Verses 24----27. " 'Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people and
upon thy holy city, (C) that transgression may be finished, and sin may
have an end, and iniquity may be abolished, and everlasting justice may be
brought to bear, and that the vision and prophecy may be fulfilled that the Holy
One of the saints may be anointed. Know therefore and take note that from the
going forth of the word to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ the prince,
there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, and the street shall be built
again, and the walls, in distressing times. And after sixty-two weeks Christ
shall be slain, and ((D) the people that shall deny Him) shall not be
His. And a people, with their leader that shall come, shall destroy the city and
the sanctuary. And the end thereof shall be devastation, and after the end of
the war there shall be the appointed desolation. And he shall confirm the
covenant with many in one xveek; and in the middle of the week both victim and sacrifice shall fail. And there shall be in the Temple the
abomination of desolation, and the desolation shall continue even unto the
consummation and the end.' " Because the prophet had said, "Thou
didst lead forth Thy people, and Thy name was pronounced upon Thy city and upon
Thy people," Gabriel therefore, as the mouthpiece of God, says by
implication: "By no means are they God's people, but only thy people; nor
is Jerusalem the holy city of God, but it is only a holy city unto thee, as thou
sayest." This is similar to what we read in Exodus also, when God says to
Moses, "Descend, for thy people have committed sin" (Ex. 32:7). That
is to say, they are not My people, for they have forsaken Me. And so, because
thou dost supplicate for Jerusalem and prayest for the people of the Jews,
hearken unto that which shall befall thy people in seventy weeks of years, and
those things which will happen to thy city.
I realize that this question has been argued over in various ways by men of
greatest learning, and that each of them has expressed his views according to
the capacity of his own genius. And so, because it is unsafe to pass judgment
upon the opinions of the great teachers of the Church and to set one above
another, I shall simply repeat the view of each, and leave it to the reader's
judgment as to whose explanation ought to be followed. In the fifth volume of
his Tempora ["Chronology"], Africanus has this to say
concerning the seventy weeks (682) (and I quote him verbatim): "The chapter
(E) which we read in Daniel concerning the seventy weeks contains many
remarkable details, which require too lengthy a discussion at this point; and so
we must discuss only what pertains to our present task, namely that which
concerns chronology. There is no doubt but what it constitutes a prediction of
Christ's advent, for He appeared to the world at the end of seventy weeks. After
Him the crimes were consummated and sin reached its end and iniquity was
destroyed. An eternal righteousness also was proclaimed which overcame the mere
righteousness of the law; and the vision and the prophecy were fulfilled,
inasmuch as the Law and the Prophets endured until the time of (F) John the
Baptist (Luke 16), and then the Saint of saints was anointed. And all these
things were the objects of hope, prior to Christ's incarnation, rather (p. 543)
than the objects of actual possession. Now the angel himself specified seventy weeks of years, that is to say, four hundred and ninety years from the
issuing of the word that the petition be granted and that Jerusalem be rebuilt.
The specified interval began in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, King of the
Persians; for it was his cupbearer, Nehemiah (Neh. 1), who, as we read in the
book of Ezra [the Vulgate reckons Nehemiah as II Esdras], petitioned the king
and obtained his request that Jerusalem be rebuilt. And this was the word, or
decree, which granted permission for the construction of the city and its
encompassment with walls; for up until that time it had lain open to the
incursions of the surrounding nations. But if one points to the command of King
Cyrus, who granted to all who desired it permission to return to Jerusalem, the
fact of the matter is that the high priest Jesus [Jeshua] and Zerubbabel, and
later on the priest Ezra, together with the others who had been willing to set
forth from Babylon with them, only made an abortive attempt to construct the
Temple and the city with its walls, but were prevented by the surrounding
nations from completing the task, on the pretext that the king had not so
ordered. And thus the work remained incomplete until Nehemiah's time and the
twentieth year of King Artaxerxes. Hence the captivity lasted for seventy years
prior to the Persian rule. [This last sentence is bracketed by the editor.] At
this period in the Persian Empire a hundred and fifteen years had elapsed since
its inception, but it was the one hundred and eighty-fifth year from the
captivity of Jerusalem when Artaxerxes first gave orders for the walls of
Jerusalem to be built. [Actually only 141 years, the interval between 587 B.C.
