daniel boyarin, daniel 7, intertextuality, and the history of israel's cult

8/13/2019 Daniel Boyarin, Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the History of Israel's Cult

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HTR 105:2 (2012) 13962

Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the Historyof Israels CultDaniel BoyarinUniversity of California, Berkeley

Professor Hanan Eshel, in memoriam

The Bifurcation of the Interpretive TraditionAncient and modern readers have offered two basic interpretations of the [Onelike a] Son of Man ( na rbk) in Dan 7:13. One line of interpretation holds thatthe One like a Son of Man is a symbol of a collective, namely, the faithful Israelitesat the time of the Maccabean revolt. 1 The other basic line of interpretation sees the

2 The reason for this double interpretation is not hard

interpreters and scholars) that the vision itself seems almost ineluctably to require

3

1 JBL 93 (1974) 5066, at 50 n. 2.

2 JTS 9 (1958) 22542.3

account of the war of Israel and Antiochus that is found at the end of the book of Daniel, namely,


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that almost always when a commentatorial tradition is as split as this is, we shouldseek for tension within the text itself, such that both interpretations can be said tobe supported by the text. 4

independent apocalyptic visions and then the provision of an interpretation, a

who, nevertheless, as all authors at some level and authors of antiquity more openly

been produced by an author, but it has not been made up out of whole cloth by himor her. As such it incorporates other texts and traditions. Texts are felt or patchworkmore than they are warp and weft.

In the pesher on the vision, it would certainly seem as if the interpreter takes

portion of the text in Daniel 7 reads thus:

16 this. He spoke to me and made known to me the interpretation of the mat-ters. 17 the earth.

the vision in vs. 22 and in the interpretation in vs. 18 (ibid., 62). The people of the holy ones in

of holy ones, but also on behalf of his people Israel (ibid., 64). It is the awkwardness of that near

The Book of Daniel

source texts. Precisely concealed in that awkward syntax is, in my view, the awkwardness of the

4 I am virtually certain that other readers of the piece will easily think of comparable examples.


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18 sess 5

There follows further explanation of the fourth beast and its horns and its fate,and its defeat of the holy ones:

22

alby

and festivals), and he will be permitted to do so for a time, and for two times, anda half a time, until:

26 The court will be seated, 6 and his dominion will be taken away, for de-struction and perdition until the end. 27

of the dominions will serve and obey it.

The people of the holy ones cannot be other than Israel or its faithful martyrs.I conclude then that from the viewpoint of method two entirely separate issues

interpreted

7 It is confusion of these two moments that

The Two Apocalypses of Daniel 7

Daniels vision of the four beasts in 7:28:

5 Daniel: A Commentary on the Bookof Daniel

6

well by the midrash on Daniel 7 in Rev 13:67.

7 Michael Riffaterre, Text Production Press, 1983).


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1 the visions of his head on his bed. Thereupon he wrote down the dream: 2 I

3 Four 4

plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet

5 Behold, another

beast, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth 6 After this I

7 After this

with its feet. It was different from all the other beasts that were before it,and it had ten horns. 8 I considered the horns, and behold, another, little horn

fl in the MT , l

three of the former horns are uprooted, and, Behold, there were eyes like human

8

8

Studies in Daniel

the plan ( Book of Daniel

ZAW 80 (1968) 38586, at


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9 I watched until thrones were set, and an Ancient of Days took his seat. His

out from before him. 10 A thousand thousands served him, and a myriad ofmyriads stood before him. The court was seated and books were opened. 11 I

I watched until the beast was slain and its body was destroyed and committed 12 As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken

13 came with the clouds of heaven, and he approached the Ancient of Days andwas presented before him. 14

-

9

unity of the chapter as obvious. 10

text to Daniel 7), which then would have read very smoothly:

8 Behold, there were eyes like human eyes in that horn and a mouth speak- 11

9 Daniel , 27475, but I have restored the emendation.10

detailed description of the fourth beast and then concentrates on a description of the eleventh horn There

follows a change of scene to the tribunal, described, an abrupt change back to the horn talking

[emphasis added]. Zevits account alone, I think, accurate and precise as it is in its description ofabruptness and


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12 As for the rest of the beasts,

for a time and a season. 11

While it is the case, as Collins points out, 12

13

9 I watched until thrones were set, and an Ancient of Days took his seat. His

out from before him. 10 A thousand thousands served him, and a myriad of

myriads stood before him. The court was seated and books were opened.13

I

with the clouds of heaven, and he approached the Ancient of Days and waspresented before him.14

which will not pass away, 14

This reconstructed text provides a coherent whole (save only for the lack of a direct

of the appearance of the Ancient of Days, it is impossible to explain why there ismore than one throne (a point of which the rabbis of the midrash were well aware). 15

