Did Hesiod influence the book of Daniel?

Hesiod has races of gold, silver, bronze, heroes, and iron. The biblical book of Daniel has a statue where gold, silver, bronze, iron, and mixed iron and clay represent kingdoms.

Coincidence? I think not!

Does this mean the author(s) of Daniel knew their Hesiod? Well ... maybe.

The Seleucid king Antiochos IV, r. 175–164 BCE. Left: bust of Antiochos, Altes Museum Berlin; right: tetradrachm of Antiochos. The book of Daniel alludes to the contemporary ruler using Babylonian kings as masked language. (Sources: Wikimedia, Apollo Numismatics)

Daniel 2

King Nebuchadnezzar II has a strange dream, and only the Jewish prophet Daniel can explain it. The setting is the Babylonian Exile, in the distant past, centuries before Daniel was written. The episode is loosely modelled on Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41.

You were looking, O king, and there appeared a great statue. That statue was huge, its brilliance extraordinary; it was standing before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of that statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its midsection and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

Daniel 2.31–33 (NRSVue)

Then a stone strikes the statue’s feet, breaking the whole thing, and the stone grows into a mountain that fills the world.

Daniel goes on to explain that the dream predicts the rise and fall of future empires. (‘Future’ for characters in the time of the Exile, that is.) The author doesn’t name names, but they must be something like

1. gold — Babylonian empire (Nebuchadnezzar’s empire)
2. silver — Median dynasty
3. bronze — Achaemenid dynasty
4. iron — Alexander
5. iron and clay — ‘divided kingdom’ of the Ptolemies and Seleucids
6. (stone — independent Judaean kingdom — actual future, from the author’s perspective)

The original audience understood that they were living in the last phase, the ‘iron and clay’ of the divided kingdoms of the Diadochoi, and that the ‘stone’ symbolised a Jewish revolt against Seleucid rule.

Note: date of composition. Daniel consists of several discrete episodes, arranged differently in different recensions, in three languages: Aramaic (2.4–7.28), Hebrew (1.1–2.4, 8.1–12.13), and Greek (all of the above plus three further episodes corresponding to 2.24–90 and 13.1–14.42 in the Roman recension). Chapters 10–12 are securely dated to the Maccabaean revolt against Antiochos IV in the 160s BCE; Daniel scholars tend to infer that the Aramaic episodes are earlier, some time between 323 and 170 BCE. However, different episodes were certainly written at different times. The ‘stone’ destroying the kingdoms of the Diadochoi is certainly programmatic for a Judaean revolt. Therefore, like chapters 10–12, it should be dated to the 160s. For a general overview on the date and setting see Collins 1992; in more detail, essays in Collins and Flint 2001; on the Greek recensions, Munnich 2021; on the relationship between the various recensions, Bledsoe 2015; Portier-Young 2017. Scholarship on the date of the dream episode, specifically, is scarce: the essays in Collins and Flint 2001 tend to treat it as a mere appendage to the ‘four beasts’ episode in chapter 7. Portier-Young’s hypothesis for a possible relationship between versions of Daniel (adapted from Portier-Young 2017: 147).

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream envisages history as a succession of empires. The same conception reappears in several other ancient sources. This includes a roughly contemporary Jewish apocalyptic work, Sibylline oracles 3, a Greek poem usually thought to have been composed in Ptolemaic Egypt in the 2nd century BCE.

Daniel scholars call this a ‘four kingdoms’ scheme. That’s a problematic label, obviously: the dream has a succession of five materials — six, if we include the stone — which the Old Greek recension of Daniel interprets as five kingdoms. The name ‘four kingdoms’ comes from the interpretation in the Aramaic version, which mentions only four empires (2.37–43); the ‘four beasts = four kingdoms’ prophecy in Daniel 7; and a ‘four trees = four kingdoms’ prophecy in a text found at Qumran.

Elsewhere the number ‘four’ isn’t so important. I mentioned the Old Greek version, which has five kingdoms. Sibylline oracles 4, a Christian apocalyptic poem, adds the Romans as a fifth empire. Some ancient Christian interpreters of Daniel have a succession of kings, rather than empires: Tertullian describes a direct line of succession from the Achaemenid king Darius II to the Roman emperor Vespasian.

None of these parallels has the ‘succession of metals’ motif that we see in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. For that, we need to look elsewhere.

Note. Succession of empires: Sibylline oracles 3.156–161. ‘Four kingdoms’ text: 4Q552, 4Q553, 4Q553a. Five kingdoms: Sibylline oracles 4.49–151. Tertullian’s succession of kings: Against the Jews 8. On the ‘four kingdoms’ trope see generally the essays in Perrin and Stuckenbruck 2021; on the five kingdoms in the Old Greek version of Daniel 2, see Young 2021. On Sibylline oracles 3, see Bacchi 2020: 13–20.