and 446 B.C.] Nehemiah was in charge of this undertaking, and the street was
built and the surrounding walls were erected. Now if you compute (683) seventy
weeks of years from that date, you can come out to the time of Christ. But if we
wish to take any other date (A) as the starting point for these weeks, then the
dates will show a discrepancy and we shall encounter many difficulties. For if
the seventy weeks are computed from the time of Cyrus and his decree of
indulgence which effectuated the release of the Jewish captives, then we shall
encounter a deficit of a hundred years and more short of the stated number of
seventy weeks [only seventy-eight years, by more recent computation, for Cyrus's
decree was given in 538 B.C.]. If we reckon from the day when the angel spoke to Daniel, the deficit would be much greater [actually not more than a few
months or a year]. An even greater number of years is added, if you wish to put
the beginning of the weeks at the commencement of the captivity. For the kingdom
of the Persians endured for two hundred and thirty years until the rise of the
Macedonian kingdom; then the Macedonians themselves reigned for three hundred
years. From that date until the sixteenth (i.e., the fifteenth) year of Tiberius
Caesar, when Christ suffered death, is an interval of sixty [sic!] years
[reckoning from the death of Cleopatra, the last of the Macedonian Ptolemies].
All of these years added together come to the number of five hundred and ninety,
with the result that a hundred years remain to be accounted for. On the other
hand, the interval from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes to the time of Christ
completes the figure of seventy weeks, if we reckon according to the lunar
computation of the Hebrews, who did not number their months according to the
movement of the sun, but rather according to the moon. For the interval from the
one hundred fiftieth year of the Persian Empire, when Artaxerxes, as king
thereof, attained the twentieth year of his reign (and this was the fourth year
of the eighty-third Olympiad), up until the two hundred and second Olympiad (for
it was the second year of that Olympiad which was the fifteenth year of Tiberius
Caesar) comes out to be the grand total of four hundred seventy-five years. This
would result in four hundred ninety Hebrew years, reckoning according to the
lunar months as we have suggested. For according to their (p. 544) computation,
these years can be made up of months of twenty-nine (variant: twenty-eight) and
a half days each. This means that the sun, during a period of four hundred
ninety years, completes its revolution in three hundred sixty-five days and a
quarter, and this amounts to twelve lunar months for each individual year, with
eleven and a fourth days left over to spare. Consequently the Greeks and Jews
over a period of eight years insert three intercalary months (embolimoi). (684)
For if you will multiply eleven and a quarter days by eight, you will come out
to ninety days, which equal three months. Now if you divide the eight-year
periods into four hundred seventy-five years, your quotient will be fifty-nine
plus three months. These fifty-nine plus eight-year periods produce enough
intercalary months to make up fifteen years, more or less; and if you will add these fifteen years to the four hundred
seventy-five years, you will come out to seventy weeks of years, that is, a
total of four hundred and ninety years."
