# Daniel 9 Seventy Weeks Objection Defeater ## Intro [Daniel 9:24-27](/codex/daniel-9-24-27/) is the passage Christians reach for when they want a date, and it is the passage where Christian apologetics most often overreaches. The claim usually made is that the prophecy predicts the exact year of Jesus's arrival. The counter-missionary reply is that it does nothing of the kind: the Hebrew says "an anointed one," not "the Messiah," the Masoretic accentuation splits the seven weeks from the sixty-two so that two different anointed figures are in view, the arithmetic does not work on any starting point, and Jewish tradition has read the passage as concerning the Second Temple's destruction since Rashi. Most of that is right, and the honest Christian position concedes it. What is left after the concessions is smaller and much harder to answer. **[Daniel 9:26](/codex/daniel-9-26/) states a sequence.** "After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: **and** the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." An anointed one is violently removed. *Then* a coming people destroy the city and the sanctuary. The city and the sanctuary were destroyed in **AD 70**. Whatever the numbers mean, whatever the accents do, whichever anointed one is meant, the passage places his removal **before** that event. And the passage says at 9:24 that the seventy weeks are determined to finish transgression, make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness, which means the whole programme terminates in that window. That is not a date calculation. It is a constraint, and it rules out every messianic candidate after the first century. ## Cheatsheet **The 30-second reply:** > I am not going to run an arithmetic scheme at you, because the Christian schemes disagree with each other and none of them is demonstrative. Here is what I will run. Verse 26 says an anointed one is cut off, and then the people of a coming prince destroy the city and the sanctuary. That is the order in the consonantal text and no accent mark or translation changes it. The city and the sanctuary were destroyed in AD 70. So whoever the anointed one is, he precedes that. And verse 24 says the seventy weeks are determined to finish transgression, make an end of sins, and make reconciliation for iniquity, so the whole programme terminates inside that window. Your own Talmud says at Sanhedrin 97b that all the predestined dates have passed. I am asking a sequence question, not a sum. **The 6 fast facts:** 1. **The sequence is in verse 26.** Anointed one cut off, then city and sanctuary destroyed. 2. **The sanctuary fell in AD 70.** Datable, and Josephus describes it in detail. 3. ***Yikkaret* is violent.** Niphal of *karat*, used of the covenantal penalty of being cut off and of violent death ([Jeremiah 11:19](/codex/jeremiah-11-19/)). 4. **Verse 24 sets six terminal goals**, including making reconciliation for iniquity and bringing in everlasting righteousness. 5. **Rav declared the dates expired.** b. Sanhedrin 97b: "All the predestined dates have passed, and the matter now depends only on repentance and good deeds." 6. **The Talmud discourages calculating.** The same passage curses those who calculate the end, which is worth knowing before producing a chart. **The 4 strongest counter-moves:** - *"What is the order of events in verse 26?"* The sequence is the whole argument. Ask for it to be read. - *"When were the city and the sanctuary destroyed?"* AD 70. Let the constraint land on its own. - *"What does verse 24 say the seventy weeks accomplish?"* Six goals, none of them Maccabean. - *"What does Rav say at Sanhedrin 97b about the predestined dates?"* They have passed. From inside the tradition. **Concessions to make freely:** - **The Hebrew is *mashiach nagid*, and *mashiach* can mean "an anointed one."** The Jewish Publication Society renders it that way and the rendering is defensible. High priests and kings are *mashiach* in the Hebrew Bible, and Cyrus is called *meshicho* at [Isaiah 45:1](/codex/isaiah-45-1/). - **The Masoretic accentuation supports splitting the seven weeks from the sixty-two.** The *atnach* falls after "seven weeks," which is the basis for reading two distinct anointed figures. This is a real feature of the received text and it should not be brushed aside. - **No Christian arithmetic scheme is demonstrative.