Daniel 7 and the Construction of Judicial Authority in the Similitudes of Enoch, 4 Ezra 13, and Mark 14:62

Daniel 7 became a major scriptural resource for portraying eschatological authority in early Jewish literature and the early Jesus movement, but later texts did not simply reproduce a completed Danielic judicial figure. This article compares the Similitudes of Enoch, 4 Ezra 13, and Mark 14:62 by asking how each composition develops relations among authority, judgment, and manifestation that Daniel 7 itself does not fully specify. The Similitudes coordinate Danielic dominion with Isaianic endowment, enthronement, and judgment; 4 Ezra 13 places its cloud-associated human figure within a Zion-centered configuration informed by Daniel 2 and probably Psalm 2, while Isa 11:4 supplies a weaponless mode of judgment; and Mark 14:62 joins Danielic cloud-coming to the explicit right-hand session of Ps 110:1. The comparison shows that these compositions differ not only in the judicial functions assigned to Danielic imagery but also in how divine election, preservation, or authorization is related to the enactment and public disclosure of eschatological authority. Continuity in Danielic imagery therefore need not imply the transmission of one stable judicial office: shared Danielic features could be developed into materially different relations among authority, judgment, and manifestation.