Susanna (Book of Daniel)

It is one of the additions to Daniel, placed in the Apocrypha by Protestants, with Anabaptists, Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists regarding it as non-canonical but useful for purposes of edification.

Additions to Daniel: A fair Hebrew wife named Susanna bathes privately (having sent her attendants away) in her locked and walled garden.

The first says they were under a mastic tree (ὑπο σχίνον, hypo schinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to cut (σχίσει, schisei) him in two.

The second says they were under an evergreen oak tree (ὑπο πρίνον, hypo prinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to saw (πρίσαι, prisai) him in two.

), remarking that the story was commonly read in the early Church (Letter to Africanus); and claimed the two Elders who had accused Susanna were Ahab ben Kolaiah and Zedekiah ben Masseiah, (Jeremiah 29:21); he also noted the story's absence in the Hebrew text, observing (in Epistola ad Africanum) that it was "hidden" by the Jews in some fashion.

Some treatments, especially in the Baroque period, emphasize the drama, others concentrate on the nude; a 19th-century version by Francesco Hayez (National Gallery, London) has no elders visible at all.

[11] The Uruguayan painter Juan Manuel Blanes also painted two versions of the story, most notably one where the two voyeurs are not in sight, and Susanna looks to her right with a concerned expression on her face.

In 1681 Alessandro Stradella wrote an oratorio in two parts La Susanna for Francesco II, Duke of Modena, based upon the story.

American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) painted a modern Susanna in 1938, now at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.