Leolaia
Post 13125
The apostates now bring out the Big Gun! Leolaia now speaks with great authority!
Why should the Society extend any future warning to Belshazzar when in Daniel 5 all that it it discloses is an immediate fate to the city of Babylon and its ruling dynasty? The book of Daniel contains narratives not only of the future but of the immediate present as in the case of Daniel 4 with its present/future account and Daniel 5 with its story set in the present. Daniel 4 is clearly eschatological because it carries the theme of God's Kingdom which is clearly eschatol.ogical by its own defintion.
I agree with you that in some narrow sense Daniel 4 presages the events of Daniel but I would arguue that Daniel 4 along with the dream image of Daniel 2 are predictive of the rest of Daniel with its description of World Powers right up to the Time of the End.
The account of Daniel is allegorized by the vocabulary of the story with the use of 'seven times' and not years and by the permeating theme of the eschatological Kingdom of God and so it is that the 'pesher' of the Gentile Times is very much consistent with both the literal and figurative meaning of the story. The abasement of Nebuchadnezzer prefigured the fact that Gentile hegemony would exist iover the earth for a period of seven times and after the expiration of those times as Nebuchadnezzer was restored to rulership so it was that God's Kingdom was now rightfuuly restored to rulership in 1914 CE thus ending Gentile domination or the Gentile Times. Such an interpretation is both internally consistent with the narrative, ancient/modern history and prophecy.
Whatever scholars say about chronos the fact is that kairos and is a suitable equivalent term for iddanim and so we must exegete with what the text actually says rather than a supposed reading as interesting as it may be.
To say that the kairos of Luke 21:24 can not be allusive of Daniel 4 but rather of Daniel 7 does not make much sense because the simple fact is that the Lucan passage refers to a kairoi ethnon, a period of time of trampling by Gentile nations on Jerusalem which was that original earthly Kingdom of God. That trampling is similar to that cutting down of the tree being banded for 'seven times. Clearly the events and imagery bare much in common.
Daniel 7 and 9 along with 4 reveal a common theme and that is God's Kingdom which very much is thematic with the entire Olivet Discourse especially the above lucan passage which describes the duration and timing for that kingdom to break forth. Your linguistic considerations regarding the primacy of Daniel 7 and 9 at the exclusion of Daniel 4 with Luke 21:24 fail to convince me.
scholar JW