The Four Kingdoms of Daniel in Hippolytus’s Commentary on Daniel

Abstract

In Hippolytus’s Commentary on Daniel (composed in Rome, 204 ce),1 the motif of the four kingdoms of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7–8 plays a prominent role. In connection with this motif, the author develops a concept of the chronological sequence of historical events in time and at the end time, which bears interpretive fruit in different ways.2 This intense interest in time and the end time seems at first to be surprising, since Hippolytus repeatedly speaks out against calculations of the events of the end time because such things are