the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK 105
of Babylon” (frag. 1 line 1). The text shares features with both the Neo-
Babylonian sources and Dan 4:22–37. The first column of 4Q242 introduces
the document as “the words of the prayer which Nabunay king of
Babylon prayed.” While the prayer—presumably in praise of the God of
Israel (cf. frag. 1 line 5; Dan 4:34–35)—is itself not preserved, the text gives
Nabunay’s first-person account of an “evil skin disease” that the king suffered
“by the decree of God” (bptgm)]lh)) for a period of seven years in
Taiman (frag. 1 lines 2, 6–7). It is further possible that the lacunae in line
3 originally described Nabunay’s state as comparable to that of a beast 9
(Dan 4:25b), or that he was “set apart from human beings” (4:25a). 10
The Nabonidus sources from the sixth century B.C.E. not only provide
information about the period of his residence in Taiman but also say
he had an unspecified illness and recovered from it. 4Q242 represents
Nabonidus’s illness in physical terms (“an evil skin disease”), while
Daniel 4 represents him as having had a theriomanic, (medical term from
qhri/wma), animal-like existence: “Nebuchadnezzar” is “driven from
humanity” to live among the wild animals (4:23, 25, 31, 34). Significantly,
regarding the period of seven years, Daniel and 4Q242 agree
over against the ten-year period mentioned in the Nabonidus inscription
from the earlier period. At the end of the story in Daniel 4, the text narrates
the restoration of the king’s sanity and supplies a prayer uttered by
the king in praise of the Most High God (4:34–37). Similarly, in 4Q242
Nabunay testifies of how he was healed through the agency of a Jew
(unnamed in the text; frag. 1 line 4).
In view of the coherence of 4Q242 with the Neo-Babylonian
inscriptions on the one hand, and with Daniel 4 on the other, there is
wide agreement that the text from the Dead Sea preserves a tradition that
antedates the biblical tradition. In place of the lesser-known Nabonidus,
the author or redactor of Daniel 4 applied the story to better known
Nebuchadnezzar, who was associated with the destruction of the First
Temple in 586 B.C.E. This substitution would have made it easier to find a
more immediate analogy from the exilic period of Israel for the desecrating
idem, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer: Ergänzungsband (2d ed.; Göttingen: Vandenμhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2004), 139 (hereafter ATTM Ergänzungsband); and Peter W. Flint,
“The Daniel Tradition at Qumran,” in Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(ed. C. A. Evans and P. W. Flint; SDSSRL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 55–59,
55n24 with bibliography. For the recent official publication, see John J. Collins,
“Prayer of Nabonidus,” in Qumran Cave 4.XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (ed. G. J.
Brooke et al.; DJD 22; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 83–93, with bibliography on 83).
9. See, e.g., Flint, “The Daniel Tradition at Qumran,” 56.
10. See the restoration of Frank M. Cross, “Fragments of the Prayer of Nabonidus,”
IEJ 34 (1984): 260–64.