Twice in the book of Daniel (chs. 2 and 7), a fourfold pattern summarizes the history of the world as a succession of gentile kingdoms that derive their sovereignty from Yhwh. This “four-kingdom schema” has proven to be one of the most influential time structuring devices of the past three millennia. This article uses “schema theory,” a tool developed in the modern discipline of psychology, to analyze the four-kingdoms schema. An overview of the reception history of this schema provides evidence for how and why it continues to function even in contemporary political discourse.
