4Q Daniel (4Q112)
4Q112 preserves substantial portions of Daniel in both Aramaic and Hebrew, including the visible transition at Daniel 7:28-8:1, furnishing an early material witness to the book's textual form while leaving its compositional date and unity debated.
- Artifact date
- c. 100–50 BC (late Hasmonean to early Herodian, paleographic dating)
- Discovered
- 1952
- Findspot
- Qumran Cave 4, near the Dead Sea, West Bank
- Current location
- Israel Antiquities Authority Dead Sea Scrolls collection
What archaeologists can actually examine
4Q112, formerly 4QDaniela, is the most extensively preserved Daniel manuscript from Qumran Cave 4. Its leather fragments contain parts of Daniel 1-5, 7-8, and 10-11, including court narrative, apocalyptic visions, and the language transition from Aramaic at 7:28 to Hebrew at 8:1. The text generally stands close to the later Masoretic form while preserving smaller variants and ancient orthography. It proves that recognizable Danielic material circulated in this arrangement before the common era. It does not by itself date the original composition of every chapter, establish one author, or settle how the Hebrew and Aramaic collections were joined.
Both biblical languages survive
4Q112 contains Aramaic and Hebrew portions of Daniel within the same physical manuscript.
The language transition is visible
Fragment 14 preserves the end of Daniel 7 and opening of Daniel 8 with a scribal blank line between them.
Multiple literary zones are represented
Court tales, symbolic visions, and historical-apocalyptic material survive across chapters 1-11.
Continuity is substantial but not simplistic
The scroll broadly agrees with the later Masoretic form while preserving ancient spellings, variants, and scribal layout.
Copy date is not composition date
A first-century-BCE manuscript establishes circulation by then but cannot date every tradition contained in Daniel.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
The fragments came from Cave 4, whose densely packed manuscript remains were excavated and purchased during the 1950s. Eugene Ulrich identified and published a preliminary edition of 4Q112 in 1987, assigning fragments by script, material, and textual sequence; the formal edition later appeared in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. The Leon Levy library now presents official images under the manuscript's current number. Scholarly attention has focused especially on fragment 14, where Daniel 7 ends in Aramaic and chapter 8 begins in Hebrew. Andrew Perrin's material-philological study revisits the blank space there, showing how physical layout can inform—but not mechanically resolve—questions of literary architecture.
What you are looking at
The manuscript is a parchment scroll surviving only in fragments, written in a late Hasmonean hand often placed around the middle of the first century BCE. Preserved passages include Daniel 1:16-20; extensive portions of chapter 2; pieces of chapters 3-5; Daniel 7:5-7 and 7:25-28; 8:1-5; 10:16-20; and 11:13-16. The famous bilingual junction carries a blank line between the Aramaic conclusion and Hebrew opening. That spacing is observable scribal practice, not a modern chapter break, yet interpreting it as a seam between independent works goes beyond description. Damage leaves column widths and some fragment positions reconstructed.
Where it belongs in history
Paleography dates this copy approximately to 75-25 BCE, making it an early witness but not the oldest Daniel manuscript at Qumran; 4Q114 is commonly assigned earlier. The book's final form is frequently located by critical scholarship in the Antiochene crisis of the 160s BCE, though constituent court tales and traditions may be older and alternative dating arguments persist. 4Q112 therefore narrows the interval between composition and copying without eliminating it. Its presence among multiple Daniel copies and Daniel-related compositions indicates rapid circulation and authority at Qumran, but manuscript count cannot reveal whether the community classified Daniel exactly as later Jewish and Christian canons did.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Ulrich's edition treats 4Q112 as a biblical manuscript and emphasizes its substantial agreement with the Masoretic tradition. Current debate asks what its layout says about composition. Perrin argues that differing uses of space at the language junction may reflect a collection of Daniel traditions rather than an already seamless book, whereas other scholars regard the bilingual alternation as an intentional architecture within a unified final form. Dating discussions must also avoid confusing 4Q112 with 4Q114, the manuscript recently subjected to radiocarbon and AI-assisted paleographic analysis. Broad agreement concerns the preserved language switch and early textual continuity; literary unity and compositional chronology remain interpretive questions.
The biblical record beside the artifact
This artifact is a direct textual witness, not merely contextual evidence. It preserves Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 2, the beasts and oppressive ruler of chapter 7, the Hebrew vision opening in chapter 8, and part of the northern-southern conflict in chapter 11. Fragment 14 is especially important because it physically confirms that the Aramaic of Daniel 7:25-28 and Hebrew of 8:1-5 stood consecutively in an ancient copy. The witness supports deep continuity with the received Daniel text while preserving an earlier scribal stage; it cannot certify every later vowel, punctuation, chapter division, translation choice, or interpretation of the visions.
Daniel 7:25–28
25And he shall speak [great] words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
26But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy [it] unto the end.
27And 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.
28Hitherto [is] the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart.
Daniel 8:1–5
1In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision appeared unto me, [even unto] me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first.
2And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I [was] at Shushan [in] the palace, which [is] in the province of Elam; and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai.
3Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had [two] horns: and the [two] horns [were] high; but one [was] higher than the other, and the higher came up last.
4I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither [was there any] that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great.
5And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat [had] a notable horn between his eyes.
A responsible historical conclusion
4Q112 closes nearly a millennium between modern readers and the medieval Hebrew codices that long supplied Daniel's principal text. Its fragments demonstrate that major narrative and apocalyptic sections, and the book's unusual bilingual sequence, circulated centuries before those codices. The object also shows why manuscript evidence is richer than a slogan that the Bible was unchanged: close textual continuity coexists with spelling, variants, fragment reconstruction, and questions about editorial form. For readers of Daniel, the scroll anchors interpretation in an ancient physical witness. For historians, it maps one stage in the collection's reception without pretending that a copy answers every question about origins.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
4Q Daniel
Israel Antiquities Authority, Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital LibraryOfficial manuscript record and images for 4Q112 under its current siglum.
Daniel Manuscripts from Qumran. Part 1: A Preliminary Edition of 4QDana
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research / University of Chicago PressUlrich's primary scholarly edition describing the fragments, contents, paleography, readings, and place among Qumran Daniel manuscripts.
Redrafting the Architecture of Daniel Traditions in the Hebrew Scriptures and Dead Sea Scrolls
The Journal of Theological Studies / Oxford University PressPeer-reviewed material-philological analysis of 4Q112-113 and the physical spacing at Daniel's Aramaic-Hebrew junction.