Africanus has expressed his views in these very words which we have copied
out. Let us pass on to Eusebius Pamphili [the famous church historian, who
assumed the cognomen Pamphili in honor of his beloved mentor, Bishop Pamphilus],
who in the eighth book of his Euangelike Apodeixis [the full title was Euangelikes
Apodeixeos Proparaskeue or "Preparation for the Demonstration of the
Gospel"; the Latin title is Praeparatio Evangelica] ventures
some such conjecture as this: "It does not seem to me that the seventy
weeks have been divided up without purpose, in that seven is mentioned first,
and then sixty-two, and then a last week is added, which in turn is itself
divided into two parts. For it is written: 'Thou shalt know and understand that
from the issuing of the word (command) that the petition be granted and
Jerusalem be built until Christ the Prince there shall be seven weeks and
sixty-two weeks.' And after the rest which he relates in the intervening
section, he states at the end: 'He shall confirm a testimony (covenant) with
many during one week.' It is clear that the angel did not detail these things in
his reply to no purpose or apart from the inspiration of God. This observation
seems to require some cautious and careful reasoning, so that the reader may pay
diligent attention and inquire into the cause for this division (variant:
vision). But if we must express our own opinion, in conformity with the rest of
the interpretation which concerns this present context, in the angel's
statement: 'From the issuing of the word that the petition be granted and that
Jerusalem be built, until the time of Christ the Prince,' we are only to think
of other princes who had charge of the Jewish people subsequent to this prophecy
and subsequent to the return from Babylon. That is to say, we are to think of
the arkhiereis [high priests] and pontiffs to whom the Scripture attaches
the title of christs, by reason of the fact that they have been anointed. The
first of these was Jesus [Jeshua] the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and
then the rest who had that office up until the time of the advent of our Lord
and Savior. And it is these who are intended by the prophet's prediction when it
states: 'From the issuing of the word that the petition be granted and Jerusalem
be built even unto Christ the Prince
there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks.' (685) That is to say, the
purpose is that seven weeks be counted off, and then afterward sixty-two weeks,
which come to a total of four hundred and eighty-three years after the time of
Cyrus. And lest we appear to be putting forth a mere conjecture too rashly and
without testing the truth of our statements, let us reckon up those who bore
office as christs over the people from the time of Jeshua, the son of Jehozadak,
until the advent of the Lord; that is to say, those who were anointed for the
high priesthood. First, then, as we have already stated, subsequent to Daniel's
prophecy, which occurred in the reign of Cyrus, and subsequent to the return of
(p. 545) the people from Babylon, Jeshua the son of Jehozadak was the high
priest, and together with Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, they laid the
foundations of the temple. And because the undertaking was hindered by the
Samaritans and the other surrounding nations, seven weeks of years elapsed (that
is to say, forty-nine years), during which the work on the temple remained
unfinished. These weeks are separated by the prophecy from the remaining
sixty-two weeks. And lastly, the Jews also followed this view when they said to
the Lord in the Gospel-narrative: 'This temple was built over a period of
forty-six years, and shalt thou raise it up in three days' (John 2:20). For this
was the number of years which elapsed between the first year of Cyrus, who
granted to those Jews who so desired the permission to return to their
fatherland, and the sixth year of King Darius, in whose reign the entire work
upon the temple was finished. [Actually the two dates involved are 538 B.C. and
516 B.C., an interval of only twenty-two years.] Furthermore Josephus added on
three more years, during which the periboloi (precincts) and certain
other construction left undone were brought to completion; and when these are
added to the forty-six years, they come out to forty-nine years, or seven weeks
of years. And the remaining sixty-two weeks are computed from the seventh year
of Darius. At that time Jeshua the son of Jehozadak, and Zerubbabel (who had
already reached his majority) were in charge of the people, and it was in their
time that Haggai and Zechariah prophesied. After them came Ezra and Nehemiah
from Babylon and constructed the walls of the city during the high priesthood of
Joiakim, son of Jeshua, who had the surname of Jehozadak. After him Eliashib
succeeded to the priesthood, then
Joiada and Johanan after him. Following him there was Jaddua, in whose lifetime
Alexander, the king of the Macedonians, founded Alexandria, (686) as (A)
Josephus relates in his books of the Antiquities, and actually came to
Jerusalem and offered blood-sacrifices in the Temple. Now Alexander died in the
one hundred and thirteenth Olympiad, in the two hundred thirty-sixth year of the
Persian Empire, which in turn had begun in the first year of the fifty-fifth
Olympiad. That was the date when Cyrus, King of the Persians, conquered the
Babylonians and Chaldeans. After the death of the priest Jaddua, who had been in
charge of the temple in Alexander's reign, Onias received the high priesthood.
