Where the Two Greek Daniels Agree

• Anchor Bible Dictionary — “Daniel, Additions to,” “Azariah, Prayer of,” “Three Young Men, Song of the,” “Theodotion.”
• Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — “Daniel, Additions to,” “Prayer,” “Penitential Prayer.”
• Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — “Daniel, Esther and Jeremiah, Additions to,” “Septuagint/Greek Old Testament.”
• On the text — any article that keeps the Old Greek and Theodotion apart. An article that speaks of ‘the Greek of Daniel’ without that distinction cannot be used for these verses, because here the two texts converge and everywhere else they do not.

• Carey A. Moore, Daniel, Esther and Jeremiah: The Additions (Anchor Bible) — the English commentary on all the Greek additions together.
• John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia) — the major critical commentary on the book.
• Tim McLay, The OG and Th Versions of Daniel — on how the two Greek texts relate.
• Curt Kuhl, Die drei Männer im Feuer — the older monograph on these verses.
• NETS (A New English Translation of the Septuagint) — whose Daniel prints the Old Greek and Theodotion as two translations. Named as the next step for a reader; not the English quoted here.

The prayer belongs to a family of national confessions. Daniel 9, Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, Baruch 1:15–3:8 and Esther’s prayer in Addition C of the Greek Esther each confess the people’s sin and call God just; Daniel 9 and Baruch ask for mercy for your own sake (our gloss), because God’s name is called upon his city and people (Daniel 9:19; Baruch 2:14–15). (Mordecai’s prayer, which stands before Esther’s in Addition C, asks God to spare his people and confesses no sin.) This page set the twenty rows of the prayer (3:26–45) against all five. The deepest verbatim contact with any of them is five words. Each family’s deepest run is printed with the number of the 30,214 screened Greek Old Testament units outside the insert that carry it, because most of them are stock phrases:

• Daniel 9:4–19, Daniel’s own prayer (either Greek text): deepest run four, from either text of the prayer — τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν Ιερουσαλημ (3:28, against 9:16) and, from the Old Greek only, ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν σου (against 9:19), each carried by 2 of the 30,214 units, Daniel 9 in its two Greek texts; and ἐν πάσῃ τῇ γῇ (3:37, against Theodotion’s 9:7), carried by 37.
• Nehemiah 9:6–37 (Greek 2 Esdras 19:6–37): three from the Old Greek — ten different three-word runs, carried by between 2 (ἐλάλησας πρὸς αὐτοὺς) and 529 (κύριος ὁ θεὸς) of the 30,214 units — and five from Theodotion: 3:45, σὺ εἶ κύριος ὁ θεὸς, carried by 3 of the 30,214 units, Nehemiah 9:7 and Elijah’s prayer at 1 Kings 18:36–37.
• Ezra 9:6–15 (Greek 2 Esdras 9:6–15): three — κύριε ὁ θεὸς (87 of the 30,214 units), κύριος ὁ θεὸς (529), and from the Old Greek also ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν (56).
• Baruch 1:15–3:8: four, in both texts — four different four-word runs, carried by between 1 and 10 of the 30,214 units. The one carried by a single unit is ἐπιείκειάν σου καὶ κατὰ (3:42), and that unit is Baruch 2:27 itself; the commonest is τὸ ὄνομά σου καὶ (10).
• Addition C of the Greek Esther (4:17a–z), the prayers of Mordecai (4:17a–i) and of Esther (4:17k–z): five, from both texts, at 3:32 — καὶ παρέδωκας ἡμᾶς εἰς χεῖρας, and you gave us into the hands (our gloss), against Esther’s own words at 4:17n, καὶ παρέδωκας ἡμᾶς εἰς χεῖρας. In the whole screened Greek Old Testament those five words stand in three units: the two Daniel rows and Esther 4:17n.

The family resemblance is in the shape, not the wording. And the deepest contact the prayer has with Daniel itself is not with Daniel’s prayer at all: Theodotion’s 3:28 shares six words, tie band 1 across the screened corpus, with Theodotion’s 9:24 — καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν τὴν ἁγίαν, and upon the holy city (our gloss) — the verse of the seventy weeks. The Old Greek’s 3:28 reads τὴν πόλιν σου τὴν ἁγίαν and the run breaks.

