Queer Past as Prologue: EX EVENTU Prophecy, Eschatology, and Non-Linear History in the Book of Daniel

• In Event: Queering the Futures of the Past: Reading Ancient Jewish Eschatology and Apocalypticism with Queer Theory

Abstract

This paper reads the apocalyptic texts in the book of Daniel (specifically chapters 7-11) alongside queer-theoretical concepts of temporality. I am interested in how the apocalyptic sections of Daniel employ a stylized, periodized history in the service of eschatological aims. The book of Daniel as a whole, like several other Second Temple period texts, plays with time and history to argue theological points about God’s power and the inevitability of Jewish triumph over imperial rulers. In contrast to the narrative sections of the book, which accomplish this through anachronism, conflation, and invention of historical details, the apocalyptic portions use EX EVENTU prophecy to play with time. EX EVENTU prophecy, or “prediction” of events which have already happened by the writer’s own time, is characterized in part by periodization of history: division of time into a series of periods and location of the audience in or near the final period.

I argue that we should read such prophecy-after-the-fact alongside queer theories of historiography, such as the work of Carla Freccero and Elizabeth Freeman. Theorists have questioned the concepts of periodization, teleology, difference, and historical positivism, arguing rather for a historiography that embraces similarities and kinship across time. Freccero proposes leaving room in history-writing for the subjective and even the non-historical, which seems directly relevant to understanding the strange picture of history produced by Daniel’s apocalyptic visions (Freccero, 2006 and 2007). Additionally, Freccero’s “queer spectrality,” the idea that we are constantly connected to days gone by through “ghostly” visitations, is useful for exploring how the “past” functions in these sections of Daniel. Elizabeth Freeman proposes understanding history through the concept of “temporal drag,” which resists an emotionless, just-the-facts production of history, leans into anachronism and affect, and allows for “an excess…of the signifier ‘history” (Freeman, 2010, 62). I find this concept useful to explore the way Daniel’s apocalyptic visions, clearly meant to draw distinctions between succeeding periods of time, end up emphasizing the sameness of those periods.

Author

• Caryn Tamber-Rosenau, University of Houston