The Church Fathers · c. 236
Letter to Julius Africanus
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
What it is
Africanus had written to say that the story of Susanna cannot be genuine, since its wordplay works only in Greek. Origen concedes the philological point and argues for keeping the book anyway, on the ground that the churches read it and providence has provided for the churches.
Why it lasted
The founding document of the argument between the Hebrew text and the church's Greek Bible — the same argument Jerome and Augustine would have a century and a half later, with the same two positions already fully formed.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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