The song belongs with the psalms that call on creation. Psalm 148 calls on angels, hosts, sun and moon, stars, the waters above the heavens, fire, snow, wind, mountains, beasts and cattle, kings and young men. Psalm 136 carries one refrain on every verse. The song has Psalm 148’s catalogue in content and Psalm 136’s refrain in form, and its two-verse coda opens on Psalm 136’s first line (3:89).

• Psalm 148 → 3:52–90. Measured: the longest run of words any verse of the song shares with any verse of Greek Psalm 148 is three in Theodotion and four in the Old Greek — and the Old Greek’s four is καὶ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, at its closing line — a stock phrase, carried by 20 of the 30,214 screened units outside the insert. Across the litany proper (3:57–88) it is three in both, and three of those threes are stock as well (πᾶσαι αἱ δυνάμεις, 8 units; καὶ πάντα τὰ, 167; Theodotion’s τὰ θηρία καὶ, 6). The fourth is not: ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη, sun and moon (3:62, both texts), is carried outside the insert by Psalm 148:3 alone of the 30,214 units. The psalm’s verb is αἰνεῖτε, eight times in five of its fourteen verses; the song’s is εὐλογεῖτε, thirty-two times in each Greek text, and Psalm 148 never uses it. Same ground, different words — with that one three-word exception.
• Psalm 136 (Greek 135) → 3:89–90. All 26 verses of Greek Psalm 135 end ὅτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ. Song 3:89 is the psalm’s first verse after its Alleluia, word for word, in both Greek texts. Hebrew Psalm 136:1: הוֹד֣וּ לַיהֹוָ֣ה כִּי־ט֑וֹב כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ׃.
• 1 Maccabees 2:59 — Mattathias on his deathbed: Ανανιας Αζαριας Μισαηλ πιστεύσαντες ἐσώθησαν ἐκ φλογός (Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael believed and were saved from the flame, our gloss). 4 Maccabees names the three at 16:21 and 18:12, and Mishael’s furnace at 16:3. Measured: the Old Greek’s entry verse 3:24 has its deepest Greek Old Testament contact — five words, tie band 1 — in 4 Maccabees 16:21, and the five words are the three names: Ανανιας καὶ Αζαριας καὶ Μισαηλ. These books remember the furnace and the deliverance; they share names with the insert, not lines.
• Hebrews 11:34 — ἔσβεσαν δύναμιν πυρός, quenched the power of fire (our gloss), commonly read as recalling the furnace; it has no word for furnace. Measured against all 67 rows, in both Greek texts, its deepest run is one word: it shares three single words with them (πυρός, ἀπὸ, ἐν) and no two in a row. The three words ἔσβεσαν δύναμιν πυρός stand in none of the 30,348 screened Greek Old Testament units.
• The Greek Odes. In the Odes appendix the prayer is the seventh canticle and the song the eighth, between Jonah’s prayer (προσευχὴ Ιωνα) and Mary’s (προσευχὴ Μαριας τῆς θεοτόκου). Read off the file’s own titles. The song’s later life in Christian worship — the Book of Common Prayer appoints it, as the Benedicite, among the canticles of Morning Prayer — is named here from that book, not held or checked on this disk.

Daniel’s two Greek texts share 404 verse labels. 337 of them lie outside 3:24–90, and at none of the 337 are the two identical. The other 67 are the insert, and at 31 of those they are identical word for word (30 even to accents and the elision mark; at 3:35 one text elides through and the other does not).

Outside the furnace the two texts share a median of four consecutive words per verse. In the prayer and the litany they share a median of thirteen, and agree outright at a third of the prayer’s rows and two thirds of the litany’s.

And no other book this shelf holds in two Greek files behaves like it. Every book the shelf holds in two Greek files, measured the same way:

The highest rate of identical verses anywhere else on the shelf is Joshua’s 4 of 96 — about four per cent. The insert’s is 31 of 67, forty-six per cent. Judges’ two texts share the longest median run of the other books (nine words, against the insert’s twelve) and are still identical at only 14 of 617 labels. And the two other additions to Daniel, Susanna and Bel, are identical at none.

