What the texts say. In the Hebrew and Aramaic book, the three young men fall bound into the furnace (3:23) and the next verse turns to the astonished king. The Greek continues with the prayer of Azariah from the flames and the great hymn of all creation, “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord” (Brenton). Susanna tells how the young Daniel exposed two corrupt elders who falsely accused a faithful wife. Bel and the Dragon tells how Daniel exposed an idol’s priests and slew a creature worshipped in Babylon. None of these passages is in the Masoretic text (Very Strong).
Two Greek versions. Daniel survives in two Greek forms: the older Septuagint version and the version associated with Theodotion. Both contain the three additions. The Theodotion form became so dominant that it replaced the older Greek in almost all manuscripts. St Jerome observed that the churches read Daniel in Theodotion’s version, not the Septuagint’s, and confessed he did not know why.
An ancient debate. In the third century Julius Africanus argued that Susanna was a later Greek composition, because Daniel’s verdicts depend on Greek puns: the elder who names a mastic tree (schinos) will be cut in two (schisei), and the one who names an evergreen oak (prinos) will be sawn (prisei). Origen answered that Susanna was “found in every Church of Christ” in the Greek, and urged that the Church’s inherited Scriptures not be set aside lightly. Jerome kept the passages in his Latin Daniel but marked them with an obelus, explaining that they were not in the Hebrew. The original language of the additions remains uncertain (Debated).
What the Orthodox Church reads and sings. The Orthodox Church reads Daniel in the Greek, with all three passages. The Prayer of Azariah with the opening of the hymn (3:26–56) and the Song of the Three (3:57–88) are the seventh and eighth of the nine biblical Odes on which the Matins canon is built, so their themes, the three youths in the furnace and all creation blessing the Lord, echo through the canons sung all year.
How translations handle it. Catholic Bibles include them in Daniel: the Douay-Rheims numbers the furnace passage 3:24–90 and places Susanna and Bel as chapters 13 and 14. Anglican and Lutheran Bibles print them in the Apocrypha; the Anglican Book of Common Prayer uses the Song, the Benedicite, as a canticle at Morning Prayer. Most other Protestant Bibles omit them.
What it does and does not change. No doctrine depends on these chapters alone. Their value lies in prayer, praise and moral example: repentance in suffering, the whole creation blessing God, justice for the falsely accused, and the folly of idols. The Church received them as part of the Daniel it read and sang.