Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel

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The four kingdoms motif enabled writers of various cultures, times, and places, to periodize history as the staged succession of empires barrelling towards an utopian age. The motif provided order to lived experiences under empire (the present), in view of ancestral traditions and cultural heritage (the past), and inspired outlooks assuring hope, deliverance, and restoration (the future). Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel includes thirteen essays that explore the reach and redeployment of the motif in classical and ancient Near Eastern writings, Jewish and Christian scriptures, texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, depictions in European architecture and cartography, as well as patristic, rabbinic, Islamic, and African writings from antiquity through the Mediaeval eras.
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Andrew B. Perrin, Ph.D. (2013), McMaster University, is Canada Research Chair in Religious Identities of Ancient Judaism at Trinity Western University. His research on Daniel and Qumran has garnered the Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise and David Noel Freedman Award.

Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Ph.D. (1994), Princeton Theological Seminary, is Professor of New Testament and Second Temple Judaism at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. His previous books include a commentary on 1 Enoch 91–108 and The Myth of Rebellious Angels.

Contributors include Katharina Bracht, Brennan Breed, Kylie Crabbe, Lorenzo DiTommaso, Alexandria Frisch, James R. Hamrick, Geoffrey Herman, Miriam L. Hjälm, Andrew B. Perrin, Michael Segal, Olivia Stewart Lester, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Ian Young.
“Die einzelnen Studien sind aus im open access zugänglich, was den hohen Preis des Bandes leichter erträglich macht. Lesenswert ist er in jedem Fall für alle, die sich für das Danielbuch und seine Wirkungsgeschichte interessieren.” – Martin Rösel, Universität Rostock, in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 148 (2023).

Abbreviations

Introduction to the Four Kingdoms as a Time Bound, Timeless, and Timely Historiographical Mechanism and Literary Motif
Andrew B. Perrin

The Four Kingdoms and Other Chronological Conceptions in the Book of Daniel
Michael Segal

Five Kingdoms, and Talking Beasts: Some Old Greek Variants in Relation to Daniel’s Four Kingdoms
Ian Young

The Four (Animal) Kingdoms: Understanding Empires as Beastly Bodies
Alexandria Frisch

The Apocalypse of Weeks: Periodization and Tradition-Historical Context
Loren T. Stuckenbruck

Expressions of Empire and Four Kingdoms Patterns in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls
Andrew B. Perrin

The Four Kingdoms Motif and Sibylline Temporality in Sibylline Oracles 4
Olivia Stewart Lester

The Generation of Iron and the Final Stumbling Block: The Present Time in Hesiod’s Works and Days 106–201 and Barnabas 4
Kylie Crabbe

The Four Kingdoms of Daniel in Hippolytus’s Commentary on Daniel
Katharina Bracht

Persia, Rome and the Four Kingdoms Motif in the Babylonian Talmud
Geoffrey Herman

The Four Kingdoms of Daniel in the Early Mediaeval Apocalyptic Tradition
Lorenzo DiTommaso

The Four Kingdom Schema and the Seventy Weeks in the Arabic Reception of Daniel
Miriam L. Hjälm

Conflicting Traditions: The Interpretation of Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Ethiopic Commentary (Tergwāmē) Tradition
James R. Hamrick

The Politics of Time: Epistemic Shifts and the Reception History of the Four Kingdoms Schema
Brennan Breed

Index of Primary Sources
Index of Modern Authors
Advanced students and scholars of the textual formation, apocalyptic theology, and historiographies of the book of Daniel and its diverse reception by writers and communities.
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