Jack Kinsella has ventured once again into the charlatanic arena of "amazing" biblical prophecy fulfillments. This time he blessed readers of his Omega Letter with a countdown to the "rapture," which he has determined from Daniel's prophecy of the "seventy weeks" (Dan. 9:24-27) is just around the corner. This particular prophecy has probably been twisted and distorted by prophecy-fulfillment snake doctors more than any other single biblical prophecy, and, believe me, that is saying a lot. The interpretations of this particular prophecy have been so diverse that it would be impossible to summarize all of them in one article, but I will mention one of them before I take Kinsella's article apart and show that his "fulfillment" scenario is no more credible than any of the others. In The Coming Prince, for example, Sir Robert Anderson presented a fulfillment scenario of this prophecy, which claimed that it was fulfilled to the very day when Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem as described in Matthew 21:1-11 and its parallel accounts in Mark 11:1-10 and Luke 19:29-38. I mention Anderson's fulfillment scenario to show just how much the prophecy-fulfillment experts disagree on what Daniel meant. Anderson claimed that it was fulfilled to the very day at the time of an event in the life of Jesus, but Kinsella--or rather whatever prophecy "expert" he was parroting--claims that it has not yet been fulfilled but will be very soon. Hence, two popular fulfillment scenarios are more than two thousand years apart in their claims of when the Daniel-9 prophecy was or will be fulfilled. Both of them parade their fulfillment scenarios with arrogant certitude before their respectively gullible audiences.
Those who are interested in seeing how ridiculous Anderson's fulfillment scenario was can go to the July 1999 archives of the old alt.bible.errancy forum to read an extended debate on this issue, which began with a diehard disciple of Anderson presenting the fulfillment claim and ended 18 months later when he finally admitted that Anderson's count of 173,880 days from his beginning date (Julian March 14, 445 BC) to his end date (Julian April 6, AD 32) was calendrically indefensible. Those of us who opposed this idiot did everything but draw pictures for him, but the evidence that finally forced him to admit that Anderson was wrong was our calculations based on Julian Day Numbers, the same astronomical system of dating that I used in "Ezekiel's 'Exact' Prophecy of the Restoration of Israel" to show irreparable flaws in Kinsella's claim that the prophecy in Ezekiel 4:1-8 was fulfilled to the very day when Israel declared its independence on May 14,1948. Those who want to equip themselves to dissect "exact, to-the-very-day" prophecy fulfillment claims should take the time to learn how to apply Julian Day Numbers to the the fulfillment claims. It is usually the simplest way to prove them wrong.
In taking apart Kinsella's fulfillment scenario of Daniel 9:24-27 to show that it is just as untenable as his spin on Ezekiel 4, I will follow my practice of using Kinsella and Till headers so that readers will be able to follow who is saying what. I will do Kinsella a favor and correct his punctuation so that readers won't think that his article was written by someone who never attended a class in which punctuation rules were discussed.
Kinsella:
Sometimes it looks like the population of Planet Earth has taken a
collective vacation from
sanity.
Till:
For once, Kinsella has said something that I agree with. Every time I
read a
prophecy-fulfillment article in the Omega Letter or some other
similar forum, I can't
help thinking that the population of planet Earth has taken a
collective vacation from sanity.
I have a long-standing challenge that I will repeat here so that
Kinsella can dodge it. I
defy any proponent of prophecy fulfillments to produce a single
verifiable case of biblical
prophecy fulfillment. It simply cannot be done, because when the
same standards of
evidence are applied to biblical prophecy-fulfillment claims that
reasonable people would
apply to nonbiblical prophecies, the claims of biblical prophecy
fulfillments
simply cannot pass muster. If Kinsella wants to try to prove me wrong
on this, I will make
this website available for him to do so. I predict that we will hear
nothing from him.
Kinsella:
The opening shots in the war on terror on 9/11 were an insane act on
the part of al-Qaeda.
The Taliban refusal to turn him over in the aftermath was an act of
political and personal
insanity.
Till:
Turn him over? Kinsella is apparently so uninformed that he
doesn't even know that
al-Qaeda is an organization. It isn't a person, so there was no
way way that the
Taliban, which is another organization, could have turned him
over. Furthermore, since
members of al-Qaeda are scattered all over the world, there was no way
that the ruling
religious party in Afghanistan could have turned them all over.
And this guy Kinsella presumes to tell us about exact biblical prophecy fulfillments? Incredible!
Kinsella:
India and Pakistan are on the verge of outright nuclear war--a military
and strategic
insanity. The Europeans believe Yasser Arafat will keep his word to
make peace if Israel
surrenders--insane behavior at so many levels it defies description.
Till:
Yes, it is almost as insane as believing that the lying, chickenhawk
leaders of our present
government could be trusted to keep their word. I say this only because
Kinsella's website
indicates that he is a Bush sycophant, and admiring that man is an
insane behavior at so many
levels that it too defies description.
Kinsella:
But through the seeming insanity one can detect good, orderly
direction. All one needs to do
is recognize the signs of the times.
Till:
And, of course, Jack Kinsella is just the one who can tell us all about
the signs of the times.
No doubt, he can tell us about the signs of the times with about as
much accuracy as he
calculated his
to-the-very-day
fulfillment of the prophecy in Ezekiel 4.
Kinsella:
The Hebrew prophet Daniel was given a complete outline of Israel's
future history, broken
into subdivisions of time of seven years each. In Hebrew, "shabua", [sic]
translated
as "week" in
Daniel
9:26, is a "week of
years," in much the same way the Greek system is in use today. A
"decade" denotes ten years
in the way a "shabua" or "week" denotes a period of seven years.
Till:
I will show that Kinsella's claim of "a complete outline of Israel's
future history" in
Daniel 9:26 falls completely apart under scrutiny, but I will wait
until he sticks his foot
into his mouth on this issue before I shove it farther in.
Kinsella:
Daniel was told by the revealing angel that "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"
[Daniel
9:24].
Till:
Here is lesson one for those who want to prepare themselves to
rebut the claims of
those who try to peddle prophecy-fulfillment claims. Don't let the
proponent of the
fulfillment claim get away with quoting the prophetic statement out of
context. Force him to
show that the full context of the statement supports his interpretation
of it,
because the very first criterion of valid prophecy fulfillment
is that the one who makes
the fulfillment claim must prove that the prophetic statement on which
he is basing his claim
meant what he is saying that it meant. As we will see when I dismantle
Kinsella's fulfillment
scenario below, he--or rather the proponents of the scenario that he is
parroting--claims that
the 70 weeks of Daniel 9:24 began in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes,
which Kinsella claims
was 444 BC. Before I shoot this fulfillment claim full of holes, I am
first going to take the
time to explicate the broader context of Daniel 9:24ff to show
that it was never
intended to mean what Kinsella and his like-minded cohorts distort it
to mean.
Daniel 9 opens with Daniel saying that in the first year of the reign of "Darius," he [Daniel] had come to "understand by the books the number of the years whereof the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the accomplishing of the seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem" (v:2). Then Daniel explained that he had "set his face toward Yahweh God to make request by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes" (v: 4). Daniel prayed to Yahweh and made confession of the iniquities of the people, which he specified in verses 5 through 7. In verses 8 through 15, the prayer continued, and Daniel acknowledged that "all Israel" had transgressed and had not kept Yahweh's word and walked according to his laws that he had set before them by the prophets. Daniel stated that he realized that God had poured out on Israel the "curse and the oath" that had been spoken by Moses (a probable reference to the tirade attributed to Moses in Deuteronomy 29-31). Beginning with verse 16, Daniel prayed that Yahweh would "let [his] anger be turned away from [his] city of Jerusalem" and "incline his ear toward their desolation and forgive his people" (vs:18-19).
Verse 19 said that while Daniel was speaking, praying, and confessing his sin and the sin of the people of Israel, the angel Gabriel appeared and informed him: "Oh, Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand." Now notice what Gabriel plainly said: he had come to give Daniel skill to understand. Well, understand what? Surely, he was referring to what Daniel had been praying about. He had prayed for the forgiveness of his sins and the sins of the people, a prayer that had been precipitated by Daniel's reading what Jeremiah had said about the seventy years, a clear reference to Jeremiah's prophecy that the Judean captivity in Babylon would last for 70 years (Jer. 25:11).
Gabriel continued his enlightenment of Daniel by saying, "At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved. So consider the word and understand the vision: "Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 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" (vs:23-25).
Since Daniel 9 began with the writer saying that he had come to understand "by the books" what "the number of the years" had meant when "the word of Yahweh" came to Jeremiah the prophet, the most likely interpretation of the reference to the "word going out to rebuild Jerusalem" is that this "word" was what Jeremiah twice had said about the rebuilding of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 30:18 "Thus says Yahweh, 'Behold I will bring back the captivity of Jacob's tents, and have mercy on his dwelling places. The city shall be built upon its own mound, and the palace shall remain according to its own plan.'"
Jeremiah 31:38 The days are surely coming, says Yahweh, when the city shall be rebuilt for Yahweh from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.
In both of these passages, Jeremiah spoke of what Yahweh had said about the rebuilding of Jerusalem, so since Daniel 9 began with the prophet saying that he had perceived in the books the number of years, according to the "word of Yahweh," that had to be fulfilled in the seventy years of Jerusalem's devastation spoken by Jeremiah, it is perfectly sensible to think that the "word that went forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" was the "word" that Jeremiah claimed that Yahweh had spoken to him (as quoted above). This view is strengthened by the fact that dâbâr was the Hebrew word used in verse 2 in reference to the "word of Yahweh [that] came to Jeremiah the prophet" concerning the seventy years and was also the word used in verse 25 in referring to the "word that went forth to restore and build Jerusalem." Although some English versions refer to a commandment or decree that went forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, the actual Hebrew word used here was dâbâr, which was the word most often used in the Old Testament to refer to "the word of Yahweh." These facts place on Kinsella the burden of proving that the reference to the "word that went forth" in Daniel 9:25 could not have been Yahweh's word spoken through Jeremiah to rebuild and restore Jerusalem but unequivocally had to be a "word" that was issued by Artaxerxes.
With all this in mind, let's now look at another entirely plausible meaning that this passage could have had. Gabriel said that a word went out from the beginning of Daniel's supplications. What was the subject of Daniel's supplications? He was asking that Yahweh forgive the sins of his people and turn his anger away from them and "your city Jerusalem" (v:16). Well, what was this "word" that went out? Why couldn't verse 25 mean that the word that went out "at the beginning of [Daniel's] supplication" was a word from Yahweh that Jerusalem would be rebuilt? This is a reasonable conclusion from the following information stated in this text.
