Bernard Muller wrote:to spin,
You seem to forget that I talked about Zerubbabel going missing in Zech 6, when I first mentioned the issue, based on the fact that the narrative gives Yeshua alone receiving the coronation, Zerubbabel notably absent. I also indicated that he was present earlier in Zechariah, citing the two messiahs. I have also said that no other person of significance is mentioned in Zech 6. You are not saying anything here that I haven't already dealt with. There is no-one other than Yeshua at the coronation, he receives the crowns, not one, and the text does not allow you to change the subject. The context necessitates that Yeshua was enthroned and given rule.
So Zerubbabel is not in Zech 6. So what? Yeshua was enthroned and given rule? No text puts that Yeshua as a ruler. Later (2 verses after Yeshua received the crowns), these crowns are allocated:
"And the crowns shall be to Helem, and to Tobijah, and to Jedaiah, and to Hen the son of Zephaniah, for a memorial in the temple of the LORD." (Zec 6:14)
So you accept that it has nothing to do with Zerubbabel given his lack of presence, but you want to whinge about who looks after the crowns.
Bernard Muller wrote:For a recap, here are the two preceding verses (Zec 6:12-13)
"and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD.
It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD, and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule upon his throne. And there shall be a priest by his throne, and peaceful understanding shall be between them both."'
But who is that man called Branch who will rebuild the temple? The answer is in Zec 4:9:
"The hands of Zerub'babel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you."
Still beating yourself because you can't get Zerubbabel into Zech 6.
Bernard Muller wrote:What about the name Branch?
Likely coming from 'Jeremiah', a book that "Daniel" knew about (Dan 9:2):
"Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land" (Jer 23:5)
and
"In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land." (Jer 33:15)
A branch from David? Zerubbabel was a descendant of David (1Ch 3:19) but Yeshua was not.
Still nothing. As you can't put Zerubbabel into the discourse of Zech 6, you don't get anywhere. There is a scholarly body of work that deals with the disappearance of Zerubbabel. You're trying to reinvent the wheel because of your prior commitments. Enjoy.
Bernard Muller wrote:And what is a sabbath of years? We know that seven sabbaths of years is forty-nine years. Yes, a sabbath of years is a group of seven years. Gosh.
Yes, except that "Daniel" did not use "Sabbath" and specify "of years". "of years" in 'Daniel" is just imagined (by many, I have to say). And "weeks" not a sure thing because it brings the seventy weeks of years 112 years farther than it should. It is what you call inaccuracy.
I guess there
were only four kings in the Persian empire.
Bernard Muller wrote:Yes, it seems to be dual in Hebrew; that does not change the fact that the masculine indicates a week
The masculine plural indicates (normally) two weeks.
Don't crap. Check the pointing of the Masoretic text. It's not a plural, but a dual, so no, the masculine plural does not indicate two weeks. The dual form does.
Bernard Muller wrote:Lester Grabbe states that it was—in the generation prior to his writing—"a considerable consensus that 1 Esdras preceded Ezra–Nehemiah."
If it is so, then 1 Esdras also has what is in Esdras, that is the mention of Artaxerxes as a Persian king coming after Darius, and Zerubbabel in Jerusalem soon after Cyrus' decree and at least up to the completion of the temple.
Yes, I cannot prove that "Daniel" knew 1 Esdras, but it is likely "Daniel" did, just as he knew about 'Jeremiah'.
The comparison is dysfunctional: we know Jeremiah existed and Daniel refers to it. You have no luck with Ezra, sorry.
Bernard Muller wrote:And Jesus Son of Sirach (who wrote at about the same time than Daniel part 2) knew about Nehemiah (from 'Nehemiah or 2 Esdras), both books mentioning Artaxerxes as a Persian king coming after Darius I.
Yes, I said Ben Sira knew about Nehemiah. Josephus did too, just not the canonical book. He evinces something called the Nehemiah Memoir.
Bernard Muller wrote:We call that "regency". He was never king, just had the proxy to wield power. It is historical error to call him king. (Are you cribbing here from fundamentalist sources?)
That's correct but that would ask for ultra accuracy from "Daniel".
That Daniel wrongly calls Belshazzar a king? Oh, I see. You have to downplay the blunder, because you are trying to sell the story that Daniel's seventy weeks
is ultra-accurate. Hence...
Bernard Muller wrote:It is a small error to see that Belshazzar as king, because he was asked by his father, the true king (but taking early retirement?) to act like one.
The same for some gospel author(s) calling Herod Antipas king (he was only a tetrarch). Both Antipas & Belshazzar had an army under their command. That goes a long way towards kingship.
Once again, nothing here. Daniel part 2 was really accurate!?
