o generation after generation, we should think instead in terms of a ‘moving front’ for their fixing of their end-dates, with periodic recalculations and reworking of the schemes as necessary to keep the end out ahead of the present, what Cana Werman calls ‘chronographic fluidity’ (2006: 250 fn 53). The authors of Daniel had a 490-year scheme that ended in the 160s BCE. Another scheme is reflected in 4Q390/Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, written at about the same time as Daniel in the context of the Hellenistic crisis, but which foresees that crisis continuing a long time and whose authors now calculated themselves to be only in the 7th of 10 jubilees of their 490-year count. The Damascus Document sets the end of its 490-year count forty years after the death of the Teacher of Righteousness which is in the very recent past of that text’s authors. The ‘Olivet Prophecy’ and book of Revelation of the New Testament end their 490-year counts of Daniel at the time of the First Revolt in the second half of the 1st century CE (Mk 13:14; Rev. 13:1-10; 17:5). All of these are different endings of Daniel’s 490 years, a ‘rolling front’ through time for when the eschatological transformation was anticipated to happen. A chronological scheme—a 490-year count—in a text in this era might by definition have been composed recently before the time of authorship of that text, with changing ways to count the 490 as schemes were updated in light of the latest developments.
In the case of the Damascus Document, the authors, reasoning that the true numbers must give a 490-year count coming out to ahead of their own time, used 390 years which they got from Ezek. 4:4-6 to fill in the first part of the period. Then they combined that 390 with more recent numbers to make the count come out right (which must obviously end at some point ahead of when they were writing). Michael Wise is right—the 390 years of CD 1.5-8 do not inform us of when the Teacher arose, but rather how long before their time the authors determined Nebuchadnezzar had lived (a question of no interest to us here).
But the more recent numbers of the Damascus Document scheme from the authors’ own time or recent memory—the 20 and the first 40—could be approximately correct. Those two numbers (the 20 and the first 40) are not necessarily the same in kind as the 390. The 390 is purely schematic, a filler number, drawn from Ezek. 4:4-6. But the 20 and the 40 may be a mixture of part schematic and part allusion to recent time periods known to the authors as interpreted by the authors, in a sense that the 390 are not. Although the 20 and the 40 also give the appearance of being round numbers, they may reflect firsthand or secondhand knowledge of the authors.
The revival of Israel like a dead plant coming back to life of CD 1.5-8 is usually understood in terms of some sectarian phenomenon, which may not be entirely inaccurate, but another possibility, not necessarily in contradiction, is that the dead plant returning to life could allude to the conquests and expansions of Alexander Jannaeus viewed favorably by the authors of the Qumran texts—a reversal of the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar, Israel at last come ‘back to life’ as a serious and formidable entity on the map as it once had been in a golden age long ago. Compare this historian’s summary for a possible context within which an image of Israel coming back to life like a dead plant reviving could be evocative and understood:
“By the death of Alexander Jannaeus [76 BCE] … all of Palestine except for the territory of Ascalon and much of Transjordan were under Hasmonean control … Jerusalem changed from a small hill-country town far from the main trade routes, whose chief distinction was a not very distinguished temple, to the capital city of one of the largest of the kingdoms which succeeded the Seleucid Empire. Alexander’s grandfather had been a village priest, low-level rebel leader and brigand; Alexander was an important king. Palestine had been a mosaic of Greek cities and little Hellenized semitic tribal and ethnic units, of which the Judae