So let Kinsella or any of his rapture-deluded cohorts tell us why this passage cannot be understood to mean that Gabriel was telling Daniel that the word to rebuild Jerusalem had gone out from Yahweh at the beginning of his prayer. That would be a perfectly sensible interpretation. Daniel had prayed, and Yahweh had answered his prayer at that time by sending out the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. This would necessitate beginning the 70 weeks from the time that Daniel began his prayer, but as we will see, this interpretation would put the countdown to the prophecy's fulfillment entirely too early to fit into Kinsella's fulfillment scenario, so he isn't likely to accept this view.
Another reasonable interpretation, which I personally prefer, is the one that I mentioned briefly above. The word to rebuild Jerusalem was the word that had gone out from Jeremiah in the passages that I quoted above (Jer. 30:18; Jer. 31:38). This view can be justified by the fact that the whole context of this chapter began with Daniel's claim that he had come to understand the number of years that had to be fulfilled for the desolations of Jerusalem, according to the word of Jeremiah. Daniel prayed for enlightenment, and Gabriel came to enlighten him and tell him that the seventy years of Jeremiah were actually seven weeks [of years]. Since Jeremiah's prophecy concerned how long the Judeans would be in captivity, no "fulfillment" of Daniel's understanding of Jeremiah's prophecy could begin with a decree issued by Artaxerxes, who reigned years after the Babylonian captivity was over, but the "fulfillment" would have to be dated from the time of Jeremiah. In other words, the 70 weeks had to begin with either the word that Jeremiah spoke or Daniel's prayer. As I have already explained above, since Jeremiah had said in 30:18 that Yahweh would rebuild Jerusalem, it is entirely plausible that the word that "went out" in Daniel 9:25 was the word that Jeremiah had spoken, which he claimed was the "word of Yahweh."
Here are two very plausible interpretations of Daniel 9:25. Either one would begin the "countdown" to fulfillment much too early to fit into Kinsella's scenario, so until he can establish unequivocally that Daniel couldn't possibly have been referring to either one of these beginning points as the time when the word went out, he cannot establish a key point in his prophecy-fulfillment claim, which is that the "word" that went out was a decree issued by the Persian king Artaxerxes. This brings us back to the first criterion of prophecy fulfillment, which I mentioned earlier above: before one can claim that a prophecy was fulfilled, he must establish unequivocally that the alleged prophecy meant exactly what the one arguing for fulfillment claims that it meant. Neither Kinsella nor any of his like-minded cohorts can establish that, although I will gladly give any of them a forum here to do so if they wish to accept this challenge.
I have now explicated the 9th chapter of Daniel down to where the prophetic statement began, so I will analyze the remaining verses as I walk us through Kinsella's fulfillment scenario.
Kinsella:
In this verse
[Dan. 9:24],
we see a
six-fold purpose to be accomplished in Daniel's "Seventy Weeks" or 490
years. First, to
finish Israel's sin--the rejection of the Messiah at the First Advent.
Till:
Just where did Kinsella get the screwy idea that Daniel's prophecy here
had anything to do
with Israel's "rejection of the Messiah at the first advent"? What
exactly did Daniel say
that can by any stretch of imagination be construed to mean this?
Daniel said that he had
come to understand the meaning of "the number of years" in the word of
Yahweh spoken
through Jeremiah the prophet
(Dan. 9:2),
and Jeremiah's
seventy years had clear reference to the length of the Judean captivity
in Babylon.
Jeremiah 25:11 This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12 Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says Yahweh, making the land an everlasting waste.
Jeremiah 29:10 For thus says Yahweh: Only when Babylon's seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.
Jeremiah's 70 years referred to the Judean captivity in Babylon, so when Kinsella or anyone else tries to give it reference to "Israel's rejection of the Messiah at the first advent," he is reading into the text something that isn't there.
Kinsella:
Then there is a skip forward in time to His Second Advent, at which
time, an end will be made
of sin, reconciliation will be made for Israel's iniquity, everlasting
righteousness will
[be] introduced to Israel, Israel's Scriptures will be vindicated by
the fulfillment of all
prophecy and finally, the return of Christ at the conclusion of the war
of Armageddon, at
which time He will be anointed and will take His seat at the Throne of
David.
Till:
Wow! We have six bald-faced assertions here, none of which Kinsella or
anyone else can
successfully defend. For now, I will advise readers to wait until the
end of this article
to see my demolishment of this "skip-forward-to-a-second-advent theory,
which is a key part
of most scenarios that claim amazing fulfillments of Daniel 9:25.
Kinsella doesn't try to
defend that theory until much later, so there is no need for me to
address it until he
presents his "arguments" or rather assertions. Here, I will point out
that Kinsella has made
the same mistake that he did in his spin on
Ezekiel
4:5-6.
There, he added the 390 and 40 years to get one continuous period of
430 years, whereas a
reading of this text clearly shows that it was referring to two
separate periods of time:
390 [or 150 years, depending on what version is accepted] for the
punishment of the house
of Israel or the northern kingdom and 40 years for the punishment
of the house of
Judah or the southern kingdom. As I showed in
"Ezekiel's 'Exact'
Prophecy of the Restoration of Israel," these were clearly intended
to be two separate
time periods that overlapped and not the one continuous period that
Kinsella and his cohorts
claim. In the same way, the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 were clearly
presented as three separate
time periods, which, in this case, did add up to seventy weeks
altogether. However, the
prince, which Kinsella called "the Messiah" to dupe his readers into
thinking that it was a
prophecy of the coming of Jesus, was to come not at the end of
sixty-nine weeks, as Kinsella
claims below, but after seven weeks. There are easy ways to show that
this was the meaning of
the text. The simplest way is to read the text in a modern English
translation instead of
the archaic language of the KJV. Notice the expressions that I
emphasize in bold print
in the NRSV quotation below.
Daniel 9:24 "Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 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. 26 After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
Notice that the text plainly says that "an anointed prince" would come after seven weeks, then there would be a period of sixty-two weeks for the rebuilding of the city, and finally, after the sixty-two weeks of rebuilding, "an anointed one" would be cut off. Kinsella and his cohorts try to add the seven weeks to the sixty-two weeks to get one uninterrupted sixty-nine week period after which the "anointed one" would come, but that is not what the text says. There would be just seven weeks until the time of an anointed prince. The seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks, although apparently intended to be one continuous stretch of time, would nevertheless be interrupted by the coming of "an anointed prince" after seven weeks, which would then be followed by sixty-two weeks. That a seven-week period and then a separate sixty-two-week period were clearly meant in this text can be corroborated by simply reading the text in other modern versions.
RSV: 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. Then after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing....
That is clear enough that even Kinsella should be able to understand it. There would be seven weeks from the going forth of the word till the coming of "an anointed one." Then the city would be built again for sixty-two weeks, and then after the sixty-two weeks, "an anointed one" would be cut off. This passage was clearly predicting the coming of two different "anointed ones," one who would come after seven weeks and one who would be "cut off" after sixty-two more weeks. If Kinsella can't read this and understand it, I recommend that he take a course in elementary literary interpretation.
Other modern English translations make the meaning just as clear as the RSV and the NRSV.
REB: Know, then, and understand: from the time that the decree went forth that Jerusalem should be restored and rebuilt, seven of those seventy will pass till the appearance of one anointed, a prince; then for sixty-two it will remain restored, rebuilt with streets and conduits. At the critical time, after the sixty-two have passed, the anointed prince will be removed, and no one will take his part....
GNB: Note this and understand it: From the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until God's chosen leader comes, seven times seven years will pass. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses, and will stand for seven times sixty-two years, but this will be a time of troubles. And at the end of that time God's chosen leader will be killed unjustly....
NAB: Know and understand this: From the utterance of the word that Jerusalem was to be rebuilt until one who is anointed and a leader, there shall be seven weeks. During sixty-two weeks it shall be rebuilt, with streets and trenches, in time of affliction. After the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall be cut down when he does not possess the city....
ESV: 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. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing.
NIRN: Here is what I want you to know and understand. There will be seven 'weeks.' Then there will be 62 'weeks.' The seven 'weeks' will begin when an order is given to rebuild Jerusalem and make it like new again.
MSG: Here is what you must understand: From the time the word goes out to rebuild Jerusalem until the coming of the Anointed Leader, there will be seven sevens. The rebuilding will take sixty-two sevens, including building streets and digging a moat. Those will be rough times. After the sixty-two sevens, the Anointed Leader will be killed--the end of him.
Jewish Publication Society: You must know and understand: From the issuance of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the [time of the] anointed leader is seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it will be rebuilt, square and mote, but in a time of distress. And after those sixty-two weeks, the anointed one will disappear and vanish.
These translations all indicate that Daniel was saying that an "anointed one" would come seven weeks (49 years) after the going forth of the word to rebuild Jerusalem, that Jerusalem would then stand for 62 weeks (434 years), after which an "anointed one" would be cut off (killed). So I am not "speculating" at all when I insist that this must be regarded as a possible meaning that Daniel intended. It has very strong support from English translations, and until Kinsella and his cohorts can show us conclusively that "Daniel" could not have meant this, they have failed to make their case. The matter is that simple. Now let them deal with it or just admit that they can't.
Kinsella's interpretation is dependent on the KJV, but even it, by repunctuation, can be made to support the view that a Messiah or "anointed one" would come after seven weeks and that Jerusalem would then be rebuilt for 62 weeks, after which another "anointed one" would be cut off. Let's look at the KJ version as it was punctuated by the translators.
9:25 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. 26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off...
Please notice the punctuation marks and then compare this KJ version to the repunctuated version below, while keeping in mind that punctuation is a late invention. Hebrew did not use our modern punctuation marks.
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. 26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off....
I know from my experience in teaching English that the placing of punctuation marks can affect the idea communicated by a written statement, and it is apparent that the KJV translators punctuated this verse so that readers would think that the seven weeks and 62 weeks referred to just one continuous period that would pass until the coming of the Messiah, but as the translations above indicate, there are many scholars who do not agree with this view. Common sense should tell readers that the spin put onto this verse by the KJV translators is unlikely, for why would the writer of this verse have said that seven weeks and sixty-two weeks would pass until the coming of an anointed one? Why didn't he just say that 69 weeks would pass until an anointed one came if that was indeed what he meant? The fact that he separated the seven weeks and the 62 weeks is a clear indication that the writer was actually talking about two different time periods.
