Daniel's Babylon

Part 1

Daniel 2:31–38 NASB95

“You, O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. “The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. “You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. “This was the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king. “You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; and wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold.

There is a lot of speculation about what this vision means. Everyone agrees that it is a description of world empires since scripture says as much, but which empires and why the information is given, meaning what we are supposed to do with it or prepare for is much debated.

It seems that the kingdoms go from greater to lesser (gold to iron and clay) but the last kingdom is Gods which is much greater.

They at first seem to be great in time but that breaks down at the feet, Babylon was long, Medes and Persians much shorter and Alexander the shortest, then Rome is much longer and God’s is eternal.

There is a cultural progression here that seems to get worse and worse until God shows up to fix it which fits with God’s overall plan and we must remember that this is a prophecy revealed to a Jew about world leaders who would rule over the Jewish people and their land for the rest of time.

If this is a Jewish prophecy to Jewish people about the Jewish Government it seems to make a lot of sense, but if so why do we care. Because we are more a part of it than you might first realize. So lets look at these kingdoms that all ruled over the Jewish people from the perspective of the ideas and that they passed on to us both cultural and political and the influence that they have had on how we live and think today. Maybe that has a meaning for the prophecy and for us today, maybe it even contributes to the end times timeline and God’s plan for mankind and for the Jewish people. I think it has a lot to teach us.

Babylonia, ancient cultural region occupying southeastern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf). Because the city of Babylon was the capital of this area for so many centuries, the term Babylonia has come to refer to the entire culture that developed in the area from the time it was first settled, about 4000 bce. Before Babylon’s rise to political prominence (c. 1850 bce), however, the area was divided into two countries: Sumer in the southeast and Akkad in the northwest.

over 2000 years

Sumerian and Akkadian

The Sumerians were responsible for the first system of writing, cuneiform; the earliest known codes of law; the development of the city-state; the invention of the potter’s wheel, the sailboat, and the seed plow; and the creation of literary, musical, and architectural forms that influenced all of Western civilization.

city state, city that governs itself and surrounding region, like united states state within a federal government.

Nebuchadrezzar II (reigned 605–562 bce) conquered Syria and Palestine; he is best remembered for the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem in 587 bce and for the ensuing Babylonian captivity of the Jews. He also revitalized Babylon, constructing the wondrous hanging gardens and rebuilding the Temple of Marduk and its accompanying ziggurat.

The Persians, under Cyrus the Great, captured Babylonia from Nebuchadrezzar’s last successor Nabonidus in 539 bce. Thereafter, Babylonia ceased to be independent, passing eventually in 331 bce to Alexander the Great, who planned to make Babylon the capital of his empire and who died in Nebuchadrezzar’s palace. After Alexander’s death, however, the Seleucids eventually abandoned Babylon, bringing an end to one of the greatest empires in history.

Daniel 2:39 NASB95

“After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.

Medio Persia

In the Bible (e.g., Ezra 1:1–4), Cyrus is famous for freeing the Jewish captives in Babylonia and allowing them to return to their homeland. Cyrus was also tolerant toward the Babylonians and others. He conciliated local populations by supporting local customs and even sacrificing to local deities. The capture of Babylon delivered not only Mesopotamia into the hands of Cyrus but also Syria and Palestine, which had been conquered previously by the Babylonians. It was by diplomacy as well as force of arms that he established the largest empire known until his time.

Lasted about 220 years

Cyrus conciliated the Medes and united them with the Persians in a kind of dual monarchy of the Medes and Persians. Cyrus had to borrow the traditions of kingship from the Medes, who had ruled an empire when the Persians were merely their vassals.

They copied clothing and other cultural ideas from the ones they conquered. There also seems to have been little innovation in government and rule, but rather a willingness to borrow, combined with an ability to adapt what was borrowed to the new empire. Cyrus was undoubtedly the guiding genius in the creation not only of a great empire but in the formation of Achaemenian culture and civilization.

alexander the great

About 33 years

In the organization of his empire, Alexander had been content in many spheres to improvise and adapt what he found.

the spread of Hellenic thought and customs over much of Asia as far as Bactria and India was one of the more striking effects of Alexander’s conquests.

Hellinistic thought - the pursuit of reason, ethics, and happiness.

