Though the MSS probably did not help the ancients concretize the canon, they do visualize for us what an ancient scribe or church father meant or conceptualized by the title of a certain book. This may not be a big deal for New Testament studies, but for the Greek Old Testament, we need to take this point to heart. The contents of books such as Jeremiah, 1-2 Esdras, Esther, and Daniel are not very straightforward. Let’s use “Daniel” as a test case by touring some select MS images of the book to see whether our vision of the contents improves.The "Book of Daniel" is an especially messy case. These manuscripts exhibit differences in whether and how the Apocryphal additions are incorporated into the book. The Old Greek translation of the book also seems to preserve elements of an earlier version than the Masoretic text.
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