Calculations

3921: Jesus is crucified

If the first seven weeks of Daniel 9 were a literal 49 years, it stands to reason that the remaining 63 weeks must have been literal years as well. Gabriel said that the first 69 weeks out of 70 total would stretch from the decree of Cyrus to “Messiah the Prince” (Daniel 9:25), and “after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself” (Daniel 9:26). It is hard to read this as anything other than the crucifixion, when Jesus was executed, but not for his own sin (rather for ours).

If we pay careful attention to Gabriel’s prophecy, we notice two things:

• There were “seven weeks and sixty-two weeks until Messiah the Prince”, but the crucifixion comes “after the sixty-two weeks.” The crucifixion could therefore only come immediately after the 62 weeks if the time period of the Messiah had no length of its own. Otherwise, there would be some time between the end of the 62 weeks and the crucifixion.
• The 70^th week is not explained.

I posit that the crucifixion happening “after the sixty-two weeks” simply means “after the Messiah comes,” as those two events are linked. How long after? After the 70^th week. As we will see later, Jesus earthly ministry (including His time as a rabbi before His baptism) lasted for seven years, which was the 70^th week. His crucifixion happened right at the beginning of the Biblical calendar year after the 70^th week. That means the last full year of His ministry was 3920, 490 years after Cyrus became king, and the crucifixion happened right at the beginning of 3921.

Daniel 9:24 says that the 70 weeks would accomplish the following: “Finish the transgression, make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, and anoint the Most Holy.” All of these happened when Jesus died and rose from the dead. The only questionable one is the sealing up of vision and prophecy, but as we will see later, John the Baptist was the final Old Covenant prophet before the coming of the kingdom of God and the beginning of the Last Days. Hebrews 1:1-2 says that “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.” Thus, while prophecy continued to exist after the resurrection (e.g., Acts 11:27-28), such prophets prophesied in the name of the Son, which was different than how Old Covenant prophets prophesied.

Returning to the dating of the resurrection, as Christian scholars generally agree that Jesus was crucified somewhere in the early AD 30s, the decree of Cyrus had to have occurred around 460 BC. That’s about 80 years later than modern secular historians place it. Therefore, the timeline I’ve constructed so far does not align with the extra-Biblical sources used by modern chronologers to understand the intertestamental period. I would simply ask: if my timeline is derived from the clear meaning of Scripture, which extra-Biblical source will we as Christians elevate as a higher authority for timekeeping than the Bible itself?

Still, how to explain the discrepancy? Well, current secular historical scholarship maintains that there were a number of Persian kings who came after Darius the Great prior to Alexander the Great conquering Persia. I strongly suspect that the apparent discrepancy between historical records and Scripture arises from the fact that all historical records about the supposed later kings of Persia are actually about Darius the Great.

In Daniel 11:2, in the third year of Cyrus (Daniel 10:1), the angelic overlord of Persia tells Daniel, “Behold, three more kings will arise in Persia, and the fourth shall be far richer than them all.” The four kings were Cyrus the Great, Cambyses II, Pseudo-Smerdis, and Darius the Great, whose riches were put on display in Esther 1. Note that the angel does not mention any further kings after Darius the Great.

In modern scholarship, almost all the supposed later Persian kings after Darius the Great had names that were variations of the three titles used for him in the Bible (Darius, Ahasuerus/Xerxes, Artaxerxes), so it’s possible there was confusion amongst ancient historians. What likely happened is that, given that rigorous historical methods were just being developed at the time and that the Greeks only used one name for each king, Greek historians might have mistakenly broken out different stories for one man who went by multiple names.

There are three additional pieces of evidence I’ve found that suggest that Alexander the Great defeated Darius the Great in his conquest of Persia:

