‘Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Syriac Tradition’, in W.Th. van Peursen and J.W. Dyk, Tradition...

Tradition and Innovation in Biblical Interpretation

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Studia Semitica Neerlandica

Editor-in-Chief

Prof. dr. K.A.D. Smelik

Editorial Board

Prof. dr. P.C. Beentjes, Prof. dr. W.J. van Bekkum, Dr. W.C. Delsman, Prof. dr. H. Gzella,

Prof. dr. J. Hoftijzer, Dr. W. Th. van Peursen, Prof. dr. J. Van Steenbergen, Prof. dr. E. Talstra,

Prof. dr. M. Tanret

VOLUME 57

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/SSN

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Tradition and Innovation in Biblical Interpretation

Studies Presented to Professor Eep Talstra on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday

Edited by

W.Th. van Peursen and J.W. Dyk

LEIDEN • BOSTON2011

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Photo frontispiece Jelly Reinders

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN 0081-6914ISBN 978 90 04 21061 5

Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

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CONTENTS

List of Contributors ........................................................................... ix

Preface ................................................................................................. xiii Janet Dyk and Wido van Peursen

Tradition and Innovation in Biblical Scholarship: An Introduction ............................................................................ 1 Wido van Peursen and Janet Dyk

PART ONE

TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN THE BIBLE ITSELF

A Story of Three Prophets: Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis of Jeremiah 26 ................................................................ 13 Joep Dubbink

‘Against you, Daughter of Babylon!’ A Remarkable Example of Text-Reception in the Oracle of Jeremiah 50–51 ............... 31 Eric Peels

‘Reading Jeremiah Makes Me Angry!’ The Role of Jeremiah 32[39]:36–41 in Transformation within the ‘Jeremianic’

Tradition ......................................................................................... 45 Janneke Stegeman

Beyond ‘Singers and Syntax’: Theological and Canonical Reflections on Psalm 8 ................................................................. 69 Carl J. Bosma

Where is God? Romans 3:13–18 as an Addition to Psalm 14 .... 93 Eveline van Staalduine–Sulman

Reading Qohelet as Text, Author, and Reader ............................. 113 Timothy Walton

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vi contents

Tradition through Reading—Reading the Tradition: Reflections on Eep Talstra’s Exegetical Methodology ............. 133 Louis Jonker

PART TWO

TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN THE RECEPTIONOF THE BIBLE

Between Stigmatizing and Idolizing the Bible: On the Reception of Genesis 12:10–20; 20; 26:1–11 ............................. 155 Cornelis Houtman

‘Out of Egypt I Have Called My Son’: Matthew 2:15 and Hosea 11:1 in Dutch and American Evangelical Interpretation ................................................................................. 171 Gert Kwakkel

Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Syriac Tradition ......................... 189 Wido van Peursen

The Identity of Israel’s God: The Potential of the So-called Extra-Calvinisticum ....................................................................... 209 Cornelis van der Kooi

A Jewish Childbirth Amulet from the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana ................................................................................. 223 Margaretha Folmer

PART THREE

TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN LINGUISTIC AND COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO THE BIBLE

Computer-Assisted Tools for Textual Criticism .......................... 245 Emanuel Tov

On Biblical Hebrew and Computer Science: Inspiration, Models, Tools, and Cross-Fertilization ..................................... 261 Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen

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contents vii

Persuasive Hebrew Exercises: The Wit of Technology- Enhanced Language Learning ..................................................... 277 Nicolai Winther-Nielsen

Judging Jephthah: The Contribution of Syntactic Analysis to the Interpretation of Judges 11:29–40 ....................................... 299 Klaas Spronk

Masoretic Tradition and Syntactic Analysis of the Psalms ........ 317 Luis Vegas Montaner

Who is Speaking—Who is Listening? How Information Technology Can Confirm the Integrity of the Text ................ 337 Oliver Glanz

Jerusalem’s Comforters in Isaiah 40:1–2: Participant Tracking in a Prophetic Text ....................................................................... 361 Reinoud Oosting

Hebrew hāyāh: Etymology, Bleaching, and Discourse Structure .......................................................................................... 379 Frank Polak

The Lexeme ............................................................................... 399 Christo H. J. van der Merwe

Language, Structure, and Strategy in Isaiah 53:1–6: , Word Order, and the Translator ............................................................ 417 Lénart J. de Regt

in Job 34:36 ................................................................................. 437 Constantijn J. Sikkel

Dissertations under the Guidance of Eep Talstra ........................ 461

Publications by Eep Talstra ............................................................. 465

Index of Sources ................................................................................ 483Index of Modern Authors ................................................................ 493

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Carl J. Bosma is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Calvin Theo-logical Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.

Joep Dubbink is minister in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and Extraordinary Professor for Biblical Theology (Dirk Monshouwer Chair) at VU University Amsterdam.

Janet W. Dyk is Assistant Professor of Bible Translation at the Faculty of Theology and Faculty of Arts, and linguistic researcher at the Werk-groep Informatica of the Faculty of Theology, both at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Margaretha Folmer is Assistant Professor of Hebrew at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam, and Assistant Professor of Aramaic at the School for Middle Eastern Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.

Oliver Glanz is post-doctoral researcher at the Werkgroep Infor-matica of the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Cornelis Houtman is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at the Prot-estant Theological University, Kampen, the Netherlands.

Louis C. Jonker is Professor of Old Testament at the Department of Old and New Testament of the Faculty of Theology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Cornelis van der Kooi is Professor of Western Systematic Theology and Director of the Centre for Evangelical and Reformation Theology at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam.

Gert Kwakkel is Professor of Old Testament at the Theological University of the (Liberated) Reformed Churches, Kampen, the Netherlands.

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x list of contributors

Christo H.J. van der Merwe is Associate Professor at the Department of Ancient Studies, and Director of the Centre for Bible Interpretation and Translation in Africa, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Reinoud Oosting is post-doctoral researcher of Old Testament at the Institute for Religious Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.

Eric Peels is Professor of Old Testament Studies at the Theological Uni-versity of Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, and Old Testament Research Fellow at the University of Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.

Wido van Peursen is Associate Professor of Old Testament at the Institute for Religious Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.