It was at this period that Seleucus, after the conquest of Babylon, placed upon
his own head the crown of all Syria and Asia, in the twelfth year after
Alexander's death. Up to that time the years which had elapsed since the rule of
Cyrus, when computed together, were two hundred and forty-eight. From that date
the Scripture of the Maccabees computes the kingdom of the Greeks. Following
Onias, the high priest Eleazar became head of the Jews. That was the period when
the Seventy translators (Septuaginta interpretes) are said to have
translated the Holy Scriptures into Greek at Alexandria. After him came Onias
II, who was followed by Simon, who ruled over the people when Jesus the son of
Sirach wrote the book which bears the Greek title of Panaretos ("A
Completely Virtuous Man"), and which is by most people falsely attributed
to Solomon. Another Onias followed him in the high priesthood, and that was the
period when Antiochus was trying to force the Jews to sacrifice to the gods of
the Gentiles. After the death of Onias, Judas Maccabaeus cleansed the Temple and
smashed to bits the statues of the idols. His brother Jonathan followed him, (p.
546) and after Jonathan their brother Simon governed the people. By his death
the two hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Syrian kingdom had elapsed, and
the First Book of Maccabees contains a record of events up to that time. And so
the total number of years from the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, until
the end of the First Book of Maccabees and the death of the high priest Simon is
four hundred twenty-five. After him John [Hyrcanus] occupied the high priesthood
for twenty-nine years, and upon his death Aristobulus became head of the people
for a year and was the first man
after the return from Babylon to associate with the dignity of high priesthood
the authority of kingship. His successor was Alexander, who likewise was high
priest and king, and who governed the people for twenty-seven years. Up to this
point, the number of years from the first year of Cyrus and the return of the
captives who desired to come back to Judaea is to be computed at four hundred
and eighty-three. This total is made up of the seven weeks and the sixty-two
weeks, or sixty-nine weeks altogether. And during this whole period high priests
ruled over the Jewish people, and I now believe that they are those referred to
as christ-princes. And when the last of them, Alexander, had died, the Jewish
nation was rent in this direction and that into various factions, and was
harrassed by internal seditions in its leaderless condition; and that too to
such an extent that Alexandra, who was also called Salina, and who was the wife
of the same Alexander, seized power and kept the high priesthood for her son,
Hyrcanus. But she passed on the royal power to her other son, Aristobulus, and
he exercised it for ten years. But when the brothers fought with each other in
civil war and the Jewish nation was drawn into various factions, then Gnaeus
Pompey, the general of the Roman army, came upon the scene. Having captured
Jerusalem, he penetrated even to the shrine in the temple which was called the
Holy of holies. He sent Aristobulus back to Rome in chains, keeping him for his
triumphal procession, and then he gave the high priesthood to his brother,
Hyrcanus. Then for the first time the Jewish nation became tributary to the
Romans. Succeeding him, Herod, the son of Antipater, received the royal
authority over the Jews by senatorial decree, after Hyrcanus had been killed;
and so he was the first foreigner to become governor of the Jews. Moreover when
his parents had died, he handed over the high priesthood to his children, even
though they were non-Jews, utterly contrary to the law of Moses. Nor did he
entrust the office to them for long, (B) except upon their granting him favors
and bribes, for he despised the commands of God's law."
The same Eusebius offered another explanation also, and if we wanted to
translate it into Latin, we should greatly expand the size of this book. And so
the sense of his interpretation is this, that the number of years from the sixth
year of Darius, who reigned after
Cyrus and his son, Cambyses, ---- and this was the date when the work on the
temple was completed ---- until the time of Herod and Caesar Augustus is
reckoned to be seven weeks plus sixty-two weeks, which make a total of four
hundred eighty-three years. (688) That was the date when the christ, that is to
say, Hyrcanus, being the last high priest of the Maccabaean line, was murdered
by Herod, and the succession of high priests came to an end, so far as the law
of God was concerned. It was then also that a Roman army (p. 547) under the
leadership of a Roman general devastated both the city and the sanctuary itself.