** They disagree about the starting decree, about whether the years are 360 days, and about whether a gap precedes the seventieth week. Anderson's scheme requires prophetic years and a specific Nisan date; Hoehner's revises it; others use 458 BC and solar years. Presenting any one of them as proof is an overreach a prepared interlocutor will punish. - **Rashi read the passage of the Second Temple's destruction**, and his reading is coherent. - **The Maccabean dating of Daniel is a serious scholarly position**, held by most critical scholars including John Collins, and it should be named rather than concealed. - **Onias III fits parts of the picture.** A murdered high priest, killed around 171 BC, unjustly and not for himself. - **The Talmud discourages date calculation** and curses those who compute the end. A Christian producing a chart is doing something the tradition he is arguing with regards as illegitimate. **What NOT to defend:** - Do not present a specific year as demonstrated. Not AD 32, not AD 33, not any other. - Do not claim the Hebrew must mean "the Messiah." It need not. - Do not dismiss the *atnach*. It is in the text. - Do not claim the Jewish reading is dishonest. Rashi's reading is a reading, not a dodge. - Do not use the passage as a stand-alone proof. It is a constraint, and it does its work alongside the other arguments. **The closing line:** > *"I have given you the numbers, the accent, and the translation. Keep all of them. What I want is the order in verse 26, because that is in the consonants and nothing we have discussed touches it. An anointed one is cut off, and afterwards a coming people destroy the city and the sanctuary. Your Temple fell in the year 70. Whoever that anointed one was, he came before it. That does not tell you who he was. It tells you when he had to be, and it means the question was settled in the first century one way or the other."* ## In full Defeater for the counter-missionary claim: *"[Daniel 9:24-27](/codex/daniel-9-24-27/) has nothing to do with Jesus. The Hebrew says 'an anointed one,' the accentuation divides the seven weeks from the sixty-two so that two different figures are in view, the arithmetic does not work, and Jewish tradition reads the passage of the Second Temple's destruction. Christian date schemes are numerology."* The consonantal sequence of 9:26, the terminal goals stated in 9:24, the violent force of *yikkaret*, the Talmud's own concession that the calculated dates have expired, and the difficulties facing the Maccabean reading do not warrant treating the passage as irrelevant to the messianic question, though they do warrant abandoning every specific arithmetic scheme. The objection is well made and largely correct in its criticisms. This defeater therefore does something unusual: it concedes the objection's strongest points in full and then shows that a narrower argument survives all of them. The defeat structure is **five-pronged**. 1. **The sequence in 9:26 is in the consonantal text and no disputed feature touches it.** "And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." Three ordered elements: an anointed one is cut off; a coming people destroy the city and the sanctuary; desolations follow. **The accentuation dispute concerns 9:25 and does not reach this verse. The translation of *mashiach* does not change the order. The arithmetic does not change the order.** Grant every objection and the sequence stands. 2. **The city and the sanctuary were destroyed in AD 70.** Titus's forces took Jerusalem and burned the Temple, an event Josephus narrates at length in *Jewish War* 6 and Tacitus records at *Histories* 5. It is among the best-attested events of the ancient world. Combined with premise 1, this places the anointed one's violent removal before AD 70, which rules out every subsequent messianic claimant, including Bar Kokhba, Sabbatai Zevi, and every modern candidate. 3. **9:24 gives the programme a terminus, and the goals are not Maccabean.** "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." Six goals: finishing transgression, ending sins, making reconciliation for iniquity (*lekhapper avon*, using the atonement verb), bringing in everlasting righteousness, sealing vision and prophecy, and anointing a most holy thing or place. The Maccabean crisis, however traumatic, did not finish transgression, end sins, or bring in everlasting righteousness, and the objection's preferred terminus is therefore in tension with the passage's own stated purpose. 4. ***Yikkaret* denotes violent removal, and "not for himself" adds a further specification.