Frank Polak is Professor of Bible at Tel Aviv University, Israel.

Lénart J. de Regt is Europe-Middle East Area Translations Coordinator for the United Bible Societies.

Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen is a postdoctoral researcher in computational linguistics at the Department of Communication and Psychology, University of Aalborg, Denmark, and academic programmer at the Werkgroep Informatica of the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Constantijn Sikkel is academic programmer at the Werkgroep Infor-matica of the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Klaas Spronk is Professor of Old Testament at the Protestantse The-ologische Universiteit, the Netherlands.

Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam, and researcher in Targum Studies within the project ‘A Jewish Targum in a Christian World’ at the Protestant Theological University, the Netherlands.

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list of contributors xi

Janneke Stegeman is PhD researcher in Old Testament at the VU Institute for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society (VISOR), VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Emanuel Tov is J.L. Magnes Professor Emeritus at the Department of Bible, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.

Luis Vegas Montaner is Professor of Hebrew Studies at the Com-plutense University, Madrid, Spain.

Timothy Walton is Extension Faculty of Old Testament for Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, USA, and Adjunct Pro-fessor of Old Testament at Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary, Amman, Jordan.

Nicolai Winther-Nielsen is Associate Professor of Old Testament at the Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology (DBI), Copenhagen, Denmark, and external reader in Persuasive Design, University of Aalborg, Denmark.

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DANIEL’S FOUR KINGDOMS IN THE SYRIAC TRADITION

Wido van Peursen

Early Christian exegetes identified the fourth kingdom in the book of Daniel as the Roman Empire. According to modern scholarship, however, it origi-nally referred to the Greeks. The Greek interpretation has been preserved in Syriac sources, including headings that were added in the text of Peshitta Daniel. In addition to the historical interpretation, various Syriac sources reflect contemporanizations of Daniel’s prophecies. Thus in the seventh cen-tury, in response to the rise of Islam, a number of apocalypses were composed which either tried to fit the Arab conquest into the traditional four-kingdoms model as a temporary trial, or interpreted the Arabs as Daniel’s fourth king-dom. The latter marked a major break with the traditional view that the Greek or the Roman Empire would be the last kingdom before the coming of the antichrist. This contribution deals with the various ways in which Daniel’s four kingdoms were understood in the Syriac tradition, both in historical interpretations and in appropriations in new contexts. It investigates how these ways relate to the reception of Daniel’s four kingdoms in other Christian traditions, both Eastern (cf. the role of Daniel in the Byzantine imperial ideology) and Western (cf. Augustine’s response to the decline and fall of Rome).

1 Introduction

Throughout the centuries the book of Daniel has been a major incen-tive for all kinds of speculation about the end of the world and people have interpreted their own time in the light of Daniel’s visions. In Syriac Christianity, the book of Daniel has been a more important source for such speculations than the New Testament book of Revela-tion, whose canonical status was disputed.

The earliest Syriac documents, including the Book of the Laws of the Countries, the Odes of Solomon, and the Acts of Thomas, do not reflect strong apocalyptic expectations,1 but when faced with wars, such as the fourth-century Roman–Sassanian conflicts, or triumphs of peoples who did not adhere to the ‘true faith’, such as the Arab victories, Syriac

1 Cf. Ute Possekel, ‘Expectation of the End in Early Syriac Christianity’, Hugoye 11/1 (2008).

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190 wido van peursen

Christians interpreted these events as the beginning of the end pre-dicted by Daniel.

In the fourth century we see such an interpretation of Daniel’s visions in Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration, in which the description of the Ram of Daniel 8 shifts from Darius to the Persian king of that day, Shapur II.2 The largest collection of such contemporanizations, however, stems from the seventh century. In response to the Arab conquests, Middle-Eastern Christians sought to understand the events that radically changed the political and religious landscape and made them subordinate to non-Christian rulers. They attempted to provide an explanation that was compatible with their beliefs and their trans-mitted history, and they struggled to give a place to the Arab con-quests in Daniel’s periodization of history into four empires.

The most important vehicle for the expression of these expectations were not, as in the example of Aphrahat, treatises or commentaries on the biblical apocalypses, but rather new compositions that were modelled on them: alleged revelations to saints from the past, depict-ing how history would develop until the turmoil of the author’s own time, and predicting divine intervention.

2 Syriac Apocalypses of the Seventh Century

The earliest apocalyptic response to the rise of Islam occurs in Pseudo-Ephrem’s On the End.3 According to Pseudo-Ephrem, just as the Persian conquests earlier in the seventh century,4 the Arab invasions

2 Cf. Craig E. Morrison, ‘The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration, “On Wars” ’, Hugoye 7/1 (2004). Cf. Phil J. Botha, ‘The Reception of Daniel Chapter 2 in the Commentary Ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian Church Father’, Acta Patristica et Byzantina 17 (2006), pp. 119–143, esp. 133: Aphrahat ‘telescopes history so as to be able to find answers from the dream with regard to things that were happening in his own time’.

3 Edition and translation: Edmund Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Ser-mones III (CSCO 320–321, Syr. 138–139; Leuven, 1972), sermo 5, pp. 60–71 (text), 79–94 (translation). Earlier apocalypses of the seventh-century, such as the Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel and the Vision of the Young Daniel or the apocalyptic sections in the Alexander literature, do not contain unequivocal references to the Arab con-quests. They have much in common with the older apocalypses such as 4 Ezra and the Apocalypse of Baruch.

4 In 614 Chosroes II (603/4–625) had shocked Christians by capturing Jerusalem and thus bringing it under pagan rule. The lost territories were recovered by Heraclius in 626–627.


daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 191

belonged to the wars that heralded the end of the world predicted by Christ in the Synoptic Apocalypse (cf. Matt 24:7).5

As time proceeded, however, the Arab conquests appeared to be more permanent than the Persian invasions and the developments of the seventh century required a reshaping of the apocalyptic expecta-tions. In the late 680s, in the last years of the Second Arab Civil War (680–691 ad), John of Phenek’s summary of the history of the world (Rish Melle)6 predicted that the Arab rule would come to an end due to internal struggles, after which the eschatological peoples would come.7

After the restoration of the Ummayad power, the expectation that internal struggle would put an end to the Arab rule appeared to be idle. Apocalypses that were composed in the early 690s, such as the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (691/692 ad)8 and the Edessene Apocalypse (also 691/692),9 developed another scenario for the end of the Arab rule, namely, that the Byzantine emperor would put an end to it and restore the former political and religious situation in the Middle East.10 At the end of seventh century, the building of the Dome

5 See G.J. Reinink, ‘Alexander the Great in Seventh-Century Syriac “Apocalyp-tic” Texts’, Byzantinorossica 2 (2003), pp. 150–178, esp. 169–170 (= idem, Syriac Christianity under Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Rule [CStS; Aldershot, 2005], VI).

