[31] Nor does the bitterness of those
disputes seem stamped with sufficient strength upon the document itself
to compel us to see in them its period of origin.
J.T. Marshall (Hastings' _D.B._ IV., 631-2) conjectures that the latter
part of the story arose out of Simon ben Shetach's efforts, about 100
B.C., to get the law as to witnesses in criminal cases altered. This
view is perhaps a trifle more probable than Ball's.
As to the true LXX text, Bissell (p. 444) rather inclines to deem it to
have been from the first a part of the LXX. So Pusey, quoted by Churton
(p. 389), says that it is "admitted to have been contemporary with the
LXX version;" and W. Selwyn (_D.B._ III., p. 1210a) thinks that this,
with the other additions, was "early incorporated with the LXX."
Rothstein in Kautzsch, very hesitatingly and with much caution, suggests
(I., p. 178) the second century before Christ.
On the other hand, A. Kamphausen (_Encyclop. Bibl._ I. 1013) writes,"
When [Daniel] first began to be translated by the Egyptian Jews into
Greek, the legends of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, which may very
well have had an independent circulation, had certainly not as yet been
taken up into it.
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