In the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles this material has no name to separate it from the rest of Daniel, since it is considered an integral part of the book. Nor does it have a name in Greek manuscripts, where it forms part of Daniel. Names in the Protestant Apocrypha vary. King James Version knew it as “The Song of the Three Holy Children.” New Revised Standard Version calls it “The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews.” New English Bible knows it as “The Song of the Three.” This material is inserted between 3.23 and 3.24 of the Aramaic Daniel text.
In that context three young Jews, named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in Hebrew), are ordered to be thrown into a fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia because they have refused to worship his god. The furnace was heated seven times hotter than usual, and the men who tossed these three young men into the flames were themselves burned to death. At this point there is a rather obvious gap in the Hebrew narrative, which the Greek addition fills. This material consists of four parts: TYM 1-22 [Dan 3.24-45] The prayer of Azariah (poetry, with a brief prose introduction) TYM 23-27 [Dan 3.46-51] Prose narrative TYM 28-34 [Dan 3.52-56] Hymn (poetry) TYM 35-68 [Dan 3.57-90] Psalm (poetry) The hymn and the psalm together constitute the “Song of the Three Young Men,” but there is such an obvious difference between these two parts (the hymn is addressed to God; the psalm is a doxology calling on God’s creatures to praise him) that they are treated here separately.
The four parts of this addition probably have separate origins, and there is virtually no evidence to assist the scholar in assigning dates or determining place(s) of origin. A clue may lie in verse 9 [3.32], where the vile king is seemingly Nebuchadnezzar, but could easily reflect the author’s real feelings about Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who ruled Palestine from 175 to 164 B.C. Most would agree that Hebrew, rather than Greek or Aramaic, was the original language of all four parts. In the 1890s Moses Gaster claimed to have isolated an Aramaic original for these verses, as well as the story of Daniel and the dragon, embodied in the medieval composition Chronicles of Jerahmeel. His thesis was widely ignored until Klaus Koch recently took it seriously enough to call for a renewed investigation, and felt justified in using the Aramaic text as a tool in the textual study of the material. This is noted for information only; this Handbook will make no appeal to this Aramaic text.
The greatest uncertainty concerns the prose narrative, for some scholars hold that it is an original part of the Aramaic text, filling in the obvious gap between 3.23 and 3.24 of the Aramaic. The problem with this position is that verses 23-25 [3.46-48] contradict 3.22. There, the men who threw the three into the furnace were consumed by the heat, but in the prose addition they were still feeding fuel to the flames, and later perished. If this addition was composed separately as a preface to the hymn and psalm, it too was probably written in Hebrew. If it formed part of the original Daniel, it would have been in Aramaic. It is not a problem that needs to hinder the translator.
A problem the translator will have to face is the matter of verse numbering and the order of certain verses in the psalm (35-68 [3.57-90]). There are several places where the order of verses is a bit different in the Theodotion text from that in the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Both Revised Standard Version and Good News Bible, as versions of Protestant origin, which include this passage as part of the Apocrypha, simply follow the Theodotion text. The Catholic translations New American Bible and New Jerusalem Bible, although they too are translating Theodotion’s Greek text, take the liberty of rearranging the material in these places so as to agree with the traditional order and verse numbering of the Vulgate. This involves no significant change of the meaning of the text at all, and Catholic translators for whom this passage is part of the third chapter of Daniel will probably want to follow the lead of New Jerusalem Bible and New American Bible in these places. This Handbook will carefully note these places.
Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.