Daniel's 70 Weeks Prophecy

The years began from 455

To determine the time of the Messiah’s arrival, first we need to learn the starting point of the period leading to the Messiah. According to the prophecy, it is “from the issuing of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem.” When did this “issuing of the word” take place? According to the Bible writer Nehemiah, the word to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem was issued “in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes.” (Nehemiah 2:1, 5-8) Historians confirm that the year 474 B.C.E. was Artaxerxes’ first full year as ruler. Therefore, the 20th year of his rule was 455 B.C.E. Now we have the starting point for Daniel’s Messianic prophecy, that is, 455 B.C.E. (https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/bible-teach/daniels-prophecy-70-weeks-messiah/)

Problems with the above claim:

1.   Nehemiah 2 was not a decree.  It was a mere letter.

2.   Who are the historians that confirmed 474 B.C.E. as Artexerxes' first full year as ruler>

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Events at the end of the French Revolution helped Bible scholars realize the prophecy of Daniel 9: 24-27 had been precisely fulfilled. There were four decrees given in regards to rebuilding Jerusalem. The first was by Cyrus, the king of Persia, in 538 B.C. The second was by Darius 1 Hystapes of Persia about 519 B.C., basically confiming Cyrus’ decree. The third was by Artaxerxes king of Persia in 457 B.C. in his 7th year and the fourth was also by Artaxerxes in his 20th year. (http://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/70-week-prophecy-daniel).

The first two decrees only authorized the rebuilding of the temple. The third decree was the most comprehesive and authorized the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. This decree also authorized the appointed of magistrates, judges, and reestablished Jewish laws as the base of government and gave the Jewish nation more sovereignty. The fourth decree given to Nehemiah in Artaxerxes 20th year helped to fulfill the decree given to Ezra in 457 B.C. The third decree with its comprehensive nature, including the allowance of full autonomy to the Jews, the reestablishment of Jewish laws and sovereignty, is the only decree that fits exactly into the prophecy of Daniel 9.

while the third decree is a decree to rebuild the temple not Jerusalem, the fourth alleged decree is not really a decree, but letters.

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apparently included authority to restore and build the city of Jerusalem (as we may deduce from Ezra 7:6,7, and also 9:9, which states, ‘God . . . hath extended lovingkindness unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of God, and to repair the ruins thereof, and to give us a wall in Judea and in Jerusalem,’ ASV). Even though Ezra did not actually succeed in accomplishing the rebuilding of the walls till Nehemiah arrived thirteen years later, it is logical to understand 457 B.C. as the terminus a quo for the decree predicted in Daniel 9:25 (1964, 387; emphasis in original). (https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/14-daniels-prophecy-of-the-seventy-weeks)

Just as explained above, the decree is to rebuild the Temple not Jerusalem.

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The Traditional Christian Interpretation of the Seventy Weeks

At this point, I must examine two alternative interpretations of the seventy weeks prophecy proposed by conservative Christians. Let us begin with the classical interpretation. Historically, Protestant Christians have maintained that Daniel's seventy weeks begin about 458 BC with the decree issued by Emperor Artaxerxes I in his seventh year (Ezra 7:7, in the context of Ezra 7) authorizing Ezra to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem (Ezra 9:9).[49] The seventy weeks end with the ministry of Jesus and the founding of the Church. During the final week of Daniel's prophecy, the Gospel is preached only to the Jews because of the "strong covenant" that Jesus the "anointed one" or Messiah made with the Jewish people. The seventieth week begins in the fall of 26 AD with Jesus' baptism by John and the beginning of his ministry to the Jews. It culminates in the spring of 30 AD with Jesus being "cut off" at the Crucifixion. Jesus' atonement on Calvary did thereby "finish the transgression," "put an end to sin," "atone for iniquity," and "seal both vision and prophet" (Daniel 9:24), thus rendering "sacrifice and offering" at the Temple obsolete. Finally, the seventieth week ends in the fall of 33 AD with the martyrdom of Stephen and the conversion of Paul and Cornelius. At this point the mission to the Jews ends and the mission to the Gentiles begins.[50]

The advantage of this theory is that it interprets the 490-year period in a straightforward way, and it has more-or-less plausible starting and ending points. However, it does have its problems. To begin with, the classical Christian theory does not provide a plausible explanation for Daniel's clear distinction between the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks.

