The time: the stone and the four kingdoms

After the place, the time

In the seventh century, the Jews of the Hijaz were awaiting the last prophet, and the Qur’an recalls it (Ameri, p. 171):

Daniel gives that time by the succession of kingdoms; Genesis gives it by the sceptre of Judah.

The stone cut out without hands

In the book of Daniel, the king of Babylon sees in a dream an image of gold, silver, brass, iron and clay (Daniel 2:31-33). Then:

Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. […] and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:34-35

Daniel gives the meaning: four kingdoms follow one another, the fourth “strong as iron” (Daniel 2:40). Then comes the fifth:

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

Daniel 2:44

The four kingdoms are Babylon, Persia, the Greece of Alexander, and Rome. This is the reading of Josephus, of Jerome and of most conservative commentators, and even of the Coptic archpriest Abd al-Masih Basit, who nonetheless refuses to see Islam in it (Ameri, p. 177-178, 182-183; al-Saqqar, p. 117-118).

The kingdom of the stone is therefore born in the time of Rome, breaks it, and passes to no other people. The King James and Louis Segond say this of the kingdom; the Arabic Van Dyck, as it is vowelled, says it of its king. Ibn Taymiyya saw in it Muhammad ﷺ, not the Messiah: he brought a strong law, broke kings and nations, and his community filled the East and the West (Ameri, p. 183-184).

Munqidh al-Saqqar adds that four real kingdoms call for a real fifth. This is how the disciples expected it, they who were still asking: “wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). The Church did not break Rome; the Muslims drove Rome out of Syria and Egypt, then took Constantinople (al-Saqqar, p. 119-121).

The objections, and their answers

“This kingdom is the Messiah’s, spread by preaching and not by the sword.” This is Basit’s objection: Rome, he says, lasted until 1453, and the Christian West carried its faith to the whole world. Sami Ameri answers (Ameri, p. 183-185):

• the stone is a new kingdom that breaks the old ones, not the fourth kingdom transformed;
• the last kingdom stands for ever, whereas Rome has vanished, and Basit admits that the Muslim Turks took its eastern half;
• in the Gospel of John, Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36);
• by Matthew’s genealogy, Jesus descends from Jehoiakim (Matthew 1:11; 1 Chronicles 3:15-16), whose line, in the book of Jeremiah, God shut out from the throne: “He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David” (Jeremiah 36:30).

“This kingdom is the Church, born at Pentecost.” The Church did not overcome Rome: it absorbed the pagan religion of Rome, down into its own theology, its liturgy and its feasts, as Charles Guignebert admits (Ameri, p. 176-177; al-Saqqar, p. 120-121).

The four beasts and the Son of man

Daniel 7 takes up the same succession of empires in the form of four beasts; the fourth is again Rome (Ameri, p. 177-178). The kingdom that succeeds them is given to one “like the Son of man” who came “with the clouds of heaven” (Daniel 7:13), then to the people of the “saints”:

And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.

Daniel 7:27

This kingdom receives all the kingdoms under heaven, and the rulers serve it: the Aramaic says serve, not worship, and the King James rightly renders it so (Daniel 7:14). It is therefore an earthly kingdom, like the fourth (Ameri, p. 176-177).

Ali Ataie goes further. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus speaks of the Son of man in the third person, as of another who is yet to come (Mark 8:38; Ataie, p. 32). For Ataie, this Son of man is the Prophet ﷺ: during the Mi’raj he was brought near to “the Ancient of days”, and Islam, which won Iraq and Iran within a generation, put an end to the glory of the Caesars (Ataie, p. 42-45).

“The little horn will be overcome at the return of Christ.” Daniel knows only one coming of the son of man, not two (Ameri, p. 176).

“The little horn is Antiochus IV, who profaned the Temple.” The prophecy speaks of “a time and times and the dividing of time” (Daniel 7:25). The profanation lasted from December 168 to December 165 BCE, according to Leupold, and no everlasting kingdom of the “saints” followed it (Ameri, p. 180).

Sami Ameri also sees Constantine in the little horn, and draws a duration from it (Ameri, p. 178-180): we do not build on these details. The common core is enough: a kingdom is born under Rome, brings it down, and endures.

