Four kingdoms of Daniel


The four kingdoms of Daniel are four kingdoms which, according to the Book of Daniel, precede the "end-time" and the "Kingdom of God".

The four kingdoms

Historical background

Daniel was one of many Hebrew young men in particular taken captive by the Babylonians. He had been very well educated in his native Israel which is why he as well as others were chosen to be trained for service in the Babylonian king's household. This was a dark time for the people of Israel, and the Babylonian Captivity was a judgment by God upon them for forsaking His Commandments and instructions. God had forewarned Israel many times prior to this.
"Belteshazzar" was the Babylonian name given to Daniel, which undoubtedly referred to a Chaldean deity. Daniel's writings cover the Israeli Captivity under Babylon and also the Mede-Persian Empires. He served under several kings and was always favored for his wisdom, which he attributed to God.

Daniel 2

In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue made of four different materials, identified as four kingdoms:
  1. Head of gold. Explicitly identified as King Nebuchadnezzar.
  2. Chest and arms of silver. Identified as an "inferior" kingdom to follow Nebuchadnezzar.
  3. Belly and thighs of bronze. A third kingdom which shall rule over all the earth.
  4. Legs of iron with feet of mingled iron and clay. Interpreted as a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, but the feet and toes partly of clay and partly of iron show it shall be a divided kingdom.

    Daniel 7

In chapter 7, Daniel has a vision of four beasts coming up out of the sea, and is told that they represent four kingdoms:
  1. A beast like a lion with eagle's wings.
  2. A beast like a bear, raised up on one side, with three ribs between its teeth.
  3. A beast like a leopard with four wings of fowl and four heads.
  4. A fourth beast, with large iron teeth and ten horns.
This is explained as a fourth kingdom, different from all the other kingdoms; it "will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it". The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom. A further horn then appears and uproots three of the previous horns: this is explained as a future king.

Daniel 8

In chapter 8 Daniel sees a ram with two horns destroyed by a he-goat with a single horn; the horn breaks and four horns appear, followed once again by the "little horn".

Schools of thought

Rashi's interpretation

, a medieval rabbi, interpreted the four kingdoms as Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Alexander of Macedon, and the Roman Empire. Rashi explains that the fifth kingdom that God will establish is the kingdom of the messiah.

Christian interpretation

From the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the "four monarchies" model became widely used by all for universal history, in parallel with eschatology, among Protestants. Some continued to defend its use in universal history in the early 18th century.
Christopher Cellarius, based on the distinctive nature of medieval Latin. The modern historicist interpretations and eschatological views of the Book of Daniel with the Book of Revelation closely resemble and continue earlier historical Protestant interpretations.
There are references in classical literature and arts that apparently predate the use of the succession of kingdoms in the Book of Daniel. One appears in Aemilius Sura, an author quoted by Velleius Paterculus. This gives Assyria, Media, Persia and Macedonia as the imperial powers. The fifth empire became identified with the Romans.
An interpretation that became orthodox after Swain
sees the "four kingdoms" theory becoming the property of Greek and Roman writers at the beginning of the 1st century BCE, as an import from Asia Minor. They built on a three-kingdom sequence, already mentioned by Herodotus and by Ctesias. Mendels contests this dating and origin, placing it later in the century.
Jewish Reconstructionists and Full Preterists believe that Daniel is completely fulfilled, and that the believers are now working to establish the Kingdom of God on earth.
Two main schools of thought on the four kingdoms of Daniel, are:
  1. the traditionalist view, supporting the conflation of Medo-Persia and identifying the last kingdom as the Roman Empire.
  2. the Maccabean thesis, a view that supports the separation of the Medes from the Persians and identifies the last kingdom as the Seleucid Empire.

