Beginning of the 70 weeks?

[Guest]

Steve,

When I was an undergraduate, I was being told by my secular Religious Studies Professor that Daniel could only be reconciled with a liberal date after the time of Antiochus Ephiphanes because clearly there were references to him (he was not impressed with supernatural ability to predict prophecy). He also used the other standard arguments to argue for a late date. I pointed out the Dead Sea Scrolls to him and how the book of Daniel was amongst them, and he argued that if one accepted one of the dates in later ranges, then the Scolls date to about 100 CE. He argued that there was enough time for the Scrolls to be accepted in the Essean community consistent with a date after Antiochus. So then I tried to used Daniel to show what I felt was a compelling argument for the inspiration of Scripture. My argument was that 483 years from the decree in Nehemiah 2:8, led to the historical date of Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem. I was a dispensational at the time and had heard no arguments against it. He had probably heard where I was coming for before, because he smiled, and showed me that there were 70 weeks in Daniel, not 69. When I told him the last 7 were for a tribulation, he asked me why (obviously knowing that I would have to cite the very passage). I was stumped, went home, researched and realized that my premise for a 7 year tribulation was based on Daniel 9, and supported nowhere else. Needless to say, circular reasoning is not a compelling argument for the predictive prophecy of Scripture. Since then, I have heard a lecture of yours, Steve, which mentioned that there were three decrees of King Artaxerxes to rebuild (i have also heard elswhere there were others from other kings, but cannot validate this).

My question is, what are the dates of the decrees, and how to they pan out by adding 490 years to them? Or adding 487, assuming that the middle of the 7 is Messiah being cut off? What are the start dates, and how do we verify these (i.e. secular history, biblical history)? Does Ezra mention a start date that would go 487 years to the crucifixtion? I would appreciate if you could show me how the dates work. If they do indeed pan out accurately, why isn't this an amazingly compelling verification of prophecy which testifies to the veracity of Scripture? Perhaps my Professor would've actually been impressed/convinced if I was applying the dates correctly (or non-dispensationally!). Thanks.

[Guest]

Have you downloaded Steve's Daniel series. I think he covers this in the introduction to the book.

I would have asked the professor if he just didn't want to believe the Daniel wrote when he claimed to because he didn't want to believe in predictive prophecy or if he had proof that Daniel's book was written late. It's one thing to speculate, it's another to have proof. If his point is that you don't have proof, then he's also shown that he doesn't have proof either and is merely speculating on the dating of Daniel, IMO.

[Guest]

The calculations associated with the 70 weeks of Daniel have been very wide-ranging and speculative. Almost like "the Bible Code" or "the number of the beast," it seems that there are explanations to accommodate every theory that one wants to promote. Three different decrees have been identified, variously, by different teachers.

1. Cyrus' decree, shortly after the conquest of Babylon, is usually dated about 538 or 539 BC. At first glance, it does not seem to work for the calculations of the 70 weeks, since, whether you look for 490 years (70 weeks), 487 years (69 1/2 weeks), or 483 years (69 weeks), you seem to fall way short (between 56 and 49 BC) of the time of Christ. Therefore, few evangelicals wish to begin with this date.

2. Ther first decree of Artaxerxes was about 457 or 458 BC. It was the occasion of Ezra's returning to Jerusalem under a royal sponsorship. "Haley's Bible Handbook" and the original "Treasury of Scripture Knowledge" both favor this date for the beginning of the 70 weeks, calculating their fulfillment in 33 AD. If the Messiah was to come at the end of the 69th week, that would be 26 or 27 AD...which is when Jesus' ministry, according to modern opinion, began. By this reckoning, Jesus was "cut off" and put an end to the sacrificial system in the midst of the 70th week (3 1/2 years after His ministry began). The final 1/2 of the 70th week is explained variously.

3. Dispensationalists tend to choose the second decree of Artaxerxes, in 444 or 445 BC as their starting point for the period. Following the classic work by Sir Robert Anderson ("The Coming Prince"), they say that the years must be calulated as lunar years. This makes the years more like 360 days long and about 5 days shorter than our solar year. With the passing of centuries, these 5 days per years add up to a discrepancy of several years. This has the 69th week ending on the very date that Sir Robert Anderson thought the triumphal entry of Christ, on Palm Sunday, occurred.

