‘FOUR MONARCHIES’ (re Carion & Sleidan)

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_kingdoms_of_Daniel

Four kingdoms of Daniel

The four kingdoms of Daniel are four kingdoms which, according to the Book of Daniel, precede the "end-
times" and the "Kingdom of God".

Historical background

The Book of Daniel originated from a collection of legends circulating in the Jewish community in Babylon and
Mesopotamia in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods (5th to 3rd centuries BC), and was later expanded by
the visions of chapters 7–12 in the Maccabean era (mid-2nd century).[1]

The "four kingdoms" theme appears explicitly in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, and is implicit in the imagery of Daniel
8. Daniel's concept of four successive world empires is drawn from Greek theories of mythological history.[2]
The symbolism of four metals in the statue in chapter 2 is drawn from Persian writings,[2] while the four "beasts
from the sea" in chapter 7 reflect Hosea 13:7–8, in which God threatens that he will be to Israel like a lion, a
leopard, a bear or a wild beast.[3] The consensus among scholars is that the four beasts of chapter 7, like the
metals of chapter 2, symbolise Babylon, Media, Persia and the Seleucid Greeks, with Antiochus IV as the
"small horn" that uproots three others (Antiochus usurped the rights of several other claimants to become king).
[4]

Roman Empire schema

The following interpretation represents a traditional view of Jewish and Christian Historicists, Futurists,
Dispensationalists, Partial Preterists, and other futuristic Jewish and Christian hybrids, as well as certain
Messianic Jews, who typically identify the kingdoms in Daniel (with variations) as:

1. the Babylonian Empire

2. the Medo-Persian Empire
3. the Greek Empire
4. the Roman Empire, with other implications to come later

Christian interpretation

From the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the "four monarchies" model became widely
used by all for universal history, in parallel with eschatology, among Protestants. Some continued to defend its
use in universal history in the early 18th century.

Christopher Cellarius (1638–1707), based on the distinctive nature of medieval Latin.[6] The modern historicist
interpretations and eschatological views of the Book of Daniel with the Book of Revelation closely resemble and
continue earlier historical Protestant interpretations.

Protestant Reformation

A series of Protestant theologians, such as Jerome Zanchius (1516–1590), Joseph Mede (1586–1639), and John
Lightfoot (1602–1675), particularly emphasized the eschatological theory of four monarchies.[39] Mede and
other writers (such as William Guild (1586–1657), Edward Haughton and Nathaniel Stephens (c. 1606–1678))
expected the imminent end of the fourth empire, and a new age.[40] The early modern version of the four
monarchies in universal history was subsequently often attributed to the chronologist and astrologer
Johann Carion, based on his Chronika (1532). Developments of his Protestant world chronology were
endorsed in an influential preface of Philipp Melanchthon (published 1557).

The theory was topical in the 1550s. Johann Sleidan in his De quatuor imperiis summis (1556) tried to
summarise the status of the "four monarchies" as historical theory; he had already alluded to it in
previous works. Sleidan's influential slant on the theory was both theological, with a Protestant tone of
apocalyptic decline over time, and an appeal to German nationalist feeling in terms of translatio imperii.[6]
[41][42]
The Speculum coniugiorum (1556) of the jurist Alonso De la Vera Cruz, in New Spain, indirectly analysed
the theory. It cast doubts on the Holy Roman Emperor's universal imperium by pointing out that the historical
"monarchies" in question had in no case held exclusive sway.[43] The Carion/Melanchthon view was that the
Kingdom of Egypt must be considered a subsidiary power to Babylon: just as France was secondary compared
to the Empire.[44]

The Catholic Jean Bodin was concerned to argue against the whole theory of "four monarchies" as a historical
paradigm. He devoted a chapter to refuting it, alongside the classical scheme of a Golden Age, in his 1566
Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.[45]