Besides the clarity of the modern English translations, there is another way to show that the writer of Daniel 9:25 clearly meant for the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks to be understood as distinctly separate periods of time. This is indicated by the presence of the Hebrew ‘atnah after seven weeks, which was a type of punctuation that in this case would indicate that the seven weeks were separate from the 62 weeks. In an explication of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9, the Jewish writer Gerald Sigal explained the function of the Hebrew ‘atnah and applied it to what he considers a flagrant mistranslation of Daniel 9:25 in the KJV, which version most prophecy-fulfillment advocates rely on when claiming this as an example of amazing prophecy fulfillment.
The punctuation mark ‘atnah functions as the main pause within a sentence. The ‘atnah is the approximate equivalent of the semicolon in the modern system of punctuation. It thus has the effect of separating the seven weeks from the sixty-two weeks: "... until an anointed one, a prince, shall be seven weeks; then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again..." (9:25).
Something that most fulfillment proponents probably don't know about the KJV version of Daniel 9:25 is that the original KJV recognized the presence of the ‘atnah in this verse. That original version said in this verse that there "shall be seuen weekes; and threescore and two weekes, the street shall be built againe...." Notice that this version of the KJV separated the seven weeks from the 62 with a semi-colon. Even the 1885 revision of the KJV recognized the separation by using a colon instead of the semi-colon: "(T)here shall be seven weeks: and threescore and two weeks, it shall be built again...." I have been unable to find exactly when the KJV was repunctuated to reflect the probable mistranslation that is currently in Daniel 9:25, but I suspect that the change was due to a recognition that the prophecy could not be construed to have reference to the coming of a "prince" or "messiah" at any time close to the period when Jesus allegedly lived unless the seven weeks were combined with the 62 to form one continuous period of 69 weeks, but if Kinsella and his cohorts are going to defend this meaning, they have to show that this was the unequivocal intention of the writer of Daniel. Failing to prove that, they will not be able to advance past the very first step required in proving prophecy fulfilling, which is the obligation to prove that the alleged prophetic statement meant what they are claiming that it meant.
Before I leave this point, I want to call everyone's attention to a couple of footnotes that the NAB includes about Daniel 9:25-26 to which I have added bold-print emphasis.
9:25 From the utterance.... to be rebuilt: from the time of Jeremiah's prophecy. One... anointed and a leader: either Cyrus, who was called the anointed of the Lord to end the exile (Is. 45:1) or the high priest Joshua, who presided over the rebuilding of the altar of sacrifice after the exile (Ez. 3:2). Seven weeks, forty-nine years, an approximation of the time of the exile. During sixty-two weeks... rebuilt: a period of 434 years, roughly approximating the interval between the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the exile and the beginning of the Seleucid persecution.
9:26 An anointed: doubtless the high priest Onias III, murdered in 171 B. C., from which the author dates the beginning of the persecution. Onias was in exile when he was killed....
These footnotes show that there are responsible biblical scholars who recognize that Daniel 9:25 was never intended to mean what prophecy-fulfillment buffs like Kinsella have distorted it into meaning. Before I go on to Kinsella's next point, I will call reader attention to the statement in the first NAB footnote quoted above, which pointed out that king Cyrus [of Persia] was referred to in Isaiah 45:1 as "Yahweh's anointed." He issued a decree in the first year of his reign (Ezra 1:1-4) that permitted the Judean captives to return to Jerusalem. The first year of his reign in Babylon would have been 539 BC, which would have been 49 years after Nebuchadnezzar's second sacking of Jerusalem in 588-587 BC, when most of the Judeans were taken away to Babylon (2 Kings 25:8-21). "Isaiah," who called Cyrus "Yahweh's anointed," also prophesied that Cyrus would issue an order for Jerusalem to be rebuilt.
Isaiah 44:24 "This is what Yahweh says-- your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am Yahweh, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, 25 who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense, 26 who carries out the words of his servants and fulfills the predictions of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, 'It shall be inhabited,' of the towns of Judah, 'They shall be built,' and of their ruins, 'I will restore them,' 27 who says to the watery deep, 'Be dry, and I will dry up your streams,' 28 who says of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, "Let it be rebuilt," and of the temple, "Let its foundations be laid."'
Since the prophet Isaiah lived some 200 years before Cyrus, the references to him must have been made by someone who made additions to the original work of Isaiah. Most responsible Bible scholars recognize this probability, and call this editor "Isaiah II." Whoever he was, he was undoubtedly a postexilic editor who knew about Cyrus's decree that had allowed the Judean captives to return to Jerusalem, and this enabled him to "predict" that Cyrus would say that Jerusalem should be rebuilt. Here, then, is a clear biblical indication that people at that time understood that the word that went forth to rebuild Jerusalem was issued by Cyrus and not by Artaxerxes, as Kinsella claims below, so Kinsella and his cohorts will have to show us that Cyrus, "the anointed of Yahweh," could not have been the "anointed one" who would come after the first seven weeks (49 years) of Daniel 9:25. If they are going to claim an amazing fulfillment of the prophecy in this verse, they must show us that the unequivocal meaning of this verse was what they are asserting.
Kinsella:
The angel went on to lock in the time. "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,
Till:
As I just showed above, the most likely meaning of this part of the
verse was that seven weeks
or 49 years would pass from the going forth of the word to rebuild
Jerusalem until an
anointed one would come. Forty-nine years would have passed well before
the time of Jesus,
so this statement could not have been a prophecy of his coming. As I
just showed above,
however, it could easily have been an after-the-fact "prophecy" of king
Cyrus of Persia,
whom "Isaiah" called Yahweh's anointed and "predicted" that he would
say that Jerusalem should
be rebuilt.
Notice also that I referred to the coming of an anointed one and not to the anointed one. There was no definite article before the word mashiach, so those who use "the Messiah" in referring to this verse are misrepresenting its intended meaning. Since there was no definite article here, a more accurate translation would be "an anointed one." Christians try their best to make this a prophecy of Jesus, but to do so, they must torturously distort the verse to make it mean what it probably was never intended to mean. Sigal's article linked to above also has a good discussion of this problem in the claims that Daniel 9:25 was prophesying the coming of Jesus.
Kinsella:
and threescore and two weeks... And after threescore and two weeks
shall Messiah be cut
off, but not for himself:"
[Daniel
9:25, 26].
Till:
As shown above, the sixty-two weeks or 434 years were separate from the
seven weeks or 49
years. If we begin counting after the end of the exile, which was
probably the time that the
seven weeks referred to, 434 years would have ended about the time of
the Seleucid
persecutions, as the footnotes quoted above from the NAB point out. To
show that this
prophecy had probable reference to that period would require me to drag
this article out for
several pages, so I am going to link interested readers to other
debates I have conducted on
this same issue.
"Good
History
in the Book of Daniel" and
"Bad
History in
the Book of Daniel" contain detailed explications of Daniel's
visions to show that this
book was a second-century BC work, which was written to make the
persecuted Jews of that
time believe that a sixth-century BC prophet had predicted that they
would triumph over their
Seleucid persecutors. Those who are interested in reading more about
the evidence for a
second-century BC authorship of Daniel can go to Everette Hatcher's
first
article
in this long debate and use the index pages of each issue of The
Skeptical Review to
find subsequent articles that Hatcher and I exchanged. If the entire
debate is read, I am
sure that open-minded readers will see very convincing evidence of a
second-century BC
authorship of this book.
Before I leave this point, I should address an issue that critics of the second-century BC dating of Daniel will invariably raise. If the end of the seven weeks (49 years) is deemed to be 539 BC, the first year of Cyrus, who issued a decree to allow the Judeans to return to Jerusalem, then the 62 weeks or 434 years would have ended in 105 BC, about a half century after the midcentury persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, so they will claim that this scenario doesn't fit Daniel's prophecy. In so arguing, they are assuming that whatever the prophecy meant had to be inerrant. In other words, they are projecting onto Daniel their assumption that this book was divinely inspired and therefore had to be accurate in everything it says, but if "Daniel" was not so inspired, it wouldn't follow that everything that he wrote was inerrant. In other words, it is more than just a little probable that someone writing "history" in the Seleucid period, some of which reached back four centuries before his time, would have made mistakes. After all, a writer of that time would not have had access to libraries, newspaper files, internet articles, and such like that we have today, so let's try to imagine how difficult it would be to write a history of, say, colonial New England today if we had the same kind of limited resources. Almost anyone in our society would know that pilgrims came to New England aboard the Mayflower, but how many of us would know the exact date of their landing (November 11, 1620) at Plymouth? Most people writing under such circumstances would have to guess and would probably get the date wrong. An error of 50 or 60 years would not be at all unlikely. Likewise, if someone wanted to write a history of Jamestown Colony but had no library sources to use, would he know that the first Virginia Company settlers landed at Jamestown Island on May 14, 1607? How many people today would know, without consulting reference works, exactly when George Washington was born?
I cited above "Bad History in the Book of Daniel," an article that will show that the author of this book was confused on several points of 6th-century BC Babylonian history, some of which I will discuss further along. There is no surprise, then, in learning that his chronology was off a bit in his 70-week prophecy, even though he was writing after the fact. Such mistakes were not at all uncommon in the works of those who wrote history in ancient times. In Beasts, Horns, and the Antichrist, page 97, Brodrick D. Shepherd cited Samuel Driver and Frederick Farrar to point out some specific examples of such mistakes.
Driver points out similar chronological errors made by the Jewish historian Josephus and Hellenistic Jew Demetrius: 1) Josephus errs by some 30 years in reckoning 639 years between the second year of Cyrus (537/536 BC) and the destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70). 2) He errs by 60 years in reckoning 434 years from the end of the Captivity (538 BC) to the reign of Antiochus Eupator (164-162 BC). 3) He errs by 50 years in reckoning 481 years from the end of the Captivity to the time of Aristobulus (105/104 BC). 4) Demetrius errs some 70 years in reckoning 573 years from the Captivity of the ten tribes (722/721 BC) to the time of Ptolemy IV (222 BC).
After citing these mistakes claimed by Driver, Shepherd then quoted Frederick Farrar.
In other words, he [Demetrius] makes as nearly as possible the same miscalculation as the writer of Daniel. This seems to show that there was some traditional error in the current chronology; and it cannot be overlooked that in ancient days the means for coming to accurate chronological conclusions were exceedingly imperfect.
Shepherd cited "The Book of Daniel," Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, University Press, 1922, p. 147, as the source of the information from Driver and "The Book of Daniel," The Expositor's Bible, vol. 4, Eerdmans, 1956, p. 423) as the source of the quotation from Farrar. I live in the middle of nowhere, so I have encountered difficulty locating these books. I have sent for these through interlibrary loan, and after I have checked them for accuracy, I will change the quotations above to primary sources and also correct errors if any were made. For now, I seem to be on safe ground when I say that finding a mistake of 60 years in Daniel's chronology would be just typical of the times in which he wrote when, as Farrar said, "the means for coming to accurate chronological conclusions were exceedingly imperfect."
