Interpretations of Idol Image
Over the centuries, scholars have proposed two alternative interpretations regarding the identification of the four kingdoms in Daniel 2. The oldest view holds that the second kingdom of silver represents the Persian Achaemenid Empire, which historically succeeded the Babylonian Empire. As the Persian empire already included the Median Empire by this time, it is sometimes referred to as the "Medo-Persian Empire". An alternate view considers Median empire as a separate one in relation to the Daniel narrative, notwithstanding the fact that the Median Empire alone never historically succeeded the Babylonian one.
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Famous quotes containing the words idol and/or image:
“One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)