Anti-Imperial Subtexts in Paul 319 KINGDOM DANIEL 2 DANIEL 7 DANIEL 8 1. Babylon golden head* lion with eagles’ ---------- wings 2. Media-Persia silver chest and bear ram with two arms horns* 3. Greece bronze midriff leopard male goat with (Macedonia) and thighs large horns* Diadochi ---------- ---------- four horns Seleucid kingdom ---------- ---------- little horn that (esp. Ant. Epiph. grew large IV) 4. ??? iron legs; iron dreadful beast ---------- and clay feet with iron teeth *Interpretation explicit in Daniel Obviously, the identification of the iron legs of Dan 2 and the iron toothed-beast in Dan 7 with Rome is neither explicit nor logically necessary. The author or authors may well have had the Seleucid kingdom in mind, and there is no reason within the context of canonical Daniel for preferring some other interpretation. Never- theless, by the end of the Second Temple period, the identification of Rome with the fourth kingdom of Dan 2 and with the fourth beast of Dan 7 had become common fare, as a brief glance at the Jewish literature of the time reveals (53). a. The Testament of Moses provides a compact overview of Israel’s history through the first third of the first century C.E. (54) In the brief hymnic section of this work we find these words (T. Mos. 10,7-8): (53) Of course, not all first-century recitations of Israel’s history follow Daniel’s scheme. The fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles, thought to have been updated about 80 C.E. to reflect contemporary conditions, recounts the procession of five world powers across the stage of history — Assyria, Media, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome — possibly following a five-kingdom scheme such as the one known to us from the work of the Roman chronicler Aemillus Sura in ca. 175 B.C.E. Cf. J.J. COLLINS, “The Kingdom of God in the Apocrypha and Pseudepi- grapha”, The Kingdom of God in 20th-Century Interpretation (ed. W. WILLIS) (Peabody, MA 1987) 81-82. The presence of such a scheme is not, however, as clear as Collins would have us believe. Collins, who edited the Sibylline Oracles in the Charlesworth edition of the Pseudepigrapha, has himself prejudiced the interpretation of Sib. Or. 4 by numbering the powers and referring to them as kingdoms in the headings he gives to the respective sections (“The first kingdom”, “The second kingdom”, etc.). The text itself gives no warrant for titles that would lead readers to detect a numbered kingdom scheme behind the oracle. In any case, there is no evidence that Daniel has modified this scheme, since even by Collins’ reckoning Dan 1-6 predates Aemillus. (54) R. H. Charles’ argument for a date between 7 and 30 C.E. still seems convincing despite alternative theories that have occasionally been put forth. Cf.