The classical interpretation also ignores the obvious parallels between Daniel 9:24-27 on the one hand, and Daniel 8:9-26; 11:31-45 on the other. Actually, all three passages unmistakably describe Antiochus Epiphanes committing a desolating sacrilege or "abomination that makes desolate" at the Temple and bringing normal Jewish sacrifices to an end for about three and a half years (cf. Daniel 7:25; 12:6-7,11). Daniel 9 places this event at the end of the seventy weeks, and the other two passages place it at "the time of the end." The "abominations" of "the prince who is to come" in Daniel 9 are to be understood in the light of the unspeakable blasphemies of Antiochus Epiphanes described in the other two passages (cf. also Daniel 7:8,20,25).

To make their scheme work, adherents of the classical Christian theory must interpret verses 26 and 27 as references to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The problem here is that the fall of Jerusalem lies thirty-seven years outside of the seventy-weeks scheme. Since "desolations are decreed," the Romans under General Titus, "the people of the prince who is to come," were to "destroy the city and the sanctuary" of Jerusalem in 70 AD, long after the seventieth week is over, to punish the Jews for their murder of their Messiah. This is an awkward and arbitrary leap.

Another problem with this interpretation is that the Hebrew word here translated in verse 26 as "destroy" is shakhat. In its various grammatical forms, it only means to "mar," "injure," "spoil," "ruin," "pervert," or "corrupt."[51] This can easily refer to the trashing of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, but not to Titus' razing of Jerusalem and its Temple to the ground.

The Dispensationalist Christian Interpretation of the Seventy Weeks

Dispensationalist Christians like Dr. Harold Hoehner have a totally different theory.[52] They claim the seventy weeks begin in 444 BC with the decree issued by Emperor Artaxerxes I in the twentieth year of his reign authorizing Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8). The obvious problem with this theory is that the seventieth week would then last from 40 to 47 AD--too late to connect with the crucifixion of Jesus in 30 or 33 AD, or with any other plausibly significant event.

To make the numbers add up and the problem go away, dispensationalists have invented an artificial "biblical year" of 360 days, arguing that in God's eyes a biblical month is invariably thirty days. Reading obviously round numbers with micrometer precision, they argue that the story of Noah's Flood equates five months with an exact period of 150 days (5 months X 30 days/month--Genesis 7:11,24; 8:3-4). Similarly, they point out that the Book of Revelation equates 42 months (3 1/2 years X 12 months/year--Revelation 11:2; 13:5) and 1260 days (42 months X 30 days/month--Revelation 11:3; 12:6) with 3 1/2 years (Daniel 7:25; 9:27; 12:7; Revelation 12:14).

Dispensationalists weave their 360-day years and Daniel's seventy weeks together as follows. Supposedly, the seventy weeks began on 1 Nisan, or 5 March 444 BC, when Artaxerxes I issued his decree to Nehemiah. (Actually, Nehemiah 2:1 does not specify the exact day in the month of Nisan that the decree was given.) The sixty-ninth week ended on 10 Nisan, or 30 March 33 AD, when Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem--the "coming" of the "anointed one, a prince" in Daniel 9:25. This span of time is exactly 173,880 days, which happens to be a difference of exactly sixty-nine sevens of years consisting of 360 days each: 69 weeks X 7 prophetic years/week X 360 days/prophetic year = 173,880 days. The "cutting off" of the "anointed one" after the sixty-nine weeks in verse 26 is the Crucifixion on 14 Nisan, or Friday, 3 April 33 AD. According to dispensationalists, the seventieth week did not begin on 31 March 33 AD as one might reasonably expect, but has been postponed to the indefinite future for reasons to be explained below.

Hoehner's theory has several flaws. First of all, the Jews have never used an inflexible 30-day month or 360-day year in either biblical or postbiblical writings in their entire history. They have always used a lunar calendar that varies between 29 and 30 days per month, and has 354 days per year. Since this is eleven days too short, the Jews add a thirteenth month to the calendar every few years to keep it in sync with the solar year. As complex as this system may seem, it succeeds in keeping the agricultural holidays of the Jewish Torah in the seasons where they belong, unlike Hoehner's 360-day fantasy.

Now admittedly, some calendars like the French Republican Calendar[53] and the calendar of ancient Egypt[54] consist of twelve months of thirty days each because these make nice round numbers. (Efforts by Hoehner to document this claim by citing Immanuel Velikovsky, among others, in six separate footnotes will certainly raise eyebrows among serious scholars.)[55] However, one way or another, these nations have always added at least five extra days each year to make the calendar year track the solar year. To the best of my knowledge, no nation anywhere on Earth at any time in history has ever used a 360-day calendar without the additional days to track time over a period of many years.

