THE CLAIM
Daniel 9:24-27, an angelic oracle delivered to Daniel in 538 BCE, specifies seventy weeks (seventy sevens = 490 years) from a command "to restore and to build Jerusalem." Seven weeks plus sixty-two weeks (= 483 years) reach "Messiah the Prince" (9:25). After the sixty-two weeks, "shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself" (9:26). The text also predicts the destruction of "the city and the sanctuary" (9:26) after the Messiah's cutting off.
THE EVIDENCE
Sir Robert Anderson's classical calculation (The Coming Prince, Hodder and Stoughton, 1894) begins from the decree of Artaxerxes in Nisan, 445 BCE (Nehemiah 2:1-8), applies a 360-day "prophetic year," and arrives at 483 x 360 = 173,880 days, reaching 6 April 32 CE - the week Anderson dates to Jesus' triumphal entry. Harold W. Hoehner (Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Zondervan, 1977) revised the calculation with 444 BCE for the Nisan decree and reached 30 March 33 CE. Both approaches anchor the starting decree in Nehemiah 2 and identify "Messiah the Prince" with Jesus' public entry to Jerusalem. Standard chronological tools supply the regnal dates of Artaxerxes I from Persian sources (Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, University of Chicago Press, 1951; the Saros tablets; the Elephantine papyri).
THE STRONGEST OPPOSING VIEW
The mainstream critical reading - John J. Collins (Daniel, Hermeneia, Fortress, 1993); Louis F. Hartman & Alexander A. Di Lella (Daniel, Anchor Bible, 1978) - takes Daniel 9 as a second-century-BCE vaticinium ex eventu referring to the Maccabean crisis. On this reading: (a) The seventy weeks begin from Jeremiah's prophecy (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10), c. 605-586 BCE, not a later Persian decree. (b) The "anointed one" (mashiach) "cut off" in 9:26 is understood as Onias III, the high priest deposed and murdered in 171 BCE (2 Maccabees 4:33-34). (c) The "prince that shall come" (9:26) is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and the "abomination that maketh desolate" (9:27) is the Zeus Olympios altar of 167 BCE (1 Maccabees 1:54). (d) The arithmetic in this reading produces roughly 490 years from Jeremiah's oracle to the rededication of the temple under Judas Maccabeus (164 BCE); exact correspondence is not insisted upon because prophetic literature often uses schematic rather than precise numbers. This is the mainstream consensus in critical scholarship and should not be dismissed - it represents the serious interpretive position of the majority of academic Danielic commentators.
THE APOLOGETIC RESPONSE
Anderson (1894), Hoehner (1977), Walter C. Kaiser Jr. (The Messiah in the Old Testament, Zondervan, 1995), and Paul D. Feinberg ("An Exegetical and Theological Study of Daniel 9:24-27," in Tradition and Testament: Essays in Honor of Charles Lee Feinberg, Moody, 1981) offer the following responses. (a) The specific terminology of 9:25 - "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem" - fits Artaxerxes's Nisan decree (Nehemiah 2) better than Jeremiah's oracle, because Jeremiah speaks of exile's end, not Jerusalem's rebuilding. (b) "Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself" (9:26) does not match Onias III, whose death was a political assassination, not a substitutionary or messianic cutting off. (c) The Maccabean reading requires the "prince that shall come" of 9:26 to destroy "the city and the sanctuary" - but Antiochus IV desecrated the temple without destroying the city. The clearer fit is the 70 CE Roman destruction under Titus. The apologetic position does not deny the seriousness of the Maccabean-crisis reading but argues its fit with the specific clauses of 9:26-27 is weaker than the Christian messianic reading.
OPEN QUESTIONS
The starting decree is debated even within apologetic circles: Artaxerxes 458 BCE (Ezra 7), 445 BCE (Nehemiah 2), or 444 BCE (Hoehner). The length of the "year" (360-day prophetic vs. 365.25-day solar) changes the endpoint. The relationship between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks - consecutive or separated by a "gap" (the dispensationalist reading) - is internally debated within apologetic scholarship. The composition date of Daniel itself (sixth-century BCE per tradition vs. second-century BCE per critical consensus) frames the entire discussion.
FURTHER READING
John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia, Fortress Press, 1993. Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Zondervan, 1977. Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince, Hodder and Stoughton, 1894.
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