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Prophecy

The seventy weeks: the Anointed One cut off, then the city and the sanctuary destroyed (Daniel 9)

The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70, artist’s impression by Francesco Hayez (1867): the final event that Dan 9:26 announces, according to this reading.
Artist’s impression The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70, artist’s impression by Francesco Hayez (1867): the final event that Dan 9:26 announces, according to this reading. — Francesco Hayez, Wikimedia Commons · Domaine public

● Written before, according to historians

Written 539–538 BC according to tradition; c. 167–164 BC according to historians. Event: c. 27–70 AD.

See the full entry: sources, objections, answers

In short

The announcement. The prophet Daniel, in the book of Daniel, around 539 BC according to tradition, announces a period of “seventy weeks” during which an Anointed One, that is, a consecrated figure, will be “cut off”, then the city and the sanctuary will be destroyed.

What happened. Depending on the starting point chosen, some calculations make the period end with Jesus, crucified in 30 or 33. In 70, the legions of Titus destroy Jerusalem and its Temple, more than two centuries after the latest date of writing proposed for the book.

What is still debated. for many scholars, the text has in view the crisis of 171–164 BC, and the starting point that leads to Jesus is chosen after the fact among several possible ones.

Why it is striking

Even if the book dates from around 164 BC, as historians think, the destruction comes two centuries later. Christians read in it the death of Jesus: that is a reading, and the calculation depends on the starting point chosen.

Main objection (in French for now)

Lecture critique : le texte vise la crise maccabéenne. L’Oint retranché est le grand prêtre Onias III (assassiné en 171 av. J.-C.), le chef qui vient est Antiochos IV, et les 490 ans « ne sont pas à prendre littéralement » (notes de la NAB).

The text (World English Bible)

“Seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your holy city, to finish disobedience, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. “Know therefore and discern that from the going out of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem to the Anointed One, the prince, will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be built again, with street and moat, even in troubled times. After the sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off, and will have nothing. The people of the prince who come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end will be with a flood, and war will …

Dan 9:24-27

Sources