The dispensationalists claim that Christ was rejected that day and the "prophetic clock" (counting-off the 70 weeks) came to a grinding halt, causing the 70th week to be completely postponed until the end of the world. They believe that the rapture of the church will start the clock running again, and the seven year tribulation that they think will follow the rapture is the tribulation period. Thus they postulate a gap of almost 2000 years between the closing of the 69th week and the commencement of the 70th.

It seems that the second date works best for non-dispensationalists, and the third date works best for dispensationalists. However, as Philip Mauro has cogently argued ("The Wonders of Bible Chronology"), there is no excellent reason biblically to choose the second or the third dates, because the Bible itself, in many ways, points to Cyrus' decree as the one that allowed Jerusalem to be built and restored (see Isa.44:28; 45:13/ Haggai 1:2-4). He, along with Old Testament scholar Edward J. Young, suggest that this earliest date is the best candidate biblically, without reference to date calculations to bolster a theory.

Mauro argues that the traditional dates of events in the Persian Empire need to be reconsidered. In saying that Cyrus conquered Babylon in 538 BC, we are depending upon the dating chronology of the pagan scientist Ptolemy, who lived at least a hundred years after Christ, and claimed that the Persian Empire had 10 kings. Josephus, who wrote almost a century earlier than Ptolemy, put the number of Persian kings at six, not ten, and the book of Daniel seems to put the total number at four (Dan.11:2).

Mauro considers that Daniel (and even Josephus) would be more authoritative to speak on this matter than was the later Ptolemy, and thinks that Ptolemy (whose calculated dates are in our history books) wrongly extends the length of the Persian Empire by 80 or so years. If this is true, it would be more accurate to say that Cyrus conquered Babylon in 458 BC (rather than the traditional 538 BC). This calculation would have the end of the 69th week, and the beginning of Christ's ministry in the year 27 AD. This expedient would, of course, require a reworking of all of Ptolemy's dates for everything after 458 BC, but it could be correct.

So who's right? I don't know. However, it is clear that the only Messiah who could be the authentic predicted One must have come sometime in the early first century AD, about the time that Jesus came. The ability to do the calculations perfectly may not long be certain, but our interpretation of Daniel's weeks should be derived from our exegesis of the text itself, not from the speculations and calculations of pagan men.

As for the evidences for the early date of Daniel's writing, the evidences are numerous and convincing, but I don't have time to enumerate them here. Perhaps I can do so soon.

[Guest]

Hi Steve,

Just out of curiosity, how old would Mauro's view make Daniel himself? It seems that he would be about 150, is that wrong?

[Guest]

Mauro's view would not affect Daniel's age, because it suggests that the period of Persian rule after Cyrus (thus after Daniel's lifetime) was shorter than the standard view. It doesn't speculate about dates prior to Cyrus.

If correct, this would require that all historical dates prior to the time of Alexander the Great must be reset about 80 years forward (e.g. what used to be called 500 BC must now be considered to have been, perhaps, 420 BC instead). Everything later than 330 BC would remain unchanged, but everything earlier would be dictated by the actual length of the Persian rule prior to Alexander. Were there four, six or ten Persian kings? Was the time from Cyrus to Alexander really about 210 years, or was it closer to 130? These are the questions that Mauro's thesis raises.

This would move the whole lifetime of Daniel forward, but would not change the length of his life.

By the way, a Google search on Philip Mauro will produce some very interesting biographical information on that fascinating man.

[Guest]

I get it. Thanks Steve.

[Guest]

First of all, thank you for a detailed answer. You made an interesting observation about how Messiah would have to fit somewhere into about a 100 year span around the time of Christ to comport with these decrees. Judaism considers Daniel to be inspired (obviously). How does it, or how do you think it might, deal with this narrowing down to the time of Messiah? Since Judaism in general teaches that Messiah is still a future figure, this is curious. I am initerested in examining Mauro's thesis in depth when I have an opportunity. The more I look at Daniel, I just don't see an impediment to it being a strong testimony to the veracity of Scripture and the correlation between the Old Testament prophecies and Jesus.

JJR

[Guest]

Here's some more (confusing) fuel for the fire. Conventional chronology has Zechariah's pronouncement of "these seventy years", found in Zechariah 1:12, coming about twelve [edit: five] years after the end of the seventy-year exile. Huh?

Zechariah would seem to be saying that the second year of Darius (verses 1 and 8 ) was literally the seventieth year of the exile. In fact, that's exactly what he's saying, and the conventional chronology is therefore wrong. But just how wrong is it?