** The verb is the Niphal of *karat*, "to cut off." Its uses include the Torah's penalty of being cut off from the people ([Leviticus 7:20-21](/codex/leviticus-7-20-21/), [17](/codex/leviticus-7-17/):4, 17:9) and violent death, as at [Jeremiah 11:19](/codex/jeremiah-11-19/) where the prophet's enemies say "let us cut him off from the land of the living." It is not vocabulary for retirement or removal from office. The following phrase *ve-ein lo* is difficult and is rendered variously: "and shall have nothing," "and he shall have no one," "but not for himself." All the renderings converge on deprivation or dispossession attending the death. 5. **The Maccabean reading faces its own arithmetic problem, which is the reciprocal concession.** If the terminus is the death of Onias III (c. 171 BC) or the rededication of the Temple (164 BC), the seventy weeks must be counted from a starting point that yields roughly 490 years to that date, and the candidates do not cooperate: Jeremiah's word about the seventy years came around 605 or 597 BC, and the destruction of the First Temple was 586 BC, neither of which is 490 years before 164. Critical commentators generally acknowledge that the numbers are schematic rather than exact on their reading too. **The arithmetic is a problem for everyone.** What that establishes is that no reading of the passage should rest on the sum, which is precisely why this defeater rests on the sequence. **On the Talmudic material.** Two passages matter and they cut in different directions, so both should be given. **b. Sanhedrin 97b** records Rav saying "all the predestined dates have passed, and the matter now depends only on repentance and good deeds," which is a concession from inside the tradition that the calculated windows expired. The same passage contains the curse on those who calculate the end, "blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end," which is a warning a Christian producing a chronological chart ought to hear. **b. Nazir 32b** contains a discussion in which the Second Temple's duration is treated as known in advance from Daniel's prophecy, which shows the passage being read as a timetable within rabbinic tradition. The defeater is targeted. It does not claim that the Hebrew must read "the Messiah," that any arithmetic scheme is demonstrative, that the accentuation is negligible, or that the Maccabean dating is unserious. It claims that the passage's sequence confines an anointed one's violent death to before AD 70, and that its stated goals are not satisfied by the Maccabean crisis. ## Grammar and hermeneutics The objection is almost entirely a set of grammatical and text-critical claims, and each deserves a direct answer. - **The *atnach* in 9:25 and what it does.** The Masoretic accentuation places the main disjunctive accent after *shavuim shivah*, "seven weeks," which supports the rendering "unto an anointed one, a prince, shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again." That is the basis of the Jewish Publication Society's two-figure reading, commonly identified as Cyrus (the anointed one of [Isaiah 45:1](/codex/isaiah-45-1/)) after seven weeks and a later figure after sixty-two. **The accents are Masoretic and date from roughly the seventh to tenth centuries.** They are an interpretive tradition of great value and they are not part of the consonantal text, which is why the question is genuinely open and why the Septuagint, Theodotion, and the Vulgate did not read them. This should be conceded and then bounded: the dispute concerns verse 25. Verse 26's sequence is unaffected. - ***Mashiach nagid* in 9:25.** *Mashiach* is a passive adjective, "anointed," used in the Hebrew Bible of priests ([Leviticus 4:3](/codex/leviticus-4-3/), [4](/codex/leviticus-4-4/):5, 4:16), of kings ([1 Samuel 24:6](/codex/1-samuel-24-6/), [2 Samuel 1:14](/codex/2-samuel-1-14/)), and once of Cyrus ([Isaiah 45:1](/codex/isaiah-45-1/)). *Nagid* means leader, prince, or ruler. Neither term is a technical designation for the eschatological Messiah in classical Hebrew, and translating "the Messiah" imports a later definiteness the noun does not carry. Concede this openly. - ***Yikkaret* in 9:26.** Niphal of *karat*. In the Torah's *karet* penalty the person is cut off from the people ([Leviticus 7:20-21](/codex/leviticus-7-20-21/); 17:4; 17:9; [Numbers 15:30-31](/codex/numbers-15-30-31/)). At [Jeremiah 11:19](/codex/jeremiah-11-19/) the plotters say *nikhretenu me-eretz chayyim*, "let us cut him off from the land of the living," of a person they intend to kill. At [Isaiah 53:8](/codex/isaiah-53-8/) the servant is *nigzar me-eretz chayyim* using a different but semantically parallel verb. The vocabulary is of violent, imposed removal. - ***Ve-ein lo* in 9:26.