Bernard Muller wrote:After "Darius the Mede" in 11:1, three more kings of Persia and then a fourth when Greece is stirred against this latter. That clearly indicates from "Darius the Mede" to Alexander there were four kings. It is blatantly wrong. There is no wiggle room. There were only four Persian kings.
I don't agree. "Daniel" did not say "there was
only four Persian kings".
Daniel didn't say there were only seventy weeks or sevens or whatever.
Bernard Muller wrote:I cannot imagine the Jews around 167 BC having a 192 years historical blank.
I'm glad we are not dependent on your imagination. The evidence disagrees with you. Four kings after "Darius the Mede". You don't like what the text says so you manipulate it just like the fundy does.
Bernard Muller wrote:More so, when at the same time, Jesus son of Sirach knew about Nehemiah whose book (or 2 Esdras) features Artaxerxes as a king coming after Darius I.
Did the Nehemiah Memoir mention Artaxerxes? Josephus, who uses it (not the canonical text), puts Nehemiah in the reign of a Xerxes (11.159).
Bernard Muller wrote:Three historical blunders and no historical bullseyes. Given a chance second Daniel cannot be expected to be accurate at all outside the writers' lifetimes.
I don't see three blunders. One tiny error about Belshazzar as king, Darius the Mede is probably an attempt at homogenization with Daniel part 1 and "Daniel" did not say there were
only four Persian kings.
Three blunders and you are hypocritically trying to bolster the text's accuracy and to cover the blunders up because of your personal commitment to a silly idea, rather than get to what the text actually says. Pleading that because the text didn't say "only" four kings the writers must have known of more is a paltry defense that allows you to manipulate almost any text for your desired ends, by judicious placement of an "only". Jesus doesn't have
only twelve apostles. They didn't pay Judas
only thirty pieces of silver. If you put aside what the narrative literally says you can bend it to your will.
But the text says after "Darius the Mede" there were three more kings and a fourth when Alexander came along. To most competent readers that means that there were four and only four kings between.
Bernard Muller wrote:Actually, Daniel part 2 is very accurate and detailed from Alexander the Great up to 164 BC, most of that period being beyond the author's lifetime.
I've already said a number of times that the text becomes more accurate the closer it comes to the time period under consideration. You turn a blind eye to the earlier period because it is obviously inaccurate. You don't expect such a text to have an accurate understanding of times over a century earlier. This realization is what kickstarted Greek historiography. You talk about what you can investigate and uncover. That's what Herodotus tried to do. Thucydides did better because of Herodotus's example. You expect too much of these people writing in the 160s BCE. The accuracy of the first hundred years of Greek rule is condensed into 5 verses, 11:4-9. The next sixty from Antiochus III to Antiochus IV is at least twenty-seven verses. You are simply deluding yourself if you think that the Jews were able to produce highly accurate historical narratives for periods outside the times they and their living predecessors could speak personally about. Only the last sixty years of Dan 11 can be considered accurate, the early part of the Greek is sparse and the Persian is to them arcane. You want something from the text that historians know you can't get.
The seventy sevens theory that you have been touting is gullible in its hopefulness for accuracy.
Bernard Muller wrote:Your eyes are shut. There are only 37 sevens. The rest is of your fabrication. Let's stick to the 70 weeks, for that's the transparent reading of שבעים שבעים, seven weeks שבעים שבעה, given Lev 12:5, and one week שבוע אחד is transparent: week = שבוע and seven = שבע. That is the last of the שבעים, so שבוע and שבעים are the same semantic content, just singular and plural
How many times I explained that? I lost count. And your reading is a lot less than transparent.
What is counted is the number of occurrences of these three consecutive Hebrews letters: שבע (seven), in a series a numbers (one, two, three, etc.) (one unit per year), up to I reach 70 occurrences of שבע.
This assertion specified in such a ridiculous way—and you would probably think so if you weren't stuck with the nonsense in the first place—has no way to verify it or falsify it. It is as valuable as many scientific theories such as aether in the decades before it was shot down or a geocentric universe which lasted many centuries. An explanation needs to show how you can know it: you can't just assert it.
They just count the three letters שבע, so you do fancy them writing all this down like your spreadsheet, but instead of numerals, they wrote letters, so what, you imagine that they wrote out a table like yours with words instead of numbers?? It wouldn't fit on the widest scroll from the DSS. Perhaps they wrote it out as a (single column) list, maybe? No? Perhaps someone counted the numbers out aloud and another marked each seven... that wouldn't work, would it? They are pronounced differently, having different vowels. You can't imagine why your theory looks silly to some others.
Bernard Muller wrote:When it is reached, I look at the corresponding number of years (in that case 372), and I subtract it from the year of Cyrus' decree and I get 167 BC.
In this situation no-one is interested in what
you did. It is what they did that matters and you don't know. You assert a wacky approach that you claim they must have used because, well, they were
ultra-accurate.
