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Thu, 31-Jan-08 10:43:29
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Quote:the discrepancy in the length of the Persian-Median rule of Israel accounts for 151 years of this difference.
Quote:Over the course of time, this verse has had several interpretations. Pablo Christiani in his disputation with Nachmanides in 1263 declared
Quote:that "The seventy weeks are weeks of years, meaning the 420 years that the Second Temple stood, together with the 70 years of the Babylonian Exile; and the 'most holy' is Jsus." Of course, Nachmanides immediately pointed out that Jsus died before the end of the 420 years.It should be noted that Christiani used the dating of history according to Seder HaOlam Rabba as the Gregorian calendar had not yet been invented.After the advent of the Gregorian calendar, the dating of this prophecy uses the new calendar. In a footnote to these verses, the NIV Study Bible states that the "authorizing the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the coming of the Messiah was to be 69 (7 plus 62) 'sevens,' or 483 years." But what is the starting date? According to the Gregorian calendar, subtracting 483 years from the destruction of the first temple places the date at 103 BCE. By the same token, 483 years after 515 BCE, the date when the second temple was completed, is 35 BCE. Changing calendars and dropping seven years did not improve the accuracy of this prophecy.Another variation divides the prophecy in three periods of 7, 62, and 1 and declare that starting point is the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. First, a point of clarification, the order to rebuild the temple was made by Cyrus I in 538 BCE and temple construction was completed in the sixth year of Darius's reign (515 BCE). Because of the high taxes paid to the Persian rulers, the inhabitants of Jerusalem lacked the finances necessary to build the wall around the city. This led to Nechemiah's coming to Israel sometime after the Second Temple was completed. As stated in Nechemiah 3-4, the walls were rebuilt in only 52 days. During his two terms of office as governor of the region, Nechemiah accomplished many reforms and, yet, those who propose this explanation cannot point to an event that fulfills the prophecy of seven weeks.To avoid the problems of sequential time periods, they start the next 62 weeks from 445 BCE. By normal math, this still does not work as subtracting 434 still only makes it to 9 BCE.When all else fails, they change the rules for calculation. To extend the number of years, the next calculation requires that we have 360 day year for calculating days (69 x 7 x 360) and 365.242 day year for converting to years (173,880 * 365.242) which now equals 476 years and 25 days which points to the year 32 CE as the date for Jsus's death. Sounds like rather strange math to me. I wonder what happen if we used the same logic on a math test. Anyway, the Flood Story (Gen 7:11-8:4), which they use as proof of a 360 day year, refers to a 150 day period spanning five months, but says nothing about how a year is determined. For example, even though the Egyptian calendar had a 30 day month, they added 5 feast days at the end of the year to bring the total number of days to 365 days.Furthermore, as shown above, no lunar calendar system has 30 days in a month. This fiction is allowed only in a solar calendar system such as the Egyptian calendar. Crazy math does not provide answers to prophecies.Regarding the Daniel prophecy, The Interpreter's Dictionary to the Bible states: "Even in that matter where Daniel is so grievously in error, the book serves most usefully, for it is of the very greatest importance to the church that the whole wearisome business of 'biblical arithmetic' and eschatological calculation should have tried so sincerely and found to be a false path." Furthermore, when rejecting (Daniel 9) based on Cyrus, they are not rejecting the Rabbis. They are rejecting the Chrstian interpretation described above.One final point regarding dates in the above attempt to explain the prophecy of Daniel, the calculation assumes that Jsus was crucified in 32 CE. The NIV Study Bible and The Interpreter's Dictionary to the Bible state that he was crucified in 30 CE. Again, we are off by two years -- another miss. . .
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