• Daniel 8 depicts the kingdom of Media and Persia as a ram with two horns, one of which was higher and came up last. Because the reigns of Cambyses and Pseudo-Smerdis are largely inconsequential in the Bible narrative (neither king is even named in Scripture), these horns are Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great. Darius the Great was more glorious and richer than Cyrus, and he came up last in Persia. But the attack on the ram by the male goat that represents Greece does not hint at any of the events that supposedly occurred in the 150 years between Darius the Great and Alexander the Great.
• The goat of Daniel 8 attacked the ram because it was “moved with rage” (Daniel 8:7). In Daniel 11:2-3, we get another perspective on this conflict, where the angel tells Daniel that the fourth king of Persia (i.e., Darius the Great) will “stir up all against the realm of Greece” (which would explain the goat’s rage), and then Alexander the Great will rule with great dominion (we know from verse 4 that Alexander is the “mighty king” of verse 3).
  Nowhere in this narrative do we get a hint of what happened in the supposed 150-year interval between verse 2 and verse 3. This is especially problematic because so much detail is given in this very chapter about the history of the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom that followed Alexander the Great that we’re still working on matching it all against our historical and archaeological records.
• 1 Maccabees 1:1 says, “After Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian, who came from the land of Kittim, had defeated King Darius of the Persians and the Medes, he succeeded him as king. (He had previously become king of Greece.)” 1 Maccabees is not inspired Scripture, but it is still an important Jewish historical record, and, importantly, it provides no qualifier for who the Darius defeated by Alexander the Great is. The simplest explanation is that this was the Darius who helped finish the Second Temple and whom every Jew reading the book would have been familiar with. Also, based on the entirety of 1 Maccabees, its writer was clearly trying to take up the mantle and continue the narrative of the historical books of the post-Exile restoration period, so why wouldn’t he provide more information about the massive century-and-a-half gap between Darius the Great and Alexander the Great?

The Bible therefore seems to be suggesting that the conquering of Persia by Alexander the Great happened around 410 BC (Darius the Great possibly ruled for a few more years after the end of the Book of Nehemiah), much earlier than the commonly accepted date of 330 BC. Considering that the dates given in 1 Maccabees conflict with the current mainstream timeline anyway, it’s not unreasonable to think that the mainstream timeline might be flawed.

It would take an open-minded expert in Persian, Greek, and Roman history to rigorously evaluate this possibility. While it might seem unlikely that so many historical experts could be so off base, in reality, if everyone entering this particular field of academic study begins with the assumption that there were more than four emperors in Media-Persia between Babylon and Greece, they will all be attempting to fit their research and discoveries into that paradigm. I suspect that once someone takes a step back and really attempts to fit all the puzzle pieces into the Biblical model, he or she will discover that they fit together quite well.

Commentary

Point 1

[Credit to James B. Jordan, who published a lecture series about the intertestamental period (including the metals of Daniel 2 and the beasts of Daniel 7), for helping me establish the groundwork for the ideas laid out here.]

To understand the prophetic symbolism used in the Bible for the intertestamental period, we must realize that God’s grant of authority to Babylon in Jeremiah 27:5-7 started with Nebuchadnezzar and continued through the reign of his son (Evil-Merodach) and his son’s son (Belshazzar), until Cyrus killed Belshazzar (Daniel 5:30-31), at which time the authority transitioned to Media/Persia.

In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the metal image is about the time period ranging from the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule through the coming of the Messiah and His replacement of the earthly empires with the spiritual kingdom of God. This time is called the “latter days” several times in the Bible (the “former days” being the days of the judges and the kings).

Many years later, in Belshazzar’s first year as king, Daniel dreamt about four beasts (Daniel 7). His dreams were a confirmation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and the repetition calls to mind Joseph’s explanation that “the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass” (Genesis 41:32).

Hence, the four metals are the same as the four beasts. By connecting them together, we can see how they foretell the four Gentile empires that would rule Israel prior to the coming of Jesus: Babylon, Media/Persia, Greece, and Rome. The four beasts are from the sea because in Bible symbolism the earth represents Israel, while the sea (or seas) represents the Gentile nations. 

The reason God consolidated global political power under the reigns of Gentile emperors was to prepare the Gentiles for Jesus’ rule (in a spiritual sense, the torch of worldwide rule would pass smoothly from Rome to the Messianic king of kings). Israel had been ruled by God for almost a millennium in the Land of Canaan prior to the Exile, but the Gentiles hadn’t been truly ruled by God since before the incident in Babel.

During the latter days, the Jews were given a special three-fold job:

• Serve as spiritual advisors to Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and Darius, all of whom worshipped God under the direction of first Daniel, then Mordecai.
• Offer sacrifices for the Gentile emperors (and by extension the entire world) at the Second Temple.
• Be missionaries in Gentile lands to teach them about the one true God. This was aided by the unique characteristics of an imperial system, such as peace amongst member nations, unrestricted travel throughout the empire’s territory, and universal elements throughout the empire such as language, currency, high-level laws, etc. This global evangelism explains why the New Testament shows the Gentiles primed and ready for the saving message of a Jewish Messiah.