Kinsella:
Beginning at a specific point in history and moving forward in time
from there, the angel
said that after sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years, the Messiah shall be
cut off [killed] but
not for Himself [He was blameless].
Till:
No, the angel said neither. As I have shown above, the seven weeks or
49 years were separate
from the 62 weeks or 434 years. There is just no linguistic support at
all for the attempts
to make Daniel 9:25 refer to an extended period of 69 weeks or 483
years. Furthermore, this
text did not say that "the Messiah" would be cut off. It said
that an anointed
one would be cut off. There was no definite article before mashiach
in this verse. As
the footnote quoted above from the NAB indicated, that this "anointed
one" was "the high
priest Onias III, [who was] murdered in 171 B. C." is a widely held
view of scholars who
aren't looking for amazing prophecy fulfillments where none occurred.
Kinsella:
History records only one decree that authorized the rebuilding of the
city. "And it came to
pass in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king .
. . I said unto the
king, If it please the king, and if thy servant have found favour in
thy sight, that thou
wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres,
that I may build it.
[Nehemiah
2:1,5]
According to modern dating research, the 20th year of the Persian king Xerxes would have been 444 BC.
Till:
Kinsella seems to have his kings confused here. He referred to the
"20th year of the Persian
king Xerxes," which he claims would have been 444 BC, but a foundation
principle of his
fulfillment scenario is that the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was issued
by Artaxerxes.
Xerxes was the father of Artaxerxes, and he reigned from
485 to 465 BC.
Since he was
succeeded by his son Artaxerxes, the 20th year of the latter's reign
would have been in 445
BC rather than 444 BC, as Kinsella claimed above to make Artaxerxes fit
into his preconceived
mold of an amaxing prophecy fulfillment. The fact is that most
proponents of an amazing
fulfillment of Daniel 9:25 fix the 20th year of Artaxerxes' reign at
445 BC. Here, for
example, is a paragraph from
Chuck Missler's
fulfillment version of
the same "prophecy.
Artaxerxes Longimanus ascended to the throne of the Medo-Persian empire in July 465 B.C. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990 ed.). The twentieth year of his reign would have begun in July 446 B.C. The decree occurred approximately nine months later in the month of Nisan (March/April on our calendar). By Hebrew tradition when the day of the month is not specifically stated (as in Artaxerxes decree), it is given to be the first day of that month. Consequently, the very day of Artaxerxes' decree was the first day of the Hebrew month Nisan in 445 B.C. The first day of Nisan in 445 B.C. corresponds to the 14th day of March. These dates were confirmed through astronomical calculations at the British Royal Observatory and reported by Sir Robert Anderson (Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince, Kregel. Reprinted in 1984.).
Missler continued to present the Anderson version of this fulfillment claim, and Anderson's version presented in The Coming Prince has been discredited so thoroughly that I cannot believe that any intelligent person would continue to defend it. Members of the old alt.bible.errancy internet forum know that Anderson's fulfillment scenario was debated for 18 months in response to a fellow named Don Keyes, who kept defending this fulfillment scenario in the face of clear evidence that Anderson was wrong. The debate with him began on July 13, 1999, and continued for 18 months before he finally admitted that Anderson's fulfillment scenario was untenable. Those who have the patience to read the hundreds of posts on this subject can find them by going to "Seventy Weeks of Daniel" in the alt.bible.errancy archives. This will take you to a sorted-by-date listing of posts on the 70 weeks of Daniel. Those who have the patience to read the hundreds of posts listed will see that Bruce Monson, David Lee [Mooney], and I, among others, so exposed the falsity of Anderson's fulfillment scenario that Keyes finally had to admit that Anderson had erred.
Another fulfillment scenario began with a different starting date.
Purpose of this Calendar for Biblical Prophecy is to show that:
- 1. King Artaxerxes' 20th year began on September 18, 446 BC and ended on September 5, 445 BC (Hebrew Calendar Dates using the Julian Calendar)
- 2. Artaxerxes' Decree Issued to Rebuild Jerusalem occurred on Sunday, March 16, 445 BC (Julian Calendar Date)
Anderson claimed that the decree of Artaxeres was issued on Nisan 1, 445 BC, which would have been Friday, March 14th, if the Julian Calendar had been in use then and Friday, March 9th, if the Gregorian calendar had been in use. This is the scenario that Missler defended above, but the article just quoted claimed a beginning date two days later than Anderson's. We will see below that Kinsella presented a clear and certain beginning date of March 5, 444 BC, which was almost a year after the scenarios presented above. There are also other fulfillment claims that used still different dates. In The Rapture: Truth or Consequences, Hal Lindsey claimed a fulfillment that began on March 6, 444 BC (p. 3), but fixed March 29, AD 33, rather than April 6, AD 32, as Anderson had claimed, as the date of fulfillment. There is no need here to waste time rebutting fulfillment scenarios when those who claim amazing fulfillment of Daniel 9:25 can't even agree among themselves on importart particulars like when the countdown to fulfillment began and ended. If the fulfillment of Daniel 9:25 was so clear and certain, I have never been able to understand why this exact, to-the-very-day prophecy fulfillment has been assigned so many different beginning and ending dates. My task here is to show that Kinsella's fulfillment claim is untenable, so I will focus on doing that rather than trying in a single article to expose the silliness of all of the contradictory fulfillment claims.
Sir Isaac Newton got into the controversy over Daniel 9:25 and fixed the date of Artaxerxes' alleged decree at 458 BC.
The book of Ezra gives the year of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem as being the seventh year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:7). While that might not mean much to the average modern reader, Newton's extensive knowledge of ancient history allowed him to identify that Persian king as Artaxerxes I (Artaxerxes Longimanus), and to place the decree in the year 458 BC.
So when did the countdown to fulfillment of this prophecy begin? In 444 BC or 445 BC? Or did it begin in 458 BC? Was the exact beginning date of the countdown Gregorian March 5, 444 BC, or was it Julian March 6, 445 BC, or Gregorian March 14, 445 BC? Those who take the time to check into the various versions of this prophecy-fulfillment claim will see that still different beginning dates have been proposed, so how can reasonable people be expected to see an amazing, to-the-very-day prophecy fulfillment in all of this when the proponents of fulfillment can't agree among themselves on key dates in their fulfillment claims?
Before I go to Kinsella's claim below that Artaxerxes issued a decree to rebuild Jerusalem on Nisan 1, 444 BC, I will first show that there is no evidence that Artaxerxes ever issued such a decree. Indeed, there is biblical evidence that Artaxerxes ordered the people of Jerusalem to stop a rebuilding project, which they had begun with the approval of Cyrus.
Then when Artaxerxes became king, those trying to disrupt the temple project sent a letter to Artaxerxes, who had succeeded his father Ahasuerus (Xerxes).
Ezra 4:7 And in the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam and Mithredath and Tabeel and the rest of their associates wrote to King Artaxerxes of Persia; the letter was written in Aramaic and translated. 8 Rehum the royal deputy and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows 9 (then Rehum the royal deputy, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the envoys, the officials, the Persians, the people of Erech, the Babylonians, the people of Susa, that is, the Elamites, 10 and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province Beyond the River wrote--and now 11 this is a copy of the letter that they sent): "To King Artaxerxes: Your servants, the people of the province Beyond the River, send greeting. And now 12 may it be known to the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city; they are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. 13 Now may it be known to the king that, if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be reduced. 14 Now because we share the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king, 15 so that a search may be made in the annals of your ancestors. You will discover in the annals that this is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from long ago. On that account this city was laid waste. 16 We make known to the king that, if this city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province Beyond the River."
In reply to this letter, the king [Artaxerxes] sent a reply that ordered the work in Jerusalem to stop.
4:17 The king sent an answer: "To Rehum the royal deputy and Shimshai the scribe and the rest of their associates who live in Samaria and in the rest of the province Beyond the River, greeting. And now 18 the letter that you sent to us has been read in translation before me. 19 So I made a decree, and someone searched and discovered that this city has risen against kings from long ago, and that rebellion and sedition have been made in it. 20 Jerusalem has had mighty kings who ruled over the whole province Beyond the River, to whom tribute, custom, and toll were paid. 21 Therefore issue an order that these people be made to cease, and that this city not be rebuilt, until I make a decree. 22 Moreover, take care not to be slack in this matter; why should damage grow to the hurt of the king?" 23 Then when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letter was read before Rehum and the scribe Shimshai and their associates, they hurried to the Jews in Jerusalem and by force and power made them cease. 24 At that time the work on the house of God in Jerusalem stopped and was discontinued until the second year of the reign of King Darius of Persia.
The better known king Darius was a predecessor of Artaxerxes, but the latter had an illegitimate son Darius Ochus, who became king after Artaxerxes, so unless the author of Ezra made a grievous error, the king Darius referred to in the text above would have been Artaxerxes' successor-son Darius Ochus. More important, however, is that the same verse says that work on the house of God in Jerusalem was stopped by a letter from Artaxerxes and didn't resume until the reign of Darius. Both of the letters quoted above give support to the view that Cyrus of Persia was the one who decreed that Jerusalem should be rebuilt--in accordance with "Isaiah's" prophecy quoted earlier--whereas Artaxerxes actually stopped the rebuilding work in Jerusalem.
Still further support for the view that Cyrus was the one who decreed that Jerusalem should be rebuilt is found in a report that this Darius found in the archives a decree that Cyrus had issued to rebuild Jerusalem. This came about when prophets stirred Zerubbabel and Jeshua to begin working on the temple again despite the command of Artaxerxes to stop the work. The resumption of the work brought about the following response.
Ezra 5:3 At the same time Tattenai the governor of the province Beyond the River and Shethar-bozenai and their associates came to them and spoke to them thus, "Who gave you a decree to build this house and to finish this structure?" 4 They also asked them this, "What are the names of the men who are building this building?" 5 But the eye of their God was upon the elders of the Jews, and they did not stop them until a report reached Darius and then answer was returned by letter in reply to it. 6 The copy of the letter that Tattenai the governor of the province Beyond the River and Shethar-bozenai and his associates the envoys who were in the province Beyond the River sent to King Darius; 7 they sent him a report, in which was written as follows: "To Darius the king, all peace! 8 May it be known to the king that we went to the province of Judah, to the house of the great God. It is being built of hewn stone, and timber is laid in the walls; this work is being done diligently and prospers in their hands. 9 Then we spoke to those elders and asked them, 'Who gave you a decree to build this house and to finish this structure?' 10 We also asked them their names, for your information, so that we might write down the names of the men at their head. 11 This was their reply to us: 'We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding the house that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and finished. 12 But because our ancestors had angered the God of heaven, he gave them into the hand of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house and carried away the people to Babylonia. 13 However, King Cyrus of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, made a decree that this house of God should be rebuilt. 14 Moreover, the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem and had brought into the temple of Babylon, these King Cyrus took out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered to a man named Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor. 15 He said to him, "Take these vessels; go and put them in the temple in Jerusalem, and let the house of God be rebuilt on its site." 16 Then this Sheshbazzar came and laid the foundations of the house of God in Jerusalem; and from that time until now it has been under construction, and it is not yet finished.'
