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

Recent textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible has increased its interest in matters beyond just using the evidence of variant texts to attempt to estab-lish the earliest recoverable text of each biblical book. Scholars following this broader approach have come to value all of the variant forms of a book such as Daniel and to use them as a way of discussing the wider tradition of the book of Daniel. This study looks at two groups of textual issues in relation to the four kingdoms in Daniel as evidence of various stages in the develop-ment of the presentation of this idea in the book. The first issue is the de-scription, in the OG of Dan 2:39–41, of five kingdoms, and not only four, which may preserve a stage in the Daniel tradition before the idea of four kingdoms was introduced to chapter 2 under the influence of Daniel 7. The second issue discussed is the tendency of the OG of Daniel 7 to increase the human features of the first three beasts representing the first three king-doms.