Four Kingdom Motifs Before and Beyond the Book of Daniel

The four kingdoms motif enabled writers of various cultures, times, and places, to periodize history as the staged succession of empires barrelling towards an utopian age. The motif provided order to lived experiences under empire (the present), in view of ancestral traditions and cultural heritage (the past), and inspired outlooks assuring hope, deliverance, and restoration (the future). Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel includes thirteen essays that explore the reach and redeployment of the motif in classical and ancient Near Eastern writings, Jewish and Christian scriptures, texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, depictions in European architecture and cartography, as well as patristic, rabbinic, Islamic, and African writings from antiquity through the Mediaeval eras.

Andrew B. Perrin, Ph.D. (2013), McMaster University, is Canada Research Chair in Religious Identities of Ancient Judaism at Trinity Western University. His research on Daniel and Qumran has garnered the Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise and David Noel Freedman Award.

Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Ph.D. (1994), Princeton Theological Seminary, is Professor of New Testament and Second Temple Judaism at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. His previous books include a commentary on 1 Enoch 91-108 and The Myth of Rebellious Angels.

Contributors are Katharina Bracht, Brennan Breed, Kylie Crabbe, Lorenzo DiTommaso, Alexandria Frisch, James R. Hamrick, Geoffrey Herman, Miriam L. Hjälm, Andrew B. Perrin, Michael Segal, Olivia Stewart Lester, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Ian Young.