Seventy weeks are determined
upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to
make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to
anoint the most Holy. 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. And after threescore and
two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the
prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end
thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are
determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in
the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,
and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until
the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:24-27)
According to a prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27,
given by the angel Gabriel in about 538 B.C., the Messianic kingdom would be
established 69 weeks after a commandment is issued to restore and to build
The prophecies of the coming Messiah, who would be both true God and true man (Isaiah 9:6), born of a virgin (Genesis 3:15,20) of the lineage of David (II Samuel 7:12) in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), would die in Jerusalem (Zechariah 12:10) for our sins (Isaiah 53:5) and rise from the dead (Psalms 16:10) and establish an everlasting kingdom (II Samuel 7:13) of righteousness (Jeremiah 33:16) and peace (Isaiah 11:10), consisting of both Jews and Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6), were incontrovertibly fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth, who is to this day known by the name of Christ, a Greek name equivalent to Messiah in Hebrew and Anointed One in English. As for the time of his appearance, the prophecies that existed before Daniel indicated only that he would appear after the fall of the Babylonian empire (Jeremiah 25:12 and Habbakuk 2:2-14).
In Daniel 9:1-2 we learn that Daniel, a
captive in Babylon since about 606 B.C, came to understand in the first year of
Darius the Mede, about 538 B.C., while reading the prophecies of Jeremiah, that
the captivity of his people would last 70 years. We find accordingly in
Jeremiah 29:10 the Lord’s promise, in regard to
The Lord goes on to say in Jeremiah 29:12,
“Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will
hearken unto you.” He also promises in Isaiah 65:24: “Before they call, I will
answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” This is in accordance
with God’s promise in Leviticus 26:40-45 to have mercy on a contrite
Seventy weeks are determined
upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make
an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to
anoint the most Holy.
The precise time revealed here for the accomplishment
of this prophecy is 70 weeks. This period could have been expressed in other
units of time, but the number 70 is significant because of its symbolism.
Seventy is a multiple of ten, which
signifies completeness (Genesis 31:7), and
seven, which symbolizes divine perfection (Genesis 2:3). We are reminded
here of the punishment for sin that the people of Daniel had been suffering for
70 years and of the response of Jesus to Peter’s question as to how often we
are to forgive our brother: “I say not unto thee, Until seven times, but, Until
seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). Daniel is thus informed that
transgression and sin would continue to exist until the establishment of the
Messianic kingdom, when everlasting righteousness would finally reign.
The Hebrew word for “week” (shabua)
is derived from the word for “seven” (sheba) and consists of either seven days
or seven years, depending on the context, as all Hebrew lexicons agree. See, for
example, Leviticus 25, where we learn that the Hebrews counted not only weeks
of days but weeks of years, and Genesis 29:26-28, where Jacob receives Rachel
in return for a week, that is, seven years, of work for her father Laban. Also,
in Daniel 10:1,2, we see that in the third year of Cyrus, about 534 B.C., or
approximately two years after this king had issued his proclamation, Daniel
“was mourning three full weeks.” A marginal note of the translators in the
Authorized Version informs us that in the Hebrew text these “full weeks” are
literally “weeks of days” (shabuim yomim).
If Daniel believed that the 70 weeks were to be counted from the proclamation
of Cyrus, the prophecy had not been fulfilled and opposition to the work of
restoration was emerging (Ezra 4:4-5). He then received in a vision another
prophecy with a detailed account of major events that were yet to occur, which
made him understand that “the time was long” (Daniel 10:1). It is universally
agreed, therefore, even by Jewish scholars, that the 70 weeks require not weeks
of days but weeks of years, that is, 70 times 7, or 490 years, for fulfillment.
The prediction of a holy ruler in a perfect
kingdom is, of course, fulfilled only in Jesus of Nazareth. The people of this
Anointed One (Acts 10:38) and Holy One (Luke 4:34) are his own children (John
11:52), the fruit of his travail on the cross. They, being justified freely by
grace (Romans 3:24) and anointed (II Corinthians 1:21) under a new covenant
(Jeremiah 31:31-34), are as righteous as he himself is (I John 3:5-7), for the
law of his kingdom, under which God does not impute sin (Romans 4:7,8),
abrogates the former law, that of Moses (II Corinthians 3:11), under which sin
and transgression reigned (I Corinthians 15:56). In this spotless Lamb of God,
slain before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), whose day Abraham
rejoiced to see (John 8:56), all believers, from the beginning to the end of
the world, find transgression and all sin ended, atonement and reconciliation
accomplished, and everlasting righteousness established, not by sight but by
faith (II Corinthians 5:7). These holy brethren (Hebrews 3:1) or saints (Romans
1:7) constitute the true
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.