The reign of each beast [i.e., kingdom] started with the might of a particularly powerful king (Daniel 7:17).

Gold/Lion – Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon

The gold head of the statue and the lion with eagle’s wings was Babylon, whose rule over Israel started with Nebuchadnezzar and lasted through the end of the 70 years of Babylonian domination. Note that the wings being plucked off and the beast becoming more like a man (Daniel 7:4) resemble the language of Nebuchadnezzar’s conversion in Daniel 4:33-34.

Silver/Bear – Cyrus and Media/Persia

The chest and arms of silver and the bear raised up on one side with three ribs in its mouth was the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, whose worldwide rule started with Cyrus the Great and ended with Darius the Great. The raising up on one side probably had to do with an imbalance in power between Media and Persia, and the three ribs were possibly the three kings of Babylon from the gold phase (Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, and Belshazzar – see Jeremiah 27:7). The “devouring of much flesh” (Daniel 7:5) is a fulfillment of Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 51, which foretold the destruction of Babylon at the hands of the Medes (note that in the Book of Daniel, Cyrus is primarily referred to as “Darius the Mede”).

Bronze/Leopard – Alexander and Greece

The belly and thighs of bronze and the leopard with four heads and four wings was Greece, whose rule started with Alexander the Great and lasted until the Maccabees achieved independence for the Hasmonean kingdom. Alexander notably engaged in extensive conquest (which explains the “ruling over all the earth” in Daniel 2:39). The leopard had four heads and four wings because the kingdom of Greece was broken up after his death and divided into pieces amongst his successors, called Diadochi. Amongst these pieces were four significant kingdoms/empires, which explains the four heads and the four wings and also the four winds of heaven in Daniel 11:4.

Because the goat of Daniel 8 is Greece, Alexander is the notable horn of Daniel 8:5, and the four main Diadochi (Ptolemy, Antigonus, Cassander, and Seleucus) are the four notable horns coming up toward the four winds of heaven that replaced him (Daniel 8:8).

In the flow of Daniel, Daniel 7 provides more detail about the prophecy of Daniel 2. Daniel 8, which was given in the third year of Belshazzar king of Babylon (Daniel 8:1), then provides a very high-level overview of one particularly important aspect of Greek rule over Israel, which was the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the subsequent revolt against him by the Maccabees, which led to the restoration of proper temple worship that is celebrated on Hanukkah.

Daniel 8 gives some information about this conflict, but then Daniel is instructed to seal up the vision (Daniel 8:26), which is about the “time of the end” (Daniel 8:17). To properly understand this, we have to realize that the “time of the end” had two sections: the beginning of the time of the end and the end of the time of the end. The time of the end began with the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes and ended with the time of judgment on Israel during the Jewish-Roman wars.

Thus, Daniel 8, which is primarily about the beginning of the time of the end, was unsealed in Daniel 10-12 in the third year of Cyrus (Daniel 10:1). Daniel 10 provides context for the prophecy, Daniel 11 provides much more detail on the conflict between Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees, and Daniel 12 provides a high-level overview of the end of the time of the end, which then gets sealed up like Daniel 8 did (Daniel 12:4). This vision gets unsealed in Revelation 5, by which time the events of the Hasmonean dynasty and the conquering of Israel by Rome had already happened, which is why neither Daniel nor Revelation records them.

Therefore, we can understand the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanies by looking at Daniel 8 and Daniel 11 side-by-side. Daniel 11 references the “king of the North” and the “king of the South.” The North and the South were the two kingdoms that arose in the wake of Alexander’s death that most affected Israel: the Seleucid Empire was just north of it, and the Ptolemaic Kingdom was just south of it. Daniel 11:5ff records the events in those two kingdoms from the time of Ptolemy and Seleucus to the death of Antiochus Epiphanes (who was a Seleucid king and ruled in the North).

