Habakkuk, Prophecy of
HABAKKUK, PROPHECY OF
HABAKKUK, PROPHECY OF , book attributed to Habakkuk, in an appendix to the sixth-century lists of Apocrypha, the Stichometry of Nicephorus and that of Pseudo-Athanasius. It is mentioned together with works of Baruch, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Further, the title of *Bel and the Dragon in the Septuagint (but not Theodotion) reads: "From the prophecy of Habakkuk son of Jesus of the tribe of Levi." This story tells how Daniel was cast into a lion's den. On the sixth day of his imprisonment Habakkuk was taking food to the reapers in the field in Judea, when he was seized by the hair and miraculously transported to Babylon, where he gave the food to Daniel. This story appears in the Life of Habakkuk in the Pseudo-Epiphanian Lives of the Prophets (ed. Torrey, 28ff.) in a somewhat different version. The Life also ascribes to Habakkuk inter alia visions of the destruction, restoration, and subsequent destruction of the Temple. These might perhaps also reflect the Habakkuk apocryphon. The story is also known (apparently from Christian sources) in later Jewish works such as Josippon, Chronicle of Jerahmeel (ed. Gaster, 220ff.), and Sefer Yuḥasin (1925), 238.
bibliography:
M.R. James, Lost Apocrypha (1920); Charles, Apocrypha, 1 (1913), 652; A. Kahana, Ha-Sefarim ha-Ḥiẓoniyyyim, 1 (1936), 554–5.
[Michael E. Stone]