6 Unlike the other seventh-century Syriac apocalypses, this text has an East-Syriac origin.

7 Cf. also Reinink, ‘Paideia: God’s Design in World History according to the East Syrian Monk John bar Penkaye’, in E. Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle 2. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle, Drieber-gen/Utrecht July 1999 (Amsterdam–New York, 2002), pp. 190–198 (= idem, Syriac Christianity, VII).

8 Cf. Reinink, Die Syrische Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius (CSCO 540–541, Syr. 220–221; Leuven, 1993), II (541), pp. xii–xxv.

9 Shortly after and influenced by Pseudo-Methodius; see Reinink, ‘Der Edesseni-sche “Pseudo-Methodius” ’.

10 Cf. Reinink, ‘Der Edessenische “Pseudo-Methodius” ’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 83 (1990), pp. 31–45, esp. 44 (= idem, Syriac Christianity, X); idem, ‘Pseudo-Methodius und die Legende vom römischen Endkaiser’, in W. Verbeke, D. Verhelst, and A. Welkenhuysen (eds.), The Use and Abuse of Escatology in the Middle Ages (Mediae-valia Lovaniensia 1/15; Leuven, 1988), pp. 82–111, esp. 103 (= idem, Syriac Christianity, VIII); idem, ‘The Romance of Julian the Apostate, as a Source for Seventh Century Syriac Apocalypses’, in Pierre Canivet and Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais (eds.), La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam. VII–VIIe siècles: Actes du Colloque international Lyon—Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen, Paris—Institut du Monde Arabe, 11–15 September 1990 (Damas, 1992), pp. 75–86, esp. 80–81 (= idem, Syriac Christianity, XI). The expecta-tion of a Byzantine-Arab war was strengthened by the fact that in 691/2 the peace treaty between Justinian II and Abd al-Malik of AD 688 was broken as a result of fresh hostilities between the Arabs and the Byzantines.



of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple (691 ad),11 tax reforms that disadvantaged non-Muslims, and a increased self-awareness of the Muslims rulers, which, according to the Syriac sources, resulted in a haughty and contemptuous attitude towards the Christians,12 inten-sified the highly wrought apocalyptic expectations.

Shortly after Pseudo-Methodius, the author of the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles (694 ad?) developed another scenario of the end. The Ummayad power was so firmly established that there was no hope left that a Byzantine emperor would conquer the Muslims. Instead, the author expected that first the Umayyad empire would come to its end through internal conflicts and that then, at the end, a ‘man from the north’—rather than the Byzantine emperor from the West—would rise.

Since the Ummayad power was now so well-established, the author of the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles took another drastic step in his interpretation of history. For centuries Christians had interpreted Daniel’s fourth kingdom as either the Greeks or the Romans (see below). Pseudo-Methodius still tried to fit the Arab conquest as a tem-porary trial into this traditional model. The author of the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, however, could no longer regard the Arab rule as an intermezzo and made it the fourth and final kingdom.13

By substituting the intervention of the Byzantine emperor in the next Arab-Byzantine war for a more shadowy and remote ‘King of the North’ and by interpreting the Arabs as Daniel’s fourth kingdom, and hence accepting the Arab rule as something that was more enduring than had been anticipated, the Gospel of the Twelve Apostle preludes

11 Cf. Reinink, ‘Early Christian Reactions to the Building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’, Xristianskij Vostok 2/8 (2001), pp. 227–241 [= idem, Syriac Christianity, XII]; idem, ‘The Romance of Julian the Apostate’, p. 79.

12 Reinink, ‘Alexander the Great’, pp. 172–173.13 Han J.W. Drijvers, ‘The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles: A Syriac Apocalypse from

the Early Islamic Period’, in Averil Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad (eds.), The Byz-antine and Early Islamic Near East 1. Problems in the Literary Source Material (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 1; Princeton, 1992), pp. 189–213; idem, ‘Christians, Jews and Muslims in Northern Syria in Early Islamic Times: The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles and Related Sources’, in Canivet and Rey-Coquais (eds.), La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam, pp. 67–74. This interpretation of the fourth kingdom is also found in Jewish sources (cf. H.H. Rowley, Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel: A Historical Study of Contemporary Theories [Cardiff, 1935], pp. 80–81), including the colophon of the Codex Leningradensis (Richard A. Taylor, personal communication, August 2010).



the end of the tense apocalyptic expectations reflected in the earlier apocalypses. It shows a transition by which the expectation of the immediate end, in which contemporaneous events and persons fig-ured prominently, was replaced by some less concrete expectations for a more remote future period.14

3 Later Developments

In the eighth century, when Muslim rule was well established, apoca-lyptic expectations faded and a new orientation of the Christian popu-lations towards the Arab government was needed:

The problem of the Arab authority that manifested itself by very concrete measures as the religion of the conquerors, superior to Christianity, was now to be solved on the level of theological apology, which should dem-onstrate that it would be a mistake to believe that the political superior-ity of the Arabs implied religious superiority.15

An example of the literature that was composed under these condi-tions is The Disputation between a Monk of the Monastery of Beth Hale and an Arab Notable, the oldest known Nestorian Christian-Muslim disputation, written in ca. 720.16 The author of this dispute17 did not expect a military solution to the hardships that the Christians were enduring, but rather considered them as the way that God chastises his people in this ephemiral life.