** Literally "and there is not to him." The ellipsis is unresolved and translations supply different objects: "and shall have nothing," "and he shall have no one," "but not for himself." The King James rendering is interpretive. What is agreed is that the clause attaches a negation of possession or attendance to the anointed one's death, and no rendering makes the death voluntary retirement. - ***Shavuim* as heptads.** The word is the plural of *shavua*, "seven" or "week," and in this context denotes units of seven rather than seven-day weeks, which is common ground. Whether the units are years is an inference, universally made, from the seventy years of Jeremiah with which the chapter opens (9:2). That inference is sound and is not disputed by either side. - **Genre: this is an angelic interpretation inside a prayer narrative.** [Daniel 9](/codex/daniel-9/) opens with Daniel reading Jeremiah's seventy years (9:2), praying a corporate confession (9:3-19), and receiving Gabriel's answer (9:20-27). The passage is therefore an expansion of an existing prophetic number, delivered as revelation to a penitent, and its rhetorical shape is consolation with warning. Apocalyptic number-schemes in this genre are characteristically schematic, which is a reason for caution about exact sums from any interpreter. On the Masoretic and therefore post-consonantal status of the *atnach*, the conceded indefiniteness of *mashiach*, the violent force of *yikkaret*, the unresolved ellipsis of *ve-ein lo*, and the schematic character of apocalyptic number-schemes, the passage will not support a demonstrated year. What it will support is the order of events in 9:26, which is written in the consonants and which no disputed feature reaches. ## Argument structure | | Premise | Notes | |---|---|---| | **P1** | **Daniel 9:26 states a sequence in the consonantal text.** An anointed one is cut off; then the people of a coming prince destroy the city and the sanctuary. The accentuation dispute concerns verse 25; the *mashiach* translation question does not affect order; no arithmetic scheme is required. | Sequence-constraint argument | | **P2** | **The city and the sanctuary were destroyed in AD 70.** Attested by Josephus (*Jewish War* 6) and Tacitus (*Histories* 5). Combined with P1, this places the anointed one's death before AD 70 and excludes every later claimant. | Chronological anchor | | **P3** | **9:24 gives six terminal goals that the Maccabean crisis does not satisfy.** Finishing transgression, ending sins, making reconciliation for iniquity (*lekhapper avon*), bringing in everlasting righteousness, sealing vision and prophecy, anointing a most holy. | Purpose-clause argument | | **P4** | ***Yikkaret* denotes violent, imposed removal.** Niphal of *karat*, the verb of the *karet* penalty and of violent death at Jeremiah 11:19. *Ve-ein lo* attaches deprivation to the death on every rendering. | Lexical argument | | **P5** | **The arithmetic is a problem for every reading, including the Maccabean one.** Neither 605, 597, nor 586 BC is 490 years before 164 BC, and critical commentators treat the numbers as schematic. No reading should rest on the sum. | Reciprocal concession | | **C** | **Daniel 9 constrains any messianic candidate to before AD 70.** **The defeater concedes that *mashiach* may mean "an anointed one," that the *atnach* supports the two-figure reading of verse 25, that no Christian arithmetic scheme is demonstrative, that Rashi's reading is coherent, and that the Maccabean dating of Daniel is a serious scholarly position.** It denies that these concessions remove the sequence in verse 26. | | ## Master objections to the whole argument **MO1: "The Jewish Publication Society renders two anointed ones, Cyrus after seven weeks and a later one after sixty-two. Your 'sequence' depends on collapsing them into one figure."** - Three responses. (a) **The two-figure reading of verse 25 is conceded and the *atnach* supports it.** (b) **Verse 26 has only one anointed one and one sequence.** Whoever the figure of 25 is, verse 26 says *an* anointed one is cut off and *then* a coming people destroy city and sanctuary. Two anointed figures in verse 25 does not produce two orderings in verse 26. (c) **On the two-figure reading the constraint tightens rather than loosening.** If the first anointed one is Cyrus (538 BC) and the sixty-two weeks run from him, the second falls centuries later, still before the destruction the same verse announces. **MO2: "The anointed one cut off is Onias III, murdered around 171 BC, and the desolation is Antiochus. The passage is about the Maccabean crisis and has a natural first-century-BC home."** - Four responses. (a) **Onias fits parts of the picture genuinely well** and the identification should be treated as serious. (b) **The destruction clause is the difficulty.