AustLit

'In Fragment A of "Jubilate Agno" (1758-63) Christopher Smart intones, "Let Susanna bless with the Butterfly - beauty hath wings, but chastity is the Cherub."

The allusion is to the history of Susannah and the elders, one of the Additions to the Book of Daniel - along with the Prayer of Azariah, and the story of Bel and the dragon - that enters the Christian Bible by way of the Septuagint and, more surely, Theodotion's translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. In placing the story at the end of the book of Daniel, St Jerome allowed it into the Vulgate, the new Latin translation of the Bible. During the Reformation, however, Protestants relegated the story to the Apocrypha, although the Fathers of the Council of Trent in their fourth session (April 18, 1546) confirmed Jerome's judgment, declaring the whole of the Vulgate to be binding for the faithful.' (Author's abstract)