At this point, I'm not sure. I prayed about it once, a long while back, and the answer I got was rather odd: "It's not for you to know at this time." God seemed to be emphasizing both the "you" and the "at this time," meaning that someone else would be given to understand this, at some point in the future. Hmm.

Let me give you an idea of some of the chronological problems involved, though.

First of all, it depends on who we believe as to what year it was when Jerusalem was originally conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Temple burned. If we believe the Greek historians, this was 587 BC.

Now, we arrive at this date through two main, interrelated methods of calculating the year. First, we try to count backwards, using the number of years that kings reigned, from a known benchmark (say, an eclipse or other astronomical observation which can't easily be moved in time). Second, we try to cross-reference our calculations between different cultures. For instance, drawing upon my own field of research - the study of ancient Egypt - authentic letters exist which were written by the Pharaohs of the late Eighteenth Dynasty to several foreign rulers who lived at the same time. So, by virtue of these letters, we know that our calculations for when, say, Pharaoh Amenhotep III lived, must roughly match when the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil lived, because there is a letter in existence which was sent from the one to the other.

With me so far?

Conventional chronology is presently a tangled web of interrelated calculations. We've based a lot of our historical timelines on what we've been able to deduce of ancient Egyptian reign lengths. The trouble is, we're beginning to learn that a lot of those reign lengths are unreliable, and a lot of those pharaohs ruled concurrently to one another. Sometimes, even whole dynasties of kings ruled concurrently! And because we base our historical timelines for other cultures largely on the timeline that we've developed for ancient Egypt, a change in Egypt's timeline can have tremendous ramifications for our understanding of other timelines -- like that of ancient Israel.

But ancient Egypt doesn't figure so prominently in this conundrum. Rather, we have to deal with chronological difficulties with the Persians and the Greeks. When the Greeks came along, they burnt whatever they could find of the Persian records. Furthermore, what they did record was often inaccurate and contradictory. There are even allegations that it was self-serving and deliberately falsified.

Imagine, if you will, a history of the United States of America written entirely by the USSR. They don't live here. They don't understand American culture anywhere near as well as Americans do. They might even get events and dates confused, for these very reasons. That's exactly what happened with the Greeks as they attempted to record Persian history, and they didn't have the advantage of global communication and mass media that we do today!

According to the people who were actually living in Israel under Persian rule, there were only four Persian kings who ruled for a total of 52 years. But according to the Greeks, there were ten kings who ruled for a total of roughly 200 years. Quite a difference, isn't it? Maybe Mauro is right, but for the time being I don't really know.

See the following web site for more on this Jewish perspective of history.

According to the Jews, the first Temple was destroyed in 421 BC. The second year of Darius was exactly 70 years later, in 351 BC. Now, that throws a huge wrench in any calculation of the 70 weeks' prophecy, because 70 weeks of years simply won't fit between Cyrus' decree to rebuild the Temple (which would be 369 BC) and Jesus' ministry, if we go by these numbers. (And by the way, the Jews often accuse Christians of being biased and unwilling to look at the real chronological difficulties, specifically because Christians have their Messianic interpretation of the 70 weeks' prophecy to defend. They may indeed have a point.)

In any case, when I prayed about this, I was told that there was something to the Jewish version of history, but that it wasn't entirely correct, any more than the Greek version of history was.

So there we have it. *shrugs*

Damon
PS. I recently did an interesting study on just when the beginning and ending points of the seventy years were, and apparently they have to do with the destruction of the Temple (cf. 2 Chron. 36:17-21) versus God beginning to have mercy on Jerusalem so that the Temple could be rebuilt (cf. Zech. 1:12-17). I'm still struggling to figure out what the seventy weeks might mean, though, even though it seems clear that the decree to rebuild mentioned in Daniel 9:25 has to be that of Cyrus, according to Isaiah 44:28 and 2 Chron. 36:22-23.

[Guest]

I had a feeling that there would be a lot of historical differences of opinion as to when the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. Thus, all the dates that we have arrived at for the beginning/fulfillment of this prophecy may very well based upon a terribly shaky foundation. I suppose it would take some serious study to arrive at a conclusion that would satisfy me, and even then, the questions will probably linger. Amazingly, despite the gaps we are working with, the specificity of the prophecy with regards to declaring a time, a figure, and what He would do appear to clearly converge on the historical person of Christ.

JJR

[Guest]

Er...sort of. See the "More on the 70 weeks" thread that Steve Gregg moved to the "Misc. Essays By Participants" section.

Damon