Or else it was Herod himself who committed the devastation, after he had through
the Romans appropriated to himself a governmental authority to which he had no
right. And as for the angel's statement, "For he shall establish a compact
with many for one week (variant: "a compact for many weeks"), and in
the midst of the week the sacrifice and offering shall cease," it is to be
understood in this way, that Christ was born while Herod was reigning in Judaea
and Augustus in Rome, and He preached the Gospel for three years and six months,
according to John the Evangelist. And he established the worship of the true God
with many people, undoubtedly meaning the Apostles and believers generally. And
then, after our Lord's passion, the sacrifice and offering ceased in the middle
of the week. For whatever took place in the Temple after that date was not a
valid sacrifice to God but a mere worship of the devil, while they all cried out
together, "His blood be upon us and upon our children" (Matt. 27:25);
and again, "We have no king but Caesar." Any reader who is interested
may look up this passage in the Chronicle of this same Eusebius, for I
translated it into Latin many years ago. But as for his statement that the
number of years to be reckoned from the completion of the temple to the tenth
year of the Emperor Augustus, that is, when Hyrcanus was slain and Herod
obtained Judaea, amounts to a total of seven plus sixty-two weeks, or four
hundred eighty-three years, we may check it in the following fashion. The
building of the temple was finished in the seventy-sixth (here and in the other
place read: "sixty-seventh" ---- Migne) Olympiad, which was the sixth
year of Darius. In the third year of the one hundred and eighty-sixth Olympiad,
that is, the tenth year of Augustus, Herod seized the rule over the Jews. This
makes the interval four hundred and eighty-three years, reckoning up by the individual Olympiads and computing them
at four years each. This same Eusebius reports another view as well, which I do
not entirely reject (A), that most authorities extend the one [last] week of
years to the sum of seventy years, reckoning each year as a ten-year period
[reading the corrupt upputatio as supputatio]. They also claim
that thirty-five years intervened between the passion of the Lord and the reign
of Nero, and that it was at this latter date when the weapons of Rome were first
(689) lifted up against the Jews, this being the half-way point of the week of
seventy years. After that, indeed, from the time of Vespasian and Titus (and it
was right after their accession to power that Jerusalem and the temple were
burned) up to the reign of Trajan another thirty-five years elapsed. And this,
they assert, was the week of which the angel said to Daniel: "And he shall
establish a compact with many for one week." For the Gospel was preached by
the Apostles all over the world, since they survived even unto that late date.
According to the tradition of the church historians, John the Evangelist lived
up to the time of Trajan. Yet I am at a loss to know how we can understand the
earlier seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks to involve seven years each, and
just this last one to involve ten years for each unit of the seven, or seventy
years in all.
So much for Eusebius. But Hippolytus has expressed the following opinion
concerning these same weeks (B): he reckons the seven weeks as prior to the
return of the people from Babylon, and the sixty-two weeks as subsequent to
their return and extending to the birth of Christ. But the dates do not (p. 548)
agree at all. If indeed the duration of the Persian Empire be reckoned at two
hundred and thirty years, and the Macedonian Empire at three hundred, and the
period thereafter up to the birth of the Lord be thirty years, then the total
from the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, King of the Persians, until the advent
of the Savior will be five hundred and sixty years. Moreover Hippolytus places
the final week at the end of the world and divides it into the period of Elias
and the period of Antichrist, so that during the [first] three and a half years
of the last week the knowledge of God is established. And as for the statement,
"He shall establish a compact with many for a week" (Dan. 9:27),
during the other three years under the Antichrist the sacrifice and offering
shall cease. But when Christ shall
come and shall slay the wicked one by the breath of His mouth, desolation shall
hold sway till the end.
On the other hand
Apollinarius of Laodicea in his investigation of the
problem breaks away from the stream of the past and directs his longing desires
towards the future, very unsafely venturing an opinion concerning matters so
obscure.