Gabriel here sets the terminus a quo or the point from which the weeks to the Messiah are
to be counted. The calculation is to begin from the commandment to restore and
to build
He
then begins to divide the 70 weeks into phases. During the first seven weeks,
the street and wall would be rebuilt. Then, 62 weeks later, the Messiah would
appear. Thus a total of 69 weeks would elapse from the going forth of the
commandment to restore and to build
The so-called Church Fathers are in
helpless disarray in regard to the interpretation of these 70 weeks, as are
reformers, chronologists and commentators. Calvin, commenting on Daniel, aptly
sums up the situation that existed in his time: “This passage has been
variously treated, and so distracted, and almost torn to pieces by the various
opinions of interpreters, that it might be considered nearly useless on account
of its obscurity.” He then sets the
terminus a quo at the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, which takes us
nowhere.[1] Even Luther is unable to adequately explain
the prophecy, for in his Preface to
Daniel, he begins counting from the second year of Darius Hystaspes or
about 520 B.C. Archbishop Ussher, whose calculations, made in the seventeenth
century, are said to be the source of the marginal dates of the Bible, differ
from them here. The marginal date given for the seventh year of Artaxerxes at
Ezra 7:7 is 457 B.C., but Ussher gives 474 B.C., having adjusted the years of
Artaxerxes, evidently in order to render the twentieth year of this king
acceptable as a terminus a quo. The
editors of the revised English edition of Ussher’s work base Ussher’s date on
an alleged co-regency of Xerxes and Artaxerxes beginning in 474 B.C.,
supposedly confirmed by “hieroglyphic inscriptions in Egypt,” which they leave
unidentified.[2]
Renowned historian Humphrey Prideaux, writing at the end of the eighteenth
century, finds, quite correctly as we shall see, that the terminus a quo is the seventh year of Artaxerxes, but he goes on
to say that the restoration actually occurred under Cyrus and that the
prediction of a restoration under Artaxerxes is to be understood not
“literally” but “figuratively”.[3]
In his nineteenth-century commentary on Daniel, Albert Barnes first quotes
Professor Stuart, who writes in his Hints
on the Interpretation of Prophecy (page 104) that it would
require “a volume of considerable magnitude” to even present a history of the
“ever-varying and contradictory opinions of critics” on this passage and that
“a candid, and searching, and thorough critique” of this passage is something
still to be desired. After quoting Stuart’s prayer (“May some expositor, fully
adequate to the task, speedily appear!”), Barnes goes on to adopt Ussher’s
twentieth year of Artaxerxes as his own terminus
a quo, which he is unable to defend any better than does Ussher.[4]
The highly esteemed nineteenth-century commentators Keil and Delitzsch, throw
up their hands in despair, concluding with Prideaux that the whole prophecy is
of a symbolic nature.[5]
In his lectures on Daniel, the learned Reverend E. B. Pusey realizes that the terminus a quo is the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, but assuming,
contrary to most historians,[6]
that Artabanus, the assassin of Xerxes, reigned for seven months between Xerxes
and Artaxerxes, he sets the beginning of the reign of Artaxerxes not in 465
B.C. but a bit later, in the middle of 464 B.C., and makes his seventh year 457
B.C.[7]
Expositors of our day continue to differ with one another, but many agree that
the terminus a quo is indeed the
seventh year of Artaxerxes. The views of popular preachers and TV evangelists,
many of whom have become entangled with the “dispensationalism” of the popular Scofield Reference Bible, according to
which the seventieth week is yet to be fulfilled, are not worthy of serious
consideration.