Bernard Muller wrote:Yet half a week is 3½ time units and in visions it is frequent to find one idea being used as a proxy for another, so week could mean something else in a vision. Would you say the weeks vision was in reality spanned by approximately 490 days, שבעים שבעים? If you are to be consistent in your language usage, shouldn't that be your contention? But according to your schema, the sevenieth "seven" or last of what is counted is the year 167 BCE. So far your sevens have indicated specific years. That should mean that the last half a week is in reality half a year. But no! The last week is an ordinary week. You can't see the inconsistency.
I do not think "Daniel" was consistent with his week(s): שבעים שבע . In 10:2 & 3, he used the form שבעים for the plural of weeks (with weeks really meaning weeks).
Not relevant here: it doesn't concern a vision. Words have a life to be discerned within the vision, not without.
Bernard Muller wrote:So he used the same form as for "two weeks" (in Lev 12:5) and "seventy" and I would say for me "sevens". Very confusing. Anyway, "Daniel" used שבע as really meaning week (seven days).
But if you want to claim a real week, then you only have sixty-nine sevens mentioned in the vision, plus a week. Where is the seventieth? Do you really want to try to have it both ways??
Bernard Muller wrote:Your reading of 9:27 seems not to have any basis. How long did Antiochus "make sacrifice and offering cease"? A week? A brief ban? I do not think so. The text says"for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease. History says that the cessation was about 3½ years, but in this case you contend that a week is a week, so 3½ days.
The half week is between when Antiochus confirmed his covenant and he ended Jewish sacrifices at the temple:
The text says that it was a week. When was that week for the covenant with the many? Or had he made a covenant back in 171 BCE when he appointed Menelaus because of a better offer?
"And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, ..." (Dan 9:27 RSV)
It is very clear.[/quote]
No it is not. The word for "midst" in Hebrew principally means "half": press the number above the word "middle"
here and scroll down to the BDB Hebrew entry. the Tamid ceased half a week and stayed ceased "until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator." Working from 168/7 when the burnt offering was stopped until Antiochus received his end, we have, umm, well, let's see, gosh, could it be?, ahh, three and a half years.
You may be interested in the New JPS translation:
For half a week he shall put a stop to the sacrifice and the meal offering.
There is no "for" in Hebrew, just the length of time. So not "for one week", just "one week", not "half a week". We usually need it in English for clarity.
Bernard Muller wrote:The text does not say "for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease"
You are in no position to make any claim about what the text says or does not say, only what the translator says it might have said. On what grounds do you say what is not the text?
Bernard Muller wrote:(I don't know which translation you are depending on for your literal understanding. If it talks about the stoppage in the middle of the week—as the KJV does—, that week ends with the end of Antiochus.)
Now you know, I am depending on the RSV translation. But many others are similar.
About "sevens" in Daniel 9:24,25,26 : It is the NKJV alternative translation for "weeks" and the main translation in the NIV. "units of seven" is the alternative translation in the NASB.
It is also the alternative translation in the NET Bible which says: tn Heb “sevens.” Elsewhere the term is used of a literal week (a period of seven days), cf. Gen 29:27-28; Exod 34:22; Lev 12:5; Num 28:26; Deut 16:9-10; 2 Chr 8:13; Jer 5:24; Dan 10:2-3. Gabriel unfolds the future as if it were a calendar of successive weeks. Most understand the reference here as periods of seventy “sevens” of years, or a total of 490 years."
So I got some company with my "sevens".
Well, you have got thirty-seven of them, haven't you?
In looking at 9:27 I noticed this:
He will make a binding covenant with many for one week,
and for half of the week he will suspend both the sacrifice and grain offerings.(ISV)
Do you see how the duration in the first clause is at the end and in the second at the beginning? This is a
similar structure to the one seen in 9:25. It shows you that the christianizing approach of separating the second duration from the following doesn't reflect Hebrew discourse. (The difference that the second duration is part of the first doesn't change the discourse structure.)
Once again:
- You still have only 37 "sevens". You have to move the goalposts to include the "seventies" in your chart to get seventy somethings.
- If the last week is only a week, it does not reflect a year to be counted in your year list, so you only have 69 years that have seven or seventy. (So the theory crashed on two counts.)
- There are two different figures in 9:25-26, reflecting different time periods: a) Yeshua ben Yehozedek who was present at the building of the temple and b) Onias III, present when Antiochus IV came to the thrown, but later removed. (I truly can't believe your rearguard efforts in Zech 6.)
- All the durations in Daniel's visions, including the second half of the week in 9:27, start with the cessation of the Tamid. They are all more or less three and a half years. This underlines the fact that the principal parts of the four visions deal with the same events and feature the same people. The prince of the covenant [11:22] is the prince of the host [8:11] and the anointed one [9:25].