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The Greek author Hesiod describes Typhoeus, a monstrous rebel who nearly overcomes the gods before Zeus defeats him. Daniel echoes a similar tradition of arrogant power in the fourth beast and its boastful horn, who will be destroyed in divine judgment.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Daniel 7:7
Hebrew Bible
7 “After these things, as I was watching in the night visions a fourth beast appeared—one dreadful, terrible, and very strong. It had two large rows of iron teeth. It devoured and crushed, and anything that was left it trampled with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that came before it, and it had 10 horns. 8 “As I was contemplating the horns, another horn—a small one—came up between them, and three of the former horns were torn out by the roots to make room for it. This horn had eyes resembling human eyes and a mouth speaking arrogant things.
Hesiod Theogony 820
Classical
[815] But the glorious allies of loud-crashing Zeus have their dwelling upon Ocean's foundations, even Cottus and Gyes; but Briareos, being goodly, the deep-roaring Earth-Shaker made his son-in-law, giving him Cymopolea his daughter to wed. [820] But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders [825] grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads [830] which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; [835] and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it. But he thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around [840] resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea,
Date: 20-50 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... With view to the latter problem, a third, Greek and also Hellenistic-Egyptian tradition deserves attention: the Typhon myth. To address this possible influence, the identification of the fourth beast in Daniel 7 with Greece and of the ‘little horn’ with Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Daniel 7 and 8 should be taken into account. The latter equation is a hypothesis, but a well-founded and established one. ...”
Beyerle, Stefan
"The Imagined World of the Apocalypses" in Collins, John J. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature
(p. 378) Oxford University Press, 2014
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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