Secondly, the Jews were in the habit of using round and stereotyped numbers, just as we do when we speak of a "ninety-day wonder" or a person who works a "24/7" job. To cite a parallel example, it was an acceptable round-number approximation for the biblical authors to say that the Molten Sea in Solomon's Temple (a huge, circular bowl of water) was ten cubits in diameter and thirty cubits in outer circumference (1 Kings 7:23-24; 2 Chronicles 4:2-3). Their measures were accurate to the nearest cubit if the diameter was actually 9.65 cubits, and the circumference was actually 30.30 cubits.

Similarly, stereotyped spans of time like forty years (Genesis 25:20; 26:34; Joshua 14:7; Judges 3:11; 5:31; 8:28; 13:1; 1 Samuel 4:18; 2 Samuel 2:10; 15:7; 1 Kings 2:11; 11:42; 2 Kings 12:1; 2 Chronicles 9:30; 24:1; Ezekiel 29:11-13) and multiples thereof (Deuteronomy 31:2; 34:7; Judges 3:30; 2 Samuel 19:32,35; 1 Kings 6:1) crop up in the Bible far more often than chance would allow. Admittedly, some biblical authors treated these figures as exact numbers: e.g., Aaron was supposedly eighty-three years old when Moses was eighty (Exodus 7:7), Israel stayed at Kadesh-Barnea for thirty-eight years (Deuteronomy 2:14) out its forty-year sojourn in the wilderness (Exodus 16:35; Numbers 14:33-34; 33:38; Deuteronomy 1:3; 2:7; 8:2,4; 29:5; Joshua 5:6; Nehemiah 9:21; Psalms 95:10; Amos 2:10; 5:25), and David's forty-year reign (2 Samuel 5:4; 1 Kings 2:11; 1 Chronicles 26:31; 29:27) is broken down into seven years at Hebron and thirty-three years in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:5; 1 Kings 2:11; 1 Chronicles 3:4; 29:27). However, these round clichéd figures are in all probability legend rather than history. Similarly, "forty-two months" and "1260 days" are tolerable round-number approximations of three and a half years.

If God used a 360-day "biblical year" in Daniel 9 as Hoehner claims, then consistency demands that he should have used it elsewhere in the Bible as well, or at least elsewhere in biblical prophecy. Thus Jeremiah's seventy prophetic years would have to be 367.5 days (5.25-day shortfall X 70 years) shorter than seventy real years--in other words, a little less than sixty-nine years. Similarly, the Millennial Reign of Jesus will have to be at least 5,250 days or over fourteen years shorter than a real millennium--in other words, only a little less than 986 real years. I have never run across a dispensationalist author who takes the prophetic year theory to this logical and absurd conclusion.

Thirdly, Hoehner's theory ends on the wrong day even if his math is correct. If the Crucifixion took place on Friday, 3 April 33 AD, then the Triumphal Entry on 30 March must have fallen on a Monday. To place this event on Palm Sunday where it belongs, we must place the beginning of the sixty-nine weeks on the last day of the month before Nisan of 444 BC, contrary to the requirements of Nehemiah 2:1 as interpreted by his theory.

Fourthly, Hoehner's math is actually incorrect. To explain why this is so, I must first digress and explain the difference between the Julian versus the Gregorian calendars. Before 1582, Christian countries used the Julian or "Old Style" calendar as originally devised by Julius Caesar. Every fourth year was made a leap year without exception because it was assumed that the solar year was exactly 365-1/4 days long. Since the actual solar year is actually a bit shorter, namely 365.24219879 days, the calendar since the days of Caesar had deviated 11 days out of sync with the seasons. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar to repair this defect. Of course, most years divisible by 4 are still leap years in the Gregorian or "New Style" Calendar as they were in the Julian calendar. Any year divisible by 400 is still a leap year, but any year divisible by 100 and not by 400 is not a leap year. Thus the year 2000 AD was a leap year, but the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not.[56]