The brief reign of Heliodorus, who during his tenure as chancellor of Seleucus IV Philopator attempted to tax the Second Temple, is referenced in Daniel 11:20. The “vile person” of Daniel 11:21 is Antiochus Epiphanes, who deposed Heliodorus and took power through a deceptive arrangement that ignored the fact that he was not the rightful heir of Seleucus Philopator, as described in the same verse. Antiochus is also the “little horn” of Daniel 8:9 and the “king with fierce features” in Daniel 8:23.

In 171 BC (according to the mainstream timeline), Antiochus deposed the high priest Jason and replaced him with a sympathetic high priest named Menelaus, which represented the beginning of Antiochus’ oppression of the Jews and eventual attempts to stamp out Jewish worship and the Second Temple sacrificial system. Jason is the prince of the covenant from Daniel 11:22, and his removal began the 2300 days of Daniel 8:13-14. The “league” of Daniel 11:23 is the “renegade covenant” of 1 Maccabees 1:11. The remainder of Daniel 11 describes the conflict between Antiochus and the faithful Jews up to Antiochus’ death, as documented from the remainder of 1 Maccabees 1 through 1 Maccabees 6:16.

Note that Antiochus was prophesied to be “broken without human means” in Daniel 8:25, and he “shall come to his end, and no one will help him” (Daniel 11:45). In 1 Maccabees 6, Antiochus is said to have died from his deep disappointment in failing to eradicate the Jewish religion.

1 Maccabees puts exactly three years from the setting up of the “desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering” and the offering of an abominable sacrifice on that “altar that was on top of the altar of burnt offering” (1 Maccabees 1:54-59) to the restoration of proper sacrifice (1 Maccabees 4:52-54). Assuming that the timeline of 1 Maccabees is accurate, to explain the 1290 days of Daniel 12:11 and the 1335 days of Daniel 12:12, I would posit that the 1290 days started with the initial defiling of the sanctuary in 1 Maccabees 1:27 and ended with the conquering of Jerusalem and the beginning of the process of cleansing the sanctuary in 1 Maccabees 4:42-43. I would also posit that the cleansing took 45 days, such that the 1335 days ended with the restoration of proper sacrifice in 1 Maccabees 4:52-53. The 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 would have ended with either the beginning or completion of the cleansing process (probably the beginning, based on the language).

Note: When the Maccabees cleansed the sanctuary and restored Second Temple Judaism, they created a new altar of burnt offering and new holy vessels (1 Maccabees 4:44-51). God’s presence in the Old Covenant was tied closely to the holy vessels, which is why it matters that Nebuchadnezzar took the original holy vessels to Babylon (2 Chronicles 36:7, 36:18), as this represented God moving to Babylon with the “good figs” of Jeremiah 24:5. When the Jews returned to Judea from exile, they took the holy vessels back home with them (Ezra 1:7-11).

Hence, the transition to a new set of holy vessels moved Israel into the “time of the end,” as referenced in Daniel 8:17, Daniel 8:19, and Daniel 11:40. This time period started with Antiochus stealing and/or defiling all the original holy vessels (1 Maccabees 1:20-24) and also defiling the sanctuary (1 Maccabees 1:37). The “end of the time of the end” started with the First Jewish-Roman War, which resulted in the destruction of these new holy vessels in 70 AD (they were never replaced, having been superseded by the New Covenant – Hebrews 8:13), and ended with the Third Jewish-Roman War, when the Jews were almost completely eradicated, lost their national sovereignty, and were banned from Jerusalem.

Iron / Terrifying Beast – Julius Caesar and Rome

After triumphing over Antiochus, the Maccabees established an independent kingdom (ruled by their descendants, the Hasmonean dynasty) that was originally semi-autonomous under Seleucid rule but later became fully independent. However, Daniel prophesied that a fourth empire would rule Judea and that during that empire the Messiah would arise. This empire was Rome.

Rome conquered the Hasmonean kingdom in 63 BC, initially allowing the Hasmoneans to remain in power, but eventually setting Herod the Great over Judea in 37 BC. Rome was the iron legs and feet of Daniel 2 and the terrifying beast of Daniel 7. Even though Augustus was technically the first “emperor,” it was his great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar who set the stage for the establishment of the Roman Empire and from whom the first five emperors traced their lineage. Therefore, he is the initial mighty king of Rome.

