Now then, if you have seen her, tell me, Under what tree saw you them companying together? Who answered, Under a mastick tree.
Read Chapter 13
Jerome
AD 420
“And a little while after the elder said, ‘Under the mastic tree.’ And Daniel answered him, ‘You have lied well—but against your own head; here in fact is the angel of God with a sword for cleaving you in two.’ ” Since the Hebrews do not accept the story of Susanna asserting that it is not contained in the book of Daniel, we must carefully assess if the words schini and prini (which mean mastic tree and evergreen oak) exist in the Jewish language and what their etymology is—if, that is, in their [i.e., the Hebrew] language schino derives from the word “to cleave” and prino from the word “to divide” or “to saw.” If we do not succeed in this attempt, we are necessarily forced to accept those whose position is that this pericope only exists in Greek because it contains etymology that is found only in the Greek and not in the Hebrew. But if someone finds that the words “to cleave” and “to divide” also have the same etymological root as those two trees in the Hebrew, then we will be able to...
Since the Hebrews reject the story of Susanna, asserting that it is not contained in the Book of Daniel, we ought to investigate carefully the names of the trees, the skhinos and the prinos, which the Latins interpret as "holm-oak" and "mastic-tree," and see whether they exist among the Hebrews and what their derivation is ---- for example, as "cleavage" [Latin (scissio) is derived from "mastic" [Greek skhinos], and "cutting" or "sawing" [Latin sectio, serratio] is derived from "holm tree" [Greek prinos, which resembles the Greek word for "to saw": prio] in the language of the Greeks. But if no such derivation can be found, then we too are of necessity forced to agree with the verdict of those who claim that this chapter [Greek pericope] was originally composed in Greek, because it contains Greek etymology not found in Hebrew. [That is, because Daniel twice makes a sinister wordplay based upon the Greek names of these two trees, and a similar pun could not be made out from the Hebrew n...
