The Naked Bible

Posted By MSH on July 3, 2010

Continuing on with the assumptions made in regard to the 70 weeks of Daniel…

In the last post we jumped into Daniel 9:24-27 and saw (to the surprise of some I am sure) that, although so many people are sure that the 70 weeks prophecy was about a timeline that had the 69th week end with the crucifixion, no New Testament writer ever quotes Daniel 9:24-27 as a fulfillment of the crucifixion (or resurrection). If that prophecy was so incredibly accurate *on that point and for that reason* then it seems nothing short of amazing that no NT writer ever put that together.

As we proceed, I’m going to ask a series of questions about how to interpret Daniel 9:24-27. Here’s the first:

Does the text of Daniel 9:24-27 have the mashiach (“anointed one”) coming after the first seven weeks, followed by 62 more (=69) before the 70th week, or does the “anointed one” come in conjunction with / toward the end of the 69th?

To many readers this no doubt sounds like a dumb question, since many will consider the second option to be self-evident from the passage. That is because they assume that the “anointed one” in the passage is the messiah, Jesus. No way he could have come only 49 years after Daniel has the prophecy beginning (which most take to be around the time of Nehemiah. I should say here that it is *not* self evident that the “anointed one” here is Jesus the messiah. As we go through some other posts it will become clear why this is the case. It is also not self evidence that the 70 weeks is to begin at the time or Nehemiah’s rebuilding — or ANY rebuilding. That may sound amazing, but we’ll hit that on in the next post. For now, we’ll stick to one issue — the question posed above: Does the text of Daniel 9:24-27 have the mashiach (“anointed one”) coming after the first seven weeks, followed by 62 more (=69) before the 70th week, or does the “anointed one” come in conjunction with / toward the end of the 69th?

This question arises from how the text of Daniel 9:24-27 was accented by the Masoretic scribes.

In Dan 9:25 the Massoretic tradition places what is called a disjunctive accent (atnah) between the words for “seven sevens / weeks” and “sixty-two sevens.” A disjunctive accent served to separate items on either side of the accent. That means the Masoretes saw a break (a disjunction) between the 7 weeks and the following 62. This in turn means that the “anointed one” comes at the end of the seven weeks, before the other 62 occur. The ESV, RSV, and NRSV translate the text according to this Masoretic division. Here they are — note how these translations (due to the accenting) has the “anointed one” coming in conjunction with the end of the first seven weeks:

(ESV) 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.

(RSV) 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.

(NRSV) 25 Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time.

This understanding of the verse is known from early Christian sources (e.g., Eusebius) so it is not coherent to chalk this up to an anti-Jesus fiddling with the text by Jewish scribes, as some have charged. Besides, the accents were added centuries after the church began, making the presence of this translation / interpretation of the verse in early Christian sources all the more striking.

Other English translations ignore the Masoretic accent (for one reason or another). Here are some examples. Note how in these translations the “anointed one” comes after the 69 weeks (7 + 62).

(NIV): 25 “Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.

(NLT): 25 Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One—comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses, despite the perilous times.

(KJV): 25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

Getting back to our question, here’s the point. The neat 69 weeks from (whatever starting point) that culminate in the ministry and crucifixion of Jesus, assumed by so many end times teachers, may not be the intended meaning of the prophecy at all. In fact, if the Masoretic accenting of the text is accurate, then the prophecy isn’t even messianic (or at least that idea is weakened considerably). The “anointed one” would not be Jesus the messiah, but another “anointed one” (and there were a number of these in the OT, even pagans, like Cyrus the Persian king – cf. Isa 45:1).

So . . . which is it?  Does Daniel 9:25 have the “anointed one” coming after the first seven weeks, or after the 69 weeks? And how can we know *for sure*? Answer: we can’t know for sure.  It would sure have been nice for at least one NT writer to quote the passage in such a way that we could know. Granted, in my first post on this I sketched out the speculation that Luke may have been seeing Daniel 9 that way, but that doesn’t actually help those who want the 69th week to end with the crucifixion (when the “anointed one” is “cut off”). If Luke was angling for what I sketched out, to him the 69th week went up to the birth of Jesus, not the death. That seems incongruous with the “cut off” language (but maybe . . . just maybe . . . the “anointed one” WAS a figure in the past — not Jesus — but the NT writers see an analogy . . . that’s future fodder). I hope you see that there is more to this than you’ve been told in the Left Behind novels and XYZ (take your pick) prophecy book.