The governors and inspectors then included in their letter to Darius a request that he search the royal archives to see if king Cyrus had ever issued such a decree. Darius ordered that the search be made, and it resulted in the discovery of a scroll in the royal palace at Media on which the following report had been written.
Ezra 6:3 In the first year of his reign, King Cyrus issued a decree: Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices are offered and burnt offerings are brought; its height shall be sixty cubits and its width sixty cubits, 4 with three courses of hewn stones and one course of timber; let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. 5 Moreover, let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, be restored and brought back to the temple in Jerusalem, each to its place; you shall put them in the house of God.
Upon discovering this scroll in the royal archives, Darius issued the following orders.
Ezra 6:6 Now you, Tattenai, governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and you, their associates, the envoys in the province Beyond the River, keep away; 7 let the work on this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. 8 Moreover I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God: the cost is to be paid to these people, in full and without delay, from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province Beyond the River. 9 Whatever is needed--young bulls, rams, or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, or oil, as the priests in Jerusalem require--let that be given to them day by day without fail, 10 so that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king and his children. 11 Furthermore I decree that if anyone alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of the house of the perpetrator, who then shall be impaled on it. The house shall be made a dunghill. 12 May the God who has established his name there overthrow any king or people that shall put forth a hand to alter this, or to destroy this house of God in Jerusalem. I, Darius, make a decree; let it be done with all diligence.
This is evidently the decree that removed the stop-work order by Artaxerxes referred to above, and all of the passages pertaining to this work in Jerusalem that I have quoted above certainly don't help the claim of Sir Robert Anderson, Jack Kinsella, et al that the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was issued by Artaxerxes in 445 or 444 BC. The proof text that advocates of this view cite actually doesn't say anything about a decree to rebuild Jerusalem. It merely refers to permission that Artaxerxes gave to his servant Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem and to a request that the keeper of the king's forest in that region provide him with timber.
Nehemiah 2:1 In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was served him, I carried the wine and gave it to the king. Now, I had never been sad in his presence before. 2 So the king said to me, "Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This can only be sadness of the heart." Then I was very much afraid. 3 I said to the king, "May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my ancestors' graves, lies waste, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?" 4 Then the king said to me, "What do you request?" So I prayed to the God of heaven. 5 Then I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my ancestors' graves, so that I may rebuild it." 6 The king said to me (the queen also was sitting beside him), "How long will you be gone, and when will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a date. 7 Then I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may grant me passage until I arrive in Judah; 8 and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, directing him to give me timber to make beams for the gates of the temple fortress, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy." And the king granted me what I asked, for the gracious hand of my God was upon me. 9 Then I came to the governors of the province Beyond the River, and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent officers of the army and cavalry with me.
So there is nothing about a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem in this text. It merely states that Artaxerxes granted Nehemiah permission to go to Jerusalem and gave him letters of introduction that would guarantee him safe passage and noninterference of officials after he arrived in Jerusalem. The passage goes on to say that when Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he found that it lay in waste, and so he motivated the people living there to begin working on the city. That, however, is entirely different from saying that Artaxerxes issued a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.
I quoted above a reference to the opinion of Sir Isaac Newton that Artaxerxes issued a decree to rebuild Jerusalem in the seventh year of his reign. That claim was made on the basis of a passage in Ezra 7, and the full context of a letter that Artaxerxes issued to Ezra in this chapter will show that one can make a better case for Newton's position than the one that Kinsella and others have tried to defend.
Ezra 7:6 (T)his Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses that Yahweh the God of Israel had given; and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of Yahweh his God was upon him. 7 Some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants also went up to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. 8 They came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. 9 On the first day of the first month the journey up from Babylon was begun, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the gracious hand of his God was upon him. 10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of Yahweh, and to do it, and to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel. 11 This is a copy of the letter that King Artaxerxes gave to the priest Ezra, the scribe, a scholar of the text of the commandments of Yahweh and his statutes for Israel: 12 "Artaxerxes, king of kings, to the priest Ezra, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven: Peace. And now 13 I decree that any of the people of Israel or their priests or Levites in my kingdom who freely offers to go to Jerusalem may go with you. 14 For you are sent by the king and his seven counselors to make inquiries about Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of your God, which is in your hand, 15 and also to convey the silver and gold that the king and his counselors have freely offered to the God of Israel, whose dwelling is in Jerusalem, 16 with all the silver and gold that you shall find in the whole province of Babylonia, and with the freewill offerings of the people and the priests, given willingly for the house of their God in Jerusalem. 17 With this money, then, you shall with all diligence buy bulls, rams, and lambs, and their grain offerings and their drink offerings, and you shall offer them on the altar of the house of your God in Jerusalem. 18 Whatever seems good to you and your colleagues to do with the rest of the silver and gold, you may do, according to the will of your God. 19 The vessels that have been given you for the service of the house of your God, you shall deliver before the God of Jerusalem. 20 And whatever else is required for the house of your God, which you are responsible for providing, you may provide out of the king's treasury. 21 I, King Artaxerxes, decree to all the treasurers in the province Beyond the River: Whatever the priest Ezra, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, requires of you, let it be done with all diligence, 22 up to one hundred talents of silver, one hundred cors of wheat, one hundred baths of wine, one hundred baths of oil, and unlimited salt. 23 Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be done with zeal for the house of the God of heaven, or wrath will come upon the realm of the king and his heirs. 24 We also notify you that it shall not be lawful to impose tribute, custom, or toll on any of the priests, the Levites, the singers, the doorkeepers, the temple servants, or other servants of this house of God. 25 And you, Ezra, according to the God-given wisdom you possess, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River who know the laws of your God; and you shall teach those who do not know them. 26 All who will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed on them, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of their goods or for imprisonment." 27 Blessed be Yahweh, the God of our ancestors, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king to glorify the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem, 28 and who extended to me steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of Yahweh my God was upon me, and I gathered leaders from Israel to go up with me.
Artaxerxes' letter to Ezra actually spoke of what the king had decreed, but it made no actual mention of rebuilding either Jerusalem or the temple. The decree merely required that the king's subjects cooperate in restoring temple worship in Jerusalem, and to that end Artaxerxes contributed money and animals, grain, and oil to be used in temple sacrifices. There is no biblical record of any decree that Artaxerxes ever made for Jerusalem to be rebuilt, but, as I said above, the letter given to Ezra could be more easily construed to be a "command" or "decree" to rebuild Jerusalem than the letter to Nehemiah. Why then don't prophecy-fulfillment buffs like Kinsella, Anderson, Missler, et al give the seventh year of Artaxerxes as the beginning date for their countdown to fulfillment? Well, the seventh year of Artaxerxes fell in 458 BC, so if they used that as their starting date, look what that would do to their fulfillment scenario. The 69 weeks or 483 years would have ended in AD 25, much too soon to have an amazing, to-the-very-day fulfillment of the spin that they want to put on Daniel 9:25. As I said at the beginning of this reply to Kinsella, however, in order to have a verifiable case of prophecy fulfillment, the one claiming fulfillment must prove that the original prophetic statement meant what he claims that it meant. Kinsella, then, must show us that Daniel 9:25 had unequivocal reference to a word or command from Artaxerxes issued in 444 BC rather than a decree issued in 445 or 458 BC. He must show that this word or command could not have been issued by Cyrus as claimed in Ezra 1:1-4 and "prophesied" in Isaiah 44:28, and after establishing all that, he must show that the word that went out was not referring to Jeremiah's "word" that Jerusalem would be rebuilt (Jeremiah 30:18) or to the decree of Cyrus discovered by Darius in the archives or to the letters from Artaxerxes to Ezra and Nehemiah or to the letter from Darius quoted above, which ordered his subjects to let the Jews continue rebuilding the temple. So from whom exactly did the word to "restore and rebuild Jerusalem" go forth? Was it Cyrus, or was it Artaxerxes, or was it Darius? If Artaxerxes, which "word" of his was being referred to? Was it the letter to Ezra or the letter to Nehemiah?
In other words, Kinsealla has his work cut out for him.
Kinsella:
The reference to the 'month of Nisan' with no reference to the day
indicates the first day
of the month.
Till:
The claim that Artaxerxes issued a decree to rebuild Jerusalem has been
shown to be false,
and now Kinsella is parroting another false claim often made by those
who want to find
amazing prophecy fulfillment where none exists. Without bothering to
check the claim for
accuracy, Kinsella, like Chuck Missler, in his article quoted above,
has asserted that ancient
documents that gave the month in which events occurred, without
specifying the day of the
month, meant that the events had happened on the first day of that
month, but there is no
truth at all to this claim. The following biblical examples will show
the falsity of
Kinsella's assertion.
Jeremiah 39:1 In the ninth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, in the tenth month, King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem and besieged it....
2 Kings 25:1 And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem, and laid siege to it....
The first text says that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in the tenth month of his ninth year, so according to Kinsella and his cohorts, this would mean that the siege happened on the first day of the tenth month, but the parallel text says that the siege began on the 10th day of the 10th month, and there are other examples that dispute this commonly heard claim that when ancient documents dated events with reference to the month when they occurred, with "no reference to the day [of the month], the first day of that month was intended."
1 Kings 6:1 In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of Yahweh.
2 Chronicles 3:1 Solomon began to build the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where Yahweh had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had designated, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 2 He began to build on the second day of the second month of the fourth year of his reign.
According to Kinsella's dating premise, the first text above would mean that Solomon began work on the temple on the first day of the second month, but the other text states that the work began on the second day of the second month.
1 Chronicles 12:15 These [sons of Gad] are the men who crossed the Jordan in the first month, when it was overflowing all its banks, and put to flight all those in the valleys, to the east and to the west.
Joshua 4:19 The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho.
According to Kinsella's false dating principle, the first text above should be interpreted to mean that the people of Israel [which would have included the sons of Gad] had crossed the Jordan on the first day of the first month, but the second text states that the crossing occurred on the 10th day of the first month.