Hoehner miscalculates the number of days between 5 March 444 BC and 30 March 33 AD by confusing the two calendars. He admits the two dates are Julian dates, but then proceeds to use the Gregorian figure of 365.24219879 days/year in an inappropriate manner as follows. The difference between 5 March 444 BC and 5 March 33 AD is exactly 476 Julian years. (In calculating this figure, one must remember that there was no year zero. In other words, the year 1 BC was immediately followed by the year 1 AD.) It so happens that 476 years X 365.24219879 days/year = 173,855.2866 days, which rounds down to 173,855 days. We must add an extra 25 days to the 173,855 days to arrive at the 173,880 days required by Hoehner's sectarian interpretation of Daniel 9. This takes us from March 5 to March 30 of 33 AD.[57]

Hoehner should have multiplied by the Julian figure of 365.25 days/year instead. Calculating with the correct figure, we find that 476 Julian years X 365.25 days/Julian year + 25 days = 173,884 days between March 5 of 444 BC and March 30 of 33 AD instead. This result places the last day of Hoehner's sixty-nine "weeks" or 173,880 days on 26 March rather than 30 March, four days too early for Hoehner's "Palm Monday." Now admittedly, this error is not fatal to his theory, since Artaxerxes could have given his decree on 4 Nisan rather than 1 Nisan to have the sixty-nine weeks end on Palm Sunday of 33 AD. However, it does show that Hoehner is operating outside his area of expertise.

Fifthly, Hoehner's theory starts on the wrong month, dating Nisan a month too early. Parker & Dubberstein provide tables of the Julian equivalents of Babylonian dates for the Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic kings. Hoehner misquotes these tables to prove that 1 Nisan 444 BC in the 20th year of the reign of Artaxerxes I fell on 5 March.[58] Actually, they say that 1 Nisan 444 BC fell on 3 April, and 4 March was actually 1 Adar, the first day of the previous month.[59] This places the endpoint of the 69 weeks about a month too late for Palm Sunday and Good Friday of 33 AD.

Hoehner cites Horn and Wood to prove that the Jewish year according to Nehemiah 1:1; 2:1 began in the fall in the month of Tishri.[60] However, Horn and Wood actually agree with Parker & Dubberstein in placing the month of Nisan too late for Hoehner's theories. They cite fourteen Jewish documents spanning the fifth century BC from among the Elephantine Papyri in Egypt with equivalent dates in both the Egyptian solar calendar and the Babylonian lunar calendar in use at the time. This supplies us with enough information to calculate the Julian equivalent of the dates in each document, as well as the Julian equivalent of 1 Nisan of each year. These documents show that for the fourteen years in question, 1 Nisan fell on Julian dates ranging from 26 March to 24 April.[61] This demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Hoehner is one month off in his calculations.

Now admittedly, Horn and Wood disagree with Parker and Dubberstein by one whole year. On the basis of certain ancient documents, Parker and Dubberstein place 1 Nisan of Artaxerxes' 20th year on 13 April 445 BC rather than 3 April 444 BC.[62] If they are right, then Hoehner's theory is off by a year. Conversely, Horn and Wood argue on the basis of their fourteen double-dated papyri that the accession year or "year zero" of Artaxerxes' reign lasted from fall 465 BC to fall 464 BC, a finding that places the Nisan of the 20th year of his reign in 444 BC. This would be more congenial with Hoehner's theory. Even so, both sources agree that even if Hoehner got the year right, he still got the month wrong.

Finally, the biggest problem of all with the dispensationalist theory is that the seventieth week never happened. The Roman "people of the prince who is to come" should have cruelly oppressed the Jews and destroyed Jerusalem along with its Temple from 33 to 40 AD, after which Jesus should have come to rule the Earth. To dispose of this error, dispensationalists have argued that God postponed the seventieth week to the distant future because the Jews crucified Jesus instead of accepting him as their king on his terms rather than theirs. Under this interpretation, Daniel's seventieth week is the Tribulation Period in our future, and the "prince who is to come" is the Antichrist, who will desecrate the Tribulation Temple in the middle of the period. The Church Age, a mystery that God had kept hidden until Pentecost, fills an invisible gap of many centuries separating the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. To describe this theory is to refute it.

The Unfulfilled Predictions

Daniel 10-12, the fourth vision and the key to the entire book, describes the history of Israel from Daniel's day until the Messianic Kingdom. Mostly, it describes the wars between the main successor states of the Greek Empire, namely the Seleucid "king of the north" in Syria and the Ptolemaic "king of the south" in Egypt, culminating in the career of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean War. However, from Daniel 11:40 until the end of the book, the prophecy's description of the fate of Antiochus at the end of the world deviates seriously from real history.

