4QPseudo-Daniela–b (4Q243–4Q244) and the Book of Daniel

Abstract

With the sole exception of Adam, 1 the figure of Daniel the Prophet 2 has had more ancient and mediaeval apocryphal literature attributed to or associated with it than any other from the Hebrew Bible. Over fifty Jewish, Christian, and Islamic compositions are extant, each of which may be classified under one of only three types: 3 i) legenda, or 1 And perhaps Ezra and/or Moses, although there is no way to be certain until a full account of the corpus of the apocrypha pertaining to each figure is tallied. On the

A History of Research on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

“…For some helpful discussions, see Collins 1993; Holm 2013; Newsom with Breed 2014). The publication of the Aramaic Scrolls has led at least some scholars to recognize that, in addition to these now-canonical Aramaic Daniel traditions, there were other Aramaic Daniel traditions in circulation in the Hellenistic and Hasmonean periods (On these traditions and their relationship to the ‘biblical' Daniel material, see, e.g., DiTommaso 2005a; Perrin 2019, 2021). Some of these other Daniel traditions are problematically labelled ‘Pseudo-Daniel’, implying that they are derivative of the now-canonical Daniel material, but the literary relationship between the various Aramaic Daniel traditions is not so easy to discern, and we cannot simply assume, as some earlier scholars did, that all of the ‘non-biblical’ Daniel traditions relied on the ‘biblical’ traditions.…”

A Reversal of Fortunes: Daniel among the Scholars

“…One final observation about resistance readings goes back to the question of textual history and intentions. As Young (2009) has pointed out, many scholars assume the priority of the MT in Daniel’s textual development (so DiTommaso 2005b: 105; Han 2008), even when they take note of the Greek versions (so Polaski 2004). They assume that the Hebrew-Aramaic text in its ‘final form’ reflects the intentions of the scribes who wrote the tales.…”