The safest way out of this maze is to seek
first the terminus ad quem, that is,
the point at which the 69 weeks end, and to count back to the terminus a quo. Doing so, we learn from Mark
1:14-15 that Jesus began his own ministry with the words, “The time is
fulfilled, and the
Dionysius Exiguus, who established the
method of reckoning our Christian era in the sixth century A.D., calculated
that Christ was born in the Roman year 753, that is, 1 B.C. He accepted December
25 as the birthday of Christ, as had earlier Christian chronologists, and made
the ensuing Roman year, 754, the first year anno
domini. The four-year discrepancy with other chronologists is said to have
been caused by the fact that, setting the year 1 A.D. from the twenty-eighth
year of Augustus, Dionysius reckoned from the year 727, when this emperor
adopted his name, rather than from 723, the year of the battle of Actium.[11]
The specific date of December 25 in the
Church calendar for the birth of Christ has nothing to do with any Roman pagan
celebrations on that day, as we hear so often parroted, but with the simple
fact that the early church, which set this date, believed that the burning of
incense by Zacharias in Luke 1:10, with the multitude praying outside, as
described in Leviticus 16:17, occurred on the Day of Atonement, that is, on the
tenth day of the seventh month according to the Mosaic calendar (Leviticus
16:29).[12]
Since the early Church evidently knew that this festival was celebrated,
according to our calendar, in late September of that year, the birth of Christ
in late December of the following year was determined by adding the six months
of Elisabeth’s pregnancy mentioned in Luke 1:36 to the nine months of that of
Mary. Thus, the Day of Annunciation, when Mary learned that she was to be the
mother of the Saviour, is March 25, and St. John’s Day, which commemorates the
birth of John the Baptist, is June 24, nine months after his conception and six
months before the birth of Christ. Regardless
of whether this view of the early Church is accurate, Christ’s ministry began,
as we have shown above, in 26 A.D., evidently in the latter part of the year,
for John’s ministry had to run its full course after beginning earlier the same
year, perhaps after the annual flooding of the Jordan (Joshua 3:15 and 4:19),
in which the people were baptized (Mark 1:5), and when John, too, would have
been about 30 years of age, the age of adulthood for priestly families (Numbers
4:43).
Having determined the terminus ad quem, we can now find the terminus a quo by counting back 69 weeks of years, that is, 483
years, from 26 A.D. All historians agree that the only source connecting the
Persian era with our own is found in The
Almagest, the major work of the second-century pagan astronomer Ptolemy. An
appendix of his book contains tables known as the The Canon of Kings, which documents the years of the reigns of
ancient kings from the Assyrian king Nabonassar to the Roman king Antoninus.[13]
In our own Appendix the reader will find the relevant portion of Ptolemy’s Canon, where we see in parallel columns
the names of the kings from Cyrus to Tiberius, the number of years of their
reigns, and the lengths of their reigns according to the Nabonassar era. We
have added a third column, consisting of the corresponding years of the
Christian era, which have been derived from those of Nabonassar, using the
following standard formula: For years B.C., the year of the Nabonassar era is
deducted from 748, and for years A.D., 747 is deducted from the year of the
Nabonassar era.[14]
To avoid possible confusion resulting from
calendar conversions and complications caused by the transition from B.C. to
A.D., we will first use the Nabonassar era as the basis for our calculations.
Applying the formula for conversion to the Nabonassar era, we find that the
year 26 A.D. is equivalent to the year 773 of the Nabonassar era. Subtracting
483 years from the year 773, we arrive at the year 290 of the Nabonassar era,
which is the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. Using now the formula for
conversion to the Christian era, we find that this year is equivalent to 458
B.C. in our calendar. From Ezra 7:7-9, we learn that the seventh year of
Artaxerxes is the very year in which Ezra, in response to a royal decree, began
his journey from
Jewish expositors, sensing that the terminus ad quem points too closely to Jesus of Nazareth, have invented
various schemes to deflect it in other directions. The Jewish calendar, which
is based on the Seder Olam Rabbah,
concocted by the second-century Rabbi Halafta, resorts to abridging the length
of the Persian Empire to about 53 years (374-321 B.C.) from its true length of
about 207 years (538 to 321 B.C.), evidently in order to make Daniel’s prophecy
apply more to the second-century false messiah Simon Bar Kokhba than to Jesus
of Nazareth.[16]
Modern Jews, compelled by reality, generally accept the standard chronology of
the Persian era but resort to various other expedients to obscure the obvious
reference to Jesus of Nazareth. Some, for example, try to shift the events of
Ezra and Nehemiah from the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus to that of a later
king, Artaxerxes Mnemon, known as Artaxerxes II -- something that would never
have occurred to them if they were dealing with an aspect of history that was
not so clearly connected with the name of Jesus. However, the Encyclopædia Britannica, which is by no
means friendly to Christianity, has to admit in regard to the events of Ezra
and Nehemiah, that “the attempts to place them in the reign of Artaxerxes II
are not convincing.”[17]
Even modern Jewish reference works are forced to concur, admitting that though
the arguments for the shifting of the king and the emendation of the dates are
numerous, most of them rely on specious considerations and dubious textual
interpretation.