The sceptre of Judah

In Genesis, the dying Jacob calls his sons to tell them “that which shall befall you in the last days” (Genesis 49:1). To Judah he says:

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

Genesis 49:10

Munqidh al-Saqqar sees in it the oldest explicit prophecy; the Targum of Jonathan understands it as: until King Messiah comes (al-Saqqar, p. 67-68). The sceptre is the election, which departs from Judah at the coming of Shiloh. It is not Moses, since the kings of Judah come after him; nor Solomon, whose dynasty goes on; nor Jesus, who neither abolished the Law nor reigned, and who called himself sent to the sheep of the house of Israel. No Israelite can bring the sceptre of Israel to its end (al-Saqqar, p. 69).

For Ali Ataie, the sceptre is prophethood, like the kingdom taken away in Matthew 21:43. In Genesis 49:10, “the gathering of the people” is the wording of the King James; the French of Louis Segond has the peoples obey him, and the Arabic Van Dyck speaks of their submission. The peoples gathered around Shiloh answer to the hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ names himself al-Hashir, the one at whose feet mankind will be gathered (Ataie, lecture). Sami Ameri reads in it a universal leader, who comes when the power of Judah has ended (Ameri, p. 152).

“Shiloh is the name of a town.” The text speaks of someone who comes, and unto whom the peoples are gathered (al-Saqqar, p. 69). The meaning of the name remains debated, the peacemaker according to Gesenius, the one who is sent according to Jerome; we rest nothing on it. The prophecy lies in the order of events: the sceptre first, then the one who comes (al-Saqqar, p. 68; Ataie, lecture).

Outside Judah and David

Three texts, with no link between them, forbid the one foretold to be a king of Judah:

• the sceptre departs from Judah at his coming (Genesis 49:10);
• in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself, citing Psalm 110, asks the Pharisees: “If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matthew 22:45; al-Saqqar, p. 21-23);
• the line of Jehoiakim is shut out from the throne of David (Jeremiah 36:30; Ameri, p. 185; al-Saqqar, p. 34-35).

The sceptre taken away and the strength promised to Ishmael are a single event seen from two sides. Al-Saqqar makes Shiloh the man of whom Genesis says, concerning Ishmael: “his hand will be against every man” (Genesis 16:12; al-Saqqar, p. 69-70). John bar Penkaye, a Christian contemporary of the Companions, already read this verse as the hand of the Arabs subduing the nations (Ameri, p. 147).

Two readings to hold with caution

The diadem and the crown. The book of Ezekiel foretells: “Remove the diadem, and take off the crown” (Ezekiel 21:26), until “he come whose right it is” (Ezekiel 21:27). For al-Saqqar, the diadem, which in Hebrew is the priest’s mitre, stands for the priesthood, and so for the Law, and the crown for kingship; he whose right it is, is Shiloh (al-Saqqar, p. 64, 69-70). The King James numbers these verses 21:25-27; other Bibles, Louis Segond among them, 21:30-32.

The king of Psalms 45 and 72. Al-Saqqar notes nine traits of the king of Psalm 45, among them “Thou art fairer than the children of men”, the sword girded upon the thigh, and “therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever” (Psalm 45:2-17). In Psalm 72: “Yea, all kings shall fall down before him” (Psalm 72:11). He sees in him the Prophet ﷺ, before whom Rome and Persia bowed; to those who see Jesus there, he answers that they themselves apply to Jesus a portrait with “no form nor comeliness” (Isaiah 53:2; al-Saqqar, p. 101-106).

These two readings rest on a single author: they come as an echo, not as a proof.

Two Jewish texts outside the Bible, the Testament of Moses and the Apocalypse of Abraham, have also been used to calculate the date of the coming. Their calculations rest on fragile assumptions: we examine them among the readings we do not use.

How this page connects to the others

• Daniel’s stone and the rejected stone of the Gospel: page 7, The kingdom taken away and given.
• The hand of Ishmael, the one David calls “Lord”: page 1, The prayer of Abraham.
• The one foretold who comes only if Jesus goes away: page 4, The Paraclete.
• Paran, the last stage: page 5, Paran and Baca.
• The time among the threads of the convergence: page 8, The convergence.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• Bible: King James Version, with its numbering (Psalm 45; Ezekiel 21).
• The hadith of al-Hashir is reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim, according to Ali Ataie.
• Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 147, 152, 171-185.
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 21-23, 34-35, 64, 67-70, 101-106, 117-121.
• Ali J. Ataie, Finding Muhammad in the New Testament, master’s thesis, Graduate Theological Union, 2011, p. 32, 42-45; and his lecture at Zaytuna College on Qur’an 7:157-158.