And if by any chance those of future generations should not see these
predictions of his fulfilled at the time he set, then they will be forced to
seek for some other solution and to convict the teacher himself of erroneous
interpretation. And so, in order to avoid the appearance of slandering a man as
having made a statement he never made, he makes the following assertion ---- and
I translate him word for word:
"To the period of four hundred and ninety
years the wicked deeds are to be confined (690) as well as all the crimes which
shall ensue from those deeds. After these shall come the times of blessing, and
the world is to be reconciled unto God at the advent of Christ, His Son. For
from the coming forth of the Word, when Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, to
the forty-ninth year, that is, the end of the seven weeks, [God] waited for
Israel to repent. Thereafter, indeed, from the eighth year of Claudius Caesar
[i.e., 48 A.D.] onward, the Romans took up arms against the Jews. For it was in
His thirtieth year, according to the Evangelist Luke, that the Lord incarnate
began His preaching of the Gospel (Luke 1) [sic!]. According to the Evangelist
John (John 2 and 11), Christ completed two years over a period of three
passovers. The years of Tiberius' reign from that point onward are to be
reckoned at six; then there were the four years of the reign of Gaius Caesar,
surnamed Caligula, and eight more years in the reign of Claudius. This makes a
total of forty-nine years, or the equivalent of seven weeks of years. But when
four hundred thirty-four years shall have elapsed after that date, that is to
say, the sixty-two weeks, then [i.e. in 482 A.D.] Jerusalem and the Temple shall
be rebuilt during three and a half years within the final week, beginning with
the advent of Elias, who according to the dictum of our Lord and Savior (Luke 1)
[sic!] is going to come and turn back the hearts of the fathers towards their
children. And then the Antichrist shall come, and according to the Apostle
[reading
apostolum for
apostolorum] he is going to sit in the
temple of God (II Thess. 2) and be slain by the breath of our Lord and Savior
after he has waged war against the saints. And thus it shall come to pass that
the middle of the week shall mark the confirmation of God's covenant with the
saints, and the middle of the week in turn shall mark the issuing of the decree
under the authority of Antichrist that no more sacrifices be offered. For the
Antichrist shall set up the abomination of desolation, that is, an idol or
statue of his own god, within the Temple. Then shall ensue the final devastation
and the condemnation of the Jewish people, who after their rejection of Christ's
truth shall embrace the lie of the Antichrist. Moreover this same Apollinarius
asserts that he conceived this idea about the proper dating from the fact that
Africanus, (p. 549) the author of the
Tempora [
Chronology],
whose
explanation I have inserted above,
affirms that the final week will occur at the
end of the world. Yet, says Apollinarius, it is impossible that periods so
linked together be wrenched apart, but rather the time-segments must all be
joined together in conformity with Daniel's prophecy.
The learned scholar Clement, presbyter of the church at Alexandria, regards
the number of years as a matter of slight consequence, (691) asserting that the
seventy weeks of years were completed by the span of time from the reign of
Cyrus, King of the Persians, to the reign of the Roman emperors, Vespasian and
Titus; that is to say, the interval of four hundred and ninety years, with the
addition in that same figure of the two thousand three hundred days of which we
made earlier mention. He attempts to reckon in these seventy weeks the ages of
the Persians, Macedonians, and Caesars, even though according to the most
careful computation, the number of years from the first year of Cyrus, King of
the Persians and Medes, when Darius also bore rule, up to the reign of Vespasian
and the destruction of the Temple amounts to six hundred and thirty.
When Origen came to deal with [reading praefuisset instead of profuisset]
this chapter, he urged us to seek out what information we do not possess; and
because he had no leeway for allegorical interpretation, in which one may argue
without constraint, but rather was restricted to matters of historical fact, he
made this brief observation in the tenth volume of the Stromata: "We
must quite carefully ascertain the amount of time between
the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, and the advent of Christ, and
discover how many years were involved, and what events are said to have occurred
during them. Then we must see whether we can fit these data in with the time of
the Lord's coming."