I could cite other examples, but these are sufficient to show that a fundamental premise in Kinsella's fulfillment claim is false: dating an event with reference to the month it happened without specifying what day of the month it was did not mean that the event had happened on the first day of that month. As we will soon see, this spells a lot of trouble for Kinsella's fulfillment scenario.
Kinsella:
Using the Hebrew calendar, the first day of Nisan, BC 444, corresponds
to the modern date of
March 5.
Till:
Keep in mind what we have noted above: the omission of what day of
the month it was when
Artaxerxes gave Nehemiah permission to go to Jerusalem does not mean
that this happened on
the first day of the month. That is an assumption that Kinsella
must prove, and I have
debated this very prophecy-fulfillment claim enough to know that he
cannot prove that this
event happened on the first day of the month of Nisan. An additional
problem to keep in
mind is that the verse that Kinsella is citing as a proof text says
that the event in
question happened "in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king"
(Neh. 2:1),
and the 20th
year of Artaxerxes, as noted above, would have been 445 BC rather than
444 BC. As we will
soon see, the problems quickly multiply in Kinsella's fulfillment
scenario.
An even bigger error in his scenario is the verifiable fact that Nisan 1 in 444 BC was not March 5th in the modern [Gregorian] calendar. The Gregorian calendar didn't exist at that time, but astronomers have projected both the Gregorian and Julian calendars back in time, and these are called "proleptic calendars." There are also conversion calendars accessible on internet sites, which can be used to determine proleptic Julian and Gregorian dates for any day in the past as far back as proleptic January 1, 4713 BC. If Gregorian March 5, 444 BC, is typed into the Gregorian window at the "Rosetta Calendar" conversion site, it will show that this Gregorian date fell on Tuesday in 444 BC and that it would have been Tuesday, March 10th, if the Julian calendar had been in use then. Most important, however, is that the conversion window for the Hebrew calendar at this site shows that Gregorian March 5, 444 BC, was the 7th of Adar II in that year and not Nisan 1. Kinsella has said that the decree of Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem was issued on Nisan 1 in 444 BC, so he did all of his calculations below on the incorrect assumption that Nisan 1 in that year would have been March 5th. The conversion site linked to above will show that Nisan 1 in that year would have been March 28th in the Gregorian calendar and April 2nd in the Julian calendar. I have checked these dates and double checked them and double checked them again, so I urge readers to click the link above to the Rosetta calendar conversion site to see for themselves that my calendric calculations are correct.
So much for Kinsella's exact, to-the-very-day prophecy fulfillment.
Before I leave this point, I want to call reader attention to the fact that 7 Adar II was the correct equivalent of Kinsella's incorrect March 5, 444 BC. This fact calls attention to something that Kinsella probably doesn't know: in some years, there will be two months of Adar in the Jewish calendar, and 444 BC was one of the years that had an additional month of Adar. The reason why some years had two Adars will be explained further along when I demolish Kinsella's attempt to convert the Gregorian years from March 5, 444 BC, through March 30, AD 33, into days, which he then converted into Hebrew years of 360 days. This poor guy doesn't seem to know that the Hebrews periodically added to their calendar a second month of Adar in order to keep their calendar synchronized with the solar year so that the seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter) wouldn't drift with respect to the dates in their calendar. What I mean by this will be explained fully when I come to where Kinsella tried to convert the 476+ Gregorian years in his scenario into 483 "Hebrew years," but essentially the matter is parallel to the way that we add an additional year to our calendar every four years to keep it synchronized with the sun. The Hebrews, in effect, had a leap-month that they added periodically to achieve the same effect, but over time, the Hebrew years averaged 365 days in length just as ours do.
Kinsella:
Counting forward 483 years from 444 BC to AD 33 is 477 years. But BC 1
and AD 1 are the same
year, so deducting that year leaves us with 476 years.
Till:
Kinsella has just showed an appalling calendric ignorance. BC 1 and AD
1 were not the same
year. He seems to be confused by the absence of a year 0 in our
calendric system. What
happened is that when the present calendric system was adopted, we went
from the year 1 BC
to the year AD 1, but a simple illustration should be sufficient to
show even Kinsella just
how badly he has erred here. Let's suppose that the Gregorian calendar
had been in use in the
year 1 BC and that a child named John had been born on January 1 of
that year. At the end of
1 BC on December 31, that child would have been one year old, and the
next year would have
begun with January 1, AD 1. If the year AD 1, however, were the same as
the year 1 BC, then
at the end of AD 1 on December 31, the child John would have still been
just one year old.
No one has to be a mathematical wizard to see the absurdity in thinking
that a child who had
lived through 24 months would have been just one year old.
This huge calendric blunder should be sufficient to convince readers that Kinsella's prophecy fulfillment scenario is seriously flawed, but, as we will see, the problems continue.
Kinsella:
Four hundred seventy-six years times 365.24219879 days is 173,855 days.
Till:
Since Kinsella made an obvious mistake in assuming that 1 BC and AD 1
were the same year,
his "deduction" of a year was an error. From March 5, 444 BC, to March
30, AD 33, there
would have actually been 476.068 years. One cannot begin counting on
the 5th day of March
in 444 BC and count through the 30th day of March in AD 33 and finish
with an even number of
years. The even number of years would have ended with March 4, AD 33,
and the 25 days from
March 5th to March 30th would have been a fraction of a year (25
÷ 365 = .068) that would
have to be entered into the calculations to find out the number of days
that had passed
between the two dates in Kinsella's scenario. If we multiply 476.068
(years) by 365.24219879
(the number of days in a solar year), we will get 173,880 days. We will
see below that
Kinsella compensated for his original mistake by adding the fractional
year (25 days from
March 5th to March 30th), so the answer he got was the one he needed, i.
e., 173,880.
This total, by the way, happens to be the number of days that Sir
Robert Anderson claimed in
his fulfillment scenario. Kinsella, like those who have tried to revamp
Anderson's discredited
scenario, continue to borrow the 173,880 days, which was the foundation
stone of Anderson's
scenario, but we will soon see that these 173,880 days were arrived at
to use in an incorrect
argument that the Hebrew calendar was based on a 360-day year. The
fulfillment advocates
needed 173,880 days to divide by 360 to get 483, which was the number
of weeks (years) in the
Daniel 9:25 prophecy. I will show the fallacy in this line of argument
when I come to it in
Kinsella's argument.
Kinsella:
Jesus was crucified on March 30, AD 33,
Till:
Exactly how did Kinsella arrive at this date? He didn't bother to say,
but the date of
Jesus's alleged crucifixion has long been a point of controversy.
Origin said in
Contra
Celsus (4:23), for example, "For it was, I believe,
forty-two years from the time
when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem." Jerusalem
was destroyed by the
Romans in AD 70, so the date that Origin gave for the crucifixion would
put it in AD 28,
five years before Kinsella's scenario. Speculation about the date of
the crucifixion
continues to this date, but there are some bits of information that can
be pieced together
to show that AD 33 was improbable. The New Testament claims that Herod
was king when Jesus
was born (Matt.
2:3-15),
but Herod died in 4
BC, so if we assume that Jesus was born the very year that Herod
died, he would have begun
his personal ministry in AD 26, because Luke said that Jesus was "about
thirty" when he began
to teach (Luke
3:23). If
he wasn't crucified until AD 33, his personal ministry would have
spanned seven years, but the
gospel narratives certainly don't indicate that he taught for that long
before he was
crucified.
Kinsella's crucifixion date also conflicts with what the New Testament says about the time when Jesus was crucified. According to Mark, he was allegedly crucified on the day of the Passover, which in the Jewish calendar always falls on Nisan 15, as the quotation below from "Passover Date, an article on a Jewish website confirms.
In fact, in the Hebrew calendar, Passover always occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nissan and ends on the 22nd day of Nissan.
This date is confirmed by several biblical references that fix the date at the 15th day of the Hebrew month Abib, later changed to Nisan, which was the first month in the Jewish calendar.
Leviticus 23:5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, there shall be a passover offering to Yahweh, 6 and on the fifteenth day of the same month is the festival of unleavened bread to Yahweh.
Numbers 9:1 Yahweh spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: 2 Let the Israelites keep the passover at its appointed time. 3 On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its regulations you shall keep it. 4 So Moses told the Israelites that they should keep the passover. 5 They kept the passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai. Just as Yahweh had commanded Moses, so the Israelites did.
The Jewish day began at sunset, so at twilight on the 14th day of the month of Abib or Nisan, the Jews would kill the paschal lamb (Ex. 12:1-4) so that it could be sacrificed and eaten on the night of Passover, and then, as the text from Leviticus quoted above says, the next day, the 15th day of the month, the festival of unleavened bread would begin. The relevance of this can be seen when Kinsella's date of the crucifixion is compared to biblical texts, which say that Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples the night before he was crucified.
Mark 14:12 On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, "Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?" 13 So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, 'The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there." 16 So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. 17 When it was evening, he came with the twelve.
As noted above, the killing of the paschal lamb was done at twilight on the 14th day of the first month (Nisan), so this conversation with the disciples would have happened on that day. The Passover meal eaten that night, after sunset, would have been on the 15th of Nisan. Later that night, Judas betrayed Jesus, and he was arrested (Mark 14:43-46). Jesus was taken that night to the high priest and the chief priests and scribes (Mark 14:53). The next morning, which would have still been Nisan 15, he was taken to Pilate (Mark 15:1), and later he was taken and crucified at the third hour (Mark 15:23-25). All of this means that if the Bible is inerrant, then Jesus was crucified on Nisan 15, but March 30, AD 33, was not Nisan 15 in the Hebrew calendar. That can be verified by typing March 30, AD 33, into the Gregorian window at the "Rosetta Calendar" conversion site. This will show that March 30, AD 33, was actually Nisan 12 in the Jewish calendar, so if Jesus was indeed crucified on the day of the Passover in AD 33, he would have been crucified on April 2nd (Nisan 15) of that year, or else the Bible is not inerrant.
So much for Kinsella's amazing prophecy fulfillment.
Kinsella:
so there are an extra 25 days to add to the equation, giving a grand
total of 173,880 days.
Till:
Yes, the extra 25 days would have to be added to determine how many
days had passed between
March 5, 444 BC, and March 30, AD 33, but March 5, 444 BC, as we noted
above, was not Nisan
1 in the Hebrew calendar, and as we just noticed, Jesus could not have
been crucified on
March 30, AD 33, because that day was not Nisan 15 in the Hebrew
Calendar. What good does
it do to have a starting date that was not equivalent to Nisan 1, 444
BC, which Kinsella
claimed was the day that Artaxerxes issued a decree to rebuild
Jerusalem, and what good does
it do to have a terminal date that does not conform to the day that the
New Testament claims
that Jesus was crucified?