Second, the fact that the One like a Son of Man approaches the Ancient of Days also11 Daniel , 274, but I have restored the emendation.12 Ibid., 280.13 Theologische Studien und Kritiken

slain makes a much

once v. 8 was added, then 11a was added to provide a (very awkward) continuity. In any case, this

14 Translated as in Collins, Daniel

Jews, Greeks, and Christians: ReligiousCultures in Late Antiquity; Essays in Honor of W. D. Davies

15 Interpreters who do not make this connection of the One like a Son of Man as the occupant

of the second throne are forced into very weak and forced explanations of the plural thrones here: Daniel


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have it does not provide a smooth narrative, for after the books are opened, there

16

elevated diction, and parallelism, while the narrative of the four beasts and itssequel in verses 1112 are clearly prose. 17

?heynEyBe q ?/hynEyBe k tq:l]si hr:y[ez yrIja; r


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9 I was seeing until thrones were set up and One Ancient of Days sat: His raiment was like white snow // And the hair of his head was like the woolof sheep.

10

A thousand thousand served him // And a myriad of myriads stood up beforehim.

He sat in judgment and books were opened before him.11

12

13 I was seeing in the vision of the night and behold,

With the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming // And to the Ancient of Days he came // And they brought him close before him.14 And to him was given sovereignty and glory and kingdom // and all of the

peoples and languages will worship him. His reign is an eternal reign which will not pass // And his kingdom will notbe destroyed.15 pan-icked me.

parallelism, that which can fairly be said to be the Hebrew or Aramaic 20

structure typical of biblical poetry. 21

22 The case for the distinction should be considered closed,

Finally, in addition to the narrative infelicities observed when the text is read as

20 Ibid., 68.21 22 Ibid., 79.


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23 because in the

of Days, the One like a Son of Man is clearly a member of the heavenly court.

btes, 24 but only on condition that it be understood that it is to the work of the

symbol for Israel and not with a member of the

sic ] is a mere symbol of someother entity (Israel, as the pesher would have it) or he is an actual member of theheavenly court and thus not a symbol. 25 As the text is constituted before us, this is

that for the beasts, Daniel says simply that he saw such and such a beast, while herehe sees an entity like

apocalypses, 26

Collins himself remarks that Daniel 7 is not simply a reproduction of an older

source, Canaanite or other.27

28

23 Collins, Daniel, 305. Collins sees this point clearly but nonetheless does not concede that this

mismatch is conducive to a two-source hypothesis.24 Mathias Delcor, Le livre de Daniel 25 As he is clearly understood in Mark 13:27 as well (personal communication, Richard Hays).26 The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs

of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature 27 Collins, Daniel , 289.28 Mark S. Smith, ed., The Ugaritic Baal Cycle


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palace of his own. Mark Smith refers to this acquisition of his own palace as a 29

30 In fact, in my reconstruction

of two apocalypses, I think I can descry the outlines at least of a syncresis between

by Y

31 I

should note that I do not offer these considerations in support of my analysis of

had before him two texts in two literary forms, a myth that had been transformed

Further evidence that the one with the appearance of a Son of Man is an actual

one with rather remarkable resemblance to a man is mentioned three more times in

of Man, but rather, in Hebrew diction rbg harmk (8:15 only, like the appearance

received his dominion. 32

29 Ibid., 296.30 Collins, Daniel , 287.31 Y does not kill and defeat the Sea

but rather subordinates him to the purposes of Y

Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament

32


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can also be supported thematically. 33

da harmk twmd), which is almost word for word our expression

appearance like a man ( ya harmk twmd ya for MT a

common concomitant of biblical theophanies. 34

OT .35

Anthropos )36 but one who looks like

37

the One like a Son of Man.

Multitudes: The Various Audiences of the Son of Man, unpublished paper (Berkeley, Calif., 2009).33 RB 60 (1953)

18789. See, too, Black, Throne, 61, who concludes properly from Feuillet: This, in effect,

means that Dan. 7 knows of two divinities, the Head of Days and the Son of Man. One of theearliest readers of Daniel 7, the author of the Similitudes of Enoch , certainly reads the two-throne

King and Messiahas Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature

34 Book of Daniel

35 36 Der Menschensohn

im ethiopischen Henochbuch still adopts the Religionsgeschichte perspective by which the Son of Man is the name for the

Anthropos , and Daniels One like a Son of He That Cometh:

The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism Blackwell, 1956] 37273).