The setting of Daniel: reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, Iraq. The original (now in the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin) was restored and renovated by the historical Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century BCE. Antipatros of Sidon counted Nebuchadnezzar’s wall among the ‘seven wonders’ of the world (Palatine anthology 9.58, 2nd/1st century BCE). (Source: Wikimedia)

Hesiod and the ‘myth of the races’

One of the oldest surviving Greek poems, the Hesiodic Works and days (ca. 700–650 BCE), lines 106–201, describes earlier races of mortals as a succession of metals. Well, mostly.

1. Race of gold: they lived ‘without cares’ or ‘wretched old age’; death came to them like sleep; the earth gave them food abundantly; they were loved by the gods.
2. Race of silver: benevolent spirits; they spent a hundred years as toddlers, then immediately became elderly; they didn’t worship the gods properly.
3. Race of bronze: strong and violent, with hands growing straight out of their shoulders; bronze weapons and armour; they were wiped out by their own violence.
4. Race of heroes: demigods (hēmitheoi) who fought wars at Thebes and Troy; they now dwell in the isles of the blessed.
5. Race of iron: they have no rest from labour and suffering; this race will come to an end when they have grey hair even at birth, when there is hatred among loved ones, and when there is no justice or respect.

Just like in Daniel, the audience know they are living in the fifth phase. The poem signals it explicitly: ‘would that I were not among the fifth men ... now is a race of iron’ (174–176). Hesiod comes across as a grouchy geezer who would say ‘get off my lawn’ as soon as look at you.

The myth of the races was influential. Successions of metallic races appear in later Greco-Roman literature in the Hellenistic poet Aratos (Phainomena 100–136, 3rd century BCE) and the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 1.89–150, 1st century BCE), with several briefer and looser imitations in other ancient authors.

The Works and days was extremely popular throughout antiquity — much more than the Hesiodic Theogony (though not as popular as the Catalogue). Aratos borrows from it heavily: not just the myth of the races, but also the concept of including a collection of lore about weather and astronomy.

So it’s perfectly feasible that the Works and days could have influenced another Hellenistic-era work, a 2nd century BCE book written in Judaea. There are catches, to be sure. The episode in Daniel is in Aramaic, not Greek.

That isn’t necessarily a problem. Many Judaeans under Seleucid rule knew Greek, and there was a thriving Greek-language Jewish literary tradition in Alexandria by the 200s BCE. More important is: are there any competing theories? — any other possible sources of influence?

Note. On the Hesiodic ‘myth of the races’ see West 1978: 172–177; Ercolani 2010: 160–166. For surveys of other Greco-Roman ‘myths of the races’ see Most 1997; Van Noorden 2015. All of these mention Daniel 2 as a comparandum.

The ‘succession of metals’ trope

The ‘succession of metals’ trope didn’t originate with Hesiod. For one thing, the race of ‘heroes’ has always stuck out like a sore thumb, wedged in among the metals. Was there an older form of the trope without that interruption?

The Works and days has many literary influences from Near Eastern poetry. It is in large part a Greek take on the genre of wisdom literature, associated with Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia. And the ‘myth of the races’ is an import too. M. L. West documents the parallels in his discussions of Anatolian and Near Eastern influences on early Greek literature (1978: 172–177; 1997: 312–319).

One bare-bones precursor appears in Babylonian god lists of the 2nd millennium BCE. The An = Anum god list (ca. 13th century BCE?) equates gods with metals:

silver = Anu
gold = Enlil
copper = Ea
tin = Ninane(?)

An = Anum, appendix F.3–6 Lambert-Winters

Note. Translation by Livingstone 1986: 182, adapted. Livingstone reads the name in the fourth line as ‘Ninazal’, but the interpretation is unclear (Lambert and Winters 2023: 338–339).

A longer list is published by Alasdair Livingstone, which also includes lead, other minerals, and plants (1986: 175–187). It seems the idea is to link the most important metals to the most important gods, and then fill in other gods by analogy, as Livingstone points out.

Ea and attendant gods: Sumerian cylinder seal, black serpentine, 32.5 x 19.5 mm, 2340–2150 BCE, and impression. (Source: Morgan Library and Museum)

Bare-bones, as I said. These lists don’t include the associated descriptions that we see in Hesiod, and they aren’t encapsulated — there’s no canon of four or five materials.

Here’s one that goes a bit deeper. First, look at Hesiod’s silver race —

In both body and mind [the silver race] were unlike the gold.
For a hundred years a child would be raised
by his dear mother, a great big toddler playing in the house ...

Works and days 129–131 (my translation)

— and then compare this snippet from the opening of the Lagash king list (18th century BCE?):

In those days a child spent a hundred years in [?nappies?],
spent a hundred years in his rearing.
He was not made to perform (any) assigned tasks.
He was small, he was feeble/stupid, he was [with] his mother.

