It is agreed with,
however, by Orelli (_Introd.to Hab._, Clarke's Transl.), who styles Bel
and the Dragon, or at least the Habakkuk incident in it, "an idle
story." A.B. Davidson also (_Encyclop. Brit._ ed. 9, II. 181) writes of
it as being "completely fabulous;" and Ewald speaks of the episode of
Habakkuk as an example of an unhistoric spirit, growing rapidly and
dangerously (v. 487).
Cloquet's plea that non-canonicity is 'proved' (_XXXIX Arts._ 1885, pp.
112, 113) by six days being named here, and one day in the canonical
book, as the length of Daniel's incarceration in the den, is beside the
mark. It assumes for controversial purposes that the two passages must
refer to the same event. This writer also speaks generally (p. 115) of
Bel and the Dragon's "direct contradictions of Scripture." Such
strictures are only worth noticing as specimens of many instances in
which _possible_ discrepancies between canonical and uncanonical books
are treated by a particular class of writers as _certain_, in the hope
of depreciating the latter.
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