A couple notes:

• In Daniel 7, there is a break between the vision of the third beast and the vision of the fourth beast. This represents the break between the rule of Greece and the rule of Rome during the independent phase of the Hasmonean kingdom.
• The clay mixed with iron in the feet of the image in Daniel 2:33 was the Herodian dynasty. The iron strength of Rome was mixed with the clay weakness of the Herods: they were mingled together, yet did not adhere to one another (Daniel 2:42-43), as we can see in the hostility between Herod and Pilate in Luke 23:12.
• The iron kingdom of Daniel 2:40 would “break in pieces and crush all the other [kingdoms],” which is similar to the way the fourth beast was “devouring [with iron teeth], breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet” in Daniel 7:7.

As Daniel prophesied, Jesus the Messiah was born during the reign of the iron Roman Empire and the clay Herod the Great.

Point 2

Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead in 3921, the 80^th Jubilee from creation. This is heavily symbolic, as the Jubilee was a proclamation of liberty (Leviticus 25:10), and Jesus died to save us from our sins (Matthew 1:21), thereby setting His people free from the bondage of sin and the unbearable burden of the Mosaic Law (Acts 15:10). Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17), the liberty by which Christ has made us free (Galatians 5:1).

Moreover, in Luke 4:16-21, Jesus announced that He had fulfilled Isaiah 61:1-2, which involved bringing liberty to captives and proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. The acceptable year of the Lord was 3921, when all those enslaved to sin were set free.

It is notable also that Jesus was crucified right after the end of a Sabbath year from creation, a Sabbath of Sabbaths, and He atoned for sin at the beginning of an eighth year, corresponding to how the pre-incarnate Jesus clothed Adam and Eve in sacrificial animal skins at the transition between the seventh day of creation and the eighth.

Lastly, this “eighth day” symbolism is reinforced by the fact that He was crucified on the 80^th Jubilee. There seems to have been a symbolic progression of Jubilees from creation in the history of Israel, where important events occurred on or very near to each, as previously discussed. Note the pattern and the accompanying numerological symbolism:

• 50^th Jubilee: The release of the Israelites from Egyptian captivity
  • The 50th Sabbath of Sabbaths (2450) was followed by 50 years (cp. Leviticus 25:8-12) until the first year of possession of the Promised Land in the Jubilee of 2500 (50×50), and then 50 Sabbaths later, Saul became king.
  • The number 5 is connected to Law: there are 5 books of Law (the Pentateuch/Torah), and the Ten Commandments are two sets of 5 commandments, one concerning God and one concerning man. Hence the Law was given in the cycle of the 50th Jubilee.
• 60^th Jubilee: The first year of temple worship
  • The First Temple was dedicated on the 60th Sabbath of Sabbaths (2940), with an ignored 60th Jubilee the following year, which was followed by 60 ignored Sabbaths.
  • The number 6 is connected to man, because man was created on the sixth day. Man’s sin means the number 6 is not used positively in most of the Bible, which is why there was such failure connected to the 60th Jubilee.
• 70^th Jubilee: The return from Exile
  • The 70 years of Babylonian domination ended with the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in the 70th Sabbath of Sabbaths (3430), with the return from Exile being granted on the 70th Jubilee, which was then followed by 70 Weeks of Years.
  • The number 7 is connected to both God’s rest and man’s covenant failure (which occurred on the seventh day of creation). Interestingly, some of the prophets (especially Jeremiah) seemed to suggest that the ultimate fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy would occur right after the Exile, only for Daniel to discover that an additional 490 years had to happen first. This suggests that the failure of the Jews to embrace the freedom provided them by Cyrus the Messiah and finally turn with their whole heart back to the LORD represented a typical Sabbath failure, necessitating salvation to be provided by Jesus on the “eighth day” (80th Jubilee).
• 80^th Jubilee: The resurrection of Jesus
  • The 80th Jubilee from creation was the last Jubilee in the time period of the Old Covenant, as the Second Temple was destroyed less than 50 years after Jesus’ resurrection. After Christ’s sacrifice, no further Jubilees were required.
  • The number 8 is connected to God’s salvation. God made His original promise of a savior and covered Adam and Eve in animal skins, foreshadowing Jesus’ sacrifice, on the eighth day of creation, which is therefore the day God saves man from his failure. Hence, Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection occurred on the 80th Jubilee.