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

The four kingdoms motif appears throughout the Jewish writings of the Second Temple period and is commonly used to anticipate the end of earthly empires and their replacement by a divine kingdom. However, upon closer examination, many of these texts share an even more distinctive motif: four kingdoms that appear as animals. The animals are marked by carnivorous appetites, predatory instincts, and abnormal creation. The ob-vious inference is that empires were understood to share these same out-of-control qualities. However, using a hermeneutic lens inspired by the new field of animal studies, this article argues that the animalistic four kingdoms establishes a distinct binary between human and animal that counters imperial hegemony. For example, in Hellenistic period texts, such as Daniel and the Animal Apocalypse, the animal/human binary emphasiz-es the horrific nature of empires, but, by identifying Israel with the human, the motif empowers the subjugated. In contrast, texts written under the Roman Empire remove the binary altogether, making Israel an animal equally as powerful as the empire. Thus, this article’s survey of the four kingdoms demonstrates that Second Temple writers not only adopted the motif from the surrounding Near Eastern context but adapted it in such a way as to give added force to its anti-imperial rhetoric.