Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

[neilgodfrey]

Prior to our "canonical gospels" having time to take firm hold and become the orthodoxy does it appear that we had various attempts at creating an earthly bio of Jesus with different scenarios for each?

So one account had Herod executing Jesus, not Pilate (Gospel of Peter), others had the Romans sweeping in to destroy the Temple/Jerusalem right on the heels of Jesus' crucifixion/resurrection and sending out of the twelve (Justin) -- also in Clement of Alexandria iirc? -- while Hegesippus links the destruction of Jerusalem to James' death, and Jesus living to "old age" in Irenaeus....

It appears some thought the best way to establish a link between a martyrdom and judgment on Jerusalem was to have the judgement following hard on the heels of the martyrdom.

But how can those accounts be explained if there was already a more coherent narrative in existence that tied the crucifixion to the destruction of the temple with a 40 year generation (a motif that could well have originated from any number of known and surmised sources)?

(I have my suspicions, but nothing more. We can try to "connect dots" and see what story is hidden behind the data, but I don't think that "method" can be validly described as historical research.)

[Ben C. Smith]

The Melchizedek scroll is clearly relevant to the discussion:

11Q13, column 2, lines 1-8a, 15b-18a: 1 [...] ... [...] 2 [...] And as for what he said: «In [this] year of jubilee, [you shall return, each one, to his respective property» [Leviticus 25.13], concerning it he said: «Th]is is 3 [the manner of the release:] every creditor shall release what he lent [to his neighbour. He shall not coerce his neighbour or his brother, for it has been proclaimed] a release 4 for G[od»] [Deuteronomy 15.2]. [Its interpretation] for the last days refers to the captives, who [...] and whose 5 teachers have been hidden and kept secret, and from the inheritance of Melchizedek, fo[r ...] ... and they are the inherita[nce of Melchize]dek, who 6 will make them return. And liberty will be proclaimed for them, to free them from [the debt of] all their iniquities. And this [wil]l [happen] 7 in the first week of the jubilee which follows the ni[ne] jubilees. And the d[ay of aton]ement is the e[nd of] the tenth [ju]bilee 8a in which atonement shall be made [לכפר] for all the sons of [light and] for the men [of] the lot of Mel[chi]zedek. .... 15b This […] is the day of [peace about whi]ch he said [… through Isa]iah the prophet, who said: «How] beautiful 16 upon the mountains are the feet [of] the messen[ger who] announces peace, the mess[enger of good who announces salvati]on, [sa]ying to Zion: your God [reigns»] [Isaiah 52.7]. 17 Its interpretation: The mountains [are] the prophet[s ...] ... […] for all... [...] 18a And the messenger i[s] the anointed of the spir[it] as Dan[iel] said....

Not only does this text predict the arrival of a figure from Danielic prophecy, but it also predicts when the time of atonement will come, using the same Hebrew word as Daniel uses:

Daniel 9.24-27: 24 "Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to atone [וּלְכַפֵּר] for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place. 25 So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. 26 Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. 27 And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate."

The Melchizedek scroll speaks of a period of ten jubilees, while Daniel speaks of seventy weeks/sevens. A jubilee was either 50 years, as a common reading of Leviticus 25.8-10 would have it, or 49 years, as the book of Jubilees calculates it:

Jubilees 10.16: 16 Nine hundred and fifty years [Noah] completed in his life: nineteen jubilees and two weeks and five years.

19 × 49 + 2 × 7 + 5 = 950.

Jubilees 19.7: 7 And all the days of the life of Sarah were one hundred and twenty-seven years, that is, two jubilees and four weeks and one year: these are the days of the years of the life of Sarah.

2 × 49 + 4 × 7 + 1 = 127.

Jubilees 23.8: 8 And [Abraham] lived three jubilees and four weeks of years, one hundred and seventy-five years, and completed the days of his life, being old and full of days.

Jubilees 35.6, 27: 6 And [Rebecca] said unto him: "My son, I have not seen in thee all my days any perverse but (only) upright deeds. And yet I will tell thee the truth, my son: I shall die this year, and I shall not survive this year in my life; for I have seen in a dream the day of my death, that I should not live beyond a hundred and fifty-five years: and behold I have completed all the days of my life which I am to live." .... 27 And they eat and drank, she and her sons that night, and she died, three jubilees and one week and one year old, on that night, and her two sons, Esau and Jacob, buried her in the double cave near Sarah, their father's mother.

