Landing in the Roman Period. Most Christian and Jewish interpreters
throughout the centuries maintain that the fourth kingdom of iron and of iron
and terra-cotta should be identified with the Roman Empire. The foremost reason
for Jewish interpreters was Rome’s extraordinary scope and power and the fact
that they destroy the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. Christian interpreters point
to its compatibility with messianic and christological interpretation: If the
kingdom of God arises in the days of the fourth kingdom, and if Jesus is the one
who ushers in the kingdom of God, then Rome must be identified with the fourth
kingdom, since Jesus arrived during the time when the Roman kings ruled. While
there is no explicit argument in the New Testament concerning the
identification of the four kingdoms, Jesus does identify himself as the Son of
Man (see, e.g., Mark 2:10; 8:38; 13:26; 14:62), which is often read in
reference to Dan 7:13, in which the Son of Man is the figure to whom the
“Ancient of Days” gives the kingdom, and as the “stone that the builders
rejected” which will then crush those upon whom it falls (Luke 20:18).
Contemporary interpreters also rely on the antiquity of the tradition that Rome
is the fourth empire.
It must be acknowledged that nothing in the text of Daniel itself
requires the Roman view, and the argument is not primarily made from the
necessity of any aspects of the vision in the book of Daniel being identified
with Rome. It is based instead on a reading of the New Testament for Christian
interpreters, and on the basis of a tradition that began with Jewish historians
who were living under the crushing weight of the Roman Empire. The primary
difficulty for those who assert the Roman view, and therefore the combination
of the Median and the Persians as the second empire, is that it fails to make
sense of the text of Daniel itself, which does not appear to have Rome in view.
(Aubrey E. Buster and John H. Walton, The Book of Daniel, Chapters 1-6
[New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2005], 387-88)