Writing during the Maccabean revolt, our author made the following mistaken predictions. He said Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of the north, was to conquer Egypt once more, apparently unopposed by Rome (Daniel 11:40-43). Then he was to return to his realm and pitch his royal pavilion in central Palestine (Daniel 11:44-45) in 163 BC at the very end of Daniel's last "week," 3 1/2 years after the original desecration of the Temple (Daniel 12:7,11--cf. Daniel 7:25; 9:27). (As stated above, some scholars place this event in 164 BC instead. If they are correct, then the chronological scheme of the author works out better, with exactly seven years between the death of Onias in 171 BC and the end of the world in 164 BC.) At the appointed time of the end (Daniel 11:27,35-36,40; 12:1,9,13--cf. Daniel 8:17,19; 10:14; 11:29), God was to miraculously intervene to destroy Antiochus and his empire (Daniel 7:9-14,17-22,26-27), sending Michael the Archangel to do the job (Daniel 12:1) like the stone that broke Daniel's statue without human hands (Daniel 2:34-35,44-45; 8:25). At that time, the dead were to be resurrected, with glory for the saints and shame for the sinners (Daniel 12:2-3).

In real history, the Messianic Kingdom never appeared as predicted. Antiochus fell ill and died in 164 BC while he was looting the treasuries of the temples in the Persian territories of his empire (1 Maccabees 6:1-17; 2 Maccabees 1:11-17; 9).[63] The Maccabee family (also known as the Hasmoneans) surprised everybody by driving out the Seleucid armies and eventually setting up an independent Jewish state under their rule that was to last for over a century.

The usual evangelical explanation for these errors is that the prophecy at Daniel 11:36 mysteriously jumps over two thousand years into the future. At this point, Daniel is no longer talking about Antiochus Epiphanes in the past, but the Antichrist in our future.[64] I am not impressed.

As I pointed out earlier, our author was not always consistent from chapter to chapter. In particular, chapter 8 does not quite fit in with the other chapters of his book. Here he successfully predicted the rededication of the Temple, but got the date wrong. Now the Temple was desecrated on 15 Chislev in the year 145 of the Seleucid Era (1 Maccabees 1:54), or 6 December 167 BC, and the Jewish rebels rededicated it to Jewish worship on 25 Chislev in the year 148 of the Seleucid Era (1 Maccabees 4:52), or 14 December 164 BC.[65] In chapter 8, our author predicted that the Temple would miss 2,300 evening and morning continual burnt offerings between its desecration and its rededication (Daniel 8:11-14). This amounts to 1,150 days, or three years plus 55 days. In the Julian calendar, the rededication should have taken place on 30 January 163 BC, almost two months too late to fit actual history.

Religious Forgeries

Christian apologists frequently argue that if Daniel were full of historical errors, as the critics say, learned Jews would have spotted those errors and prevented the book from being canonized in the Hebrew Bible. Actually, this argument carries little weight because successful religious forgeries have been common throughout history.

To begin with, many a Mormon today embraces Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon, an alleged history of ancient America miraculously translated from gold plates that had been buried in a hill in upstate New York fourteen centuries before his time. Some of our nation's most brilliant doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer scientists, and corporate executives are devout Mormons. This dubious book demands and receives self-sacrificing morality, honesty, and obedience from its adherents. Alas, mitochondrial DNA studies show that Native Americans are Asian rather than Jewish.[66] In addition, the Book of Mormon contains many other errors demonstrating that it was written by a modern American rather than an ancient Native American.[67]

The Mormons are not the only ones to embrace forgeries. Ignatius of Antioch had written seven genuine epistles in the early second century, but a fourth-century impersonator interpolated false passages into his genuine epistles, and forged six more epistles in his name. The fraud was exposed only in modern times, but for centuries the Catholic Church used the expanded collection of Ignatius' epistles to support the authority of the Catholic hierarchy.[68]

The Donation of Constantine is a forgery produced by eighth-century Catholic leaders to support the Popes' temporal claim to the Papal States of Italy and their spiritual claim to rule all Christendom. Emperor Constantine supposedly issued this decree early in the fourth century to donate the Papal States to Pope Sylvester I in gratitude for his miraculous cure from leprosy upon his baptism.[69]

The Donation of Constantine is one part of a much larger collection, the False Decretals. These documents are a collection of papal letters and decrees of church councils purportedly compiled by Saint Isidore of Seville around 600 AD. Many of the documents happen to be genuine. However, many of the letters, including all those dating from the first three centuries of the Church's existence, were forged to prove that the clergy have always had political rights that secular kings dare not interfere with. The ninth-century pope Nicholas I declared the Decretals authoritative, and had them incorporated into the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the Church has admitted for some time that these works are forgeries, they were official Church documents for many centuries.[70]

