Daniel's four kingdoms in the Syriac tradition

Early Christian exegetes identified the fourth kingdom in the book of Daniel as the Roman Empire. According to modern scholarship, however, it originally referred to the Greeks. The Greek interpretation has been preserved in Syriac sources, including headings that were added in the text of Peshitta Daniel. In addition to the historical interpretation, various Syriac sources reflect contemporanizations of Daniel's prophecies. Thus in the seventh century, in response to the rise of Islam, a number of apocalypses were composed which either tried to fit the Arab conquest into the traditional four-kingdoms model as a temporary trial, or interpreted the Arabs as Daniel's fourth kingdom. The latter marked a major break with the traditional view that the Greek or the Roman Empire would be the last kingdom before the coming of the antichrist. This contribution deals with the various ways in which Daniel's four kingdoms were understood in the Syriac tradition, both in historical interpretations and in appropriations in new contexts. It investigates how these ways relate to the reception of Daniel's four kingdoms in other Christian traditions, both Eastern (cf. the role of Daniel in the Byzantine imperial ideology) and Western (cf. Augustine's response to the decline and fall of Rome).