Jewish expositors are thus left clinging to the false claim of Bible critics that their book of Daniel is nothing more than a collection of legends and bogus prophecies compiled and concocted during the intertestamental period as propaganda in the wars of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes. However, neither they nor any so-called Christian expositors are able to squeeze the 70 weeks into any amenable chronological framework, even starting as early as 606 B.C. and ending as late as 164 B.C.
Pusey points out in a footnote that
critics, who correct the text at will, “have all at once discovered in this
case the value of the tradition of the Hebrew accents.”[18]
These accents are diacritical marks
added to the Hebrew text by the Masoretic scribes in the obscure past, which
are still found in all Hebrew Bibles. They are no longer fully understood and
are by no means part of the sacred text. Yet Jewish translators, finding that
the accent known as atnach separates
the “seven weeks” from the “threescore and two weeks,” use it to justify
placing a full stop or semicolon between these two numbers in their English
versions. Thus, in their translations, they render the words in question, with
slight variations, in the following meaningless manner: “From the going forth
of the commandment to restore and to build
As critics are eager to point out, the
decree of Artaxerxes, which is preserved in the Hebrew Old Testament in Ezra
7:12-26 in the original Aramaic, the official language of the Persian Empire,
does not seem to meet the description of a commandment to restore and to build
Jerusalem as required by the prophecy in question, for the restoration had
already begun under Cyrus and the temple was even rebuilt. In reply, it should
be noted, first of all, that Cyrus, who is mentioned by name long before his birth
and is called the Lord’s anointed in Isaiah 45:1, is “raised up in
righteousness” in verse 13 to build God’s city and free his captives, “not for
price or reward.” Cyrus is thus quite clearly a type or figure of the true
Messiah, Jesus Christ, who died to liberate the captives of sin, freely and
without any merit or worthiness on their part, and was raised up in
righteousness to build the new and spiritual
It is essential, therefore, to bear in
mind, that the decrees of these three kings constitute one commandment, and, strangely enough, the work is said here to
have been completed even before the third king, Artaxerxes, issued his own
decree in 458 B.C. -- over half a century later. We read accordingly in Ezra
1:1, in regard to the first king, that it was the Lord who “stirred up the
spirit of Cyrus” to make his proclamation. Then in Ezra 6:12 Darius, the second
king, calls on “the God that hath caused his name to dwell there” to “destroy
all kings and people that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy this
house of God which is at
Thus we see that there are three aspects to
this commandment of God and the three
Persian kings: 1. Under the decree of Cyrus of about 536 B.C., the people
returned to
To counter the objection of those who seek
a terminus a quo in the twentieth
year of Artaxerxes, when the king allowed Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem to
build the wall of the city, as described in the first chapter of his book, it
need only be pointed out that nowhere in the book of Nehemiah is mention made of any decree. In fact, the
opposition that Nehemiah encountered from the surrounding adversaries, as
described in the sixth chapter of his book, proves that it did not exist, for
had he been in possession of a royal decree, he needed only to show it to them
to silence their opposition to his building project, as occurred in the time of
Darius Hystaspes (Ezra 6:1-14). Nowhere, in fact, in any of the three decrees
of the Persian kings is any mention made of the actual building of any wall or
buildings other than the temple. Thus the words of verse 25 of Gabriel’s
prophecy are fulfilled to the letter, which predicted that the street and wall
would be built again “in troublous times.” It is only logical, as was assumed
by Artaxerxes himself in Nehemiah 2:4-6 and as we read in Haggai 1:4, that
houses would be built and that a wall was needed, but this being left
unspecified in the royal decrees, the adversaries found a basis for causing
trouble by challenging the legality of the whole project as early as in the
time of Cyrus (Ezra 4:5-7).