The calendar conversion windows at the Rosetta Canendar site will show that Nisan 1, 444 BC, was the same day as Gregorian March 28, 444 BC. At this point, I intend to use Julian Day Numbers to show just how far off Kinsella's to-the-very-day fulfillment scenario is, but before doing that, I first need to define what Julian Day Numbers are. I recommend that readers click this link to Peter Meyer's article about Julian Day Numbers so that they can learn from an expert what they are. In reading this article, you will learn that Julian Day Numbers (JDNs) are numbers given to days for the convenience of determining when events happened without having dates confused by calendars, which will give different dates to events. My birthdate, for example, is April 26, 1933, in the Gregorian calendar, but it would have been April 13, 1933, had we still been using the Julian calendar at that time, and the date was Nisan 30, 5693, in the Jewish calendar. It would be yet other dates in other calendars.
JDNs simplify the confusing calendric systems by numbering the days. The Julian calendar, which we don't use today, was projected back to the year 4713 BC, which became the first year in the JDN system, so the first day of that year was given the number 0, the second day 1, the third 2, and so up until the present day (October 2, 2005, as I am writing this), which is Julian Day Number 2453646. In other words, 2,453,646 days have passed in the JDN system since January 1, 4713 BC. The JDN of my birthdate (Gregorian April 26, 1933) is 2427189, so if I should want to know how many days I have lived, I simply subtract this number from 2453646, the JDN for today (October 2, 2005). The answer is 26457 (2453646 - 2427189 = 26457), so I have now lived a total of 26,457 days. How time flies!
By using the real Gregorian date for Kinsella's claim that Artaxerxes decreed the rebuilding of Jerusalem on Nisan 1, 444 BC, we can use JDNs to show that there would not have been 173,880 days between that date and March 30, AD 33. As I have already explained, the Rosetta conversion calendar shows that Nisan 1, 444 BC, was actually Gregorian March 28, 444 BC. The JDN for that date was 1559344, and the JDN for Gregorian March 30, AD 33, was 1733202, so to find out how many days passed between those two dates, all we have to do is subtract 1559344 from 1733202. When we do, we find that only 173,858 days (1733202 - 1559344 = 173,858) passed from Gregorian March 28, 444 BC to Gregorian March 30, AD 30, so Kinsella's fulfillment scenario is 22 days short of the 173,880 that he needs to claim an amazing prophecy fulfillment.
On the chance, that Kinsella erred by using dates from the Julian calendar in his scenario, I checked to see if there would have been 173,880 days between Julian March 5, 444 BC, and Julian March 30, AD 33. The Rosetta conversion calendar shows that the JDN for Julian March 5, 444 BC, is 1559316 and that the JDN for Julian March 30, AD 33, was 1733200, so 1733200 - 1559316 = 173,884, which would be four days too many to fit into Kinsella's scenario. Furthermore, Julian March 30, AD 33, was not Nisan 15 (Passover day) in the Hebrew calendar. It was Nisan 10, so Kinsella's wonderfully accurate, to-the-very-day prophecy fulfillment proves to be untenable.
I even used the dates in the Hebrew calendar to see if they would fit into Kinsella's scenario. The JDN for Nisan 1 in the year 444 BC (year 3317 in the Hebrew calendar) is 1559344, and the JDN for Nisan 12 AD 33 (which was the equivalent of Gregorian March 30) is 1733202, so 1733202 - 1559344 = 173,858, which won't fit into Kinsella's 173,880-day scenario either. As we noted above, the gospel of Mark claimed that Jesus was crucified on the day of the Passover, which would have been Nisan 15, so the JDN of that date (which would have been April 2nd in the Gregorian calendar) is 1733202 + 3 = 1733205. Using this number would add only three more days to the 173,858, so it seems that Kinsella's fulfillment scenario fails just about any way that it is looked at. Before Kinsella ever publishes another example of amazing prophecy fulfillment, he should check his math better than he did this time.
Kinsella:
So, from the going forth of the commandment on March 5, BC 444, until
March 30, AD 33, was
exactly 173,880 days
Till:
Although there were indeed 173,880 days between the two dates in
Kinseall's scenario, we have
just seen how his brilliant prophecy-fulfillment fell apart in that (1)
he claimed that the
"going forth of the commandment" to restore and rebuild Jerusalem
happened on Nisan 1 in 445
BC but then in his calculations used the wrong Gregorian date, which
was actually March 28,
444 BC instead of March 5, (2) he selected a terminal date in his
fulfillment scenario that
could not have been the date that Jesus was crucified, because March
30, AD 33, was not Nisan
15 [the day of the Passover] in the Hebrew calendar, (3) he cannot
prove whether the
commandment went forth from Jeremiah or Cyrus of Persia or Artaxerxes
or Darius, (4) if he
should be able to prove that the commandment went forth from
Artaxerxes, he cannot prove
whether it went forth in 458 BC or 445 BC or 444 BC, and (5) if he
should be able to prove
that the prophecy referred to a command that went forth from Artaxerxes
in the month of Nisan
in 444 BC, he cannot prove what day of that month the commandment was
issued.
In a word, Kinsella's amazing fulfillment scenario has more holes in it than a sieve.
Kinsella:
divided by 360 day lunar equals exactly 483 years.
Till:
Since there are so many versions of this 173,880-day
prophecy-fulfillment claim, which all
use the tactic of dividing these days by 360 to get 483 Jewish years,
everyone who wants to
be prepared to debunk these fulfillment claims should pay careful
attention to what is coming
next in my rebuttal of Kinsella's version of this fulfillment claim,
because it can be used
to debunk whatever versions are being trumpeted as amazing prophecy
fulfillment. You will
need to know just one thing: the Jewish years over time averaged 365
days in length, just
as they do in our present calendric system. I explained above that
the Hebrews had a
"leap month" in their calendar, which they added periodically to keep
their lunar calendar
synchronized with the solar year. A more detailed explanation of this
intercalated month
(a second Adar) was given by the author of
"Passover
Date," an
article on a Jewish website, which I quoted earlier to show that the
Jewish Passover always
falls on the same date--Nisan 15. Notice the last sentence emphasized
in bold print.
In fact, in the Hebrew calendar, Passover always occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nissan and ends on the 22nd day of Nissan. However, in the Gregorian calendar which comprises the January to December months of the year, Passover begins and ends on different days each year. Why? (I had to ask) Well, I asked, so here comes the answer: the Hebrew calendar is primarily a lunar calendar, meaning the months are determined by the new moon that occurs when the first sliver of the moon appears following the complete darkness of the moon, and the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar based upon the Earth's rotation around the sun. Since there are 12.4 lunar months in every solar year, this means that a 12-month lunar calendar will lose about 11 days off the solar calendar every year. Since the Passover date is a fixed date in the Hebrew calendar then this means that the Passover date would occur earlier and earlier in the Springtime in the solar year until it would occur in the Wintertime, then in Autumn, then in Summer, and then back to Spring, and so on. To make up for this 'drift' in the Passover date through the solar months of the solar year, an extra month was periodically added to the Hebrew calendar so that the Passover date would drift back about 11 days each year for about two or three years, then jump forward by about a month's worth of days (29 or 30 days).
The article went on to explain how Rabbi Hillel II in AD 358 refined this system to reduce the "drifting" problem, but the fact remains that over time, the Jewish year in biblical times averaged 365 days just as it does now in our Gregorian system. Hence, Kinsetta's claim of a 360-day Jewish year has no more basis in fact than did his fulfillment scenario in general.
Kinsetta:
Daniel 9:26 goes on to say that after Messiah is 'cut off but not for
Himself', "the people
of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city."
Within a generation of Israel's rejection of the Messiah, General [and future Emperor] Titus of Rome led his legions into Jerusalem where the city was sacked and the Temple utterly destroyed.
Till:
What does the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, which happened
40 years after
Kinsella's date for the crucifixion, have to do with his fulfillment
claim? His position is
that the 69 weeks ended when Jesus was crucified and, as we will see
him claiming below, the
prophecy then leaped into the distant future, where the seventieth week
has yet to come. If
this scenario is what Daniel meant, then what would any date or time
period between the
crucifixion of Jesus and the present day have to do with this prophecy?
Since he has
introduced the Roman destruction of Jerusalem into the picture, I will
be glad to show that
it had nothing at all to do with the intended meaning of Daniel's
prophecies.
As noted above, scholars who don't have any inerrancy axes to grind or rapture dreams to wish for recognize that the "anointed one" was the high priest Onias III, who was assassinated in 171 BC. The destruction of "the city" or Jerusalem by the troops of "the prince" was a reference to the army that Antiochus Epiphanes sent to Jerusalem under the command of Apollonius in 167 BC. The pillage of Jerusalem that followed was described in the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees.
1 Maccabees 1:29 Two years later the king [Antiochus] sent to the cities of Judah a chief collector of tribute, and he came to Jerusalem with a large force. 30 Deceitfully he spoke peaceable words to them, and they believed him; but he suddenly fell upon the city, dealt it a severe blow, and destroyed many people of Israel. 31 He plundered the city, burned it with fire, and tore down its houses and its surrounding walls. 32 They took captive the women and children, and seized the livestock. 33 Then they fortified the city of David with a great strong wall and strong towers, and it became their citadel.
Kinsella must remember that the first responsibility of the one who claims prophecy fulfillment is that he must prove that the prophetic statement meant what the proponent of fulfillment is claiming. In this case, Kinsella must prove that "the people [troops] of the prince" who came and destroyed the city were the Roman troops of AD 70 rather than the troops of Antiochus under the command of Apollonius in 167 BC. Those who want to see in Daniel 9:25 an amazing prophecy about Jesus will contend that the "people of the prince" who destroyed the city were the Roman forces under the command of Titus. In Prophecy: Fact or Fiction, Josh McDowell defended the same scenario as Kinsella's, which began on March 5, 444 BC, and ended on March 30, AD 33, but as we have seen, even though this period did have exactly 173,880 days in it, its starting and terminal dates do not conform to the claims that Artaxerxes issued his decree to rebuild Jerusalem on 1 Nisan in the year 444 BC and that Jesus was crucified on March 30, AD 33. At any rate, this was McDowell's scenario, which Kinsella probably borrowed from him, and on page 21 of the book just cited above, McDowell argued that "the people [troops] of the prince" had to have reference to the Roman forces of Titus, because his destruction of the temple was total and complete in AD 70, but the temple wasn't completely destroyed in 167 BC when the forces of Antiochus under the command of Apollonius plundered Jerusalem; however, Daniel 9:26 did not say that the "people [troops] of the prince would come" and totally and completely destroy the temple. It simply said that they would come and destroy the city and the sanctuary, and as far as faithful Jews of that era were concerned, the forces of Antiochus had indeed destroyed the sanctuary. An article about Hanuka at EverythingJewish.com described the condition of the temple after control of it was regained by the Maccabeans.
