SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS

Peter Paul Rubens' Painting Susanna and the Elders



Peter Paul Rubens' Painting Susanna and the Elders

Introduction

Peter Paul Rubens' Painting Susanna and the Elders is a painting from the metropolitan museum in New York City. Susanna and the Elders, apocryphal work added to the canonical Book of Daniel in ancient versions. In several uncial Greek manuscripts (B A Q), the Old Latin, and the Bohairic, Susanna precedes chapter 1; its traditional position, however, in accord with the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate (and versions based on it), is after chapter 12. The story of Susanna (whose name means "lily") concerns the virtuous and beautiful wife of a prosperous Jew of Babylon, named Joakim (Broude & Garrard, 2005). Unjustly accused by two Jewish elders of having committed adultery, and condemned to death, she is proved innocent when the elders, interrogated by Daniel, disagree about the tree under which the adultery allegedly took place. In accord with Deuteronomy 19:18-19 the elders were executed, and God and Daniel are praised for Susanna's vindication. Scholars have debated the question whether the original language of the addition was in Hebrew or Greek. Already in the third century (C.E.) Julius Africanus, rebutting Origen's defense of the genuineness and canonicity of the account, pointed out that the play on words in verses 54f. and 58f. are possible only in Greek. During the Middle Ages the story attained great popularity.

In the Arts

Susanna is one of the outstanding heroines of the Apocrypha, and her story has inspired many writers and artists. In literature, two of the earliest treatments are the mid-14th century English Epistill of Swete Susane and a 15th-century French play, Une vie de Saincte Susanne, staged at Chambéry in 1470. The subject particularly attracted Renaissance dramatists because of the religio-didactic significance of the central theme - the vindication of innocence and virtue. A work of high quality was Sixtus Birck's German drama, Susanna (1532), a neo-Latin version of which was published by the playwright in 1537. One of its novel effects was the insertion of appropriate Old Testament passages at certain points in the action which were sung by the chorus (Broude & Garrard, 2005). Some other works of the period were Susana cista, a play by the Montenegrin religious poet Mavro Vetranovic of Ragusa (1482-1576); a neo-Latin Susanna by the Dutch humanist Georgius Macropedius (c. 1475-1558) and Jan Kochanowski's early Polish epic, Zusanna (1562). It was in England that the theme attracted the greatest attention, beginning with Ralph Radcliffe's The Delivery of Susanna, performed at Hitchin in 1540. Outstanding among the English plays was Thomas Garter's The Commody of the moste vertuous and Godlye Susanna (London, 1578) which, though clearly influenced by Ovid's erotic works, righteously maintained the biblical notion of divine justice in its highly moral conclusion. The subject continued to attract writers throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

In France, Antoine de Montchrétien wrote the verse play, Susane ou la Chasteté (1601), and in Greece, ...