Millions of Arabs and other enemies of the Jews continue to cite the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to this day as proof of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. This infamous forgery supposedly comprises the minutes of twenty-four meetings of a congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. Supposedly, Jewish political and economic leaders from all over the world collaborated with the Freemasons to hatch a diabolical plot to subvert the morals of young people and foster liberalism and socialism. Thus they hoped to destroy the economies of all nations and thereby take over the world.[71]

We read in the Book of Daniel that God's angels ordered the venerable prophet Daniel to "shut up" and "seal" his book (Daniel 8:26; 12:4,9). Perhaps the author meant us to understand that Daniel was to conceal the meaning of the book from the unworthy (Daniel 12:9-10), but these verses can also be understood as saying that the book was to be concealed until the time that all its predictions about the end of the world were due to come to pass in the Maccabean Age.[72] If an ancient Jewish author asserted that in an old trunk somewhere he had just discovered a book of prophecy that was four centuries old, such a claim would be hard to disprove without modern forensic equipment.

The canonization of the Book of Daniel was probably a matter of politics. Pious Jews apparently embraced the book, despite its historical errors, false predictions, and recent origins, because it supported their political movement. Even if the age of everlasting righteousness did not appear as expected, the political independence of the Jews for the first time in over four centuries seemed to be miracle enough to confirm Daniel's prophecies. The details of the unfulfilled predictions were probably reinterpreted in a more figurative and "spiritual" manner, much as Jehovah's Witnesses have repeatedly rationalized the failure of their own predictions for the imminent end of the world. Thus religious fantasies like the Book of Daniel will survive if the political factions that embrace them prevail in the end, and it is the winners who write the history books.

Evangelical Damage Control

Many skeptics do not realize that conservative Christians for centuries have been well aware of errors in the Bible, and that they have contrived many ingenious but unlikely damage-control hypotheses to explain this evidence away. In this essay, I have addressed the most important of their objections to the critical interpretation of Daniel. Admittedly, each individual error can be demonstrated only with probability rather than certainty, and the believers always have their excuses at the ready. However, the weight of the evidence is cumulative, just as it is in a court of law.

Let's translate this into the language of everyday life. I was late for work one morning many years ago because I had negligently forgotten to set my alarm clock the night before. When I finally arrived at work, to save face, I told the story that my cats had knocked a bottle of olive oil from the kitchen counter and onto the floor, where it shattered with dire results. Of course, that was not the sort of accident a person could just walk away from. Now it happened that my story was believed because I am normally quite punctual, and freak accidents like this do happen once in a great while. However, you know perfectly well what a boss would think if a habitually tardy employee offered outrageous excuses like this two or three times per week.

Similarly, if there were only a half dozen errors in the entire Bible, then the fundamentalist excuses for these errors might be tolerable, since strange and unlikely things do happen once in a blue moon. However, with hundreds if not thousands of errors to dispose of, the credibility of the damage-control explanations offered by the Christian apologists wears mighty thin. Fundamentalists who struggle to explain away the errors in the Bible frequently attack the errors of the holy books of other religions as eagerly as any freethinker,[73] and I see no reason to treat the Book of Daniel any differently.

Whenever critical scholars point out that Daniel's purported predictions were written after the fact, Christian believers routinely retort that they are merely showing a philosophical prejudice against the possibility of supernatural prophecy. Actually, it is not a question of philosophical presuppositions, but a question of hard evidence and inference to the best explanation. Daniel's "predictions" of events up to the desecration of the Temple in 167 BC and the beginning of the Maccabean revolt substantially came true--yet its predictions of a new invasion of Egypt by Antiochus and the Resurrection of the Dead soon thereafter totally failed. The author correctly "predicted" the rise of Alexander the Great, and the history of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings, but he fared far worse in his predictions that God would supernaturally slay Antiochus Epiphanes, raise the dead, and inaugurate the messianic age in 163 BC. The most likely explanation of this strange pattern is that these prophecies were first composed just before the time they started to fail by an author who had no genuine talent for predicting the future.

