R.J. Furuli wrote:Dear Carl,
I have the following comments:
kwrandolph wrote:Dear Rolf:
R.J. Furuli wrote:Regarding the beginning and end of the 70 sevens in Daniel 9:24-27, there is cuneiform evidence suggesting that the 20th year of Artaxerxes I was 455/54 BCE and not 445/44 BCE, as is universally believed. If this is correct, the 70th week ends in 36 CE when Cornelius, the first person of the nations, was baptized.
Two responses:
1) Was Nehemiah at the court of Artaxerxes I, or was he at the court of a later Artaxerxes? Along with that, I’ve done enough reading in history to realize that our present, university mediated, understanding of BC history is really poor. For example, did Thutmosis II live in the 15th century BC as claim Kitchen and most Egyptologists, or was he the Pharaoh Sesiq who looted Jerusalem five years after the death of Solomon, or somewhere in between? That’s a span of five centuries, and the majority of the evidences, not claims, that I’ve seen so far indicate that he was Pharaoh Sesiq. While the Persian history seems not as messed up as Egyptian history, can precise dates be claimed, and more importantly, defended?
RF: Nehemiah was at the court of Artaxerxes I. Several starting points for the 70 sevens have been suggested, but in my view, the 20th year of Artaxerxes I is what fits best.
Ancient history and ancient chronology cannot be proven, as you suggest. One problem with chronological issues is that old standpoints are repeated over and over again and never checked. As for the Persian chronoløogy, I have studied the Persepolis Treasury Tablets and Fortification Tables, as well as dated Persian business tablets and astronomical tablets—all together several thousand tablets. My conclusions have been published: Cambyses reigned 8 years (1 year more than usually believed); there are 5 years between Cambyses and Darius I (not 0 years as is usually believed); there was a cogency between Xerxes and Darius I of 16 years (not a normal succession as is usually believed); and Artaxerxes I reigned 51 years (and not 41 as usually believed). If this is correct, Artaxerxes I started to reign in 475/74, and not in 465/64, that is usually believed.
OK, I haven’t studied Persian history that much, but my understanding is that when Alexander burned the Persian royal palace, he burned also the the royal records, so that any reconstruction we make on Persian history is based on second and third hand sources, not first hand. Further, what I read is that even those second and third hand sources were reconstructions, not authoritative.
Nehemiah mentions that he was governor over Judea from year 20 to 32 of Artaxerxes, but when was that? When, for that matter, was the Babylonian Exile? The Bible doesn’t give us dates, and our reconstructions based on piecing together from other ancient histories are possibly decades off.
R.J. Furuli wrote:kwrandolph wrote:2) The events of the seven years preceding Cornelius’ baptism don’t match the description of events as listed by Daniel in these last verses of chapter nine. But the prophecies do match the events of the Jewish revolt of 66 AD.
RF: On the basis of the chronology presented above, the 20th year of Artaxerxes I is 455/54. Sixty-nine sevens…
From where do you get sixty-nine sevens? Daniel 9:26 gives sixty-two.
R.J. Furuli wrote:… would end in the year 29 CE, when the Messiah would come; the middle of the week when sacrifices were terminated because the Messiah died, would be 33 CE…
Why 33 AD? Why not about 26 AD?
As you state above, “One problem with chronological issues is that old standpoints are repeated over and over again and never checked.” For example, when was the 15th year of Tiberius? Was it the 15th year of his sole rule, or did it include the 10 years of his co-rule with his predecessor? When exactly was the Jewish revolt? Was it exactly 66 AD or are we taking a consensus because the date could be off by a few years? Question after question.
R.J. Furuli wrote:…, and the end of the 70th "week" would be 36 CE. According to the prophecy, the Jews were given 70 sevens as a time to repent, and it is fitting that at the end on the period of 70 sevens (Daniel 9:24, 27), the first person of the nations, Cornelius, was baptized.
Was he the first? Weren’t there any proselytes among the 3,000 on the Day of Pentecost? Wouldn’t they have been the first?
R.J. Furuli wrote: From this year the Jews was no longer the special property of God, because the nation did not repent. The temple and the city surrounded by the Roman army in 66, as you indicate, and they were destroyed in destroyed in 70 CE in accordance with Daniel 9:26,27. The text does not say that at the end of sevens the city would be surrounded or destroyed.
It does say that the city and the holy place will be destroyed in war, and the treaty will be enforced through overcoming, an overcoming that lasts seven years, seven years of war and absolute destruction.
R.J. Furuli wrote:Best regards,
Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway
Basically, what I say is that our human computed history is not as accurate as we want it to be. Remember, 0 AD was supposed to be Jesus’ birth year, but now many historians put it at 7 BC. How many other dates preached so confidently in universities are off by that much or more? As a result, I look at all those dates with a ±10 years. That’s only up through Alexander. Earlier? Can be off by centuries.
In Daniel there are 70 sevens, or 490 years. Seven sevens after the beginning of that period we find the anointed prince—Alexander the Great. After 62 sevens from the beginning of that period, in other words we can add three to four years, Messiah will be cut off (killed). The last seven, a time of war, destruction and conquest, ends the period. I take the Bible as accurate, and man’s reconstructions based on partially missing data as approximate.
Karl W. Randolph.