Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

shall become [gre]at upon the earth. (8)[... All w]ill make [peace,] and all will serve (9) [him.] He will
be called [son of the Gr]eat [God;] by His Name he shall be designated.
Column 2 (1) He will be called the son of God; they will call him son of the Most High. Like the
shooting stars (2) that you saw, thus will be their Kingdom. They will rule for a given period of year[s]
upon (3) the earth, and crush everyone. People will crush people, and nation (will crush) nation, (4)
until the people of God arises and causes everyone to rest from the sword. (5) His Kingdom will be an
Eternal Kingdom, and he will be Righteous in all his Ways. He [will jud]ge (6) the earth in
Righteousness, and everyone will make peace. The sword shall cease from the earth, (7) and every
nation will bow down to him. As for the Great God, with His help (8) he will make war, and He will
give all the peoples into his power; all of them (9) He will throw down before him. His rule will be an
Eternal rule, and all the boundaries...
13. The Vision Of The Four Kingdoms (4Q547)
This is another tantalizing apocalypse in Aramaic relating to the Daniel cycle of literature, as well as to
a certain extent Enoch. In it, the king (possibly either Belshazzar or Nebuchadnezzar) sees a vision of
four trees, each represented by an Angel. As each tree represents a kingdom, some relationship with
the Dan. 7 -8 vision of the four kingdoms is evident.
When the text assigns Angels to trees, and thereby to the kingdoms, it is developing an already ancient
idea prominent in Daniel. In Dan. 10:13, the seer encounters an Angel, presumably the Heavenly
interpreter of visions, Gabriel. This Angel is also of fundamental importance to the heir to many of
these traditions, Islam. He tells Daniel that he would have come earlier, but 'the prince of the Kingdom
of Persia opposed' him for 2 1 days. Thus Israel's Angel seems to have been engaged in heavenly
combat with the Angel of the Kingdom of the Persians. Only with the aid of another Angel, Michael -
already figuring prominently in many of these texts - was he able to advance. A similar understanding
of the interplay between the worlds of the seen and the unseen would appear to animate this vision.
It would be interesting to know the identities of all the trees in the Four Kingdoms text, for then one
might better appreciate just how the work relates to parallel visions in the Biblical Daniel or Enoch.
Only the identity of the first, Babylon, is preserved in Line 5. Does the work end with Alexander of
Macedon, or does it come down to the Roman period? Does it contain material of equal antiquity and
authority as the Biblical Daniel or Enoch? Or, is this work rather an explication of Daniel, composed
later?
The use of trees to represent kingdoms has ample precedent in the ancient motif of the cosmic tree (cf.
Ezek. 17 and 31 and Zech. 1 1:2), and parallels the use of other symbols like animals and horns in
Daniel and Enoch. In Dan. 4, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream in which he sees '.. . a tree in the middle of
the earth of great size. The tree became large and strong, and its height reached up to the heavens...'
Daniel later tells the king that this tree represents the king himself and his kingdom, but the book of
Daniel does not develop this equation any further.