The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

104 FORMATION AND RE-FORMATION OF DANIEL
of the formative influence of Daniel on the language, motifs, and ideas
(re)expressed in the Qumran texts.
A. PRE-DANIELIC TRADITIONS IN THE SCROLLS
4QPrayer of Nabonidus (4Q242)
Perhaps the first source from the scrolls to be linked with the formative
background of the biblical Daniel was this much-discussed fragmentary
manuscript. 5 Already twelve years before the first Dead Sea discoveries,
Wolfram von Soden had advanced a plausible case that the stories associated
with Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3 and 4 actually derive from legends
that had been told about another figure, Nabonidus, the last ruler
of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (556–539 B.C.E.). 6 On the basis of a comparison
with Mesopotamian sources, von Soden found good reason to
question the note in Dan 5:2, which identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the
father of the king Belshazzar. As is well known, there is no evidence that
Nebuchadnezzar ever had a son by that name. The name Bel-sharra-usur,
however, does appear in materials relating to Nabonidus. Before his
downfall Nabonidus is known to have been absent from the capital
Babylon, residing some ten years in Taiman, Arabia, in the south; and
during this period he left his son, Bel-sharra-usur, in charge of Babylon
as governor. 7 According to the Babylonian inscriptions, Nabonidus’s
absence from Babylon, combined with his attempt to introduce the cult
of the lunar deity Sin from Harran into the capital city by force, led to a
perception of him as an irresponsible ruler; among the priests of Marduk,
for example, he was portrayed as a “weakling.”
The fragmentary text from two columns of 4Q242, first published by
Jozef T. Milik in 1956, 8 refers by name to Nabonidus (written nbny) “king
5. See Jozef T. Milik, “‘Prière de Nabonide’ et autres écrits d’un cycle de Daniel:
Fragments araméens de Qumrân 4,” RB 63 (1956): 407–11.
6. See Wolfram von Soden, “Eine babylonische Volksüberlieferung von Nabonid
in den Danielerzählungen,” ZAW 53 (1935): 81–89.
7. For a recent and accessible review of the Mesopotamian materials concerning
Nabonidus, see Ida Fröhlich, “Time and Times and Half a Time”: Historical Consciousness
in the Jewish Literature of the Persian and Hellenistic Eras (JSPSup 19; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1996), 19–43. The Babylonian Chronicle about Nabonidus is
printed in English translation in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts (3d
ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 306–11.
8. See n5 (above). For further bibliography, see Klaus Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte
vom Toten Meer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 223 (hereafter ATTM);