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Posted By MSH on July 2, 2010

I was going to try and address Daniel 9:24-27 in one post and then move into another point of eschatology, but the comments have persuaded me that this passage needs close scrutiny. My reason for that is the same as it has been for this entire series:  I want readers to see for themselves how the popular end times view of the 70 weeks is *far* from being self evident. There are *many* issues in this passage that I expect most readers will never have seen before. The standard pre-trib (any trib, actually) pre-mill view is presented to the masses in overly simplistic ways. Each element that you’ll see in this and other posts in regard to Dan 9:24-27 must be accounted for before one decides what the prophecy meant and thus how it was or will be fulfilled.

To begin, here is a summary of some of the issues we’ll encounter from John Goldingay’s Word Biblical Commentary volume on Daniel. Each of the items highlighted below has its own set of sub-issues as well. Goldingay writes:

“Seventy sevens” presumably denotes “seventy times seven years,” as the original “seventy” of Jeremiah was explicitly a period of years (v 2). The period suggests that the seventy years of punishment due according to Jer 25:11/29:10 is being exacted sevenfold in accordance with Lev 26 . . .

Ancient and modern interpreters have commonly taken vv 24–27 as designed to convey firm chronological information, which as such can be tested by chronological facts available to us. It may then be vindicated, for instance, by noting that the period from Jeremiah’s prophecy (605 b.c.) to that of Cyrus’s accession (556) was 49 years and the period from Jeremiah’s prophecy to the death of the high priest Onias III (171) was 434 years so that the sum of these periods is 483 years, the final seven years taking events to the rededication of the temple in 164 (e.g., Behrmann). Or it may be vindicated by noting that according to some computations the period from Nehemiah (445 or 444 b.c.) to Jesus’ death at Passover in a.d. 32 or 33 was exactly 483 years, the seventieth seven being postponed (Hoehner, BSac 132 [1975] 47–65; Anderson, Prince, following Julius Africanus reported in Eusebius; Driver instances other comparable theories). Both these understandings of the seventy sevens may be faulted on the grounds of their arbitrariness. In the case of the first, it is not obvious why two partly concurrent figures should be added together. In the case of the second, it is not obvious why the word about building a restored Jerusalem should be connected with Artaxerxes’ commission of Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem; nor why we should accept the basis of the computation, that of a 360-day year; nor why we should separate off the seventieth seven, as the theory requires; nor why we should date Nehemiah’s commission in 444 b.c. or Jesus’ crucifixion in a.d. 32—the computation requires one or the other, but the usually preferred dates are 445 and a.d. 30 or 33 (see, e.g., IBD 278–79; J. Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964] 285–301; according to J. K. Fotheringham, a.d. 32 is “absolutely impossible”! [“The Evidence of Astronomy and Technical Chronology for the Date of the Crucifixion,” JTS 35 (1934) 160]). Further, it is striking that the NT itself does not refer to the seventy sevens in this connection; Luke 1–2 applies v 24 in a quite different way.

This last comment deserves a closer look. How does Luke 1-2 refer to the seventy sevens? Understand the import of this. The question we are asking is “How does the New Testament itself understand the 70 weeks?”

There’s more here than meets the eye.

First, we need to observe that the 70 weeks passage is *not* quoted in the gospels in relation to the crucifixion, which is the assumed reference point for the prophecy in the standard trib/mill view(s). That is very curious *if* the end of the 69th week was intended to end with the crucifixion of the messiah. How could *all* the gospel writers have missed that?

Second — and here’s where we need to think about the deliberate literary UNITY of the Bible — there are a series of parallels between Daniel 9 and Luke 1, and so the question is, are they deliberate:

a. The angel that speaks to Zechariah to announce the birth of John the Baptist, the eschatological herald, is Gabriel. Gabriel is the same angel who spoke to Daniel in Daniel 9. He’s the same guy that gives Daniel the information of Dan 9:24-27.

b. Gabriel’s appearance to Daniel when Daniel was praying (Dan 9:20–21). In Luke 1:8-13 his appearing happens in connection with the hour of incense when prayers are being offered.

c. The description of the fear of Daniel and Zechariah respectively are parallel (Luke 1:12 matches that of Dan 8:17; 10:7).