It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the various ways in which Syriac Christian authors responded to the challenges that emerged from the confrontation with Islam after the initial apocalyptic

14 Cf. Drijvers ‘Christians, Jews and Muslims’, p. 73; cf. ibid., p. 74: ‘The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles marks a transition between a period of intense apocalyptic hope and a more stable though more negative situation in which the various Christian churches, the Jews and the Muslims had to deal with each other and find their identi-ties and boundaries.’

15 Thus Reinink, ‘The Beginnings of Syriac Apologetic Literature in Response to Islam’, OrChr 77 (1993), pp. 165–187, esp. 185 (= idem, Syriac Christianity, XIII).

16 Cf. Sidney H. Griffith, ‘Disputing with Islam in Syriac: The Case of the Monk of Bêt Hãlê and a Muslim Emir’, Hugoye 3/1 (2001).

17 It is doubtful that it reflects an actual Muslim-Christian disputation. Rather, these disputations were literary fictions written by Christians for the members of their own communities for the purpose of warding off the increasing danger of apostasy (Reinink, ‘Syriac Apologetic Literature’, p. 186).



reactions. Syriac Christians had to reflect on God (in response to Muslim objections against the doctrine of the Trinity), authority (now that the Christians were subjected by non-Christian rulers), Scripture (in response to the Muslims’ rebuke that the Jews and the Christians had distorted their holy books), and history (since the apocalyptic expectations were not fulfilled). However, it is worthwhile to mention these developments because the new directions in Syriac literature in the eighth century highlight the apocalyptic writings of the seventh century as the representatives of the very first phase of Syriac Christian responses to Islam.

Two additional observations can be made. First, it should be noted that the developments in the Syriac responses to the rise of Islam do not stand in isolation. In the Byzantine Empire, too, the initial apoc-alyptic responses to the rise of Islam, reflected in, for example, the Christmas sermon of Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem (Patriarch 634–638) and the Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati (634),18 were sup-plemented by apologetic disputations, including the works of John of Damascus, the earliest Byzantine apologist against Islam.

Second, after the eighth century apocalypticism did not die out com-pletely, but reemerged in tumultuous periods. Thus the apocalyptic sections in the Syriac Bahira legend reflect the 9th-century upheavals in the Abbasid caliphat.19 In later times we see a reemergence of apoca-lypticism in response to the failures of the Crusades and the decrease of Christian power in the Middle East,20 the Fall of Constantinople, and the Rise of the Mongols.21

18 Cf. Walter Emil Kaegi, ‘Initial Byzantine Reactions to the Arab Conquest’, Church History 38/2 (1969), pp. 139–149, esp. 139–152.

19 Barbara Roggema, The Legend of Sergius Bahīrā: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam (The History of Christian-Muslim Relations 9; Leiden, 2009).

20 Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York, 1979), p. 149: ‘Conflict between Christendom and Islam remained a nur-turing ground for the production of apocalyptic texts during the thirteenth century. As the reality of Christian power grew more tenuous in the East, and as the crusading expeditions became more desperate and less successful, men increasingly turned to prophecies of the imminent end of Moslem rule for solace and hope.’

21 Bert Roest, ‘Franciscaanse apocalyptiek’, in Jan Willem van Henten and Osger Mellink (eds.), Visioenen aangaande het einde: apocalyptische geschriften en bewegin-gen door de eeuwen heen (Zoetermeer, 1998), pp. 189–220, esp. 204–205.



4 Historical Interpretations in Peshitta Manuscripts and Commentaries

Side by side with the contemporanizations of Daniel’s visions in the sources discussed above, in which Daniel’s visions were applied to per-sons and events of the era, an historical interpretation was transmit-ted as well. This interpretation regarded Daniel’s visions as related to events that took place in the past, referring to the Babylonian Empire and its successors. Important witnesses to this historical interpretation are rubrics and additions in the Peshitta manuscripts in chapters 7–8 (present in the earliest available manuscripts from the 6th century) and chapter 11 (in manuscripts from the 10th century onwards),22 such as the headings ‘Darius the Mede’ (8:2, 19) and ‘Death of Alexander, the son of Philip’ (8:8), or the addition ‘Alexander the First, the son of Philip’ following ‘then a mighty king will appear’ (11:3).23

It is debated whether the headings in chapters 7–8 were part of the original second-century translation24 or later additions.25 Van der Kooij thinks that the latter is the case because of the interpretation they reflect. In taking the fourth beast in Daniel 7 as referring to the Greeks (which we will call ‘the Greek interpretation’), the rubrics reflect an interpretation that strikingly differs from the majority view among early Jews and Christians, who considered it a reference to the Roman Empire (henceforth: ‘the Roman interpretation’, see table 1).26 For this

22 See the introduction to the text of Daniel in the Leiden Peshitta edition: ‘Daniel’, in The Old Testament in Syriac according to the Peshitta Version III, 4. Dodeka-propheton—Daniel-Bel-Draco (prepared by the Peshitta Institute on the basis of mate-rial collected and studied by Th. Sprey; Leiden, 1980).

23 Cf. also Konrad D. Jenner, ‘The Unit Delimitation in the Syriac Text of Daniel and its Consequences for the Interpretation’, in M.C.A. Korpel and J.M. Oesch (eds.), Delimitation Criticism: A New Tool in Biblical Scholarship (Pericope 1; Assen, 2000), pp. 105–129 (on delimitation markers), and idem, ‘Syriac Daniel’, in John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception (2 vols.; Leiden, 2002), II, pp. 608–637 (on the selection of passages for liturgical use).

24 Thus Abraham George Kallarakkal, The Peshitto Version of Daniel—A Compari-son with the Massoretic Text, the Septuagint and Theodotion (PhD diss., Hamburg University, 1973).

25 Thus Arie van der Kooij, ‘The Four Kingdoms in Peshitta Daniel 7 in the Light of the Early History of Interpretation’, in R.B. ter Haar Romeny (ed.), The Peshitta: Its Use in Literature and Liturgy (MPIL 15; Leiden, 2006), pp. 123–129.

26 Within both interpretations there is variation. There are, for example, also repre-sentatives of the Greek interpretation that take the Medes and the Persians together. See below.



