The Throne Visions of Daniel 7, 1 Enoch 14, and the Qumran Book of Giants (4Q530): An Analysis of Their Literary Relationship

Abstract

In Dan 7:9–10, the apocalyptic seer narrates his vision of God's heavenly throne. According to most scholars, Daniel's vision account depends literarily on the supposedly more primitive visionary traditions found in 1 Enoch 14 and the Book of Giants of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Certain divergences in these traditions, however, reveal that it is in fact 1 Enoch 14 that depends on a vision account much like that found in Dan 7. The Book of Giants and Daniel, on the other hand, both seem to make use of a common tradition, each adapting it in a different way.

A History of Research on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

“…Additionally, it is helpful to consider the arguments of Perrin and Machiela alongside an extensive scholarship on the affinities and points of contact between various pairs and clusters of Aramaic compositions from Qumran. Some of these studies are in explicit dialogue with the work of Dimant, Machiela, etc., while others predate or are otherwise independent of the above-cited research on the Aramaic Scrolls as corpus: the Books of Watchers and the Aramaic Levi Document (Nickelsburg 1981; Stone 1988; Wright 1997); the Astronomical Book and the Aramaic Levi Document (Drawnel 2006a; Ben-Dov 2008a); the early Enoch literature and Tobit (Nickelsburg 1996; 2003); the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testament of Qahat, and the Visions of Amram (Milik 1972; Drawnel 2006b; Tervanotko 2014; Hama 2022; Perrin 2022b); the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document (Machiela and Jones 2023); the Genesis Apocryphon and the Book of Giants (Machiela and Perrin 2011); the Genesis Apocryphon and Tobit (Machiela and Perrin 2014); the Visions of Amram and Tobit (Goldman 2013); the Visions of Amram and Four Kingdoms (Machiela 2021b); the Book of Giants and Daniel 4 (Angel 2016); the Book of Watchers, the Book of Giants, and Daniel 7 (Stokes 2008; Trotter 2012; Angel 2014a; 2014b; Davis Bledsoe 2016; cf. Holmes 2019); Pseudo-Daniel and the early Enoch literature (Stuckenbruck 2001); Four Kingdoms and Daniel chapters 2 and 7 (Hogeterp 2010; Perrin 2015b), Tobit and various other Qumran Aramaic traditions (Perrin 2015a; Dimant 2017); the canonical Daniel court tales and other Aramaic Daniel traditions (Perrin 2019).…”

The Book of Daniel and the Twenty-First-Century Religious Bible Student

“…The first is written in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic, and the second, only in Aramaic. The first section quotes a verse in Daniel that explains that the apparition of the angel clothed in linen described in the previous verses (5)(6) was seen only by Daniel, and identifies the men who were with Daniel but did not see the angel, whom Rabbi Jeremiah (according to another tradition, Rabbi Ḥiyya b. Abba) identifies as the Second Temple era prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Daniel may thus be inferred to have seen visions too sublime for the others to perceive.…”

“…The documents discovered in the Judean Dessert, which include passages from the book of Daniel as well as additional texts with similar content, such as Tefillat Nabunaid (The Prayer of Nabunaid) (4Q242) 5 and Sefer ha-Anakim (The Book of Giants) (4Q530), 6 as well as scholarship on postbiblical literature such as 1 Enoch, pose challenges of their own to the traditional perception of the book. The pronounced mix of parallels and contrasts between these texts has brought scholars to regard them collectively as "Daniel literature" from which the canonical work ultimately emerged.…”