** Antiochus desecrated the Temple; he did not destroy the city and the sanctuary, and 9:26 says "destroy," with 9:27 continuing to a determined consummation poured on the desolate. The Maccabean reading has to soften a verb the text chooses. (c) **The six goals of 9:24 are not met.** Transgression was not finished, sins were not ended, reconciliation for iniquity was not made, and everlasting righteousness did not arrive in 164 BC. (d) **The arithmetic does not favor it either**, as premise 5 grants, which means the Maccabean reading pays the same price it charges. **MO3: "Christian schemes have produced a dozen different years and each of their authors is certain. That is numerology, and the fact that you have abandoned them concedes the point."** - Three responses. (a) **The criticism is accepted in full, and the schemes are abandoned here.** Anderson's 445 BC start with 360-day prophetic years, Hoehner's revision, and the 458 BC solar-year schemes all require assumptions that have to be argued rather than assumed, and their mutual disagreement is itself evidence against any of them being demonstrative. (b) **Abandoning them is not conceding the passage.** The sequence argument does not use any of their machinery. (c) **The Talmud's own view supports the caution.** B. Sanhedrin 97b curses those who calculate the end, which is a warning against exactly the genre being criticized. **MO4: "Daniel is a second-century BC composition written after the events it 'predicts.' Once that is granted, the passage is not prophecy at all and your constraint evaporates."** - Four responses. (a) **The Maccabean dating is the majority critical position and it should be named, not hidden.** John Collins's Hermeneia commentary is the standard statement of it. (b) **It is contested on real grounds**, including the Aramaic and Persian loanwords, the absence of Greek terms beyond musical instruments, and the presence of Daniel manuscripts at Qumran; that argument belongs at the pages treating Daniel's date rather than here. (c) **The constraint survives on either dating in the form that matters.** If Daniel is authentic prophecy, the sequence is a prediction and confines the anointed one to before AD 70. If Daniel is Maccabean, then it is not a prophecy about Jesus, and it is equally not an argument against him, so the counter-missionary cannot use the late dating to neutralize the Christian reading while treating Daniel as authentic Scripture elsewhere. (d) **The counter-missionary position cannot have it both ways**, and pressing this is the reciprocal move: either Daniel is prophecy, in which case the sequence binds, or it is not, in which case the objection loses its own footing in the book. **MO5: "Rashi and the Jewish commentators read this of the Second Temple's destruction and the Roman period, and they are reading their own text in their own language."** - Three responses. (a) **Rashi's reading is coherent and is not being dismissed.** (b) **It concedes the constraint.** If the passage concerns the Second Temple's destruction, then the anointed one it mentions belongs to the period leading to AD 70, which is precisely what premise 1 claims. (c) **Rabbinic tradition treated the passage as a timetable elsewhere.** B. Nazir 32b has the Second Temple's duration treated as known in advance from Daniel, which shows the chronological reading operating inside the tradition. **MO6: "Even granting the constraint, you have shown only that some anointed figure died before AD 70. Many did. Onias III, Aristobulus, and a series of high priests were killed. The constraint identifies nobody."** - Three responses. (a) **Correct, and the defeater claims no more.** It is a constraint, not an identification. (b) **The constraint does substantial work anyway.** It excludes every messianic candidate after the first century, which is a live matter in Judaism, and it places the question in a window rather than leaving it open indefinitely. (c) **The identification is carried elsewhere**, by the cumulative messianic case, the sacrificial vocabulary of [Isaiah 53](/codex/isaiah-53/), and the resurrection. See [Rabbinic Sources Attest a Suffering Messiah Argument](/codex/rabbinic-sources-attest-a-suffering-messiah-argument/) and [Resurrection of Jesus](/codex/resurrection-of-jesus/). ## Premise 1, the sequence in verse 26 ### Affirmative case 1. **The verse states three ordered elements.** An anointed one cut off; the people of a coming prince destroying city and sanctuary; desolations determined to the end of the war. 2. **The order is carried by the consonants.