Quote:
Originally Posted by bearbear
1. If you were to take this prophecy literally without the pause, then the 70th week should have began between 30AD-32AD (depending on which 360 day Calendar system you use). This would require all the events described by Daniel in the 69th-70th week to have been fulfilled by 39AD at the latest, not 70AD.
2. "We can tell Jesus expected the Jewish leadership to understand Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy because He held them accountable for knowing the exact day of His official arrival in Jerusalem, and only the 70 weeks prophecy could have told them."
3. Furthermore Revelation is convincingly dated to 96 AD well after the destruction of the temple in 70AD. Why would the Apostle John prophesy concerning things that have already past?
https://www.christiancourier.com/art...lation-written |
I have read the entire post and you have indeed raised so many issues regarding my post, focusing only on the prophecy of the seventy weeks, that it will require a lot of time to answer; time that I unfortunately do not have. However, I will answer briefly on three points from your post that I have numbered 1, 2 and 3 to make it easier.
1. I never suggested that the 70 weeks will end in 70 AD. It ended with Messiah being cut off which is in the middle of the 70th week. Jesus was crucified in the year 32 or 33. Note that the prophecy makes no mention what happens the rest of the week. Any suggestion would be conjecture. (I have read that at the end of the seven years, the last week, Stephan was martyred. That might be so, or not.)
2. Not only the Jewish leadership expected the Messiah around the time of His birth but also common people like Simeon and Anna, the prophetess (Luke 2).
3. I do not agree that the date of the writing of the Revelation has been
convincingly dated to 96 AD (during the closing years of the reign of Domitian). The Revelation had to be written before the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. For example, Revelation 11 speaks of John being instructed to measure the temple.
When John wrote the Revelation the temple was still standing and it would have been before the siege and the destruction of the temple and the city. In the whole history of Israel, the greatest catastrophe, the most woeful tragedy, had to be the destruction of their beloved city and their temple, the center of the religious activities. Yet according to your argument about a late date (at the most 25 years after the siege and subsequent sack of the temple and the city), John totally ignores it, as if it never happened. Impossible!
You also give a link to Wayne Jackson's "Christian Courier". He discusses the external and internal evidence for a late-date argument. Regarding the external evidence there is and always has been only one argument although people like Wayne Jackson and others would cite several sources who use this particular argument as support for their argument of the external evidence in support of a late date. I quote from your link:
Irenaeus (A.D. 180), a student of Polycarp (who was a disciple of the apostle John), wrote that the apocalyptic vision “was seen not very long ago, almost in our own generation, at the close of the reign of Domitian” (Against Heresies 30). The testimony of Irenaeus, not far removed from the apostolic age, is first rate. He places the book near the end of Domitian’s reign, and that ruler died in A.D. 96. Irenaeus seems to be unaware of any other view for the date of the book of Revelation.
In case you did you did not know, Irenaeus wrote De Incartione, which gave us that most famous of phrases, "… that we might become God". Therefore, I am suspect of his pronouncements.
Wayne Jackson is somewhat disingenuous with his quote from Irenaeus and I will show why. He should have explained the dilemma of this quote. The original Greek writing was lost but Eusebius had written it down in his Ecclesiastical History. The statement in the Greek is somewhat ambiguous and could mean that the "Apocalypse was seen" (by John) or that Polycarp had seen him who had seen the Revelation (i.e. John). Polycarp was allegedly trained by the apostles and Irenaeus had seen Polycarp when he (Irenaeus) was probably still a child because his Against Heresies from which this quote comes was written only about 75 years later.
Irenaeus has been described as "even in the Greek … a very obscure writer." Expositor F J A Hort (of Westcott and Hort) insisted that according to the Greek construction it had to refer to John who had seen the Revelation and not to the Apocalypse itself.
Whatever the case, evidence for a late date is at best tenuous. That leaves us only with the internal evidence and the sheer weight from Revelation itself supports an early date (pre-70 AD).