Led by Judah Maccabee, the most famous of Mattityahu’s five sons, the Maccabees, a force much smaller than the powerful Greek armies, finally triumphed in 165 B.C.E. On the 25th of Kislev, the Maccabees reclaimed the Jewish Temple, which was, at that point, almost unrecognizable as a place of Jewish worship.
I cited above articles in which I debated the dating of Daniel with the fundamentalist Christian Everette Hatcher. That debate and the articles specifically cited will show that responsible scholarship dates the authorship of Daniel in the second century BC. To take the time here to list and discuss all of the reasons why scholars with no inerrancy axes to grind do not consider this book to be the work of a sixth-century BC Jewish official in the Babylonian government would drag this article out forever, so I will instead urge readers to review the responsible literature written on this subject. Some good sources would be S. R. Driver's "The Book of Daniel" in Cambridge Bible for Scholars and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1922); H. H. Rowley's Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel (University of Wales Press, 1959); Norman Porteous's Daniel: A Commentary (The Westminister Press, 1965). I have found these books to be useful in my debates with fundamentalists who have tried to defend the traditional view that Daniel was written in the 6th century BC by a Jewish official in Babylon. I also recommend Beasts, Horns, and the Antichrist by Brodrick D. Shepherd (Cliffside Publishing House), which refutes the traditional view of Daniel in a simple format that even those who have limited knowledge of this book should be able to understand. I think that it does a commendable job of debunking attempts to make Daniel 9:25 a prophecy of the coming of Jesus.
With all that said, I have to return to the claim of Kinsella and his cohorts that "the people [troops] of the prince" who would come and destroy the city and the sanctuary were the Roman forces of Titus who plundered Jerusalem in AD 70. The position of those who hold to this scenario is that the 69 weeks ended either with the triumphal entry, the crucifixion, or some other specific event in the life of Christ, so if they are correct in their claim, what would any event after the 69 weeks have to do with this prophecy, since they also claim that the 70th week was to be postponed until some time in the distant future? The only sensible conclusion to reach is that Daniel meant for his readers to understand that the 69 weeks would end, at which time the "people of the prince" would come to destroy the city and the sanctuary and the prince would make a "strong covenant with many" for a week, which would be the seventieth and final week in the prophecy. All of the talk about a "gap" or a "leap" forward cannot be justified by the language of the text.
Kinsella:
The 'people' identified by the angel to Daniel are proved by history to
be the Roman Empire,
currently embodied by the European Union.
Till:
I assume that everyone has noticed that Kinsella, who up until this
point tried to sustain
his position with mathematical precision, suddenly stopped offering any
support for his
claims, so he is now doing nothing but arguing by assertion. Just how
has "history" proven
that the "people" referred to here were "the Roman Empire"? Kinsella
gave us no arguments to
respond to here, and argumentation by assertion is a recognized logical
fallacy.
Kinsella:
The 'prince' of that 'people' is the antichrist.
Till:
Here is another assertion for which Kinsella didn't offer even a
scintilla of supporting
evidence. There is nothing here for me to do except to show, as I
continue my rebuttal, that
the evidence supports the view that the author of Daniel was
"predicting" events relating to
the time in which he was writing, i. e., the second century BC,
and that the "prince"
who made the covenant with many was Antiochus Epiphanes.
Kinsella:
As an aside, according to the Jewish historian [and eyewitness]
Josephus, the Romans burned
the Temple so completely its ornate gold fixtures melted and ran
between the stones of the
Temple.
To recover this rich booty, the soldiers dismantled the Temple, stone by stone, fulfilling Jesus' prophecy of a generation before; "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down" [Matthew 24:2].
Till:
Kinsella did not cite where Josephus said this. I have heard this claim
before, but if it was
made anywhere in Josephus's account of the destruction of Jerusalem and
the temple, I have
been unable to find it. An electronic version of Wars of the Jews
is available on
line, and I took the time to use gold as a keyword to see if
Josephus had made this
claim anywhere within Book 6, which is the part where he described the
sacking of Jerusalem
and the temple. Instead of a claim that the temple gold had melted and
run between the
stones of the temple, I found in
6:8.3
an account
of how the soldiers had plundered the temple and its treasury of all of
its valuables.
3. But now at this time it was that one of the priests, the son of Thebuthus, whose name was Jesus, upon his having security given him, by the oath of Caesar, that he should be preserved, upon condition that he should deliver to him certain of the precious things that had been reposited in the temple (29) came out of it, and delivered him from the wall of the holy house two candlesticks, like to those that lay in the holy house, with tables, and cisterns, and vials, all made of solid gold, and very heavy. He also delivered to him the veils and the garments, with the precious stones, and a great number of other precious vessels that belonged to their sacred worship. The treasurer of the temple also, whose name was Phineas, was seized on, and showed Titus the coats and girdles of the priests, with a great quantity of purple and scarlet, which were there reposited for the uses of the veil, as also a great deal of cinnamon and cassia, with a large quantity of other sweet spices, (30) which used to be mixed together, and offered as incense to God every day. A great many other treasures were also delivered to him, with sacred ornaments of the temple not a few; which things thus delivered to Titus obtained of him for this man the same pardon that he had allowed to such as deserted of their own accord (emphasis added).
Prior to this, Josephus had said that the Roman soldiers had taken "such vast quantities" of plunder from the temple and its store houses that "in Syria a pound weight of gold was sold for half its former value" (6:6.1), so if Josephus ever said what Kinsella claimed above, I would appreciate his citing the book, chapter, and section. Those who are interested in checking this claim for it accuracy can find the description of the burning of the temple in Book 6, Chapters 4 through 6. Those who read it will see that Kinsella's claim above is probably bogus.
The fact is that the destruction of the temple in AD 70 was not as complete as Kinsella claimed. There was enough left that the Jews later tried to rebuild it by permission of Emperor Hadrian, and they were making good progress on it until the emperor began to have second thoughts and stopped work on it. In this section of one of my many replies to Robert Turkel's attempts to defend the silly doctrine of preterism, I summarized this rebuilding project that took place during the Bar Kokhba rebellion, which was led by Shimon Bar Kokhba. When that uprising was finally quelled, Hadrian undertook to destroy completely the Jewish system of worship by plowing under the city of Jerusalem and replacing it with a settlement that was called Aelia Capitolina. It was at this time that the remaining stones in the temple were torn apart and dispersed, but even that "destruction" wasn't entirely complete, because the retaining walls of the former temple remain until today, one of which is called the "wailing wall." A picture of the southwest corner of the temple mount shows that there are still some stones remaining in place for the old temple, so it just isn't true that Jesus's prophecy that not one temple stone would be left upon another had been wonderfully fulfilled.
When prophecy-fulfillment buffs claim marvelous fulfillments, they almost always run into problems that don't quite fit into their fulfillment scenarios, but if Kinsella wants to know what Josephus really thought about the relationship of Daniel's prophecies to the destruction of the temple, he should read Book 12, Chapter 7, Section 6, in Antiquities of the Jews, where he attributed fulfillment of those prophecies to temple desecrations during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.
When therefore the generals of Antiochus's armies had been beaten so often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them, that after these many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem, and purify the temple, and offer the appointed sacrifices. But as soon as he, with the whole multitude, was come to Jerusalem, and found the temple deserted, and its gates burnt down, and plants growing in the temple of their own accord, on account of its desertion, he and those that were with him began to lament, and were quite confounded at the sight of the temple; so he chose out some of his soldiers, and gave them order to fight against those guards that were in the citadel, until he should have purified the temple. When therefore he had carefully purged it, and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table [of shew-bread], and the altar [of incense], which were made of gold, he hung up the veils at the gates, and added doors to them. He also took down the altar [of burnt-offering], and built a new one of stones that he gathered together, and not of such as were hewn with iron tools. So on the five and twentieth day of the month Casleu, which the Macedonians call Apeliens, they lighted the lamps that were on the candlestick, and offered incense upon the altar [of incense], and laid the loaves upon the table [of shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar [of burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out, that these things were done on the very same day on which their Divine worship had fallen off, and was reduced to a profane and common use, after three years' time; for so it was, that the temple was made desolate by Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This desolation happened to the temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Apeliens, and on the hundred fifty and third olympiad: but it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the month Apeliens, on the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and fifty-fourth olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before; for he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship [for some time].
Olympiads were four-year periods in Greek chronology, reckoned from the beginning of one celebration of the olympic games until the next. The 153rd Olympiad dated from 168-165 BC, so Josephus's date falls within the range of the Maccabean dating of the desecration of the temple by Antiochus. Notice that Josephus said that the "desolation" lasted for three years, and keep those three years in mind when we come to Kinsella's attempt below to make Daniel's "time, times, and half a time" refer to some 1,290-day period that will happen during a "tribulation" whose coming he envisions at some time in the distant future. For here, we just want to notice that Josephus clearly said that Daniel's prophecies about a desecration of the temple were fulfilled in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.
Kinsella:
The coming prince of Daniel 9:26, the antichrist, kicks off the
Tribulation Period
Till:
And what is Kinsella's proof that the "coming prince of Daniel 9:26"
was the antichrist?
He gave none. He simply asserted it. The fact is, however, that neither
Daniel nor any
other Old Testament writer ever spoke about an "antichrist." This is a
term that was used
only five times in the New Testament, all five times in the epistles of
"John," and they
have sparked all kinds of speculations, most of which cannot be
harmonized with what "John"
said in using this term. Tribulationists, i. e., those who
believe that they see a
period of future tribulation in Daniel 9, see "the antichrist" as an
evil, powerful ruler
who will arise at the time of Jesus's return, which, of course, has yet
to happen (if it
ever will), but that is not at all what "John," the only writer to use
the term, meant.
He said, for example, that there wasn't just one antichrist but many.
1 John 2:18 Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour.
Tribulationists often speak of "the antichrist," but the New Testament passage that first used this term clearly said that "many antichrists" had already come, by which it could be known that "it is the last hour." Well, the last hour has lasted for almost 2,000 years now, and tribulationists are still talking about the coming of "the antichrist."
On the basis of what "John" said about this "person," however, I can prove