Monday, October 6, 2008

The intertextual evidence against the "Roman View"

We've seen that the internal evidence from the Book of Daniel is in conflict with an identification of the fourth 'kingdom' with the Roman Empire. Now, we'll consider the evidence from the rest of the Bible:

(a) Evidence from the so-called Old Testament
1–2 Maccabees demonstrate that the Jews in the 2nd. and 1st. century BCE identified the 'little horn' in the Book of Daniel with the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (cf. Dan 11: 2–4, 21; Dan 8: 9 and 1 Macc 1:1–10).

(b) Evidence from the so-called New Testament
It's generally accepted that in the Book of Revelation (Rev), the Roman Empire is depicted as a beast rising from the sea (cf. 13:1–2). A close comparison between the fourth beast in Dan 7 and the beast 'from the sea' in Rev 13 will demonstrate, I think, that they cannot be one and the same entity:

First, in Rev 13:1b–2a, John has employed Daniel's description of all the 'beasts' (viz. empires) for the portray of the beast 'from the sea' (= the Roman Empire). Second, one should note that according to Daniel, the fourth 'beast' was different from the other three 'beasts'. John's "beast fromthe sea", however, has features from all of the four beasts (in Dan 7).

For more on this, see R. van der Water: "Reconsidering the Beast from the Sea (Rev 13.1)", NTS 46:2 (2000), pp. 245–561.

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