An Atheist Explores the Apocrypha Part 31: Two Lecherous Creeps Get What They Deserve (Susanna 1)

 Susanna  1

Two Lecherous Creeps Get What They Deserve.

 Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

 For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

 Susanna  1

“Now when the people departed away at noon, Susanna went into her husband's garden to walk”

 Let’s get one thing out of the way first; this book doesn’t feature anybody coming from Alabama with a banjo on their knee. So with that disappointment passed, on to the story.

 It’s a biblical #metoo story. Susanna is the pious Jewish wife of a man called Joacim who lives in Babylon. Whether or not Joacim is a Hebrew or not is unclear, but he’s a wealthy man with a nice garden and lots of people come to his house to conduct business, including a couple of elders who use Joacim’s house to hear cases.

 The two elders see Susanna daily, and both are “inflamed with lust”. There’s a bit of comedy where the two elders are too ashamed to admit to the other how they feel, and conspire to send the other away on the pretence of going home, then doubling back to have their wicked way with Susanna. Of course, they both do this and run into each other, and so “they acknowledged their lust: then appointed they a time both together, when they might find her alone”.

 They lie in wait until Susanna enters the garden to bathe, accompanied by two maids who she sends away. And so the two old pervs leap out and try to blackmail her. “Behold, the garden doors are shut, that no man can see us, and we are in love with thee; therefore consent unto us, and lie with us. If thou wilt not, we will bear witness against thee, that a young man was with thee: and therefore thou didst send away thy maids from thee”.

 Susanna decides it’s better to call their bluff than to have to “lie with them” and so she calls for help. Sure enough the two elders spin their tale about how there was a young man here but, oh, he got away, and the matter is taken to a tribunal whereupon the people believe the elders, because they are respected members of the community and Susanna is condemned to death.

 But then a young man called Daniel (whether the Daniel of “lion’s den” fame or not is unclear) shames the people into not giving Susanna a fair trial. A retrial is called and Daniel questions the two elders separately. I thought at first we were going to get a very early example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but not quite. Daniel asks them under what kind of tree they found Susanna. One answers “Under a mastick tree”, the other “Under an holm tree”. And thus the people see that the two elders have been lying and, as Daniel says, “the angel of God waiteth with the sword to cut thee in two”.

 Maybe not the angel of God but an executioner because the two elders are killed, everyone praises God, and “From that day forth was Daniel had in great reputation in the sight of the people”, so I guess he is that Daniel.

 That’s a fun book, a very relatable morality tale.

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