And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
Here we learn that after the
Messiah begins his ministry he will be “cut off,” but the time of his death is
not specified until the next verse. It is said only that it will occur after 62 weeks. Gabriel goes on to say that
his death will be “not for himself,” for he will by his death redeem the whole
human race from sin, death, hell and the devil. In the margin of uncorrupted
Bibles we find an alternate translation of these words, indicating that this
portion of the Hebrew text can also be interpreted by the words “and shall have
nothing.” These strong words together with the words “cut off” indicate that
the Messiah would be rejected and killed by his own people. The fulfillment of
this prophecy is boldly stated by Peter to the Jews in Acts 5:30,31: “The God
of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God
exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give
repentance to
Gabriel then goes on to reveal that in
spite of the unbelief of the Jewish nation, the Messiah would retain a people
of his own, over whom he would rule as a Prince, and that Jerusalem and the
temple would be destroyed by a torrent of war and destruction. This came to
pass in 70 A.D., as Jesus had predicted (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) and as
secular history informs us. The fact that the Messiah would have a new people
is also predicted in Isaiah 65:14,15: “Behold, my servants shall sing for joy
of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of
spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen: for the Lord
God shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name.” This agrees with
John 1:11,12: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many
as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on his name.” We learn, however, from Luke 19:41 and John 11:35 that Jesus wept over the Jews, whose
unbelief led them to pressure Pilate to accede to their will to have him
crucified (John 19:16.). Thus we see that the spiritual plight of the Jews is
not due to any refusal on Christ’s part to have them in his kingdom but to
their own dreadful words that no corruptor of Holy Scripture can expunge for
them, which are recorded in Matthew 27:25: “His blood be on us, and on our
children.” Although these words, according to the same verse, were uttered by
“all the people,” they were by no means uttered by Christ, whose call for
forgiveness (Luke 23:34) and whose blood, which “speaketh better things than
that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24), mean more to God than does their call for
punishment on themselves and their children. Hope remains, therefore, that the
spirit of grace and of supplications promised in Zechariah 12:10 will again be
poured out upon the inhabitants of modern Jerusalem and that they will, as we
read in our uncorrupted King James Version, “look upon me [that is, God] whom
they have pierced” and “mourn for him [that is, for Christ], as one mourneth
for his only son” and “be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness
for his firstborn.”
And he shall confirm the
covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the
sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations
he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined
shall be poured upon the desolate.
Here the third period or final week of the 70 weeks is finally introduced, and the time of Christ’s death, which brings the temple worship to an end, is set more precisely. It is to occur in the middle of the seventieth week or 30 A.D. Thus his ministry will last not for a whole week of seven years but for only the first half of the final week or about three and a half years. Our Bible margins, which agree with Ussher, that Christ was crucified in 33 A.D.,[19] are in error here. The true length of Christ’s ministry is confirmed by adding the three passovers recorded in John 2:13, 6:4 and 18:28 to one that is unmentioned but clearly implied in John 4:35. The offering of Christ’s body causes the animal sacrifices and food offerings to cease, for he is the antitype of the sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament, as explained in Hebrews 9:24-26: “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world, but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” In Hebrews 10:1 we read further: “The law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.” And then in verses 9 and 10 we see in regard to the coming of Christ and the establishment of his covenant that “he taketh away,” that is, he abolishes, the first covenant, “that he may establish the second” and that “we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
