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

LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK 119
author of 4Q246 may have interpreted the beast of Daniel 7 to be the first
“people” in line 3, to be distinguished from “a people of God” (line 4),
through which a time of peace is introduced. (b) The expression “making
war” is attributed to the “great God” (lines 7–8), who does this on behalf
of his people; 51 this is quite different from Dan 7:21, where it is the horn
from the fourth beast that wages war against the saints. This suggests that
if 4Q246 is dependent on Daniel 7 at all, it is certainly not a straightforward
interpretation. (c) There is no mention of “one like a son of man” in
4Q246. We cannot take this point for granted, though it is obvious; given
the other correspondences with Daniel 7, it has been tempting for interpreters
to look for an equivalent for the enigmatic figure of Dan 7:13
somewhere in 4Q246. So, for instance, James D. G. Dunn links Daniel’s
“son of man” to “the people of God” in line 4, and Collins finds its equivalent
in the “Son of God” = “Son of the Most High” in line 1. In either
case, 4Q246 column 2 has been read in relation to a Vorverständnis concerning
the nature of the figure in Dan 7:13 (Dunn: a corporate interpretation;
52 Collins: a heavenly angelic figure 53 ). Whatever the “Son of God”
in line 1 represents—for purposes of this discussion it does not matter
which interpretation is taken—the freedom vis-à-vis Daniel 7 reflected in
4Q246 should caution one from looking for corresponding elements and
motifs when they are not sufficiently obvious. 54
The overlaps and departures between 4Q246 and Daniel neither
exclude nor fully substantiate the notion of a dependence on Daniel.
Even if the vision of Daniel 7 has provided some written or oral background
for the Cave 4 text, the comparison above has shown that individual
elements have been used rather freely, even to the point of
51. Since the opposing forces appear in the following mention of delivering “peoples”
into “its hand,” I do not think w(bd lh in line 8 (“he will make war for it”) is to
be translated in the same way as the similar construction qrb (m-qdys ]yn in Dan 7:21
(“he made war against the holy ones”); see also, e.g., Puech, “4QApocryphe de
Daniel ar,” 177–78. Eisenman and Wise seem to have read the expression in 4Q246
as an “ethic dative” (cf. The DSS Uncovered, 71), which would regard the preposition
l- as an untranslatable particle that follows some verbs; if this is so, then its use with
the verb (bd is without analogy (see Beyer, ATTM, 613).
52. See James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (London: SCM, 1980), 77–78.
53. John J. Collins, e.g., in Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 304–10.
54. At present, I favor the view that line 1 refers to a pretender (Antiochus
Epiphanes?) to whom a prerogative of God (or of God’s agent) is (wrongly) ascribed;
in support of this is the impression that the appearance of this figure, before a period
of conflicts (lines 2–3), occurs in the pre-eschatological era not described until line 4;
cf. Émile Puech, “Fragment d’une apocalypse en araméen (4Q246 = pseudo-Dan d ) et
le ‘Royaume de Dieu,’” RB 99 (1992): 129; and Beyer, ATTM Ergänzungsband, 146–47.
If the figure is a pretender, then the honorific language in col. 1 does not constitute
as much of a difficulty as Collins argues (The Scepter and the Star, 158).