37 For a study of the ubiquity of this pattern, see Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism


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to corroborate the deep connection between this pattern and the most ancient

l frequently plays the

His characteristic mode of manifestation appears to be the vision or audition,

the cloud chariot . . . Ba l is thetranscendent one. 38

suppose, the author of Daniel, who forced it to be a representation not of a divinity

39

the apocalypse of the two thrones into the apocalypse of the four beasts, the author

To the question of why the author included the throne vision at all only to reduce

38 Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic Press, 1973) 43.

39 This work of his is thus consistent with the work of the Deuteronomists and Prophets, who,

King and Messiah , xi).


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these verses of the throne apocalypse provide two elements that he wished for, a

apocalypse enabled the author to reinterpret the One like a Son of Man as well,such that he now is not the counterpart of the Ancient of Days but rather of the

beasts, especially the fourth beast. The particle k (like) in the case of the One

to the beasts. In the former case it means a real divine entity that has the form

k

40

This set up the combined text as a new apocalypse which enabled a reinterpretation

down to earth, and like the four beasts, read as a human political entity, Israel. Thusthe four beasts, whatever they were in the source myth (which is beyond the scope

and the most terrible fourth one of Alexander and his descendants, which will, in

The author of Daniel has made of two mythic texts, namely, by his transformation of what is essentially a mythicalrepresentation into a historical one. 41

40 k in the present text between the animals and the One like a Daniel , 168), who, nonetheless, comes to quite different conclusions

from mine.41

consensus that k#bar elynn

in any appreciable way by ones hypothesis that there may be two hands at work in the chapter( Book of Daniel but if my hypothesis of a prior composition incorporated into the book were deemed acceptable,


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the Ancient of Days as a real presence and the One like a Son of Man as a symbol isprecisely what the author of Daniel desired to achieve in his search for a perfectlymonotheistic representation. As in any author, but perhaps in his case more than

42 The alien tradition is, however,

a tradition from within Israel that has been alienated by the author of Daniel, more

16 and he answered and made known to me the explanation [pesher] of the

words. 17 the earth. 18

43

a year. 44

tyrant. 45

in hisown mind

42 Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

43

Book of Daniel , 91), a

44 Ibid.45 Ibid., 95.


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46 The author of Daniel has made the One like a

in the text itself.The analysis I offer here thus enables both traditional views about the One like

a Son of Man to stand: on the one hand, the clearly correct view that the One like

on the other hand, the equally clearly correct view that the author of the book of

for the faithful, holy, people of Israel. I believe that I have accomplished three

of the eleventh horn, which conceivably is the work of a secondary hand) who has

a mere symbol of the people of Israel. Third, we can now see more clearly howsynchronically the text makes itself available to be read in the fashion that it was inthe Similitudes of Enoch

of the text out of its sources produces intertextuality on the synchronic surface.Source criticism is about the history of the text. Intertextuality is about the text as a

of the term intertextuality as if it simply were a fancy word for source criticism.

46 Ibid., 92. This could make Daniel the earliest text, I believe, in which holy ones is used to


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47

(but not uncannily) one of the most ancient strata of biblical (or even pre-biblical)

matter of interpretations at one and the same time. It is no accident that Freud chose

precisely the ways that Rome wears its history on its surface that present it for these

backward and forward in time, back to the most ancient sources of Israelite cult and

48

47

the biblical text in The Sea Resists: Midrash and the (Psycho)Dynamics of Intertextuality, PoeticsToday 10 (1989) 66177, later incorporated into Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash

formulations.48 After the rabbis, I have found that only Mowinckel ( He That Cometh ,


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the anointed, the anointed as Daniel pictures him now has a very transcendent

- 49

not be One like

deuterostheos

of this vision and one that would have a very lively future life. As Carsten Colpe

50 Where I part

of the concept outside the tradition of Israel. There is very little warrant for this

51 Collins has helpfully

52 namely, the fact

49 Daniel , 170.50 Colpe, Ho Huios, 406.51

The Early History of God: Yahweh

and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel

52 Collins, Daniel , 291.


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53 Colpe has

into the broader conclusion that older material lives on in the tradition of Israel

54

Y that was later replaced by a cult of Y alone, but rather that different

focused ones such as the Y different times and places. 55

Y

Israel. 56 There are, to be sure, in accordance with the notion expressed in the last

Y

.laer:c]yI ynEB] rPs]mil] yMi[' tlbuG bXey" d:a; ynEB] /dyrIp]h'B] yI/G /yl][, lje nh'B] 8./tl;j} n" lb,j, bqo[}y" /M[' hw:hoy ql,je yKi 9

Y -

heritance.

