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

114 FORMATION AND RE-FORMATION OF DANIEL
taken this construal one step further by suggesting that the 4Q243–244
(and 4Q245) fragments drew their inspiration directly from Daniel. 31
While some sort of knowledge of the book of Daniel is not impossible,
none of the features that 4Q243–244 share with Daniel (as listed
above) warrants a conclusion that underscores the tradition-historical priority
of Daniel. As Collins and Flint have argued, 32 the names “Daniel”
and “Belshazzar” could simply derive from common tradition, and the
royal court setting is neither unique to Daniel 33 nor to any of the Dead
Sea texts. 34 In addition, the notion of the exile as punishment for the
people’s sins is widespread, and so it would be tenuous to posit a relationship
between the documents in terms of some form of dependence.
Furthermore, in 4Q243-244 the exile is the result of God’s anger at the
Israelites’ “sacri]ficing their children to the demons of error” (cf. Ps
106:37, 40; 4Q243 frag. 13; 4Q244 frag. 12). 35 By contrast, in Daniel the
sins of Israel are more generally described in terms of transgressing the
Torah (9:11).
Finally, even though the evidence is quite fragmentary, it is possible to
observe that the perspective on history in these 4Q fragments differs
from that of Daniel in at least one respect. Daniel’s account of sacred history—presented
in the form of vaticinium ex eventu—is concerned with
events following the exile until the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. The
pseudo-Danielic fragments, however, relate not only to postexilic times
(including the Hellenistic period), but also cover biblical history from the
primeval and patriarchal periods. To the primeval history, for instance,
may be assigned the fragments that mention “Enoch” (4Q243 frag. 9),
31. See Émile Puech, La croyance des Esséniens en la vie future: Immortalité, resurrection, vie
éternelle (Paris: Gabalda, 1993), 568–70; idem, “Messianism, Resurrection, and
Eschatology at Qumran and in the New Testament,” in The Community of the Renewed
Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. E. Ulrich and J.
VanderKam; Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 10; Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 247–48; and Florentino García Martínez, “4QPseudo
Daniel Aramaic and the Pseudo-Danielic Literature,” in Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies
on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (STDJ 9; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 137–49.
32. Collins and Flint, “4QPseudo-Daniel,” 134–36.
33. Cf., e.g., the Joseph story in Genesis 39–41 and the book of Esther.
34. So the Aramaic texts 4Q242 (see above), the 4Q550 manuscripts (so-called
Proto-Esther), and possibly to be inferred from 4Q246 (see below).
35. On the influence of Psalm 106 here, see Beyer, ATTM Ergänzungsband, 141. The
association of wayward Israelites with “demons of error” is consistent with the general
tone elsewhere in 4Q243; cf. frag. 24 lines 1–2, in which a group (restored by
Collins and Flint as “the sons of ev]il”; cf. “4QPseudo-Daniel,” 114, 148) that was
“led astray” seems to be distinguished from “the elect,” who “will be gathered” (cf.
the “elect ones” in the Apocalypse of Weeks in 1 En. 93:2, 10).