The final words of the
prophecy are: “and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it
desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon
the desolate.” This means that Christ’s sacrifice renders the temple desolate,
for, as we have seen above, there will be no more use for an earthly sanctuary,
the types and shadows of the Old Testament prophecies having been fulfilled by
his death. The earthly temple remains, therefore, in utter and permanent
destruction. Wherever men think they worship God, though they have killed
Christ and eliminated him from their hearts by unbelief, there is, in fact,
only an overspreading of abominations in place of the living Saviour, which
eventually brings desolation as a punishment upon the spiritually desolate. The
earthly temple and city predicted by Gabriel, which disappeared long ago, were
only symbolic of true restoration for the children of Israel and all men in a
spiritual temple and heavenly city under the law of the kingdom of Christ, the
only law that brings peace of conscience to sinners because, under it, sin, not
being imputed, no longer exists in the sight of God, having been removed by the
Lamb of God (John 1:29). The earthly
The prophecy of the 70 weeks given to
Daniel foretells, before the restoration of
The Hebrew Bible, of which we have an
accurate translation in the Old Testament of our Authorized or King James
Version, has, through God’s providence, been preserved and copied throughout
the centuries not by Christians but by Jews. Thus, if the prophecy of the 70
weeks as found therein can be harmonized with Christ’s first coming and
crucifixion from secular sources, that is, from the standard chronology of
Ptolemy, who was entirely objective, being neither a Christian nor a Jew, it
will have to be acknowledged by all that Jesus of Nazareth, the only child of
his age to escape the slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem and all its coasts,
as related in Luke 2:16, is the sole legitimate claimant to the title of
Messiah, having fulfilled all the prophecies of the Old Testament. Since this
same Jesus, who has ascended to Heaven (Psalms 110:1), will return in power and
glory with all his saints (Daniel 7:14,22) to judge both the living and the
dead (Daniel 12:2), it would behoove every human soul to flee from erroneous
and deceitful explanations of Daniel 9:24-27, which remain for many a vain
refuge that will be of no avail on that final and dreadful day when the heavens
and earth, together with all the dens and rocks of the mountains (Revelation
6:15) and, needless to say, all spiritual and cynical subterfuges in which
unbelievers trust, will be burned with fervent heat (II Peter 3:12).
Warren Hepokoski
October
27, 2008
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes,
Albert. Notes, Critical, Illustrative,
and Practical on the Book of Daniel.
Leavitt and Allen, 1857.
Bond,
John. Handy-Book of Rules and Tables for
Verifying Dates with the Christian Era. New
Calvin,
John. Calvin’s Commentaries. Reprint
of the
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999.
Finegan,
Jack. Handbook of Biblical Chronology.
Princeton:
Revised edition:
Keil,
C. F. and F. Delitzsch. Commentary on the
Old Testament. Reprint of the
of T. & T. Clark, 1866-91.
Prideaux,
Humphrey. The Old and New Testament
Connected in the History of the Jews
and
Neighbouring
Nations.
Ptolemy
(Claudius Ptolemaeus). The Almagest.
English text published as Volume 16 of Great
Books of the
Western World.
Pusey,
E. B. Daniel the Prophet: Nine Lectures, Delivered in the
of
Ussher,
James. The Annals of the World.
Marion Pierce.
King Number of Years Nabonassar Era Christian
Era
Cyrus 9 210-218 538-530 B.C.
Cambyses 8 219-226 529-522 B.C.
Darius
Hystaspes 36 227-262 521-486 B.C.
Xerxes 21 263-283 485-465 B.C.
Artaxerxes
Longimanus 41
284-324 464-424 B.C.
Darius
Nothus 19 325-343 423-405 B.C.
Artaxerxes
Mnemon 46 344-389 404-359 B.C.
Ochus 21 390-410 358-338 B.C.
Arogus 2 411-412 337-336 B.C.
Darius
Codomanus 4 413-416 335-332 B.C.
Alexander
the Great 8 417-424 331-324 B.C.
Philip
Aridaeus
7
425-431 323-317 B.C.
Alexander
Aigos 12 432-443 316-305 B.C.
Ptolemy
Lagos 20 444-463 304-285 B.C.
Ptolemy
Philadelphus 38 464-501 284-247 B.C.
Ptolemy
Euergetes I 25 502-526 246-222 B.C.
Ptolemy
Philopater 17 527-543 221-205 B.C.
Ptolemy
Epiphanes 24 544-567 204-181 B.C.
Ptolemy
Philometor 35 568-602 180-146 B.C.
Ptolemy
Euergetes II 29 603-631 145-117 B.C.
Ptolemy
Soter 36 632-667 116-81 B.C.
Ptolemy
Dionysius 29 668-696 80-52 B.C.
Cleopatra
22 697-718 51-30 B.C.
Augustus 43 719-761 29 B.C. - 14 A.D.
Tiberius 22 762-783 15-36 A.D.
Only
the portion of Ptolemy’s canon that is relevant to our study is given above.
