This book has a bad start thanks to Robert Hanhart's polemical “Introduction”. Not content to merely skate his theologumenon of Canonicity across thin ice, he decides to build a castle on it. One does not have to look far to see people completely turned off from the Septuagint (and the rest of the book) by this essay alone. Ironically, it was his tendentious, unsupported, a priori assertions that strengthened my interest in the textual authority of the LXX and launched me into Hengel's book in hopes of finding the grain sifted from Hanhart's chaff. I was only occasionally disappointed. What tarnishes this incredible (and approvingly short) book is Hengel's constant and unimpressive quoting of sources in their original languages--sometimes at great length--without any translation either of his own or another's. In the end, Hengel's answer to the historical question “why did Christians accept the 'apocryphal' texts into their canon?” is quite anti-climactic. In addition, although Hengel attributes the authorship of Daniel to about 165 BC, his arguments affectively annul the possibility of any such dating. “The inclusion of...Daniel...was based...on a 'historical error'” (p.91). “The fact that the book of Daniel...was received so quickly and without hesitation seems to be almost a miracle...” (p.95). Rather than suggest one believe in miracles and strangely incoherent historical errors, Hengel's arguments affirm that Daniel must be dated to the epoch of revelation between Moses and Artaxerxes in order to make historical sense of its uncontested place in the Pharisaic canon. ( )