** No vowel pointing, accentuation, or translation choice alters the succession of clauses. 3. **The disputed features are located elsewhere.** The *atnach* controversy belongs to verse 25; the two-anointed-ones reading belongs to verse 25; the arithmetic belongs to verses 24 to 27 as a whole. 4. **Both traditional Jewish and Christian readings accept the order.** Rashi's application to the Second Temple's destruction preserves it, as does every critical commentary. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Hebrew narrative sequence is not always chronological. The *waw* can be explanatory or resumptive."* 2. *"Verse 27 introduces further material about a covenant and a cessation of sacrifice that complicates any simple ordering."* 3. *"'The city and the sanctuary' might refer to the destruction under Antiochus or to a symbolic desolation."* ### Rebuttals 1. **The general point about the *waw* is sound and does not fit here.** The clause is introduced by *ve-* with a following noun phrase as subject, and it introduces a distinct set of actors, "the people of the prince that shall come," performing a distinct action. Resumptive or explanatory readings require the second clause to restate or clarify the first, and destroying a city is not a clarification of an anointed one being cut off. 2. **Verse 27 does complicate the picture and it does not disturb the order in verse 26.** Its subject and its referents are among the most contested in the book, which is why this argument stops at verse 26. 3. **The vocabulary is of destruction, not desecration.** The verb is *shachat*, to ruin or destroy, and the objects are the city and the holy place together. Antiochus profaned the sanctuary and did not destroy the city; the Roman action did both. ## Premise 3, the six goals of verse 24 ### Affirmative case 1. **The verse states a purpose for the whole period.** "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." 2. **The third goal uses the atonement verb.** *Lekhapper avon*, employing *kipper*, the technical term of the sacrificial system. See [Blood Atonement Not Required Objection Defeater](/codex/blood-atonement-not-required-objection-defeater/). 3. **The fourth goal is eschatological in scope.** *Tzedek olamim*, everlasting righteousness. 4. **These are not descriptions of the Hasmonean restoration**, which ended in a dynasty the rabbinic tradition itself criticized and in Roman annexation within a century. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"The goals are unfulfilled on the Christian reading too. There is no everlasting righteousness now."* 2. *"'Anoint the most Holy' is most naturally the rededication of the altar in 164 BC, which is exactly the Maccabean event."* 3. *"Apocalyptic literature routinely describes limited historical deliverances in cosmic language. The scale of the vocabulary proves nothing."* ### Rebuttals 1. **This is the strongest objection to the premise and it is answered by the same two-stage structure used across this cluster.** Reconciliation for iniquity is claimed as accomplished; everlasting righteousness is claimed as inaugurated and not consummated. That structure has to be argued rather than assumed, and it is argued at [Two-Stage Messianic Prophecy](/codex/two-stage-messianic-prophecy/) and [Jesus Failed the Messianic Job Description Objection Defeater](/codex/jesus-failed-the-messianic-job-description-objection-defeater/). The objection identifies a cost the Christian reading pays; the premise's point is that the Maccabean reading pays it too and has less to show. 2. **The rededication reading of *qodesh qodashim* is genuinely plausible** and should be conceded as one live option. The phrase ordinarily denotes the most holy place or most holy things rather than a person, and Christian readings that make it refer directly to a person are strained. 3. **Granted as a feature of the genre, and it applies symmetrically.