The shelf’s loader describes Odes 7 and 8 as second copies of Theodotion’s Daniel 3, and excludes them from every screen so that no verse is counted twice. Measured, row by row, aligned by content (Ode 8:54 against 3:55 and 8:55 against 3:54):

• 57 Ode rows. Identical to Theodotion at 41; identical to the Old Greek at 27; to both at 25.
• Identical to Theodotion and not the Old Greek: 16. Identical to the Old Greek and not Theodotion: 2 — Ode 7:26, which reads αἰνετὸν with the Old Greek, and Ode 8:61, which reads δυνάμεις κυρίου with the Old Greek.
• Identical to neither: 14. Among them Ode 7:27, ending ἀληθεῖς where the Old Greek has ἀληθιναί and Theodotion ἀλήθεια; Ode 8:83, εὐλογείτω Ισραηλ, in the third person where both Daniel texts have the second; and Ode 8:88, which stops after the refrain.
• The third person at 8:83 is not the Ode’s alone. The Clementine has it too: Benedicat Israël Dominum. Two witnesses, Greek and Latin, read let Israel bless where both Greek Daniels read bless, Israel. The words εὐλογείτω Ισραηλ stand in none of the 30,348 screened units.
• And in two lines the Ode carries Psalm 148’s words where neither Daniel text does. Ode 8:81 reads τὰ θηρία καὶ πάντα τὰ κτήνη; Greek Psalm 148:10 reads τὰ θηρία καὶ πάντα τὰ κτήνη (ESV: “Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds!”). In the screened corpus those six words stand only in Psalm 148:10 and Genesis 8:19. Theodotion’s 3:81 has them in another order and the Old Greek’s does not have them. Ode 8:60 likewise reads ὑπεράνω τῶν οὐρανῶν with Psalm 148:4, where both Daniel texts read ἐπάνω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ.

So the Odes lean to Theodotion, sixteen readings to two, but are a copy of neither text. In places they read with the Psalter, and in places with the Latin against both Greek Daniels: at 8:83; at 8:60, whose plural heavens the Clementine has too (super cælos); and at 7:45, where the Ode opens καὶ γνώτωσαν, and let them know (our gloss), as the Clementine opens et sciant and neither Greek Daniel has the and. The page does not say why; it reports that a liturgical copy of a song is not the same witness as the book it stands in, and that excluding it from screens loses something as well as preventing double-counting.

The Theodotion file prints the litany in a different order from the Old Greek at four places. Here is every witness held, at each of the four:

The Old Greek and the Clementine agree throughout; Theodotion stands alone; the Odes take Theodotion’s order once and the Old Greek’s three times; the King James takes Theodotion’s at three and, at the fourth, has no springs line at all. Four orders among five witnesses. Reading order is evidence, and a dictionary built from labels would miss every one of these.

Whose Greek does the King James English read with? The two Greek texts differ in sense at many points; at ten of them, chosen for this table and not an exhaustive list, the difference is plain enough to read off an English and a Latin line. They are printed whole so that the reader can check every one:

The King James agrees with Theodotion at nine of the ten and with the Old Greek at one; the Clementine with Theodotion at seven and the Old Greek at three. Two further points, outside the table, cut against the Clementine tally: at 3:32 Theodotion reads εἰς χεῖρας ἐχθρῶν ἀνόμων and the Old Greek εἰς χεῖρας ἐχθρῶν ἡμῶν ἀνόμων, and the Clementine has the Old Greek’s our (inimicorum nostrorum iniquorum) where the King James has lawless enemies; at 3:40 Theodotion reads οὐκ ἔσται αἰσχύνη, the Old Greek οὐκ ἔστιν αἰσχύνη, and the Clementine has the Old Greek’s present (non est confusio) where the King James has the future, they shall not be confounded. Counted in, they make the Clementine seven to five and the King James eleven to one. The King James’s lean holds; the Clementine’s is slighter than the table alone suggests. Together with the order, that is why the codex prints Theodotion first. This is a reading of an English and a Latin line against two Greek lines; it says what each column has, not where its translators found it.

