Expressions of Empire and Four Kingdoms Patterns in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

The historiographical mechanism of counting imperial exchanges in the Mediterranean and Near East is well-represented in ancient sources. For Western culture, however, the most familiar articulations of a four king-doms motif are found in the book of Daniel received in the canons of Juda-ism and Christianity. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, research on Daniel lacked an appropriate context for comparative study. Several fea-tures that set Daniel apart from its closest “biblical” kin resonate with themes and topics of new finds among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is partic-ularly the case with the Aramaic writings in the collection. These too were penned in Aramaic, emerged in the mid-Second Temple period, and exhibit strong apocalyptic bents. This corner of the Qumran collection, therefore, provided an unexpected yet essential body of writings for rethinking the content and context of Daniel. In this essay, I explore the extent of four kingdoms motifs in these writings in order to demonstrate the broader cur-rency of this chronology in the apocalyptic historiographies that permeate the Aramaic collection. The outcomes of this study demonstrate the im-portance of (i) studying Daniel traditions as a part of ancient Judaism’s Ar-amaic scribal heritage, not apart from it and (ii) acknowledging the prob-lems of assuming Danielic priority or influence in the collection by virtue of shared ideas, terms, and outlooks.