Jubilees 45.13: And Israel lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years, and all the days which he lived were three jubilees, one hundred and forty-seven years, and he died in the fourth year of the fifth week of the forty-fifth jubilee.

I did two of the calculations for you, but you can check to make sure the rest turn out, as well. A jubilee in this book is 49 years. The book of Jubilees was well known at Qumran; it is hardly a stretch to take a jubilee at Qumran to mean 49 years. If we do so, it turns out that both Daniel and the Melchizedek scroll are talking about a period of 490 years:

Ten jubilees: 10 × 49 = 490.
Seven sabbaticals: 7 × 70 = 490.

At the end of the 490 years in the Melchizedek scroll atonement is made, just as at the end of the 490 years in Daniel. At the same time in the Melchizedek scroll (at least one of) Daniel's Messiah figure(s) shows up. This scroll has simply rewritten Daniel's seventy sevens as ten jubilees.

Long before Josephus or Vespasian or Titus, Jewish people were using Daniel to predict the timing of the end.

[John2]

Long before Josephus or Vespasian or Titus, Jewish people were using Daniel to predict the timing of the end.

It may not have been very long though and might even have been contemporary with Josephus, as noted in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, edited by Charlesworth:

The paleographic dating of the text has provoked some discussion. Van der Woude dated it to the Herodian period in the first half of the first century C.E., and Horton suggested an even later date. Milik, however, argued for a date towards the middle of the first century B.C.E., c. 75-50 B.C.E., and both Kobelski and Puech follow him with slight variations. A date for the manuscript in the middle of the first century B.C.E seems likely, but the evidence makes greater precision than that problematic.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ROama ... ng&f=false

[Ben C. Smith]

Long before Josephus or Vespasian or Titus, Jewish people were using Daniel to predict the timing of the end.

It may not have been very long though and might even have been contemporary with Josephus, as noted in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, edited by Charlesworth:

The paleographic dating of the text has provoked some discussion. Van der Woude dated it to the Herodian period in the first half of the first century C.E., and Horton suggested an even later date. Milik, however, argued for a date towards the middle of the first century B.C.E., c. 75-50 B.C.E., and both Kobelski and Puech follow him with slight variations. A date for the manuscript in the middle of the first century B.C.E seems likely, but the evidence makes greater precision than that problematic.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ROama ... ng&f=false

Granted. But the point remains that Josephus was not creating a new kind of exegetical sport. Using Daniel to calculate the end was a thing.

[John2]

But the point remains that Josephus was not creating a new kind of exegetical sport. Using Daniel to calculate the end was a thing.

Right.

[Ben C. Smith]

The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs use Daniel as a guide to present and future timetables, as well:

Testament of Levi 16.1-18.4:

16.1 And now I have learnt that for seventy weeks ye shall go astray, and profane the priesthood, and pollute the sacrifices. 2 And ye shall make void the law, and set at naught the words of the prophets by evil perverseness. And ye shall persecute righteous men, and hate the godly the words of the faithful shall ye abhor. 3 [And a man who renews the law in the power of the Most High, ye shall call a deceiver; and at last ye shall rush to slay him, not knowing his dignity, taking innocent blood through wickedness upon your heads.] 4 And your holy places shall be laid waste even to the ground because of him. 5 And ye shall have no place that is clean; but ye shall be among the Gentiles a curse and a dispersion until He shall again visit you and in pity shall receive you [through faith and water].

17.1 And whereas ye have heard concerning the seventy weeks, hear also concerning the priesthood. 2 For in each jubilee there shall be a priesthood. And in the first jubilee, the first who is anointed to the priesthood shall be great, and shall speak to God as to a father. And his priesthood shall be perfect with the Lord, [and in the day of his gladness shall he arise for the salvation of the world]. 3 In the second jubilee, he that is anointed shall be conceived in the sorrow of beloved ones; and his priesthood shall be honoured and shall be glorified by all. 4 And the third priest shall be taken hold of by sorrow. 5 And the fourth shall be in pain, because unrighteousness shall gather itself against him exceedingly, and all Israel shall hate each one his neighbour. 6 The fifth shall be taken hold of by darkness Likewise also the sixth and the seventh. 7 And in the seventh shall be such pollution as I cannot express before men, for they shall know it who do these things. 8 Therefore shall they be taken captive and become a prey, 9 and their land and their substance shall be destroyed. 10 And in the fifth week they shall return to their desolate country, and shall renew the house of the Lord. 11 And in the seventh week shall become priests, (who are) idolaters, adulterers, lovers of money, proud, lawless, lascivious, abusers of children and beasts.