Every row of the insert, both texts, against the 30,214 screened units outside the insert. Old Greek: all 67 reach two, 63 three, 29 four, 15 five, 7 six, 3 eight, 2 twelve, and nothing thirteen. Theodotion: all 67 reach two, 62 three, 29 four, 17 five, 9 six, 3 seven, 2 twelve, and nothing thirteen. Canonical Daniel stays in the target, in both its Greek texts, so a match in Daniel can count twice.

• 3:36 → Genesis 22:17 — twelve words, tie band 1, in both texts. τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ὡς τὴν ἄμμον τὴν παρὰ τὸ χεῖλος τῆς θαλάσσης — of heaven, and as the sand beside the shore of the sea (our gloss): the promise to Abraham after Moriah, which the prayer is pleading. Outside the two Daniel rows, the twelve words stand in Genesis 22:17 and nowhere else in the screened corpus.
• 3:89 → Greek Psalms 105:1, 106:1 and 135:1 — twelve words, tie band 3, in both texts. The coda opens on a whole psalm line, three times over in the Psalter (Greek Psalms 105, 106 and 135 are Psalms 106, 107 and 136 in the Hebrew and English numbering).
• ⚠️ Depth is not rarity — the page’s own Greek Old Testament counter-example. The next deepest row is the Old Greek’s 3:90, at eight words, tie band 2 (2 Chronicles 5:13 and Greek Jeremiah 40:11, which is Jeremiah 33:11 in the Hebrew and English numbering). Theodotion’s 3:90 measures seven, tie band 42. Both are the psalm refrain ὅτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ — forty-six screened units carry those seven words, four of them the insert’s own 3:89 and 3:90 — and the Old Greek’s eighth word is and. The seven-word refrain is the common phrase (46 units); the eighth word, and, is all that takes the band from 42 to 2. A run of eight with a band of 2 looks rare; it is a formula and a conjunction.
• Theodotion 3:45 → 1 Kings 18:36–37 — six words, tie band 2. ὅτι σὺ εἶ κύριος ὁ θεὸς — that you are the Lord, the God (our gloss): Elijah’s prayer on Carmel, twice. The Old Greek puts μόνος (alone) in the middle of the phrase and measures four, tie band 9. The figure depends on which Greek text is screened.
• Theodotion 3:34 → Jeremiah 14:21 — five words, tie band 1. μὴ διασκεδάσῃς τὴν διαθήκην σου, do not break your covenant (our gloss). The Old Greek’s word order (μὴ διασκεδάσῃς σου τὴν διαθήκην) measures four, with a tie band of 12.
• 3:42 → Nehemiah 13:22 (Greek 2 Esdras 23:22) — six words, tie band 1, both texts. κατὰ τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ ἐλέους σου, according to the abundance of your mercy (our gloss) — one of the remember me prayers that close Nehemiah. 3:35 → Psalms of Solomon 16:6 — six, tie band 1, both texts: μὴ ἀποστήσῃς τὸ ἔλεός σου ἀφ'…

The prayer shares its form with Daniel 9, Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, Baruch and the prayers of Greek Esther (Stage 2) and its longest verbatim runs with other texts altogether — the promise to Abraham, Elijah’s prayer, Jeremiah’s, Nehemiah’s closing prayers, a Psalm of Solomon.

Old Greek 3:24–90, 67 rows against 7,927 verses: all 67 reach two, 64 three, 11 four, 4 five, and nothing reaches six. Theodotion, the same 67 labels: all 67 reach two, 62 three, 13 four, 4 five, and nothing reaches six. The same four rows reach five in both texts. For scale: the 30 rows of chapter 3 that the Aramaic also has reach five at six rows in each Greek text.