To cite a parallel example, the Book of Mormon prophets, who purportedly flourished between 600 BC and 400 AD, supposedly gave explicit predictions about Jesus Christ's career in first-century Palestine (Helaman 14 et passim), Christopher Columbus' discovery of America (1 Nephi 13:10-12), the Revolutionary War (1 Nephi 13:15-19), and Joseph Smith's prophetic career in nineteenth-century America (2 Nephi 3). However, the book is totally silent about events after 1830, the year the book was first printed. The most likely explanation is that the book was Smith's own composition, and a heavy burden of proof lies on Mormon apologists to prove otherwise. And the exact same reasoning applies to the prophecies of Daniel.

The biblical prophets themselves admitted that their credibility stands or falls with the fulfillment or failure of their predictions.[74] We read, for instance, in the Book of Deuteronomy:

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'--when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)

Now of course nobody should ever be executed for their religious beliefs, and the Book of Daniel is probably just a novel rather than a serious prophecy. Even so, the dramatic failure of the prophecies in the Book of Daniel demonstrates that whatever else it is, it is not the inspired word of God.

Notes

[1] Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel, Anchor Bible Series, vol. 23 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978); Arthur Jeffery, "The Book of Daniel: Introduction and Exegesis" in Interpreter's Bible ed. George Arthur Buttrick, 12 vols. (New York & Nashville: Abingdon, 1951-1957), vol. 6 (1956): 339-549; George A. F. Knight, "The Book of Daniel" in Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, ed. Charles M. Laymon (Nashville & New York: Abingdon, 1971): 436-450; Andre Lacocque, The Book of Daniel, trans. David Pellauer (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979).

[2] Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. George A. Buttrick and Keith R. Crim, 4 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), s.v. "Daniel, Book of"; Anchor Bible Dictionary ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), s.v. "Daniel, Book of."

[3] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 5.

[4] Ibid., p. 6.

[5] Leonard J. Greenspoon, "Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period" in Oxford History of the Biblical World ed. Michael D. Coogan: 317-351 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), p. 323.

[6] Ibid., p. 340.

[7] King James Bible Commentary, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), p. 970.

[8] John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel (Missoula, MT: Scholar's Press, 1977), p. 40.

[9] Jeffery, "Book of Daniel," p. 455.

[10] Quoted by the ancient author Velleius Paterculus, Roman History 1.6.6, cited in Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, p. 37.

[11] Ibid., p. 62n25.

[12] Ibid., p. 63n31.

[13] Elias Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible (New York: Schocken Press, 1967), p. 102.

[14] James B. Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 118-132; D. Winton Thomas, ed., Documents from Old Testament Times (London: Thomas Nelson, 1958), pp. 124-128.

[15] Pritchard, Ancient Near East, pp. 270-275; Thomas, Documents, pp. 245-249.

[16] H. H. Rowley, Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel (1935; repr. Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press Board, 1964), p. 12, 26.

[17] Klaus Koch, Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. "Darius the Mede." Whitcomb offers a more intricate version of this theory: John C. Whitcomb, Darius the Mede (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963).

[18] Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982), pp. 287-288; King James Bible Commentary, p. 968, comment on Daniel 6:31.

[19] Rowley, Darius the Mede, pp. 51-53. In the traditional Hebrew text of Daniel 9:1, the verb homlak in the hoph'al verb form is rendered "was made king." However, the vowels are a guess invented centuries after the book was originally written. With different vowels, the word himlik in the hiph'il verb form, by analogy with the Aramaic aph'el verb form, can be rendered "became king."

[20] Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, p. 107, 121n34; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 157, 160.

[21] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 301-302.

[22] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 301-302; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 232.

[23] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 42, 302; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 153.

[24] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 253, 299.

[25] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 301; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 141, 231.

[26] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 301; Jeffrey, "Book of Daniel," p. 534, comment on Daniel 11:36.

[27] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 40, 301; Jeffrey, "Book of Daniel," p. 534, comment on Daniel 11:36.

[28] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 301; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 141, 231; Jeffrey, "Book of Daniel," p. 534 (comment on Daniel 11:36), p. 535 (comment on Daniel 11:37).

[29] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 302, 305.

[30] Rowley, Darius the Mede, pp. 121-123.

[31] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 5, 288; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 161.

[32] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 289.

[33] Knight, "The Book of Daniel," p. 445, commentary on Daniel 7:7-8; Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, "The Book of Daniel: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections" in New Interpreter's Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck, David L. Peterson, and Thomas G. Long, 12 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995-2002), 7: 17-152 (1996), pp. 102-103, commentary on Daniel 7:7-8.

