Daniel 9 Interpreters Through History

Great Minds Have Wrestled With This Prophecy for Nearly 2,000 Years.

Gabriel gave Daniel a prophecy involving seventy sevens, beginning with a word concerning the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem and extending forward to an anointed ruler, the cutting off of an anointed one, the destruction of the city and sanctuary, and a covenant and a period of desolation.

Those few verses have generated centuries of study. Some of the greatest historians, theologians, rabbis, chronologists, philosophers, and even scientists have attempted to determine exactly what Gabriel meant. They agreed about some things and disagreed sharply about others. They argued over where the count begins, what sort of years are being counted, who the anointed one is, and where the seventy sevens end. Those arguments began a long time ago.

JOSEPHUS - DANIEL AS A PROPHET OF HISTORY - c. AD 37-100

Our story will start in the first century with the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Josephus came from a priestly family, lived through the Jewish war with Rome, and witnessed the period in which Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. He did not leave us a detailed calculation of Daniel 9, so we should not attribute one to him.

Josephus regarded Daniel as an authentic prophet who had accurately foretold events centuries before they occurred. He connected Daniels prophecies with Antiochus Epiphanes and also stated that Daniel had written about Roman rule and the future desolation of the Jewish country. He emphasized that Daniel not only foretold events but also indicated the time of their accomplishment.

Within the first century, Daniel was being read by a highly educated Jewish historian as genuine predictive prophecy involving identifiable events in history. The battle over the chronology would come later.

JULIUS AFRICANUS  - WHAT WAS AUTHORIZED?  - c. AD 160-240

One of the most important early attempts to calculate the seventy sevens came from Sextus Julius Africanus. Africanus was no lightweight. He was an early Christian historian and chronologist whose work influenced later historians, including Eusebius.

He understood the seventy weeks as 490 years and believed they led to Messiah. But his most interesting contribution concerns the beginning point. Africanus looked carefully at the Persian decrees and rejected Cyrus as the decree intended in Daniel 9:25.

Why? Because Cyrus authorized the return of the exiles and the restoration associated with the Temple. Yet Jerusalem itself remained largely ruined and undefended. Africanus instead pointed to the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, when Nehemiah asked the king for authority to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it. He wrote that the command occurred in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, when Nehemiah received permission for Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

His numerical method is another matter. He attempted to reconcile the chronology by converting between lunar and solar years, and his computation presents obvious difficulties when compared with what we now know of Persian chronology.

HIPPOLYTUS  - THE FINAL WEEK AND THE END - c. AD 170-235

At roughly the same time, another influential Christian scholar was reading Daniel very differently. Hippolytus of Rome wrote one of the earliest surviving Christian commentaries on Daniel. He believed the prophecy concerned Messiah, but he also did something that will sound very familiar to anyone acquainted with modern prophecy teaching. He separated Daniels final week from the preceding weeks.

Hippolytus placed that last week at the end of the age. He believed its first half would involve the ministry of Enoch and Elijah and its latter half the rule of Antichrist.

The idea of separating the seventieth week and placing it in the future did not originate with nineteenth or twentieth-century dispensationalism. A form of that interpretation existed by the early third century. Already, interpreters were wrestling with whether all seventy weeks must run continuously.

PORPHYRY - WAS DANIEL WRITTEN AFTER THE EVENTS? - c. AD 234-305

Then came a completely different challenge. Porphyry was one of the great Neoplatonic philosophers of the ancient world. He was highly educated, intellectually formidable, and hostile to Christianity. Instead of trying to make Daniels prophecy fit Messiah, Porphyry attacked the foundation beneath the entire discussion.

He argued that Daniel had not really written the book in the sixth century BC. According to Porphyry, an unknown Jewish writer living during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century BC wrote the book under the name of Daniel. He said what appeared to be prophecy was therefore simply history written after the events. Porphyry had discovered a way to answer Daniels astonishing historical accuracy without accepting divine prophecy.

Today we know this argument does not hold up because Daniel is intimately tied in with the language, culture, times and events of Daniels life, so could not have been written by a later writer. Also, this argument was largely thwarted in the 20^th century with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. The Scrolls are from centuries before Messiah, and already include the book of Daniel.

JEROME - BY AD 400 THE ARGUMENT WAS OLD - AD 347-420

Jerome is especially valuable because he became a historian of the Daniel 9 debate itself. One of the most accomplished biblical scholars of the early Catholic Church, Jerome knew Hebrew and Greek, produced the Latin Vulgate, and had access to writings from earlier interpreters that are now partly or entirely lost.

When he came to the seventy weeks, he did not pretend that Christians had reached one universally accepted solution. Instead, he preserved a remarkable range of opinions. Africanus had one calculation. Clement had another. Tertullian another. Eusebius tried several approaches. Hippolytus placed the final week in the future. Porphyry moved the prophecy into the time of Antiochus.

That observation was telling: the passage had been argued in different ways by exceptionally learned men. By about AD 400, therefore, the essential questions were already on the table. Jeromes commentary demonstrates something we should keep in mind today: There never was an early unanimous interpretation of Daniel 9. There was serious debate almost from the beginning.