Table 1: The Greek Interpretation and the Roman Interpretation of Daniel’s Four Kingdoms

Daniel 7 ‘Greek interpretation’ ‘Roman interpretation’27

1 Lion Babylonians Babylonians2 Bear Medes Medes and Persians3 Leopard Persians Greeks4 Terrifying animal with ten horns Greeks Romans

reason Van der Kooij thinks that they were added somewhere in the fifth century, after the fourth-century—since Aphrahat, who identifies the fourth kingdom as the Romans, apparently was not familiar with them—but before the sixth century—because all available manuscripts from the sixth century onwards contain them. According to Van der Kooij the Greek interpretation they reflect originated in Porphyrius’ anti-Christian polemics, about which we are well informed because Jerome goes to much trouble to refute Porphyrius’ claims; from there they entered the Syriac Christian tradition.

Although Van der Kooij is right that the Greek interpretation dif-fers from the majority view attested in Christian sources, we should be aware that in the Syriac tradition the Greek interpretation is pre-dominant. It occurs not only in all extant Peshitta manuscripts (6th cent. and later), but also in Pseudo-Ephrem’s commentary on Daniel in the Catena Severi (9th cent.?),28 as well as in the commentaries by

27 But Eusebius has Assyria (!), Persia, Macedonia, and Rome. This may reflect the influence of pagan sources which indeed do contain models of the four kingdoms starting with Assyria (see below, section 5). It is rather the substitution of Assyria by Babylonia in Daniel which is a secondary development; cf. Joseph Ward Swain, ‘The Theory of the Four Monarchies Opposition History under the Roman Empire’, Clas-sical Philology 35 (1940), pp. 1–21, esp. 19.

28 See Botha, ‘The Reception of Daniel Chapter 2’; idem, ‘The Relevance of the Book of Daniel in Fourth-Century Christianity according to the Commentary Ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian’, in Katharina Bracht and David S. du Toit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-Auslegung in Judentum, Christentum und Islam: Studien zur Kommen-tierung des Danielbuches in Literatur und Kunst (BZAW 371; Berlin–New York, 2007), pp. 99–122. We disagree with Botha regarding the attribution of this commentary to Ephrem ‘or one of his students’; cf. Bas ter Haar Romeny, ‘Ephrem and Jacob of Edessa in the Commentary of the Monk Severus’, in George A. Kiraz (ed.), Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock (Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 3; Piscataway, NJ, 2008), pp. 535–557; idem, ‘The Peshitta of Isaiah: Evidence from the Syriac Fathers’, in W.Th. van Peursen and R.B. ter Haar Romeny (eds.), Text, Translation, and Tradition: Studies on the Peshitta and its Use in the Syriac Tradition



Ishodad (9th cent.) and Bar Hebraeus (13th cent.). It is also implied in the Syriac Alexander Legend (629/30),29 the Alexander Poem (between 630 and 640?),30 and the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (691/692 ad).31 According to Pseudo-Methodius, Alexander and the Byzantine emperor were genealogically related through a common Ethiopian ancestry,32 which reflects a combination of the Greek and the Roman interpretation. Van der Kooij’s hypothesis can only be maintained if we assume that all these sources in the end go back to the allegedly secondary additions in the Peshitta manuscripts, in which, according to Van der Kooij, the Greek interpretation originated due to the influ-ence of Porphyrius.

Even more serious challenges to Van der Kooij’s interpretation, however, are the attestations of the Greek interpretation in non-Syriac sources, including the Topography of the sixth-century Byzantine author Cosmas Indicopleustes,33 as well as some indications that the Greek interpretation was also known to earlier authors, even if they advocate the Roman interpretation. Thus according to H.H. Rowley, 4 Ezra 12:12,34 ‘But is was not explained to him as I now explain it to you’, immediately following the identification of the fourth beast as

Presented to Konrad D. Jenner on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (MPIL 14; Leiden, 2006), pp. 149–164, esp. 154–159.

29 Cf. Reinink, ‘Alexander the Great’, p. 162; idem, ‘Die Entstehung der syrischen Alexanderlegende als politisch-religiöse Propagandaschrift für Herakleios’ Kirchen-politik’, in C. Laga, J.A. Munitiz, and L. Van Rompay (eds.), After Chalcedon: Studies in Theology and Church History Offered to Professor Albert van Roey for his Seventieth Birthday (OLA 18; Leuven, 1985), pp. 263–181, esp. 273, 276 (= idem, Syriac Chris-tianity, III).

30 Cf. Reinink, ‘Alexander the Great’, p. 162; idem, Das syrische Alexanderlied: Die drei Rezensionen (CSCO 454 –455; Syr. 195–196; 1983), II, pp. 15, 131.

31 On Pseudo-Methodius’ depiction of the last emperor as an Alexander redivivus see Reinink, ‘Ps.-Methodius: A Concept of History in Response to the Rise of Islam’, in Cameron and Conrad, The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, pp. 149–187, esp. 165–166 (= idem, Syriac Christianity, IX); idem, Pseudo-Methodius, II (CSCO 541), pp. 65–66 (annotation to translation of XIII,16).

32 Reinink, ‘Concept of History’, p. 165; idem, Pseudo-Methodius, II (CSCO 541), pp. xxvi–xvii.

33 Gerhard Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie: Die Periodisierung der Weltgeschichte in den vier Grossreichen (Daniel 2 und 7) und dem Tausenjährigen Friedensreiche (Apok. 20): Eine Motivgeschichtlichte Untersuchung (Münchener Uni-versitäts-Schriften. Reihe der philosopischen Fakultät 9; München, 1972), pp. 16–19. Cosmas considered Rome as the fifth kingdom, see below.