** If cosmic language may describe a limited deliverance, then the six goals do not by themselves establish either reading, which is why the argument's weight sits on premise 1. ## Live-cite kit **Scripture** - [Daniel 9:24](/codex/daniel-9-24/), the six goals, read in full. - [Daniel 9:25](/codex/daniel-9-25/), cited with the *atnach* concession stated aloud. - [Daniel 9:26](/codex/daniel-9-26/), the sequence, which is the argument. - [Daniel 9:2](/codex/daniel-9-2/), Jeremiah's seventy years as the chapter's starting point. - [Jeremiah 11:19](/codex/jeremiah-11-19/), for the force of *karat*. - [Isaiah 45:1](/codex/isaiah-45-1/), Cyrus as *mashiach*, conceded openly. - [Leviticus 4:3](/codex/leviticus-4-3/) and [1 Samuel 24:6](/codex/1-samuel-24-6/), *mashiach* of priests and kings. **Jewish sources** - b. Sanhedrin 97b, Rav on the expired dates and the curse on calculators. - b. Nazir 32b, the Second Temple's duration known from Daniel. - Rashi on [Daniel 9](/codex/daniel-9/), applying the passage to the Second Temple's destruction. - The Jewish Publication Society rendering of 9:25, with its two anointed figures. **Historical and scholarly** - Josephus, *Jewish War* 6, on the destruction; Tacitus, *Histories* 5. - John J. Collins, *Daniel* (Hermeneia, Fortress, 1993), the critical position, cited against convenience. - John Goldingay, *Daniel* (WBC, Word, 1989); Ernest Lucas, *Daniel* (Apollos, 2002); Joyce Baldwin, *Daniel* (TOTC, IVP, 1978). - Michael L. Brown, *Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus*, vol. 3 (Baker, 2003). - Sir Robert Anderson, *The Coming Prince* (1894) and Harold Hoehner, *Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ* (Zondervan, 1977), named as the schemes being set aside. **Aphorism** - "I am asking a sequence question, not a sum." - "Keep the accent. Keep the translation. The order is in the consonants." - "Your Temple fell in the year 70. He comes before that on any reading." ## Tactical notes - **Open by giving away the arithmetic.** "I am not going to run a date scheme, because they disagree with each other and none of them proves anything." This is the single highest-value sentence on the page. - **Concede *mashiach* and the *atnach* in the same breath.** Both are real, both are commonly disputed by Christians who should know better, and conceding them buys the credibility the sequence argument needs. - **Then ask for verse 26 to be read aloud, and ask what happens first.** Do not explain it. Let the order do the work. - **Have AD 70 ready as a date and nothing more.** No commentary on its significance, no theology of judgment. See [Israel and the Church](/codex/israel-and-the-church/). - **Expect the Maccabean dating.** Answer with the two-horned form at MO4: either Daniel is prophecy and the sequence binds, or it is not and the objection loses its footing too. - **Cite Sanhedrin 97b carefully.** It contains both Rav's concession and the curse on calculators, and quoting only the first half is the kind of selective citation this cluster forbids. - **Do not produce a chart.** Ever, in this conversation. - **What NOT to defend:** any specific year; the claim that *mashiach* must be definite; dismissal of the *atnach*; the claim that Rashi is evading. ## See also - [Jesus Failed the Messianic Job Description Objection Defeater](/codex/jesus-failed-the-messianic-job-description-objection-defeater/), where this constraint pairs with the two-picture argument. - [Talmud Attests the Temple Signs Ceased Argument](/codex/talmud-attests-the-temple-signs-ceased-argument/), the other chronological argument from Jewish sources. - [Isaiah 53 Is About Israel Objection Defeater](/codex/isaiah-53-is-about-israel-objection-defeater/), on the parallel vocabulary of being cut off from the land of the living. - [Rabbinic Sources Attest a Suffering Messiah Argument](/codex/rabbinic-sources-attest-a-suffering-messiah-argument/) and [Resurrection of Jesus](/codex/resurrection-of-jesus/), where identification is argued. - [Blood Atonement Not Required Objection Defeater](/codex/blood-atonement-not-required-objection-defeater/), on *kipper* in 9:24. - [Messianic Prophecy](/codex/messianic-prophecy/) and [Two-Stage Messianic Prophecy](/codex/two-stage-messianic-prophecy/), the hermeneutical frame. - [Israel and the Church](/codex/israel-and-the-church/), on why AD 70 functions here as a date only. - [The Jewish Defense](/codex/the-jewish-defense/), [Judaism](/codex/judaism/), and [Counter-Missionary Movement](/codex/counter-missionary-movement/), the cluster hubs.
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What are the seventy weeks of [Daniel 9](/codex/daniel-9/)?** [Daniel 9:24-27](/codex/daniel-9-24-27/) announces that "seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city" to accomplish six things: finishing transgression, making an end of sins, making reconciliation for iniquity, bringing in everlasting righteousness, sealing up vision and prophecy, and anointing a most holy. The word rendered "weeks" is *shavuim*, units of seven, and both traditions take the units to be years by inference from the seventy years of Jeremiah with which the chapter opens at 9:2. The passage then divides the period into seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and a final week, and describes an anointed one being cut off, a coming people destroying the city and the sanctuary, and a cessation of sacrifice. It is among the most contested passages in the Hebrew Bible, and Christian, Jewish, and critical readings differ substantially about nearly every element. **Q: Does [Daniel 9](/codex/daniel-9/) predict the exact year Jesus came?