Originally Posted by stephan huller

I see the proper interpretation of texts as being preserved in tradition, living or otherwise.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

When the rabbinic sources say for instance that the messiah would appear as a secular monarch like David, I think this is all that we need to know about what a messiah is or was ever intended to be.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

I see no point in arguing that THE awaited messiah COULD HAVE BEEN a high priest unless such a tradition emerges from within Judaism.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

I am not telling you how you should conduct your research. Maybe its a cultural thing. Mabye I say Topol too many times on stage when I was growing up.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

In this matter, we have a prophesy attributed to a Daniel the court eunuch who lived in the Babylonian period but which was undoubtedly written in the Persian or Greek period. How the hell are we to determine what Daniel really thought?

Originally Posted by stephan huller

If I was a pious Jew or Christian maybe I might care what the 'Holy Spirit' told Daniel. But I am only interested in knowable commodities.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

It is evident that all surviving Jewish interpretation connect the end of the seventy weeks with the destruction of the temple. Was this 'Daniel's formulation? No undoubtedly not but it is a formulation we have a better chance figuring out than the prophesy of an unknown Daniel who lived at a time which is difficult to determine.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Eusebius is an important witness. He was familiar with a lot of texts and traditions. The caution he exhibits promoting what is clearly his own 'innovation' regarding the anointed prince as the high priest Jeshua is telling. It's like he is saying 'I know what you guys are all thinking - the anointed prince has to be a secular ruler, but, if you look at things a certain way you can argue that the high priests were like governors.' A telling argument.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

If knew ANY authorities which argued on behalf of Jeshua he'd tell us and he doesn't so they didn't exist or they weren't known to Eusebius.

Originally Posted by DCHindley

While I agree that the name Daniel was probably chosen because it represented the ancient hero of old, not an actual person, the Seventy Weeks passage in Chapter 9 is a self contained cryptogram. The text actually says specifically when the period began: "from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" (Dan. 9:25b). This is generally acknowledged to be an allusion to Jeremiah 29:10, which is set in circumstances that would date to about 597 BCE.

Now I have my own oh so wrong but credible way to interpret this cryptogram* as covering events between 597 and 164 BCE, but just because the story - as written - may refer to events leading into the 2nd century BCE doesn't mean that later commentators (Christian and Jewish, ancient and modern) couldn't wrest other interpretations out of it for their own ideological reasons. And who is to say that defined events HAVE to be sequential, and not have intervening periods between them that have nothing to do with the "meaning" of the defined events?

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Most people see the periods 7 (7x7=49), 62 (7x62=434), 1 (1x7=7) as sequential to equal 70 (7x70=490). By leaving open the question of whether an anointed one was a king/ruler or high priest, the seventy weeks of Dan 9 can be understood as a sophisticated cryptogram:

597-------------------<434 yrs>------------------164
597 - <49 yrs> - 548 - <378 yrs> - 171 - <7 yrs> - 164

The governing period of the cryptogram is actually 62 weeks of years, starting with the year in which Jeremiah 29:10 *appears* to have been uttered (circa 597/6 BCE, based on Jer. 29:2), and thus ending 163/2 BCE. A "seventy" year-week cryptogram was formed by taking the 62 year-week base period, plus the initial seven year-weeks plus the final year-week that are actually contained within it, and arbitrarily adding them together. Besides, for a 70 week (490 year) governing period to end circa 164 BCE would mean it started 653 BCE!

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Daniel 9:24 "Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city:
to finish the transgression,
to put an end to sin,
and to atone for iniquity,
to bring in everlasting righteousness,
to seal both vision and prophet,
and to anoint a most holy place.

Daniel 9:25b from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (Jer 29:10, ca. 597 BCE) until the time of an anointed prince (Cyrus, as in Isa 25:1), there shall be seven weeks (49 yrs, making this ca 548 BCE);
25c and for sixty-two weeks (starting in 597 BCE) it (Jerusalem) shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time.
26a After the sixty-two weeks (ca. 597 - 434 = ca. 163 BCE), an anointed one (Menelaus) shall be cut off and shall have nothing,
26b and the troops of the prince who is to come (Antiochus IV) shall destroy the city (Jerusalem) and the sanctuary (ca 169-168 BCE). Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
27a He (Antiochus IV) shall make a strong covenant with many for one week (ca 171 BCE with the appointment of Menelaus, to ca. 164 BCE when Judas displaced him for a high priest of his choosing),
27b and for half of the week (6 Dec 167 BCE, or earlier, to 13 Dec 164 BCE, not exactly 3.5 years but just over 3 years) he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator (Judas' defeat of Antiochus' forces which resulted in the rededication of the temple, 14 Dec 164 BCE)."