We may learn what
Tertullian had to say on the subject by consulting the book
which he wrote against the Jews
(Contra Judaeos), and his remarks may be
set forth in brief: "How, then, are we to show that Christ came within the
sixty-two (A) weeks? This calculation begins with the first year of Darius,
since that was the time when the vision itself was revealed to Daniel. For he
was told: 'Understand and conclude from (B) the prophesying (692) of the command
for me to give thee this reply. ...' Hence we are to commence our computation
with the first year of Darius, when Daniel beheld this vision. Let us see, then,
how the years are fulfilled up to the advent of Christ. Darius reigned nineteen
(p. 550) years; Artaxerxes forty years; the Ochus who was surnamed Cyrus
twenty-four years; (C) Argus, one year. Then Darius II, who was called Melas,
twenty-one (D) years. Alexander the Macedonian reigned twelve years. And then
after Alexander (who had ruled over both the Medes and the Persians, after he
had conquered them, and had established his rule in Alexandria, calling it after
his own name), Soter reigned (E) there in Alexandria for thirty-five years, and
was succeeded by Philadelphus, who reigned for thirty-eight years (F). After him
Euergetes reigned for twenty-five years, and then Philopator for seventeen
years, followed by Epiphanes for twenty-four years. Furthermore the second
Euergetes ruled for twenty (G) and nine years, and Soter for thirty-eight years.
Ptolemy [sic!] for thirty-seven (H) years, and Cleopatra for twenty years and
five months (I). Furthermore Cleopatra shared the rule with Augustus for
thirteen years. After Cleopatra Augustus reigned forty-three years more. For all
of the years of the reign of Augustus were fifty-six in number. And let us see
(variant: we see) that in the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus, who
ruled after the death of Cleopatra (J), (693) Christ was born. And this same
Augustus lived on for fifteen years after the time when Christ was born. And so
the resultant periods of years up to the day of Christ's birth and the
forty-first year of Augustus, after the death of Cleopatra [actually only
twenty-nine years after
Cleopatra's death ---- the language here is confusing], come to the total figure
of
four hundred and thirty-seven years and five months. This means that
sixty-two and a half weeks were used up, or the equivalent of four hundred and
thirty-seven years and six months, by the day when Christ was born. Then eternal
righteousness was revealed, and the Saint of saints was anointed, namely Christ,
and the vision and prophecy were sealed, and those sins were remitted which are
allowed through faith in Christ's name to all who believe in Him." But what
is the meaning of the statement that the "vision and prophecy are confirmed
by a seal"? It means that all the prophets made proclamation concerning
[Christ] Himself, saying that He was going to come and that He would have to
suffer. Hence we read shortly thereafter in this Tertullian passage, "The
years were fifty-six in number; furthermore, Cleopatra continued to reign
jointly under Augustus...." (p. 551) It was because the prophecy was
fulfilled by His advent that the vision was confirmed by a seal; and it was
called a prophecy because Christ Himself is the seal of all the prophets,
fulfilling as He did all that the prophets had previously declared concerning
Him.
Of course after His advent and His passion (variant; the passion of
Christ), there is no longer any vision or prophecy (variant: or prophet) which
declares that Christ will come [?]. And then a little later Tertullian says,
"Let us see what is the meaning of (A) the seven and a half weeks, which in
turn are divided up into a subsection of earlier weeks; by what transaction were
they fulfilled? Well, after Augustus, (B) who lived on after Christ's birth,
fifteen years elapsed. He was succeeded by Tiberius Caesar, and he held sway for
twenty-two years, seven months and twenty-eight (C) days. In the fifteenth year
of his reign (D) Christ suffered, being about (694) thirty-three when He
suffered. Then there was Gaius Caesar, also named Caligula, who reigned for
three years, eight months and thirteen days. [Note that Claudius' reign of 13
years is here omitted.] Nero reigned for nine years, nine months and thirteen
days. Galba ruled for seven months and twenty-eight (E) days; Otho for three
months and five days; and Vitellius for eight months and twenty-eight (F) days.
Vespasian vanquished the Jews in the first year of his reign, bringing the
number of years to a total of fifty-two, plus six months. For he ruled for
eleven years, and so
by the date of his storming Jerusalem, the Jews had completed the seventy weeks foretold by
Daniel."
As for the view which
the Hebrews hold concerning this passage, I shall set
it forth summarily and within a brief compass, leaving the credibility of their
assertions to those who asserted them. And so let me put it in the form of a
paraphrase
(paraphrastikds) in order to bring out the sense more clearly.
