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.

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 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.

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 192 wido van peursen

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).

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 193

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).

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 194 wido van peursen

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.

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 195

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.

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 196 wido van peursen

Table 1: The Greek Interpretation and the Roman Interpretation

of Daniel’s Four Kingdoms
Daniel 7 ‘Greek interpretation’ ‘Roman interpretation’27
1 Lion Babylonians Babylonians
2 Bear Medes Medes and Persians
3 Leopard Persians Greeks
4 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

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 197

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.

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 198 wido van peursen

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 Babylonians
2 Medes Medes and Persians
3 Persians Greek kingdom of Alexander
4 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.

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 199

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.

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 200 wido van peursen

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.

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 201

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.

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 202 wido van peursen

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).

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 203

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 Sassanians
3 North: Gog and Magog Medes
4 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.

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 204 wido van peursen

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

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 205

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.

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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.’

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 daniel’s four kingdoms in the syriac tradition 207

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 (ÿãü˜š~) symbolically in the
house of the Maccabees who subdued the kingdom of the Greeks; in
truth (ÿØ~ûØûü) it is fulfilled (¾ĆãàüJ ……N ) 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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