Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel (2024)

‘Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Syriac Tradition’, in W.Th. van Peursen and J.W. Dyk, Tradition and Innovation in Biblical Interpretation. Studies Presented to Professor Eep Talstra on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (SSN 57; Leiden: Brill, 2011).

Willem T H . Van Peursen

The Four Kingdoms Motif before and beyond the Book of Daniel

"The Four Kingdoms Motif and Sibylline Temporality in Sibylline Oracles 4." Pages 121–41 in The Four Kingdoms Motif before and beyond the Book of Daniel. Edited by Andrew Perrin and Loren Stuckenbruck. Themes in Biblical Narrative 28. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

2020 •

Olivia Stewart Lester

This chapter examines the four kingdoms motif in Sib. Or. 4, which in its current form probably dates from the late first century CE. I consider the motif looking backwards, breaking the text of Sib. Or. 4 apart into reconstructed redactional layers, and forwards, analyzing the sibylline temporality that emerges from the book’s current form, including its literary seams. Engaging Paul Kosmin’s recent proposal that the four kingdoms motif is primarily an anti-Seleucid response to imperial periodized time, this chapter revisits the redactional proposals of John Collins and David Flusser regarding the motif’s origin and transformation in Sib. Or. 4. While our knowledge of the earlier form of the four kingdoms motif in Sib. Or. 4 is too speculative to be conclusive, it is just as possible that the underlying motif was anti-Macedonian, rather than anti-Seleucid. Turning to sibylline temporality in book 4, I argue that the literary transformation of the four kingdoms motif proposed by Collins and Flusser constructs a temporality that is multiple, fragmented, and less linear, even as it employs periodized time. Such a sibylline temporality could have had the effect of reinforcing the chaos of a world under divine judgment for ancient audiences.

John Bergsma

In this essay, I make the following three points, which build on each other: first, that liturgical motifs run throughout Daniel and, indeed, the book has a liturgical telos or purpose; second, that Daniel presents a running conflict between two “cultic kingdoms” or “liturgical empires”—the “Kingdom of God” and its inverted image, the “Kingdom of Man”;1 third, that in Daniel, those who belong to the Kingdom of God and live in the Kingdom of Man (that is, the exiles from Judah) face crises that call into question the meaning of liturgy and sacrifice; indeed these crises require of them the ultimate sacrifice, the offering of their own lives, the making of their lives into a living sacrifice. Finally, I will conclude with some theological reflections concerning the continuing relevance of the message of Daniel to the contemporary Church.

RELS 335.01: Early Christian Thought

1998 •

Paul A . Dietrich

Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History 1, 600-900, ed. D. Thomas and B. Roggema, (History of Christian Muslim Relations 11), Leiden and Boston, 2009, pp. 309-313.

The Proto-Fourteenth Vision of Daniel

2009 •

Jos van Lent

SSEC newsletter Aug 2016 Society for the Study of Early Christianithy

Society for the Study of Early Christianity SSEC

August newsletter as at 8 August 2016

The “Little Horn” as Ptolemy I Soter? Daniel 7 as 4th Century BCE Symbolic Historiography (Book of Daniel Consultation, SBL 2019)

Ralph Korner

ABSTRACT The “Little Horn” as Ptolemy I Soter? Daniel 7 as 4th Century BCE Symbolic Historiography. Is there an early Hellenistic context for the “little horn” of Daniel 7 that allows for the alignment of this Aramaic chapter with the linguistic (Aramaic), thematic, and literary (concentric symmetry) unity of Dan 2:4b–6:28 (hereafter chs. 2–6)? The opinio communis is that Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE) best fits an ex eventu reading of the “little horn” (7:8, 11, 20-21, 24-26; 8:9-12, 23-25). Such an historiographical context places the composition of Aramaic Daniel 7 into the late pre-Maccabean period, just prior to the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem (167 BCE). This date then ties the compositional history of Aramaic Daniel 7 to that of the Hebrew chapters (chaps. 1–2:4a, 8–12; ca. 164 B.C.E.), rather than to that of the rest of the Aramaic corpus (chs. 2–6; ca. 3rd cent. BCE). The purpose of this presentation is to build upon previous work and assess the historiographical implications of identifying the “little horn” in ch. 7 (but not in ch. 8) with Ptolemy I Soter (323–282 BCE). The key question that will be addressed is whether Daniel 7 can function as a symbolic history of Judean events in the early Hellenistic, rather than only in the late pre-Maccabean, period. Ptolemy I Soter can be said to accord with at least three essential historical criteria for the “little horn” of ch. 7: (1) he is of the lineage of the “ten horns” and reigned over Judea, the land of the “holy ones”; (2) he can be associated with a sufficient level of antagonism towards God and his “holy ones” to merit divine judgment; and (3) his rise to power over Judea is in tandem with the “demise” of three other kings (“three horns”) who had influence in the Land. At least two literary implications arise from this historiographical investigation. First, Albertz’s view that the Aramaic corpus (chs. 2–7) formally can be classified as an “apocalypse” gains reinforcement. Second, a simpler theory for the diachronic development of Daniel 1–12 becomes possible. The later Hebrew texts (chs. 8–12) can be said to function as inner biblical exegesis of Daniel 7. In this regard, Dan 8–12 (2nd cent BCE) would then be leveraging the eschatological hopes of Daniel 7 for a later generation facing a new threat to Jewish existence and religious identity (Temple defilement), this time in the form of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

Religious Studies Review

2016 •

Beth Stovell

Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel, edited by Andrew Perrin and Loren T. Stuckenbruck

The Four Kingdom Schema and the Seventy Weeks in the Arabic Reception of Daniel

2020 •

Miriam L Hjälm

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Review of Tanios Bou Mansour, Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive: Aphraate, Ephrem, Jacques de Saroug et Narsaï, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 156 (Leiden: Brill, 2020). Journal of Early Christian Studies 29, no. 2 (2021): 298–300.

Philip Michael Forness

Review of Tanios Bou Mansour, Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive: Aphraate, Ephrem, Jacques de Saroug et Narsaï, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 156 (Leiden: Brill, 2020). Journal of Early Christian Studies 29, no. 2 (2021): 298–300.