[34] Henry H. Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary, 24th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1965), p. 346; King James Bible Commentary, 970-971, comment on Daniel 7:22-24.

[35] Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 187, 195.

[36] E.g., Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 238-254; Jeffery, "Book of Daniel," pp. 484-498; Knight, "Book of Daniel," pp. 447-448.

[37] Jeffery, "Book of Daniel," p. 493, comment on Daniel 9:24.

[38] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 33-34, 128.

[39] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 34, 247.

[40] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 35, 190-191, 240, 251.

[41] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 252; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, pp. 225-226.

[42] King James Bible Commentary, p. 891, comment on Jeremiah 25:11-14.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Livius: Articles on Ancient History, "Ptolemy's Canon," http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronology/canon.html (accessed August 4, 2007); Wikipedia, "Canon of Kings," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Kings (accessed May 10, 2007).

[45] Josephus placed the interval from the end of the Babylonian Captivity in 539 BC to the death of the Hasmonean King Hyrcanus and the crowning of Aristobulus as king in 104 BC as 481 years, an error of 46 years (Antiquities XIII.xi.1). The actual interval from the first year of Cyrus the Great (in 539 BC) to the first year of Antiochus Eupator (in 164 BC) was 375 years, but Josephus gives the interval as 414 years, an error of 39 years (Antiquities XX.x.i). Josephus mistakenly synchronized the building of the Second Temple, which took place in the days of Haggai in 515 BC, with "the second year of Cyrus the king" in 538 BC. Either way, he says the Second Temple lasted 639 years until it was destroyed by Emperor Vespasian in 70 AD. Depending on the starting point, the error is either 32 years or 55 years (Wars VI.iv.8).

[46] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 41, 296-297; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 228.

[47] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 41-42, 297-299; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 228.

[48] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 42, 299; Lacocque, Book of Daniel, p. 229.

[49] Archer, Encyclopedia, pp. 289-292; Henry H. Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook, p. 349.

[50] Gary Demar, End Times Fiction: A Biblical Consideration of the 'Left Behind' Theology (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), pp. 42-46; Henry H. Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook, p. 349; Steve Wohlberg, End Time Delusions: The Rapture, the Antichrist, and the End of the World (Shippensburg, PA: Treasure House, 2004), pp. 39-47.

[51] Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), pp. 1007-08.

[52] Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1977), pp. 115-139; Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, 2nd ed. (San Bernardino, CA: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1979), pp. 170-75.

[53] Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia, 15th ed., s.v. "French Republican Calendar."

[54] Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia, 15th ed., s.v. "Calendar: Ancient and Religious Calendar Systems."

[55] Hoehner, Chronological Aspects, p. 135n63-66, 136nn67-68, citing Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950).

[56] Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia, 15th ed., s.v. "Calendar: The Western Calendar and Calendar Reforms."

[57] Ibid., pp. 137-138.

[58] Ibid., p. 128.

[59] Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.-A.D. 75, 2nd ed. (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1956), p. 32.

[60] Hoehner, Chronological Aspects, p. 127.

[61] S. H. Horn and L. H. Wood, "The Fifth-Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 13 (January 1954): 1-20.

[62] Parker & Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology, pp. 17-18, 32.

[63] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, p. 305.

[64] Archer, Encyclopedia, p. 292; King James Bible Commentary, p. 977, comment on Daniel 11:36.

[65] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 215-216, 253-254.

[66] Thomas W. Murphy, "Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics" in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, ed. Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature, 2002), pp. 47-77.

[67] Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? (Salt Lake City: Modern Microfilm, 1972).

[68] Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia, 15th ed., s.v. "Ignatius of Antioch, Saint."

[69] Ibid., s.v. "Constantine, Donation of."

[70] Ibid., s.v. "False Decretals."

[71] Ibid., s.v. "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."

[72] Hartman & Di Lella, Book of Daniel, pp. 310-311.

[73] E.g., Walter R. Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, rev. ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1985).

[74] Deuteronomy 18:20-22; 1 Kings 22:28; 2 Kings 19:25; 2 Chronicles 18:27; Isaiah 19:12; 25:1; 30:8; 34:16; 37:26; 41:4,21-29; 42:8-9; 43:9,12; 44:7-8,24-28; 45:20-21; 46:8-11; 48:3-8,16; Jeremiah 28:8-9; 32:6-8; Ezekiel 6:10; 33:33; 38:17; Habakkuk 2:2-3; John 13:19; 14:29; 16:4.