(translation by J. A. Black, quoted by West 1997: 316)

A much later parallel — related more closely to Daniel and the Qumran ‘four kingdoms’ text than to Hesiod — is in a Zoroastrian apocalyptic work, the Bahman yašt (ca. 6th cent. CE). Zoroaster dreams of a tree, and Ahura Mazda explains it as a vision of a succession of future kingdoms:

That root of a tree which thou sawest, and those four branches, are the four periods which will come. That of gold is when I and thou converse, and King Vistâsp shall accept the religion ... And that of silver is the reign of Ardakhshir the Kayân king, and that of steel is the reign of the glorified Khûsrô son of Kêvâd, and that which was mixed with iron is the evil sovereignty of the demons with dishevelled hair of the race of Wrath ...

Bahman yašt 1 (E. W. West 1880: 192–193)

M. L. West also cites some looser parallels in the Indian Laws of Manu and the Mahābhārata.

Hesiod is the earliest source to give a full, encapsulated sequence of metals, but there’s enough to infer that the Hesiodic ‘myth’ of the races is no myth. It’s a literary device. The ‘myth of the races’ isn’t a framework for Greek myth, it’s a motif designed for apocalyptic literature.

The sequence of metals is borrowed from Near Eastern models. So there’s no particular need to imagine that Hesiod influenced the dream episode in Daniel. It’s perfectly possible that Daniel drew on other models that were still floating around the Levant in the 2nd century BCE.

Possible, but not certain. It’s also perfectly possible that the Works and days, a centrepiece of the Greek literary canon, was indeed known in 2nd century Judaea. Jewish people living in Alexandria, at least, could scarcely have avoided classic Greek literature.

The details of how Daniel was compiled is a subject of ongoing research. The most information comes from the Dead Sea scrolls, going back to the 2nd century BCE, not long after some episodes in Daniel were originally written. There are no Greek copies of Daniel among the Dead Sea scrolls. But Greek manuscripts were in circulation: the finds at Qumran Cave 7 consist entirely of Greek manuscripts, including a Hasmonean-era copy of Exodus; Nahal Hever Cave 8 had Greek copies of the minor prophets alongside Hebrew copies of other parts of the Bible. As well as that, the Old Greek recension of Daniel is thought to be early — possibly as early as the late 2nd century BCE.

It isn’t necessary to posit Hesiodic influence on the composition of Daniel 2. The rest of Daniel isn’t exactly bubbling with influence from Greek literature. But it can’t be ruled out either. After all, it isn’t as if we know of any other Aramaic- or Hebrew-language models for the ‘succession of metals’ trope. If there was Greek influence — and it’s a big ‘if’ — we can at least say it’s from Hesiod, not Aratos: Aratos’ version has no iron race.

References

• Bacchi, A. L. 2020. Uncovering Jewish creativity in Book III of the Sibylline oracles. Leiden/Boston.
• Bledsoe, A. M. D. 2015. ‘The relationship of the different editions of Daniel: a history of scholarship.’ Currents in biblical research 13: 175–190. [LMU München]
• Collins, J. J. 1992. ‘Daniel, book of.’ In: Freedman, D. N. (ed.) The Anchor Bible dictionary, vol. 2 (D–G). New York, etc. 29–37. [Internet Archive]
• Collins, J. J.; Flint, P. W. (eds.) 2001. The book of Daniel. Composition and reception, 2 vols. Leiden/Boston/Köln.
• Ercolani, A. 2010. Esiodo. Opere e giorni. Roma.
• Lambert, W. G.; Winters, R. D. 2023. An = Anum and related lists. Tübingen.
• Livingstone, A. 1986. Mystical and mythological explanatory works of Assyrian and Babylonian scholars. Oxford.
• Most, G. W. 1997. ‘Hesiod’s myth of the five (or four or three) races.’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 43: 104–127. [JSTOR]
• Munnich, O. 2021. ‘Daniel, Susanna, Bel and the dragon. Old Greek and Theodotion.’ In: Salvesen, A. G.; Law, T. M. (eds.) The Oxford handbook of the Septuagint. Oxford. 291–305.
• Perrin, A.; Stuckenbruck, L. (eds.) 2021. The four kingdoms motif before and beyond the book of Daniel. Leiden/Boston. [JSTOR (open access)]
• Portier-Young, A. 2017. ‘Three books of Daniel: plurality and fluidity among the ancient versions.’ Interpretation: a journal of Bible and theology 7: 143–153. [Academia.edu]
• Van Noorden, H. 2015. Playing Hesiod. The ‘myth of the races’ in classical antiquity. Cambridge.
• West, E. W. 1880. Pahlavi texts, vol. 1. Oxford. [Internet Archive]
• West, M. L. 1978. Hesiod. Works & days. Oxford.
• —— 1997. The east face of Helicon. West Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth. Oxford. [Internet Archive]
• Young, I. 2021. ‘Five kingdoms, and talking beasts: some Old Greek variants in relation to Daniel’s four kingdoms.’ In: Perrin and Stuckenbruck 2021: 39–55. [JSTOR (open access)]