** No Christian arithmetic scheme is demonstrative, and this codex does not run one. The schemes disagree about the starting decree, with candidates in 538, 520, 458, and 445 BC; about whether the years are 360-day "prophetic" years or solar ones; and about whether a gap precedes the seventieth week. Sir Robert Anderson's 1894 calculation and Harold Hoehner's revision are the best known, and their mutual disagreement is itself a reason not to rest weight on either. The Babylonian Talmud is worth hearing on this: at Sanhedrin 97b it curses those who calculate the end. What survives after the schemes are set aside is a **sequence** rather than a sum, and that is the form in which the argument should be made. **Q: What is the strongest form of the [Daniel 9](/codex/daniel-9/) argument?** The sequence constraint in verse 26. The verse reads "after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: **and** the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." An anointed one is violently removed, and afterwards a coming people destroy the city and the sanctuary. The city and the sanctuary were destroyed in AD 70. That order is written in the consonantal text, so none of the disputed features touches it: the Masoretic accentuation controversy concerns verse 25, the translation of *mashiach* does not affect the order of clauses, and no arithmetic is required. The result is a constraint rather than an identification. It does not tell you who the anointed one was; it tells you that he preceded AD 70, which excludes every later messianic claimant. **Q: Doesn't the Hebrew say "an anointed one" rather than "the Messiah"?** It can, and the Jewish Publication Society renders it that way defensibly. *Mashiach* is a passive adjective meaning "anointed," used in the Hebrew Bible of priests ([Leviticus 4:3](/codex/leviticus-4-3/)), of kings ([1 Samuel 24:6](/codex/1-samuel-24-6/)), and once of Cyrus the Persian ([Isaiah 45:1](/codex/isaiah-45-1/)). It is not a technical term for the eschatological Messiah in classical Hebrew, and translating it as a title imports a definiteness the noun does not carry. Christians should concede this rather than insisting the Hebrew must mean "the Messiah." The concession costs nothing, because the argument from the passage does not depend on the title. It depends on the order of events in verse 26, which holds whoever the anointed figure is. **Q: What is the atnach argument about [Daniel 9:25](/codex/daniel-9-25/)?** The Masoretic accentuation places the main disjunctive accent, the *atnach*, after "seven weeks" in verse 25. That supports reading the verse as "unto an anointed one, a prince, shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again," producing two distinct anointed figures rather than one period of sixty-nine weeks. The two are commonly identified as Cyrus, after the seven weeks, and a later figure such as the murdered high priest Onias III. This is a real feature of the received text and should not be brushed aside. Two things bound it. The accents are Masoretic, dating from roughly the seventh to tenth centuries, and are an interpretive tradition rather than part of the consonantal text, which the Septuagint, Theodotion, and the Vulgate did not have. And the dispute concerns verse 25 only. Verse 26's sequence is untouched by it. **Q: What if Daniel was written in the second century BC?** That is the majority critical position, argued at length in John Collins's Hermeneia commentary, and it should be named rather than concealed. The Christian response on the dating question belongs elsewhere and turns on the Aramaic and Persian loanwords, the limited Greek vocabulary, and the Qumran manuscripts. For this argument the important point is that the constraint survives either way, and that the objection cannot use the late dating selectively. If Daniel is authentic prophecy, the sequence in 9:26 is a prediction and confines an anointed one's death to before AD 70. If Daniel is a second-century composition about the Maccabean crisis, then it is not a prophecy about Jesus and it is equally not an argument against him. What a counter-missionary may not do is invoke the Maccabean dating to neutralize the Christian reading while treating Daniel as authentic Scripture in every other context.