The original canon contains the lengths of reigns of all kings from the
Assyrian king Nabonassar, whose reign is calculated from noon of 26 February in
747 B.C., to the Roman king Antoninus, whose rule ended in 160 A.D. The
original canon is in an appendix in Ptolemy’s second-century astronomical work,
The Almagest, and is recognized by all legitimate historians as the
only reliable source connecting the chronology of Assyrian and subsequent kings
with our own time. Ptolemy’s canon makes no mention of any king whose reign
does not extend into the next calendar year, and if a king dies before the new
year in Ptolemy’s Egyptian calendar, the year of his death in that calendar is
assigned to his successor. Thus, Tiberius, for example, reigned until his death
on 16 March in 37 A.D., but the year of his death is assigned by Ptolemy to the
following ruler. Due to this and other factors, such as the transition from
B.C. to A.D., a shifting New Year’s day (Thoth 1) in the Egyptian calendar
until 22 B.C. (when it was set permanently on August 29), and other
complications connected with calendar conversions, the reigns of kings may be
found to differ slightly when comparing Ptolemy’s data with that found in
historical works based on our own calendar. Ptolemy lived, of course, long
before the time of Dionysius, who established the method of reckoning the
Christian era in the sixth century A.D. The formula used for converting years
of the Nabonassar era to those of the Christian era is, for years before
Christ, to deduct the given Nabonassar year from 748, and, for years after
Christ, to deduct 747 from the given year. It should also be noted that in the
canon the nine years assigned to Cyrus begin with his victory over the
Babylonians, not with his direct rule in
“Ptolemy’s
canon being fixed by the eclipses, the truth of it may at any time be
demonstrated by astronomical calculations, and no one hath ever calculated
those eclipses, but hath found them fall right in the times where placed; and
therefore, this being the surest guide which we have in the chronology, and it
being also verified by its agreement everywhere with the holy scriptures, it is
not, for the authority of any other human writing whatsoever, to be receded
from.” (The Old and New
Testament Connected in the
History of the Jews and Neighboring Nations, Part I, Vol. II, p. 297)
“This
Ezra went up from
“Now
in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being
governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip
tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch
of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came
unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the
country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of
sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying,
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill
shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke
3:1-6)
“Now
when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being
baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a
bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said,
Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. And Jesus himself began to
be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which
was the son of Heli.” (Luke 3:21-23)
“The
law and the prophets were until John; since that time the
Now
after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the
gospel of the
“At
the request of his father, the Senate and people of
“After
two years, Tiberius returned from
[1] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids: 1999), Vol. 13, pp. 195, 210.
[2]
James Ussher, The Annals of the World
(
[3]
Humphrey Prideaux, The Old and New
Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and Neighboring
Nations (
[4] Albert Barnes, Notes, Critical, Illustrative, and Practical on the Book of Daniel (New York: 1857), pp. 369-394.
[5]
C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary
on the Old Testament (
[6] Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the first century B.C., writes, for example, that, upon killing Xerxes,
Artabanus was in turn slain by Artaxerxes. See his Historical Library, 11.69.
[7]
E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet: Nine
Lectures, Delivered in the
(
his reasoning, saying that “it is clear, from the sequence of events in Neh. 1:2, Ezr. 7:7-9, that Chisleu fell earlier in
the year of his reign than Nisan, and Nisan than Ab (July, Aug.). Then the reign of Artaxerxes must have begun
between Ab and Chisleu (Nov., Dec.) 464 B.C., and the Edict, in his seventh year, in accordance with which Ezra
and his colony set out in Nisan, must have been at the end of 458 or the beginning of 457.”
[8]
See the selections from Roman historians in our Appendix. According to Jack
Finegan’s Handbook of Biblical
Chronology (
[9] Antiquities of the Jews, 17.6.4.
[10] See Finegan, p. 294.
[11] See John Bond, Handy-Book of Rules and Tables for Verifying Dates with the Christian Era (New York: 1966),
Preface, p. 10.
[12] See Finegan, p. 327.
[13]
An English version of The Almagest is
included in Great Books of the Western World
(
Ptolemy’s Canon is in Appendix A, p. 466.
[14] See, for example, Bond, p. 197.
[15] See Finegan, p. 268.
[16] See Ussher, Appendix G, pp. 931-934.
[17] See entry under Artaxerxes, 1911 edition, Vol. 2, p. 661.
[18] Pusey, p. 173.
[19] Ussher, p. 819.