Y

MSS , while the Masoretic Text has undermined

53 comparison with the sea, since I believe that the sea vision and the Son of Man vision were once

54 Colpe, Ho Huios, 419.55 Smith, Early History of God , 78.56 JSS 1 (1956) 2537.


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Israel, which makes little sense. 57 texts in the Bible, 58 Y

59

Y

Y Y , I

did not make known to them. The ancient southern theophanies of Y , especiallyat Sinai and the Sea, are (as shown by Cross) too Baal-like for us to see Baal as alater incursion (dressed up as Y, as it were) into the divine economy of Israel. My

Y was

as Israel, 60 Y

Y.61

and Y 62

in Israelite-Canaanite history and apparently quite early. 63

57 Deuteronomy God in Translation: Cross-Cultural Recognition of Deities in

the Biblical World discussion on the Deut 32:8 issue.

58 Y

Tendenz ) discussion of Bibliotheca Sacra

158 (2001) 5274, and see other earlier literature cited there. Y is not mentioned in the psalm at Y

Pace

the Divine Council in the Hebrew Bible have Y of Y

59 Cross, Canaanite Myth , 180.60

Ronald Hendel, Remembering Abraham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 5775.61 Cross, Canaanite Myth Bible, History of Religions 21 (1982) 24056 and Smith, Early History of God , 184.

62 This explanation of Baal and Y better the extreme rivalry between them manifested in the Bible.

63 Smith, Early History of God Y

(Canaanite Myth , 71). This seems to me to leave somewhat unclear the Baal-like characteristicsof Y


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Y had very different and in some ways

antithetical functions, and this dysfunctionality, I propose, left a residue in which

64 This tension and

65

at least until he comes 66 As a much later rabbinic poetic text would have it,

Y This event, if indeed there ever was one like it, must have happened very early on,

as it is constitutive of Israel itself. 67 Y combination can still be detected in the

68).

line in the text protest that that is the valid one, while others claim the opposite.

Y ,

last century, an entire Baal hymn has been lifted intact and adapted for Y in Psalm 29. As Cross

Y

Y in ancient Israel was parallel (even nearly identical)

Y Y as a

Y as variant forms and Y

Y did not further appropriate characteristics of Baal

JJS 42 (1991) 5.

64 A similar explanation, mutatis mutandis okm and herconnections with Asherah, on which see Smith, Early History of God , 133, and sources cited there.

65 Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israels Second God

66 Another possible hypothesis would be that these traditions are a direct continuation of such

whatever traditions lie behind it is that the Ancient of Days is Y and superior to Y .

67 Cross, Canaanite Myth , 186.68 Mearon

HTR 87 (1994) 291321.


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to be the people of Israel: 69

( Demonstration 70 On the

try to see both sides of this unresolved tension in the text and thus make sense

the Son of Man is a name for the divine-human redeemer. 71

The pesher insists that the One like a Son of Man is a collective, not an individual

for the pesher, are almost doubtlessly the Maccabean heroes who redeemed thetemple after a time, two times, and a half time (three and a half years, the actual

purposes for his own time: he has discredited the appearance of a second divine

69 pace Collins, Daniel , 87, who

70 Pace Collins, 308 n. 271, who believes that it is a mere reductio ad absurdum. I would also

representation of the collective, Israel.71 Early Christianity


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26 completely. 27 -

and obedient to them.

72

in Daniel 73 There is,

We will have to try to understand better the relationship of this divine redeemer tothe human redeemer, the Davidic messiah.

Baal or Y

vision of Daniel 7, however much the author of Daniel seeks to suppress this myth.

Y

war and punishment, have been transferred from older forms of Israelite-Canaanite

72 73 Pace Barker, Great Angel


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Once Y

biblical) identity as Y .74 It is the power of that myth itself on its own that explains

called the Son of Man), it is the not-entirely-successful suppression of this myth in

explain the later development of the Son of Man as a title in both the Similitudes of

Enoch for the interpretation of the Book of Daniel, for which it is clear that the One like aSon of Man is Israel, or more precisely the Maccabean martyrs, the intertextuality

75 Better put, perhaps, we must pay attention to the way that these various components

74 C .E .

(4th5th c. C .E . Mearon (Andrei JBL 127 JJS

HTR 763 (1983) 26988. As Alexander points out in

75 This is the precise contrary of the position taken by Mowinckel, He That Cometh , 353, who

( Anthropos Israel. See also ibid., 42037.


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of the two thrones from its context allows us to look both at the possible history

and in its afterlife. 76

the Collinses own in another closely related context: The fact that the dominantattitude in biblical tradition insists on a sharp distinction between divinity and

psalms all the more remarkable. It requires that we take them seriously as a witness

that led to the demise of the monarchy. 77 Ditto, I would say, for Daniel and the

78

79

76 into confusion, as it has led many others (on both sides of the hermeneutical divide), many of them

mentioned by Black.77 Collins and Collins, King and Messiah , 24.78

7 (Collins, Daniel , 281).

79 Mearon and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient

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