• 3:25 → Matthew 5:2 and 17:27 — five words, tie band 2. καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ, and opening his mouth (our gloss). From the other side the band is also 2: Matthew 5:2’s deepest contact in the whole screened Greek Old Testament is five words, and the two units that reach it are the two Greek texts of Daniel 3:25. The five words stand in those two rows and nowhere else of the 30,348, and in those two Matthew verses and nowhere else of the 7,927. Rare on both sides — and still not a citation: in Matthew 17:27 the mouth is a fish’s, opened to find a coin. The idiom around the phrase is common: τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ stands in 25 screened Greek Old Testament units and 8 New Testament verses. A rare five-word sequence made of a common idiom is a coincidence of wording until something else says otherwise; here nothing does.
• 3:26 and 3:52 → Acts 3:13, 5:30 and 22:14 — five words, tie band 3. ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν, the God of our fathers (our gloss). From the other side: Acts 5:30 and 22:14 reach five against ten screened Greek Old Testament units — the four Daniel rows and six others (1 Chronicles 12:18, which is 12:17 in English; 2 Chronicles 20:6; 2 Esdras 7:27, which is Ezra 7:27; Judith 10:8; and Tobit 8:5 in both recensions); Acts 3:13 reaches six, but at 1 Chronicles 29:18 and 1 Kings 18:36, not here. A formula, ten times over.
• 3:36 → Hebrews 11:12 — five words, tie band 1. παρὰ τὸ χεῖλος τῆς θαλάσσης, beside the shore of the sea (our gloss). From the other side, it dissolves: Hebrews 11:12’s deepest Greek Old Testament contact is nine words at 1 Maccabees 11:1, tie band 1, and the five-word phrase stands in five screened units (Genesis 22:17, Exodus 14:30, 1 Maccabees 11:1 and the two Daniel rows). The shared phrase is the promise to Abraham, which the prayer and Hebrews both have in view.
• ⚠️ The page’s own counter-example. A New Testament verse commonly read as recalling the furnace, Hebrews 11:34, measures one against every row of the insert in both texts (Stage 2), and its own deepest contact anywhere in the screened Greek Old Testament is two words, ἐν πολέμῳ, tie band 28. It has no word for furnace. Four other New Testament verses do (Matthew 13:42 and 13:50, Revelation 1:15 and 9:2), and the deepest of them against the insert is three words, εἰς τὴν κάμινον, into the furnace (our gloss), from Matthew 13:42 and 13:50, reached by four of the 134 insert rows (Old Greek 3:24, 3:46 and 3:49; Theodotion 3:49). From the other side, those two verses reach five, tie band 8 — εἰς τὴν κάμινον τοῦ πυρός, into the furnace of fire (our gloss) — and all eight units are the canonical Daniel 3 outside the insert (3:6, 3:11, 3:15 and 3:20, in both Greek texts). The verse commonly read as recalling the event shares no two consecutive words with these verses; the verses that share five are about other things.

• The English file has three readings no Greek or Latin witness held supports. At v. 55 it reads O ye mountains where every Greek witness and the Clementine call on the springs (Stage 4); at v. 12 it spells the patriarch Issac’s; and at v. 47 its refrain reads bless and exalt him where its other thirty-one refrain lines read praise and exalt him and the Greek has the same verb throughout. Whether printed editions of the King James Apocrypha read the same was not checked: no facsimile of the 1611 or the 1769 printing is held here, and the page reads its English only from the one file. It prints the file verbatim and flags the three lines rather than silently correcting them.
• The loader’s description of the Odes is approximate. It excludes the Odes partly because Odes 7 and 8 are “Daniel (Th) 3” a second time. Measured: they are identical to Theodotion at 41 of 57 rows and to neither Greek text at 14. The exclusion is still right for screening; the description should say “close to”.
• Label order is not reading order. Any loader that sorts Theodotion’s Daniel 3 by verse number silently puts four stretches of the song into the Old Greek’s order. This page reads the file in file order.
• In whole-corpus hit lists the Old Greek is tagged plain “Dan” and Theodotion “DanTh”. A hit reported as “Dan 3:25” is the Old Greek, not “Daniel” in general. Every band on this page that touches Daniel was counted with the two files kept apart.