Alexander’s short reign marks a decisive moment in the history of Europe and Asia. His expedition and his own personal interest in scientific investigation brought many advances in the knowledge of geography and natural history. His career led to the moving of the great centers of civilization eastward and initiated the new age of the Greek territorial monarchies; it spread Hellenism in a vast colonizing wave throughout the Middle East and created, if not politically at least economically and culturally, a single world stretching from Gibraltar to the Punjab, open to trade and social intercourse and with a considerable overlay of common civilization and the Greek koinē as a lingua franca. It is not untrue to say that the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity as a world religion, and the long centuries of Byzantium were all in some degree the fruits of Alexander’s achievement.

Koine Greek - Language of the New Testament.

Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul- 15million population- 18% of Turkey’s population-straddles two continents 2/3 in Europe and the rest in Asia- One of the top 100 science and technology centers in the world. 2x population of New York- 7x physical size NYC-NYC 6x bigger economy

Babylon over 2000 years

Medes and Persians barely over 200 years

Alexander about 30 years

Rome about 1100 years, or until now

Part 2

Many scholars of Roman history have noted that there are so many similarities between ancient Rome and the United States that we have been called the new Rome. Many of our ideas about government came from ancient Rome and Most of our founding fathers had a classical education that focused on the philosophers and writers of the Roman era. The world we live in has been heavily influenced by Rome.

Daniel 2:40–43 NASB95

“Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces. “In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. “As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. “And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.

Rome

The lasting effects of Roman rule in Europe can be seen in the geographic distribution of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), all of which evolved from Latin, the language of the Romans. The Western alphabet of 26 letters and the calendar of 12 months and 365.25 days are only two simple examples of the cultural legacy which Rome has bequeathed Western civilization.

two social orders, the patricians and the plebeians, that is thought to have begun during the first years of the republic and lasted for more than 200 years. In the beginning, the patricians were supposed to have enjoyed a monopoly of power (the consulship, the Senate, and all religious offices), whereas the plebeians began with nothing except the right to vote in the assemblies.

two party system of government

During the republic the Senate advised both magistrates and the Roman people. Although in theory the people were sovereign and the Senate only offered advice, in actual practice the Senate wielded enormous power because of the collective prestige of its members. It was by far the most important deliberative body in the Roman state, summoned into session by a magistrate who submitted matters to it for discussion and debate. Whatever a majority voted in favour of was termed “the Senate’s advice” (senatus consultum). These advisory decrees were directed to a magistrate or the Roman people. In most instances, they were either implemented by a magistrate or submitted by him to the people for enactment into law.

People supposed to be sovereign but elected officials make the decisions

During the republic two different assemblies elected magistrates, exercised legislative power, and made other important decisions. Only adult male Roman citizens could attend the assemblies in Rome and exercise the right to vote. The assemblies were organized according to the principle of the group vote. Although each person cast one vote, he did so within a larger voting unit. The majority vote of the unit became its vote, and a majority of unit votes was needed to decide an issue.

Women’s suffrage/electoral college

Before the creation of criminal courts during the late republic, the centuriate assembly (centurions) sat as a high court and exercised capital jurisdiction. Each class was allotted varying numbers of centuries, and the entire assembly consisted of 193 units. The first (and richest) class of citizens was distributed among 80 centuries, and the second, third, and fourth classes were each assigned 20 units. The fifth class, comprising the poorest persons in the army, was allotted 30 centuries.

Congressional representatives by population

The tribal assembly (comitia tributa) was a nonmilitary civilian assembly. It accordingly met within the city inside the pomerium and elected magistrates who did not exercise imperium (plebeian tribunes, plebeian aediles, and quaestors). It did most of the legislating and sat as a court for serious public offenses involving monetary fines.

The tribal assembly was more democratic in its organization than the centuriate assembly. The territory of the Roman state was divided into geographic districts called tribes, and people voted in these units according to residence. The city was divided into four urban tribes. During the 5th century bc, the surrounding countryside formed 17 rustic tribes. With the expansion of Roman territory in central Italy (387–241 bc), 14 rustic tribes were added, thus gradually increasing the assembly to 35 units, a number never exceeded.

Tribal assembly and Senate like Senate and Congress

Remember Rome had leader like our president called by various titles.

The law code was inscribed upon 12 bronze tablets and publicly displayed in the Forum. Its provisions concerned legal procedure, debt foreclosure, paternal authority over children, property rights, inheritance, funerary regulations, and various major and minor offenses. Although many of its provisions became outmoded and were modified or replaced in later times, the Law of the Twelve Tables formed the basis of all subsequent Roman private law.