34 See below, section 5, on 4 Ezra as an early Jewish witness to the Roman inter-pretation.



the Romans, ‘admits with clear reference to the Greek view that the Roman is not the original interpretation’.35

The situation with the classic fourth-century authors Aphrahat and Ephrem is somewhat unequivocal. Aphrahat advocates the Roman interpretation, but his complex argumentation in Dem. 5.19–20 seems to reflect acquaintance with the Greek interpretation. After identify-ing the third beast as Alexander the Great he says that ‘the third and the fourth were one’ and explains that the fourth beast includes both the Greek kings after Alexander, including Antiochus IV whom he identifies as the little horn that arose from the fourth beast in Dan 7:8, and the Roman kings from Augustus to the the third-century emperor Philip, who was reputed to have been the first Christian emperor.36 Ephrem does not dwell at length on the identification of the four king-doms in Daniel. However, his remark that the feet of the statute in Daniel 2 are Egypt,37 suggests that he, too, identified the fourth king-dom as the Diadochi.38

Another challenge to the view that the interpretation reflected in the headings in the Peshitta manuscripts in the end go back to Porphyrius is an obvious difference between Porphyrius and the Peshitta manu-scripts regarding the identification of the second to the fourth king-doms, as shown in table 2.

Table 2: Differences between the Peshitta Manuscripts and Porphyrius

Peshitta manuscripts Porphyrius

1 Babylonians Babylonians2 Medes Medes and Persians3 Persians Greek kingdom of Alexander4 Greeks Alexander’s successors

35 Rowley, Darius the Mede, 70.36 Cf. Van der Kooij, ‘Four Kingdoms’, p. 126.37 Edmund Beck, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Carmina Nisibena I (CSCO

218–219), 34,6.38 Thus Harald Suermann, ‘Einige Bemerkungen zu syrischen Apokalypsen des 7.

Jhds’, in H.J.W. Drijvers et al. (eds.), IV Symposium Syriacum 1984 (OCA 10; Rome 1987), pp. 327–335, esp. 331.



In summary, taking into account the supremacy of the Roman inter-pretation in the Christian exegetical traditions, we agree with Van der Kooij that the dominance of the Greek interpretation in the Syriac tradition is remarkable. However, because of its widespread diffu-sion in all Peshitta manuscripts and in the extant Syriac literature, the acquaintance with the Greek interpretation that seems to be implied in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations, and perhaps also in 4 Ezra and one of Ephrem’s hymns, and the differences between the identification of the four kingdoms in the Peshitta manuscripts and that in Porphyrius’ interpretation, we consider a direct dependence of the former upon the latter unlikely.

5 The Identification of Daniel’s Fourth Kingdom in the Christian Tradition

Since the identification of Daniel’s fourth kingdom as either the Greeks or the Romans plays an important role in understanding the nature of the Syriac interpretation of Daniel, it is worthwhile to have a closer look at it. The scheme of four kingdoms in the book of Daniel was bor-rowed from the political propaganda of the Hellenistic Near East.39 In Daniel, as in its Near Eastern parallels, it is employed to represent the increasingly wicked successive empires of the world up to the worst, final kingdom, which will be followed by a divine intervention in one way or another. Thus in the Sybilline Oracles, where the list of empires consists of (1) Assyrians; (2) Medes; (3) Persians; (4) Macedonians (Sib. Or. 4:49–101), the scheme of four kingdoms is used to express the expectation of ‘a fifth empire from which the Greeks would be expelled, and under which the oriental system would return’.40 In Daniel the scheme is used to describe the Hellenistic rulers, especially Antiochus IV (175–164 bc), as the climax of wickedness, expecting an imminent divine intervention.

39 For more details see Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’; John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination. An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York, 1984), pp. 74–78.

40 Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’, p. 9.



In the Roman period the four-kingdoms scheme was rearranged in such a way as to make Rome the fourth empire. In the Roman propa-ganda, the new schedule was used to present Rome as the successor of the great empires of the past. Thus for Aemilius Sura,41 who wrote in the early second century bc, the identification of Rome as the fourth kingdom42 serves to support the definitive status of the Roman rule.

At the same time the four-kingdom model continued to be used as a means to describe the fourth kingdom, now Rome, as the culmina-tion of evil. With this perspective, the new scheme was also applied to Daniel, whose descriptions of the fourth empire were now taken as prophecies about Rome. The Roman interpretation became the opinio communis in Jewish sources,43 including Josephus, 4 Ezra,44 2 Baruch, Targum Jonathan to the Prophets (cf., e.g., Targum Habakuk 3:17), and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to the Pentateuch,45 and among Christian interpreters, starting with Hyppolyte of Rome.46 In this scheme, Rome was the final kingdom, after which a new, fifth kingdom was expected. In Christian sources different answers were given to the question as to the start of the fifth kingdom, whether it should be identified as the church on earth, either starting under Augustus (thus Hyppolyte)47 or with Constantine (thus Eusebius of Caesarea),48 or whether it would start at Christ’s second coming.49

41 Cf. Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’, 2.42 Following the sequence of (1) Assyrians, (2) Medes, (3) Persians, which we also

find in Ctesias and Herodotus and as the first three empires in the Sibylline Oracles; cf. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 74.

43 Cf. Van der Kooij, ‘Four Kingdoms’, 124–125.44 But see above, section 4, on the view that 4 Ezra admits that the Roman inter-

pretation is not the original one.45 Cf. Uwe Glessmer, ‘Die “vier Reiche” aus Daniel in der targumischen Literatur’,

in Collins and Flint, The Book of Daniel (note 23), II, pp. 468–489.46 See, e.g., Rowley, Darius the Mede, pp. 74–75; Van der Kooij, ‘Four Kingdoms’,

p. 125; Cf. Swain, ‘Four Monarchies’, p. 18: ‘The early Christians were of course the most determined opponents of the Roman Empire, and eventually they gathered into their system nearly all the criticisms of that empire that were current at the time.’

47 Cf. Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie, p. 10 (about the Roman empire): ‘Als ökumenisches Reich steht es jedoch einem zweiten, in seinem Machtbereich unter Kaiser Augustus neuentstandenden Weltreich entgegen: den Christen.’

48 Cf. Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie, pp. 11–12.49 On the fifth kingdom in the Syriac tradition see Robert Murray, Symbols of

Church and Kingdom (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 239–247.



