Unlike the OP? Arbitrarily picking out ten of the emperors to claim Constantine as the 10th horn?2ndpillar2 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:59 am Your allusion to the 10 horns is too vague to determine which kings you are pointing out. It seemed more like throwing mud at a wall.
If nothing else this thread illustrates how futile it is to imagine that any reliable knowledge can be gained from biblical 'prophecy': The vague symbolism can be 'interpreted' pretty much however you want and adjusted to fit any circumstances whatsoever.But supposing for the sake of argument that some interpretations are a little less arbitrary than others, I'd say that the OP does fairly well, except its purported identification of the 10 horns. Except for some references to "the end," the prophecies in Daniel seem to refer to events in the period around the 6th century BCE to 1st century CE:
- Ch 9, a five-century countdown beginning from the 6th or 5th century BCE
- Ch 8, a broad outline of the Persian and Greek kingdoms leading into the Seleucid persecution
- Ch 11, a more detailed focus on the Greek kingdoms of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE
- Ch 2, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar/Babylon covers subsequent kingdoms (the iron being either the Seleucids or Romans)
- Ch 7, a more detailed focus on those four 'metallic' kingdoms
If (as scholars generally suppose) some or all of Daniel was written in the Maccabean period then the iron kingdom/fourth beast would presumably be the Seleucid kingdom. Alternatively, given the assumption of divine foreknowledge and our understanding of later history, a case could be made for them being Rome instead - and hence from chapter 2, the small rock which grows into a mountain over the whole earth would be the 'kingdom of God' begun by Jesus. Under the latter view, all five prophecies (supposedly written around the time of the first temple's destruction and second one's construction) also focus significantly on the temple itself:
- Ch 11, focusing on the temple's desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes
- Ch 9, focusing on the temple's destruction by Vespasian and his son Titus (and in Christian theology, its replacement by the 'anointed one' who was cut off)
- Ch 8, focusing on the desecration by Antiochus
- Ch 2, culminating in that 'kingdom of God' which was to replace the temple
- Ch 7...?
If the iron kingdom/fourth beast represents Rome (which alongside the more secular Seleucid interpretation would be the best/least arbitrary interpretation I know of), then the most obvious or least arbitrary interpretation of the ten horns would be Rome's first ten rulers after either A) Rome's final conquest of the Hellenic world with the occupation of Alexandria in ~30 BCE or B) the complete subjugation of Greece itself in the First Mithridatic War ~85 BCE. In the former case the ten would be:
1 - Augustus
2 - Tiberius
3 - Caligula
4 - Claudius
5 - Nero
6 - Galba (69 CE)
7 - Otho (69 CE)
8 - Vitellius (69 CE)
9 - Vespasian
10 - Titus
The general who destroyed the Jewish temple would thus be the '10th horn.' Taking the horns instead as the first ten Caesars (ie, including Julius) would make Vespasian the tenth; the general who led at the start of the Jewish War before delegating command to his son Titus, but perhaps more interesting the ultimate victor of the Year of the Four Emperors who essentially replaced three other 'horns.'
(For fans of the Revelation of John, Vespasian is quite convincingly the 7th horn when those three less significant rulers are omitted. Of course, while there are substantial difficulties in making Daniel 'fit' with history as any kind of genuine prophecy, Revelation is flat-out, unequivocally wrong in its repeated reassurance to the seven churches that Jesus would return "soon," so 'interpretation' of Revelation is even more fraught with dubious assumptions and wildly differing theories even than Daniel! Remarkably, its disputed inclusion into the 'official' canon by some later bishops and publishers obviously causes many Christians to ignore that reality, suggesting their devotion to the traditions of men over and above their own reason and respect for God.)