"O Daniel, know that from this day on which I now speak to thee (and that
was the first year of the Darius who slew Belshazzar and transferred the
Chaldean Empire to the Medes and Persians) unto the seventieth
week of years
(that is,
four hundred and ninety years) the following events shall befall thy
people in stages [literally: part by part]. First of all, God shall be appeased
by thee in view of the earnest intercession thou hast just offered Him, and sin
shall be canceled out and the transgression shall come to an end. For although
the city at present lies deserted and the Temple lies destroyed to its very
foundations [reading
fundamenta for the non-existent
frudamenta],
so that the nation is plunged into mourning, yet within a fairly short time
it shall be restored. And not only shall it come to pass within these
seventy
weeks that the city shall be rebuilt and the Temple restored, but also the
Christ, who is the eternal righteousness, shall be born. (p. 552) And so shall
the vision and the prophecy be sealed, with the result that there shall be no
more any prophet to be found in Israel, and the Saint of saints shall be
anointed. We read concerning Him in the Psalter: 'Because God, even Thy God,
hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness (695) above thy fellows' (Ps. 44:8
=45:7). And in another passage He says of Himself: 'Be ye holy, for I also am
holy' (Lev. 19:2). Know therefore that from this day on which I speak to thee
and make thee the promise by the word of the Lord that
the nation shall return
and Jerusalem shall be restored, there shall be sixty-two weeks numbered unto
the time of Christ the Prince and of the perpetual desolation of the Temple; and
that there shall also be seven weeks in which the two events shall take place
which I have already mentioned, namely that the nation shall return and the
street shall be rebuilt by Nehemiah and Ezra. And so at the end of the weeks the
decree of God shall be accomplished in distressing times, when the Temple shall
again be destroyed, and the city taken captive. For after the sixty-two weeks the Christ shall be slain, and the nation who shall
reject Him shall go out of existence" ---- or, as the Jews themselves put
it, the kingdom of Christ which they imagined they would retain (G) shall not
even be. And why do I speak of the slaying of Christ, and of the nation's utter
forfeiture of God's help, since the Roman people were going to demolish the city
and sanctuary under Vespasian, the leader who was to come? Upon his death t
he
seven weeks or forty-nine years were complete, and after the city of Aelia was
established upon the ruins of Jerusalem, Aelius Hadrian vanquished (H) the
revolting Jews in their conflict with the general, Timus Rufus. It was at that
time that the sacrifice and offering (ceased and) will continue to cease even
unto the completion of the age, and
the desolation is going to endure until the
very end. We are not, say the Jews, greatly impressed by the fact that the seven
weeks are mentioned first, and afterwards the sixty-two, and again a single week
divided into two parts. For it is simply the idiomatic usage of the Hebrew
language, as well as of antique Latin, that in quoting a figure, the small
number is given first and then the larger. For example, we do not, according to
good usage say in our language, "Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five
years"; on the contrary the Hebrews say, "Abraham lived five and
seventy and one hundred years" (I). And so the fulfilment is not to follow
the literal order of the words, but it shall be accomplished in terms of the
whole sum, taken together. I am also well aware that some of the Jews assert
that as for the statement about the single week, (696) "He shall establish
a covenant with many (p. 553) for one week," the division is between the
reigns of Vespasian and Hadrian. According to the history of Josephus, Vespasian
and Titus concluded peace with the Jews for three years and six month. And the
[other] three years and six months
are accounted for in Hadrian's reign, when
Jerusalem was completely destroyed and the Jewish nation was massacred in large
groups at a time, with the result that they were even expelled from the borders
of Judaea. This is what the Hebrews have to say on the subject, paying little
attention to the fact that from the first year of Darius, King of the Persians,
until the final overthrow of Jerusalem, which befell them under Hadrian, the
period involved is a hundred and seventy-four Olympiads or six hundred
ninety-six years, which total up to ninety-nine Hebrew weeks plus three years ---- that being the time when
Barcochebas, the leader of the Jews, was crushed and Jerusalem was demolished to
the very ground.
Jerome /
Ιερώνυμος,
Commentary on Daniel / Υπόμνημα στον Δανιήλ,
transl. Gleason L. Archer,
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958,
pp. 542-553 [15-157].
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