6 Rome: the Culmination of Evil or the Final God-Willed Empire?

For Hyppolite and the Jewish interpreters mentioned above, the identification of the fourth kingdom implied that Rome embodied the culmination of evil. According to Hyppolyte and many authors after him, the antichrist would be a Roman emperor. However, after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, tension arose because such a view of Rome and its emperor became increasingly difficult to main-tain. It had to give way to a more positive judgement of Rome. Thus for Aphrahat, Rome functioned as the protector of the Christians:

For the time being, however, the Romans hold it in trust for Christ, and therefore God preserves it and will not let their enemies (the Persians, whom Aphrahat prudently does not name) overcome them (. . .) Aphrahat wants the Romans to win in the war which is just beginning, simply because he wants relief for the Church.50

A similar understanding of Rome as the protector of the Christians is reflected in the Julian Romance, the Kreuzesauffindungslegende, and the Alexander Poem. This understanding had an important rhetori-cal effect. Whereas in the previous interpretations the four-kingdoms model had functioned as an instrument to criticize the worldly pow-ers, the reinterpretations that arose were used as a confirmation of those who were in power, regardless of whether Rome was identified as the fourth kingdom but detached from its negative connotation, or whether the new period which begun with Constantine was considered as the fifth kingdom overruling the fourth kingdom.51 This is especially true for the Byzantines, to whom the identification of their empire as the Kingdom of God became a prominent part of their ideology:

In diesem Punkt scheint nur das spätere Byzanz der größten Einsei-tigkeit verfallen zu sein, indem es die rom-kritische Haltung eines Hyppolytos, einiger jüdischer Apokryphen sowie der Sibyllinischen Orakel (vorchristlicher Bestand) nicht mehr auf Byzanz anzuwenden wagte. Mochte dieses Mißtrauen gegenüber der herrschenden Macht auch tendenziös aus augenblicklicher Bedrängnis geweckt worden sein, so führte seine bewußte Eliminierung theoretisch zur unvermeidlichen

50 Murray, Symbols, p. 242.51 Cf. Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie, p. 17, on the understanding of

the Roman/Christian empire in Cosmas’ Topography.



Ideologisierung der byzantinischen Reichseschatologie und praktisch zur zunehmenden Diskrepanz zwischen Anspruch und Realität des byzanti-nischen Staatswesens.52

In Syriac Christianity the imperial ideology had not gone as far as it had in Byzantium, but elements of it can be found in the portrayal of the Roman/Byzantine emperor as the protector of the Christians and the defender of the Christian faith in response to the threat of non-Christian conquerors, be it the Sassanians in the time of Aphrahat or the Arabs in the seventh century. However, the Syriac attitudes towards the Byzantines were not uniform, and among the West-Syrians, who previously had lived under Byzantine rule, we also encounter the view that the Arab conquests were a punishment for the Byzantine/Chalcedonian arrogance and the persecution of the Monophysites under Heraclius.

In the West-Roman Empire, a completely different voice was heard. The decline and fall of Rome in the early fifth century incited Augustine to write his City of God, in which he argued that the Roman Empire, even though officially Christian, was a worldly kingdom not to be con-fused with the heavenly City of God. The confidence that God protects and favours an empire as a result of the piety of its emperor and its people, which persisted in the Byzantine Empire long after the fifth century, could not be maintained in the West. The contrasting for-tunes of West and the East in the fifth century engendered two oppos-ing attitudes to the Roman and Byzantine empires.53

7 Reinterpretations of Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in Response to the Arab Conquests

The Syriac sources written in response to the Arab conquests reflect various attempts to fit the new state of affairs into an already accepted conceptual framework,54 because the Arab conquests challenged the traditional interpretation according to which the Greek or Roman kingdom is the last kingdom before the coming of the antichrist.

52 Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie, p. 71.53 Kaegi, Byzantium and the Decline of Rome (Princeton, NJ, 1968), pp. 206, 210.54 Thus S.P. Brock, ‘Syriac Views on Emergent Islam’, in G.H.A. Juynboll (ed.), Stud-

ies on the First Century of Islamic Society (Papers on Islamic History 5; Carbondale, 1982), pp. 9–21, esp. 14 (= idem, Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity [CstS; London 1984], VIII).



On the one hand, we see attempts to maintain this traditional inter-pretation and to fit contemporaneous events, including the rise of Islam, into this scheme. Thus Pseudo-Methodius goes to great lengths to support the traditional interpretation and to take the fourth king-dom as the Greeks/Romans/Byzantines and to argue that the Arabs are just a temporary trial.55

On the other hand, we see reinterpretations of the Danielic scheme of four kingdoms. The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles abandons the traditional scheme, interpreting the fourth kingdom as the Arabs. In the same period, the Armenian author Sebeos interpreted the four kingdoms as being related to the four quarters of the earth.56 He also considered the Arabs as Daniel’s fourth kingdom. These reinterpreta-tions are given in table 3.

Table 3: Reinterpretations of Daniel’s Four Kingdoms

Sebeos (Armenian) Gospel of the Twelve Apostles

1 West: Greeks Romans57

2 East: Sassanians Sassanians3 North: Gog and Magog Medes4 South: Ishmaelites Arabs

8 Conclusions

In this survey of the history of interpretation of Daniel’s four kingdoms in the Syriac tradition, we have seen different processes at work. First, we see various contemporarizations of Daniel’s visions in response to current events. A clear example is Daniel’s fourth kingdom: in Daniel it functions as the culmination of evil, and later interpreters identified it as the evil powers they had to face in their own time. They discerned the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecies in their day and age, and con-cluded that they lived in the last days, expecting an imminent end.

55 Cf. Reinink, ‘Concept of History’, pp. 154, 158.56 Cf. Reinink, ‘Concept of History’, p. 158.57 Beginning with Constantine the Great.



Second, we see that the tense apocalyptic expectations could last over decades, but that new circumstances required new responses. This happened, for example, at the beginning of the eighth century, when apocalypticism faded and was replaced by a rethinking of the fundamentals of the Christian religion and a concern for the preser-vation of its tradition. The Arab dominion was no longer taken as a sign of the imminent end, but rather as a chastisement of God’s people during this earthly life.

Third, side by side with the reapplication of the visions to current events, which is attested, for example, in the seventh-century apoca-lypses, we see an awareness of the historical interpretation of Daniel’s visions. The Peshitta manuscripts and Syriac commentaries took Daniel’s four kingdoms as references to the kingdoms of the world, from the Babylonians up to the Greeks, an interpretation that, unlike the Roman interpretation which received much more support among Christian interpreters, basically agrees with the insights of modern scholarship.