U.S. constitution

Since legal business could be conducted only on certain days (dies fasti), knowledge of the calendar was important for litigation.

Blue laws

Many sources state that the crisis was ended by the passage of the Hortensian law (after Quintus Hortensius, dictator for 287), which was thought to have given enactments of the tribal assembly the same force as resolutions of the centuriate assembly.  

Although the Latins dwelled in politically independent towns, their common language and culture produced cooperation in religion, law, and warfare. All Latins could participate in the cults of commonly worshiped divinities. Latins freely intermarried without legal complications. When visiting another Latin town, they could buy, sell, litigate, and even vote with equal freedom. If a Latin took up permanent residence in another Latin community, he became a full citizen of his new home. Although the Latin states occasionally waged war among themselves, in times of common danger they banded together for mutual defense. Each state contributed military forces according to its strength. The command of all forces was entrusted by common assent to a single person from one of the Latin towns. Sometimes the Latins even founded colonies upon hostile territory as military outposts, which became new, independent Latin states, enjoying the same rights as all the other ones. 

Like the United States State and Federal Government

When not commanding his army, the governor spent his time hearing legal cases and arbitrating disputes. During the republic, revenue collection was left to private companies of publicani, so called because they won by highest bid the contract to collect the revenues.

Governor Pontius Pilot and Publican Levi from the gospels

Philip V noted that Rome replenished its citizen ranks with freed slaves. The extension of citizenship continued in the early 2nd century, as in the grant of full citizen rights to Arpinum, Formiae, and Fundi in 188. Yet Rome’s glittering successes made such openness ever more problematic. For one, the city attracted increasing numbers of Latins and allies, who wished to use their ancient right to migrate and take up Roman citizenship. The depletion of Latin and Italian towns prompted protests, until in 177 Rome took away the right of migration and forced Latin and Italian migrants to return to their hometowns to register for military service. 

Open migration to closed borders/citizenship/state citizenship within the country/the draft

Polybius greatly admired Rome’s balanced constitution, with its elements of monarchy (magistrates), aristocracy (Senate), and democracy (popular assemblies). According to Greek political theory, each form of constitution was believed to be unstable and susceptible to decline until replaced by another. Yet Rome’s system of balance, Polybius thought, was a check on the cycle of decline. By forcing the Roman constitution into the mold of Greek political theory, however, he exaggerated the symmetry of checks and balances.

Governmental checks and balances/modifiable constitution

Because offices were won in the centuriate and tribal assemblies, senators had to cultivate support among the populus. Yet the system was not as democratic as it might appear. Senators with illustrious names and consular ancestors dominated the election to the highest offices, increasing their share of the consulates from about one-half to two-thirds during the 2nd century. Since the campaigning was not oriented toward issues, the great families were able to maintain their superiority over the centuries by their inherited resources: their famous names, their wealth, and their clienteles of voters.

Popular election controlled by family politics/party politics and wealth

 Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus emerged from the Second Punic War as the Roman whose dignitas (prestige) far surpassed that of his peers. Nonetheless, a number of senators attacked him and his brother Lucius Cornelius with legal charges until he finally retired from Rome to end his life at his Campanian villa at Liternum.

Legal charges used as a tactic to discredit a political rival

Since the Hortensian law of 287, the plebs had the constitutional power to pass laws binding on the entire state without senatorial approval.

This law, imperfectly known from later passing references, provided that a magistrate holding a legislative assembly could be prevented from passing a bill on religious grounds by another magistrate claiming to have witnessed unfavourable omens in a procedure called obnuntiatio.

Using religion as a political Weapon

Voting in electoral and judicial assemblies had been public, allowing powerful senators more easily to manage the votes of their clients. The Gabinian law (139) and Cassian law (137) introduced secret written ballots into the assemblies, thus loosening the control of patrons over their clients.

Ballot issues/voting fraud/illegal influence/Jim crow laws

Because Greek was the lingua franca of the East, Romans had to use Greek if they wished to reach a wider audience. Thus the first histories by Romans were written in Greek.

The language of the New Testament

Elected censor in 184 to protect Roman mores, Cato vowed “to cut into pieces and burn like a hydra all luxury and voluptuousness.” He expelled seven men from the Senate on various charges of immorality and penalized through taxation the acquisition of such luxuries as expensive clothing, jewelry, carriages, and fancy slaves. 