d. The Greek word  hoptasia (“vision”) in Luke 1:22 is found six times in Dan 9–10 (Septuagint; Theod.)

e. Both Zechariah and Daniel are rendered mute (Luke 1:20, 22 and Dan 10:15).

f. Luke gives chronological details in his gospel that mirror the 490 weeks of Daniel 9: There are six months (180 days; Luke 1:26) between the two birth announcements to Elizabeth and Mary; Mary’s pregnancy lasted nine months (270 days); there were 40 days from the birth to the presentation in the temple [cf. Lev 12:1-4; i.e., 7 + 33 = 40 days before the mother could go to the sanctuary]. These numbers produce a total of 490 days, the number of the total of weeks in Daniel 9.

Is this all a coincidence?  Maybe. If it’s not, then what we have here is that, in the mind of Luke (who of course traveled with Paul, the Pharisee, and used Jewish sources), the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple sanctuary when he was 40 days old marked the end or fulfillment of the seventy sevens — both in years and in the days since God first moved to begin the fulfillment of OT prophecy (the announcement of the herald, John, who would “prepare the way of the Lord” in fulfillment of Isaiah 40).

Now, for sure, this may be a coincidence, or there may be more to Daniel 9, or other ways Daniel 9 could work (including but also aside from the standard trib/mill view). But that’s my point: HOW CAN WE KNOW FOR SURE which scheme is right?  We can’t, and to assume one view is somehow “biblical” and the others are not is arrogant, as it depends on our own omniscience.

More Daniel 9 to come.

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Posted By MSH on July 1, 2010

These stats are through June 30 of this year.

Last year for the entire year, this blog had the following stats:

Visits: 152,349

Page Views: 274,399

This year, in the first six months, we’ve already passed those numbers by a considerable margin:

Visits: 230,591

Page Views: 401,941

Really amazing — and gratifying.  Thanks to all of you who visit and read!

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Posted By MSH on June 27, 2010

The question to address in this post is much simpler than others: Is there any biblical proof that the 70th week of Daniel = the tribulation period?

This equation is critical to the pre-trib, premill view of the rapture. That is, without this equation, that view is very damaged.

Sure, there are plenty of biblical references to a time of tribulation, “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” and of course there is the “70 weeks” prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27.  But is there any biblical proof that these terms overlap or are to be defined by each other? Is the 70th week of Daniel ever called or alluded to as a period of tribulation? You’d think that would be important (at least I would).

A couple of observations are in order on this one – I’d like some participation from you all, too.

1. Here is a link to all the occurrences of the word used in Matthew 24 for “tribulation” (Greek: thlipsis). Does any use of the term allude to Daniel 9’s 70th week?

2. Notice that in Daniel 9 the only reference to “trouble” (v. 25) is placed before the 70th week.  The Septuagint does *not* use thlipsis in this passage to translate this word.

3. The only time Daniel 9:24-27 is specifically referenced in the New Testament is Matt. 24:15.  Note that the “tribulation” period in Matthew *follows* in Matt 24:21 (the earlier reference to “tribulation in 24:9 is obviously personal to each of the disciples of Jesus’ day). This suggests that the tribulation period cannot be the 70th week of Daniel, though *part* of that 70th week is defined as a period of tribulation. This is a common position of the pre-wrath rapture view.

So, what I’d like in terms of interaction is for those who would define / equate the 70th week of Daniel with a seven year tribulation to provide some textual support for that view.

We’ll get into the 70 weeks prophecy itself shortly.

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Posted By MSH on June 19, 2010

I just wanted to put in a good word for John Barry’s new book, The Resurrected Servant in Isaiah. John is a colleague of mine at Logos.

Having read through some sections of John’s book when it was a thesis, and having read the recommendations (Bruce Waltke was especially enthusiastic), I can encourage you to get the book.  It is available in hard copy through Paternoster (and Amazon) and in digital form in the Libronix format.

The subject matter of the book is obviously an important focus for biblical studies. John argues that the Servant in Isaiah 53 is an individual and that the language points to resurrection. The work is technical in places (e.g., part of John’s argument is guided by discourse analysis in Isaiah).  He interacts at length with arguably the two most important scholars on Isaiah 53, Orlinsky and Whybray.

Hope you’ll check it out!

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