by digderidoo 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I have been told by a JW that 36ce ends Daniels 70 week prophecy, how do they work this out?
I know the starting point is 455bce, but could someone elaborate? The guy has stated it as matter of fact, it sort of smells like the 1914 prophecy to me, but may be i'm wrong.
Paul
Its somewhat different than the 1914 one as the 70 weeks prophecy isnt dependant on the day for a year principle. Bible commentries state this. The 70 weeks is the final biblical prophecy. Some people beleive the last week in this prophecy isnt fulfilled until the end of time.
The day year principle shouldnt be used in the 1914 prophecy because the word day isnt in the verse at all. The day year is not used consistently in every case in predictive prophecy.
In Daniel 9 : 24-27, 70 weeks (they calculate 7 x 70 = 490 years) are prophecied between the word to rebuild Jerusalem (- 455) and the end of the time the covenant has been kept in force (baptism of Cornelius, + 36) .
From Daniel 5 : 23 - 26, they understand that there are 7 times between the fall of Jerusalem (they say - 607) and God appointing Jesus as king in 1914 : On the basis of 360 day years, They (Fred FRANZ did) calculate 7 x 360 = 2520 years. 607 + 1914 - 1 (year zero thing) = 2520. Don't ask why they switch from 360 day years to 365 day years...
If those 7 times were calculated out of 365 day years, and assuming we keep the - 607 date as the start of the period of time, we would get 7 x 365 = 2555 years, and 1914 would become 1949 (607 + 1949 - 1 = 2555) as the beginning of the last days ! and if we agree with historians who say that Jerusalem fell in - 587, the last days began in 1969...
Just add 120 years to make room for anti typical Noah's days and you expect ARMAGEDDON FOR 2089, or 2069 (about the date Issac NEWTON foresaw) if you stick to - 607.
What is the difference mathematically if the ' 7 times' is referring to seven generations ?
Cameo,
just find a duration for a generation and play with figures, there's no limit to it.
I have read that the 2520 equates somehow to the 42 months mentioned in Revelation. Can you all tell me more?
I would like to point out that the Society's interpretation is an Adventist variant of the late Christian interpretation (and reworking of the text) that has been in vogue since the third century AD onward. It is hardly what the author originally intended which can be grasped by comparing ch. 9 with the similar apocalyptic visions in ch. 7, 8, and 11 and also by comparing ch. 9 with similar, cognate surveys of history written in roughly the same period (such as the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch). Among other things, the prevailing Christian interpretation has conflated two separate "anointed" figures that were originally separated from each other by a span of 434 years (62 weeks), interpreted the second "anointed one" as a "messiah" figure, and by starting the reckoning of the 70 weeks as late as the generation of Nehemiah, it has obscured the relationship between the "70 weeks of years" with the original "70 years" of Jeremiah.
The point of the apocalyptic survey in ch. 9 is to explain why the Temple in Jerusalem was defiled by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the 160s BC (compare the motifs in 9:27 with those in ch. 11, especially with respect to the installation of the "abomination of desolation," 1 Maccabees 1:54), centuries after the city was supposed to be restored and brought to perfection as promised by Jeremiah. The answer provided by the angel Gabriel is that the 70 years of the "desolations of Jerusalem" (9:2; notice the plural) had not really ended yet -- they were 70 sabbatical years, such that the Jeremiah's 70 years was really 490 years. It was during that period of time that "your people and your holy city" was supposed to atone for the sins accumulated by the old kingdom of Judah. Since the putative author was portrayed in the outset of ch. 9 as pouring over the prophecies of Jeremiah, the "word" to rebuild Jerusalem is that "word of YHWH" given to Jeremiah in 587 BC (cf. Jeremiah 30:18, 31:38-40, 32:37-44, and see the reference to the "word of YHWH addressed to Jeremiah" in 32:1 that was given while Nebuchadnezzar was besieging Jerusalem). Daniel's prayer in v. 4-19 is occasioned by the demand for repentance in Leviticus 26:40, the "curse and imprecation written in the Law of Moses" (v. 11) is none other than the one in Leviticus 26:14-39, and the stipulation in that curse that Israel be punished sevenfold (Leviticus 26:21, 23, 27) is the rationale behind expanding the 70 years into 490 years in v. 24. This also makes the initial total of 70 years equivalent to the number of sabbatical years in 490 years (Leviticus 25:1-7), and the first unit of that longer period equals seven sabbatical years, or one jubilee (49 years, cf. Leviticus 25:8-11), with the fiftieth year being a year of return from slavery to one's homelands. This period corresponds to the length of the Babylonian exile, with the jubilee year corresponding to the beginning of the 62 weeks which is heralded by the coming of an anointed leader, which from ancient times was interpreted to be Jeshua son of Jozadek, the "son of oil" (Ezra 3:8, Zechariah 3:1-9, 4:14), the first high priest after the exile (cf. "Now what khristos does he mean but Jeshua son of Jozadek, who then returned with the people and in the 70th year upon the rebuilding of the temple offered sacrifices according to the Law? For all kings and priests are called khristoi", Hippolytus, On Daniel 2.13-14). The 62 weeks that transpire henceforth correspond to the period when Jerusalem is rebuilt and when the restored priesthood "anoints the Holy of Holies" (9:24). This priesthood then comes to an end at the close of the 62 weeks when "an anointed one" (not "the Messiah", as the NWT renders the term) is cut off. This same event is mentioned in the apocalyptic surveys in ch. 11 (the destroying of the "prince of the covenant" in 11:22) and the Animal Apocalypse (in 1 Enoch 90:8), i.e. the end of the post-exilic Zadokite high priesthood in the assassination of Onias III in 171 BC. This starts the final 70th week (later Christian attempts to disentangle this period from the chronographical scheme of the 69 weeks represent a patently eisegetical move unmotivated by the text), which itself is subdivided at the halfway point by the cessation of sacrifice and oblation and the installation of the "abomination of desolation" by the "desolator". This event corresponds to Antiochus Epiphanes' profanation of the Temple and cessation of the Tamid sacrifice in 168 BC (halfway between the assassination of Onias III in 171 BC and the restoration of the Temple in 164 BC), the same event mentioned in the cognate visions in 7:25, 8:9-14, 23-25, 11:31-35, 12:11-12. Even Josephus in the late first century AD said that the prophet Daniel declared that "there should arise a certain king that should overcome our nation and their laws, and should take away their political government, and should spoil the temple, and forbid the sacrifices to be offered for three years' time. And indeed it so came to pass, that our nation suffered these things under Antiochus Epiphanes, according to Daniel's vision" (Antiquities, 10.11.7).
If you examine most major Bible commentaries (such as by Montgomery, Charles, Collins, Gowan, Goldingay, Hartman & DiLella, Porteous, Lacocque, etc.), you would find a similar explanation of the "70 weeks" as given here.
a tim, tims and haffa tim, as we used to recite over a beer