Luxury tax/immorality and corruption at the top due to wealth and availability

It was not that the Bacchic cult spread heretical beliefs about the gods—Roman civic religion was never based on theological doctrine with pretensions to exclusive truth; rather, the growing secret cult led by male priests threatened the traditionally dominant position of senators in state religion. The decree did not aim to eliminate Bacchic worship but to bring it under the supervision of senatorial authorities.

Not concerned about the beliefs but about the threat to their power

To replace the peasants on the land of central and southern Italy, slaves were imported in vast numbers. Slavery was well established as a form of agricultural labor before the Punic Wars. The scale of slavery, however, increased in the 2nd and 1st centuries as a result of conquests. Enslavement was a common fate for the defeated in ancient warfare: the Romans enslaved 5,000 Macedonians in 197; 5,000 Histri in 177; 150,000 Epirotes in 167; 50,000 Carthaginians in 146; and in 174 an unspecified number of Sardinians, but so many that “Sardinian” became a byword for “cheap” slave. These are only a few examples for which the sources happen to give numbers. More slaves flooded into Italy after Rome destabilized the eastern Mediterranean in 167 and gave pirates and bandits the opportunity to carry off local peoples of Anatolia and sell them on the block at Delos by the thousands. By the end of the republic Italy was a thoroughgoing slave society with well over one million slaves, according to the best estimates. No census figures give numbers of slaves, but slaveholding was more widespread and on a larger scale than in the antebellum American South, where slaves made up about one-third of the population. In effect, Roman soldiers fought in order to capture their own replacements on the land in Italy.

Slavery as an agricultural necessity

The husband managed the family’s affairs outside the house, while the wife was custodian within. Marriage was an arrangement for life; divorces were rare and granted only in cases of serious moral infractions, such as adultery or wine-tippling on the part of the wife. The children of the couple were subject to the father’s nearly absolute legal powers (patria potestas), including the power of life and death, corporal punishment, and a monopoly of ownership of all property in the family. The father’s power lasted until his death or, in the case of a daughter, until her marriage. When the father died, his sons, his wife, and his unmarried daughters became legally independent, and all inherited equal shares of the family’s property unless otherwise specified in a will.

Traditional family/father having legal authority over children/till death do you part

When family life emerged into the full light of history in the 2nd century bc, it had changed in significant ways. A form of marriage, commonly called “free marriage,” was becoming prevalent. Under this form, the wife no longer came into her husband’s power or property regime but remained in that of her father; upon her father’s death she became independent with rights to own and dispose of property. But she was not a member of the family of her husband and children and had no claim to inheritance from them, even though she lived with them in the same house. Because many women inherited part of their fathers’ estates, they could use their independent fortunes to exert influence on husbands, children, and people outside the house. In the same period divorce became far more common; moral infractions were no longer needed to justify divorce, which could be initiated by either side. Frequent divorce and remarriage went hand in hand with the separation of marital property.

No fault divorce/various non traditional marriages including limited time contracts-homosexual-more than two person marriages.

First, the Romans built a network of roads that facilitated communication across Italy.

Allowed the spread of the gospel by making travel easier just as making Greek the official language had allowed easier communication.

Second, internal migration—Italians moving to Rome and Romans being sent to Latin colonies throughout Italy—promoted social and cultural homogeneity.

Like the automobile made travel across the U.S easier and mixed up traditional north and south and other cultural factors ( the civil war also did this in the post war reconstruction)

Fourth, the regular military campaigns brought together Romans and Italians of all classes under the command of Roman magistrates.

Federal military does this-especially during the draft. Expansionism and colonization during the early years of America.

Among many reforms—including provision for a stable and cheap wheat price and for the foundation of colonies 

Farm Subsidies

Gaius put the publicani (public contractors, hitherto chiefly concerned with army and building contracts and with farming minor taxes) in charge of the main tax of Asia—a rich province formed out of Attalus’ inheritance, which would henceforth provide Rome with the major part of its income. This was expected both to reduce senatorial corruption and to improve efficiency.

Government oversight and more government employees-just saying

As you can see we have a lot of the leftovers from Rome, we may well be the clay as Ancient Rome was the iron. We are culturally and governmentally very similar to Rome. Bearing this in mind makes many things clearer as you go forward into prophecy.

Daniel 2:44–45 NASB95

“In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. “Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”

Millennial Kingdom

Thousand years/forever