Fourth, the traditional interpretation was reshaped by historical events, regardless of whether the fourth kingdom was identified as the Greeks or with the Romans. The radical changes in the Roman Empire starting with Constantine made it hard to maintain that Rome was the culmination of evil, and the rise of new powers, such as the Arab rulers, challenged the view that Rome was the God-willed final empire before the coming of the antichrist.

The updating and reshaping of biblical interpretation in response to contemporaneous events relate not only to the interpretation of history, but also to the very question of the nature of the Kingdom of God. In this respect the West-Romans and the Byzantines parted ways. To the first, the disasters that befell Rome prevented them from a straightforward identification of the Christian Roman empire on earth as the Kingdom of God. The latter employed the model that took the Romans as the final God-willed empire to understand the divine vocation of the Byzantine emperor in this world.

Postscriptum: Hermeneutical and Biblical-Theological Implications

As a staff member of a so-called duplex ordo university, I usually refrain from adding hermeneutical or theological notes to my philological and



literary investigations. Since, however, Eep Talstra has always attached great importance to their integration into the study of biblical and other ancient sources, I will end this contribution with some herme-neutical and theological reflections.

In our survey we have seen an ongoing interaction between bibli-cal interpretation and theological reflection on the one hand, and the interpreter’s historical circumstances on the other, be it, for example, in the tense apocalyptic expectations enhanced by the Arab conquests, or in the reflection on the way God acts in history in a period when the Arab dominion was well-established. It should be recalled that the mechanisms that we see at work here—tense apocalyptic expec-tations of divine intervention in the face of disasters that befall the pious, and the recasting of the past when it appears that the immedi-ate end did not come as expected—are recognizable in other periods and contexts as well. In the realm of biblical studies we could think of the expectation of a divine intervention in response to the impious acts of Antiochus IV reflected in Daniel and the reinterpretation of the same events as chastisement in 2 Maccabees 6:12–17. Likewise, in the New Testament we see a transformation of the Naherwartung of the earliest Christians in, for example, Luke–Acts, in which a concept of history was developed ‘that placed Jesus at the center of time and that potentially, at least, was open to an indefinite postponement of Christ’s return’.58

Other examples of this interaction between biblical interpretation and the interpreter’s historical circumstances are the different views on the Roman/Byzantine Empire and on the relationship between the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God in the East (cf. the Byzantine imperial ideology) and the West (cf. Augustine’s reaction to the fall of Rome), discussed in section 6.

We have also seen how historical interpretations and contempo-ranizations can go side by side. To put it differently: interpreting the Bible in its own historical context and appropriating it in new contexts are not two mutually exclusive approaches to the Scriptures. As H.H. Rowley put it more than 75 years ago:

58 Cf. Bernard McGinn, ‘The Apocalyptic Imagination in the Middle Ages’, in Jan A. Aertsen and Martin Pickavé (eds.), Ende und Vollendung: Eschatologische Perspek-tiven im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26; Berlin–New York, 2002), pp. 79–94, esp. 82.



When, therefore, we read the book of Daniel no longer as a Chart of the Ages, but as the work of a man who saw the world in the light of what he had seen of God, and whose interest was essentially and wholly religious, we are free to feel its religious power, and to understand its message. To the heroes of the Maccabean days it gave encouragement and hope. And beyond that it enshrined abiding principles which are as valid in our day as in those. It tells us that every force which elevates itself against God shall be broken, and that they who are humbly loyal to Him, and who find in His fellowship their strength, shall be able to laugh at the lions, for theirs shall be the Kingdom.59

In this approach Daniel informs us not only about the anti-Hellenistic sentiments of suppressed Jews in the second century bc, but also gives us insight into the way in which kingdoms rise and fall, a movement which Oswald Spengler has described strikingly, but also somewhat dogmatically in his Der Untergang des Abendlandes,60 and which has repeated itself many times after the second century bc or the seventh century ad. What we see in Daniel, however, is not only the insight that kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, but also the trust that in the end God is in control.

It is worth observing that the flexibility to discover new mean-ings and applications of the Scriptures without ignoring the histori-cal interpretation is not an invention of modern scholarship, but that interesting examples of it can be found throughout the Syriac tradi-tion. In addition to the co-existence of historical interpretations and contemporanizations regarding the identification of Daniel’s four kingdoms discussed on the previous pages, I want to draw attention to the way in which various passages in Daniel’s visions were applied to Christ. Other contributions to this volume deal with the challenges Christian interpreters face when they, on the one hand, are aware of the historical meaning of Old Testament prophecies, and, on the other hand, wish to apply them to Christ, either because of the general con-viction that in Christ the Old Testament Scriptures were fulfilled, or because they want to do justice to the Christological interpretation of

59 Rowley, Darius the Mede, p. 181.60 Cf. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer morphologie

der Weltgeschichte 1. Gestalt und Wirklichkeit (München, 1927), p. 147: ‘Jede Kultur, jede Frühzeit, jeder Aufstieg und Niedergang, jede ihrer innerlich notwendigen Stufen und Perioden hat eine bestimmte, immer gleiche, immer mit dem Nachdruck eines Symbols wiederkehrende Dauer.’



Old Testament passages in the New Testament.61 In this respect, the Syriac interpreters showed a fascinating flexibility to combine vari-ous interpretations. In the case of Daniel, it is interesting to see how Pseudo-Ephrem’s commentary on Daniel 2 deals with the stone that overthrows the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream:

Although it was delineated/imprinted ( ) symbolically in the house of the Maccabees who subdued the kingdom of the Greeks; in truth ( ) it is fulfilled ( ) in the Lord.62

61 See especially Gert Kwakkel’s contribution to the present volume on Hos 11:1 and Matt 2:15.

62 Botha, ‘The Reception of Daniel Chapter 2’, p. 123; Cf. ibid., p. 120: ‘The com-mentary does indeed explain the rock as the kingdom of the Maccabees, but notes that this is a symbol of a greater truth that would come later, namely Christ.’ But see above, footnote 28 on Botha’s ascription of this commentary to Ephrem.


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