• Any Semitic form of these verses. The Masoretic Daniel has none, and no medieval Hebrew or Aramaic version is on this disk. Whether the prayer and the song were composed in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek is not verifiable from local corpora; the literature named in Stage 1 argues it.
• The manuscripts behind the Old Greek. The Old Greek of Daniel survives in very few witnesses — papyrus 967, one minuscule, and the Syro-Hexapla are the ones the literature names. None is held. The CATSS file is a digitisation of Rahlfs’s edition and inherits whatever that edition chose. So the convergence this page measures is a convergence between two edited texts as CATSS encodes them, and the page cannot say how much of it any one manuscript carries.
• Whether Theodotion’s reading order is the printed edition’s. The four transpositions are in the CATSS file. Whether Rahlfs’s printed page, or the Göttingen edition, prints Theodotion in the same order was not checked. The King James English has the same order at three of the four places, which shows that a text with that order existed — no more.
• Why the two Greek texts converge here. The literature on the relation of the Old Greek to Theodotion (Stage 1) was named, not read for this page. The convergence is measured; its explanation is not offered.
• The liturgical history. The song’s use as the Benedicite is named in Stage 2 from the Book of Common Prayer, which is not held here and was not checked.
• The Clementine is Jerome’s Latin as the Clementine edition prints it, not the Old Latin, which is not held.

• The KJV/Clementine diagnostics are readings of English and Latin against Greek. “Winter and summer” is counted as Theodotion’s cold-and-heat; “truth” as Theodotion’s noun against the Old Greek’s adjective, and the Latin vera as the Old Greek’s adjective. Every item is printed whole so that a reader can disagree with any one of them; the tally would move by one or two, not reverse. The ten were chosen, not drawn exhaustively; the two further points printed after the table move the Clementine from seven-to-three to seven-to-five and the King James from nine-to-one to eleven-to-one.
• The structure’s inner divisions are by content. Only the twin opening, the third-person turn at 3:74 and the two seams are textual markers; the rest of the outline is a reading.
• Identical-verse counts depend on the normaliser. They are computed after accents, breathings and elision are set aside, as on every page of this shelf; the stricter, character-for-character count is given beside them (30 against 31).
• The cross-shelf comparison is coarse. The two Joshua files overlap in three chapters only, and the books differ in genre and length. The comparison shows that the insert is unlike every other two-text book held; it does not rank the others.
• Every word of the insert is in the screened corpus twice, once per Greek text. Where a count includes both, the page says so; a reader comparing it with a count over one text should halve it.
• The English column is quotation, not a measured parallel. It is the only public-domain English of these verses held here, and it reads with Theodotion; the Old Greek has no English on this page at all.

• Carey A. Moore, Daniel, Esther and Jeremiah: The Additions (Anchor Bible).
• John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia).
• Tim McLay, The OG and Th Versions of Daniel.
• Curt Kuhl, Die drei Männer im Feuer.
• Joseph Ziegler’s Göttingen edition of Susanna, Daniel, Bel et Draco — the critical text with apparatus. Not held here.
• NETS, Daniel — the Old Greek and Theodotion as two English translations.

• “The Greek” of Daniel is two texts — and where they agree is itself a finding. Identical at none of 337 verse labels outside these verses, at 31 of 67 inside them, and no other two-text book on this shelf above Joshua’s 4 of 96 (4.2 per cent). Ask which copy, every time.
• The verse commonly read as recalling the furnace measures one; the five-word links are formulae and coincidences. Hebrews 11:34 shares no two consecutive words with these verses; Matthew 5:2 shares a rare five-word run of common words, and so does a fish in Matthew 17:27. Measure before you repeat.
• A canticle copy is a witness of its own. The Odes copy leans to Theodotion but agrees with neither text at fourteen of its rows, twice reads with Psalm 148, and more than once with the Latin against both Greek Daniels.
• A prayer offered without the furniture of worship. No prince, no prophet, no sacrifice, no place — and still, in the King James words, we follow thee with all our heart, we fear thee, and seek thy face (KJV v. 18, Greek 3:41). That Greek line is identical in both texts.
• One concrete response. The song’s two-verse coda opens on a line the Psalter has three times — in the ESV of Psalm 136:1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” Pray Psalm 136 aloud this week, refrain and all — it is Scripture, and its first line is where this song’s coda begins.