01The record
Anderson 1894: 445 BC Nehemiah decree -> AD 32 triumphal entry
Messianic arithmetic
Daniel's 70 Weeks: The Arithmetic and the Debate
Daniel 9:24-27 gives 490 years from a command to restore Jerusalem to Messiah the Prince. This entry presents Anderson's and Hoehner's calculations and presents at full strength the Maccabean reading.
high confidenceProphetic
THE CLAIM
Daniel 9:24-27 gives 490 years from a command to restore Jerusalem to Messiah the Prince
WHERE IT STANDS
Firmly established
high confidenceThe prophecy
Seven weeks, and threescore and two
“Know therefore and discern, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the anointed one, the prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks…
And after the threescore and two weeks shall the anointed one be cut off, and shall have nothing: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.”
— Daniel 9:25–26, ASV · oracle dated 538 BC
The record
The arithmetic, and where each count lands
Anderson (The Coming Prince, 1894) starts at the Nisan decree of 445 BC, counts 483 prophetic years of 360 days — 173,880 days — and reaches 6 April AD 32. Hoehner (Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, 1977) starts at 444 BC and reaches 30 March AD 33.
The regnal dates of Artaxerxes I come from Persian sources independent of the Bible: the Saros tablets, the Elephantine papyri, and Thiele's chronology (1951).
The critical reading counts instead from Jeremiah's oracle (c. 605–586 BC) to the rededication of 164 BC, reading Onias III as the anointed one cut off and Antiochus IV as the prince who comes. The contested clause is 9:26: the prince's people destroy the city as well as the sanctuary.
The span, dated
538 BC
The oracle given
Daniel 9:24–27 — seventy sevens decreed, running from a command to restore Jerusalem.
458 BC
Artaxerxes' decree to Ezra
Ezra 7 — one of the three candidate starting points.
445/444 BC
The Nisan decree to Nehemiah
Nehemiah 2:1–8 — the only decree that speaks of rebuilding the city itself. Anderson dates it 445 BC, Hoehner 444 BC.
171 BC
Onias III murdered
The critical reading's “anointed one cut off” (2 Maccabees 4:33–34) — the strongest rival identification.
167 BC
The altar to Zeus Olympios
1 Maccabees 1:54 — the critical reading's abomination that makes desolate.
164 BC
The temple rededicated
Judas Maccabeus — the terminus of the Maccabean reckoning from Jeremiah's oracle.
AD 32 / AD 33
The two calculated termini
Anderson (1894): 173,880 days of 360 to 6 April AD 32. Hoehner (1977): to 30 March AD 33. Both land on the triumphal entry.
AD 70
City and sanctuary destroyed
The clause of 9:26 that Antiochus IV does not satisfy — he desecrated the temple without destroying the city.
The claim
Daniel 9:24-27, an angelic oracle delivered to Daniel in 538 BC, 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 BC (Nehemiah 2:1-8), applies a 360-day "prophetic year," and arrives at 483 x 360 = 173,880 days, reaching 6 April AD 32 - 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 BC for the Nisan decree and reached 30 March AD 33. 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).
3 pieces of evidence
What this establishes
- 02The record
Hoehner 1977: 444 BC decree -> AD 33
- 03The record
Messiah cut off but not for himself poorly fits Onias's political murder
1 objection taken at full strength
The objections, answered
THE OBJECTION01The 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-BC 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 BC, 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 BC (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 BC (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 BC); 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 ANSWER
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 AD 70 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.
5 passages
Key verses
Berean Standard Bible
“Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.”
Daniel 9:24
“Know and understand this: From the issuance of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until the Messiah, the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of distress.”
Daniel 9:25
“Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing. Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed.”
Daniel 9:26
And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of the temple will come the abomination that causes desolation, until the decreed destruction is poured out upon him.”
Daniel 9:27
“Now in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was set before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had never been sad in his presence,”
Nehemiah 2:1-8
THE RECEIPTS
Sources
- 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)
◈Contested pointscontested
Open questions
The starting decree is debated even within apologetic circles: Artaxerxes 458 BC (Ezra 7), 445 BC (Nehemiah 2), or 444 BC (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 BC per tradition vs. second-century BC per critical consensus) frames the entire discussion.
- 2nd-century vaticinium ex eventu, Onias III as mashiach
- The 360-day "prophetic year" is imported into the passage, not read out of it. Daniel 9 says "sevens" and nothing about the length of a year; Israel's calendar was lunisolar and intercalated. Keep every other assumption and count 483 ordinary years from 445 BC and the total lands in the late 30s AD, nowhere near a triumphal entry. The precision of Anderson's result is manufactured by the convention he supplies, and the same is true of Hoehner's revision.
- There are four candidate starting decrees — Cyrus in 538, Darius in 520, Artaxerxes to Ezra in 458, Artaxerxes to Nehemiah in 445/444 — spanning roughly ninety years, and the freedom to choose among them is by itself enough to reach almost any endpoint. Critical commentators add that the word in Daniel 9:25 (dabar, a word going forth) is the same word used of the divine word to Jeremiah at 9:2 and to Daniel himself at 9:23, which points to Jeremiah's oracle rather than to any Persian rescript.
- The Maccabean reading (John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia, 1993; Hartman and Di Lella, Daniel, Anchor Bible, 1978) fits the clauses in order and without arithmetic: the anointed one "cut off" is Onias III, murdered in 171 BC; the prince who comes is Antiochus IV; the abomination is the altar of 167 BC; and the half-week in which sacrifice ceases is the three years of desecration to the rededication in 164. The correspondence is textual rather than computed, which is precisely its claimed advantage.
- The strongest single argument for a second-century date is not in chapter 9 at all. Daniel 11 tracks Seleucid dynastic history in fine detail down to Antiochus IV's last campaign and then predicts his death wrongly. That seam — accurate to a point, then astray — is where critical scholarship locates the boundary between history written backwards and genuine forecast, and it dates the composition to the years just before 164 BC.
- The Masoretic accents place an athnach after "seven weeks," which yields two separate anointed figures, one after seven weeks and another after sixty-two, rather than a single 483-year span; the RSV, NRSV and JPS translate it that way. And nothing in the text separates the sixty-ninth week from the seventieth: the gap now stretched across it is approaching two thousand years, longer than the prophecy itself, and a method that permits an unbounded interval can accommodate any outcome at all.