The Four Kingdom Schema and the Seventy Weeks in the Arabic Reception of Daniel

Abstract

Throughout the ages, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have used the periodization motifs in the book of Daniel to interpret past, present and future events and to understand their own place within sacred history. For most Christian commentators in patristic times, the four different materials representing four successive kingdoms, which comprised the statue in Daniel 2, were identified as Babylonia, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome.1 The stone that grew into a mountain and shattered all previous kingdoms was identified as Christ and his kingdom, the eternal Church. Further east, the flexibility of the four kingdoms motif was put to the test when the people of the book2 were subjected by yet another empire, one none of the patristic interpreters had imagined. In the wake of the Arab victories over Byzantium, the interpretation of the kingdoms was thus often adapted.3 In the Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius the interpretation of the final kingdom was expanded to include the Greek, the Roman, and the Byzantine empires with a reference to the Kushites. This final kingdom waged war with Islam and defeated it.4 In another Syriac tract, the four kingdoms were identified with Rome, Persia, Media, and finally the