    Roman Empire schema

The following interpretation represents a traditional view of Jewish and Christian Historicists, Futurists, Dispensationalists, Partial Preterists, and other futuristic Jewish and Christian hybrids, as well as certain Messianic Jews, who typically identify the kingdoms in Daniel as:
  1. the Babylonian Empire
  2. the Medo-Persian Empire
  3. the Greek Empire
  4. the Roman Empire, with other implications to come later
Jerome described this scheme in his Commentary on Daniel. Within this framework there are numerous variations.
Use with the Book of Revelation
Christian interpreters typically read the Book of Daniel along with the New Testament's Book of Revelation. The Church Fathers interpreted the beast in Revelation 13 as the empire of Rome. The majority of modern scholarly commentators understand the "city on seven hills" in Revelation as a reference to Rome.
Second temple theory
, Idealists, certain Reconstructionists and other non-futurists likewise typically believe in the same general sequence, but teach that Daniel's prophecies ended with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and have few to no implications beyond that. Jewish and Christian Futurists, Dispensationalists, and, to some degree, Partial Preterists believe that the prophecies of Daniel stopped with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem; but will resume at some point in the future after a gap in prophecy that accounts for the Church Age.

Traditional views

Eschatological themes

For over two thousand years readers have speculated as to the meaning of the themes running through the Book of Daniel:
The prophecy of 2,300 days in Daniel 8:14 plays an important role in Seventh-day Adventist eschatology. The 2,300 days are interpreted as 2,300 actual years using the day-year principle. According to the Adventist teaching, this period starts in unison with the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks in 457 BC and ends in 1844 AD. It was thought that the end of this period would bring the end of days as advocated by the Millerite movement at the turn of the 19th century.
Most Adventist groups in the Millerite tradition hold similar beliefs about the Great Apostasy as do those of other Restorationist types of Christian faith. Some of these, most notably the Seventh-day Adventist Church, have traditionally held that the apostate church formed when Bishop of Rome began to dominate and brought heathen corruption and allowed pagan idol worship and beliefs to come in, and formed the Roman Catholic Church, which teaches others traditions over Scripture, and to rest from their work on Sunday, instead of Sabbath, which is not in keeping with Scripture.
Seventh-day Adventists teach that the Little Horn Power which as predicted rose after the breakup of the Roman Empire is the papacy. In 533 AD Justinian, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, legally recognized the bishop of Rome as the head of all the Christian churches. Because of the Arian domination of some of the Roman Empire by the barbarian tribes, this authority could not be exercised by the bishop of Rome. Finally, in 538 AD, Belisarius, one of Justinian's generals routed the Ostrogoths, the last of the barbarian kingdoms, from the city of Rome and the bishop of Rome could begin establishing his universal civil authority. So, by the military intervention of the Eastern Roman Empire, the bishop of Rome became all-powerful throughout the area of the old Roman Empire.
Like many reformation-era Protestant leaders, the writings of Adventist pioneer Ellen White speak against the Catholic Church as a fallen church and in preparation for a nefarious eschatological role as the antagonist against God's true church and that the pope is the Antichrist. Many Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther, John Knox, William Tyndale and others held similar beliefs about the Catholic Church and the papacy when they broke away from the Catholic Church during the reformation.
Ellen White writes,
Ellen G White does not discuss Daniel 8:9–12. When 8:9–14 is studied as a unit, the inadvertent conclusion is that Jesus is the worst little horn who defiled the sanctuary in heaven by transferring the sins of saints there. He began cleansing the heavenly sanctuary of the defilement He caused in 1844.

Baha'i Faith

The Baha'i Faith interprets the prophecy of the 2300 days and the 70 weeks in the same manner as the Seventh-day Adventists, with the period ending in the year 1844. In Baha'i belief, 1844 marked the end of the old world and the start of the millennial period. This meant the end of the Islamic age, the end of the prophetic cycle of all religions, and the inauguration of the common era where the fulfillment of prophecies would occur for all religions. For the Baha'i, the promise of the return of God's Messenger was fulfilled in this year by the appearance of the Báb, followed 19 years later by Baha'u'llah.

Methodists

Methodist theologian and historicist Adam Clarke proposed an alternative to the 1844 date as used by Seventh-day Adventists and followers of Bahá'í Faith. Clarke viewed Daniel 8 as a separate vision from Daniel 7. In his 1831 commentary on, he states that the 2,300-year period should be calculated from 334 BC, the year Alexander the Great began his conquest of the Persian Empire. His calculation ends in the year 1966, where he links to.
The traditional interpretation of the four kingdoms, shared among Jewish and Christian expositors for over two millennia, identifies the kingdoms as the empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. This view conforms to the text of Daniel, which considers the Medo-Persian Empire as one, as with the "law of the Medes and Persians". These views have the support of the Jewish Talmud, medieval Jewish commentators, Christian Church Fathers, Jerome, and Calvin.
Jerome specifically identified the four kingdoms of Daniel 2 in this way. The "four monarchies" theory existed alongside the Six Ages and the Three Eras, as general historical structures, in the work of Augustine of Hippo, a contemporary of Jerome.
The alternative view which sees the sequence ending with Greece and the Diadochi, thus excluding Rome, is not without historical precedent however. The pagan critic of Christianity, Porphyry, suggested a variation of this interpretation in the third century CE. In the following centuries, several Eastern Christians espoused this view, including Ephrem the Syrian, Polychronius, and Cosmas Indicopleustes.
During the Medieval ages the orthodox Christian interpretation followed the commentary by Jerome on the Book of Daniel. It tied the fourth monarchy and its end to the end of the Roman Empire, which was considered not to have yet come to pass. This is the case for example in the tenth-century writer Adso, whose Libellus de Antichristo incorporated the characteristic medieval myth of the Last Roman Emperor. Otto of Freising used the principle of translatio imperii and took the Holy Roman Empire as the continuation of the Roman Empire.

Protestant Reformation

A series of Protestant theologians, such as Jerome Zanchius, Joseph Mede, and John Lightfoot, particularly emphasized the eschatological theory of four monarchies. Mede and other writers, Edward Haughton and Nathaniel Stephens ) expected the imminent end of the fourth empire, and a new age. The early modern version of the four monarchies in universal history was subsequently often attributed to the chronologist and astrologer Johann Carion, based on his Chronika. Developments of his Protestant world chronology were endorsed in an influential preface of Philipp Melanchthon.
The theory was topical in the 1550s. Johann Sleidan in his De quatuor imperiis summis tried to summarise the status of the "four monarchies" as historical theory; he had already alluded to it in previous works. Sleidan's influential slant on the theory was both theological, with a Protestant tone of apocalyptic decline over time, and an appeal to German nationalist feeling in terms of translatio imperii. The Speculum coniugiorum of the jurist Alonso De la Vera Cruz, in New Spain, indirectly analysed the theory. It cast doubts on the Holy Roman Emperor's universal imperium by pointing out that the historical 'monarchies' in question had in no case held exclusive sway. The Carion/Melanchthon view was that the Kingdom of Egypt must be considered a subsidiary power to Babylon: just as France was secondary compared to the Empire.
from 1650. Title page of the 1678 edition of her poems.
The Catholic Jean Bodin was concerned to argue against the whole theory of 'four monarchies' as a historical paradigm. He devoted a chapter to refuting it, alongside the classical scheme of a Golden Age, in his 1566 Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.
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Fifth Monarchists

In the conditions leading to the English Civil War of 1642-1651 and in the disruption that followed, many Englishmen advanced millennarian ideas, believing they were living in the "end of days".
The Fifth Monarchists were a significant element of the Parliamentary grouping and, in January 1661, after Charles II had taken the throne following the English Restoration of 1660, 50 militant Fifth Monarchists under Thomas Venner attempted to take over London to start the "Fifth Monarchy of King Jesus". After the failure of this uprising, Fifth Monarchists became a quiescent and devotional part of religious dissent.

Seventh-day Adventist view

The Seventh-day Adventist Church shares the traditional view that the four kingdoms of Daniel, as paralleled in chapters 2 and 7, correspond to the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. Furthermore, they hold the view that the ram and the goat correspond to the Medo-Persian Empire and the Greek Empire, respectively. They also hold to the traditional view that the "little horn" in Daniel 7:8 refers to the Papacy; the reference to changing "times and law" refers to the change of the Christian Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and the attack on the sanctuary to the mediatorial ministry of Roman Catholic priests. The "time, times and half a time" represents for Adventists a period of 1260 years from 538 CE to 1798 CE, when the Roman Catholic Church dominated the Christian world. The feet of the statue in Daniel 2, made of mixed iron and clay, represent modern Europe. The Adventist interpretation depends on the "day-year principle", the established idea that when used in prophetic context, a day is equivalent to a year.

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