18.1 And after their punishment shall have come from the Lord, the priesthood shall fail. 2 Then shall the Lord raise up a new priest. And to him all the words of the Lord shall be revealed; and he shall execute a righteous judgement upon the earth for a multitude of days. 3 And his star shall arise in heaven as of a king. Lighting up the light of knowledge as the sun the day, and he shall be magnified in the world. 4 He shall shine forth as the sun on the earth, and shall remove all darkness from under heaven, and there shall be peace in all the earth.

A priestly world ruler is predicted to arrive at the end of the seventy weeks. Unfortunately, this text has probably been tampered with by Christian scribes (the bracketed material above is marked off as the results of such tampering, according to Charlesworth), and it is not always easy to figure out what parts have been tampered with.

[Secret Alias]

this text has probably been tampered with ... and it is not always easy to figure out what parts have been tampered with.

It's odd that scholars are willing to admit that this happened to a useless or 'remote' text like the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs but somehow fail to see - in light of the Marcionite controversy - that the same thing likely happened across the canon. Odd that. My question would be - why on earth would we expect that religious texts weren't being continually reworked? What would stop that in Christianity? The love of truth? Duty to posterity?

[DCHindley]

FWIW,

I had mentioned the "Apocalypse of Weeks" in 1 Enoch. Looking at it just now, it seems to be a prediction for the future based on the concept of "weeks" but not 7 year weeks. In other words, indefinite periods of time, varying from week to week, representing stages of time development, not the actual length of time itself. Here we have seven weeks that cover a period of world history that cannot in any way be reconciled to Daniel's 70 weeks. The Apocalypse of Weeks may obliquely refer to the Maccabees in 93:10 (seventh week), but of this I am not sure. However, the language reminds me of the Damascus Document that speaks of their movement springing up 20 years prior after a period of evil. The 390 years of evil is symbolically derived from Ezek. 4.5, but we really do not know if that was meant as an actual period of time or a *symbolic* period drawn from the prophet Ezekiel but not meant to signify an actual period of 390 years. That's what is nice about prophecy, one can make anything of it one wants, with a little ingenuity.

Chapters 90-104 in which it is embedded seem to have been written between 109-79 BCE, per R H Charles (APOT vol 2). I have highlighted the weeks, and include summaries of what Charles thought they symbolized, plus underlined the language in week eight that might be interpreted as referring to the rising of a world ruler (the "Great King"). So here we would have an example of a "prophecy" that could be thought of as an oracular response to some question posed, that interprets "weeks" as phases of world history. This interpretation of time as dispensations that are thematic, rather than time predictions, is similar to what was also done in the "Animal Apocalypse" of chapters 85-90. "The theory of the seventy shepherds [in the AA] is an extension of the conception of the seventy years of Jeremiah and the seventy periods of Daniel. The events between the fall of Jerusalem [to the Babylonians] and the Messianic kingdom are divided into four periods (1) to the Return under Cyrus, (2) to the conquests of Alexander, (3) to the Seleucid conquests of Palestine, (4) to the Messiah's reign.

Charles describes this apocalypse as "An account of the great events of the world during the first seven weeks of its history, which are already past. The three last weeks of xci. 12-17 belong to the future. This Apocalypse of weeks refers to the Dream-visions, Ixxxiii-xc, but not being by the same author is irreconcilable with them. The ten weeks are not definite and equal periods, but of varying length, each marked, especially towards its close, by some great event, e.g. the first by Enoch's birth, the third by Abraham's call, the seventh by the publication of Enoch's writings. In the eighth the Messianic kingdom is established and lasts to the close of the tenth week. The final judgement in xci. 15 is held at the close of the Messianic kingdom."

Section Five (XCI-CIV) written ca. 109 BCE to 79 CE:

XCIII, XCI. 12-17. The Apocalypse of Weeks.

93 1, 2. And after that Enoch both gave and began to recount from the books. And Enoch said:
'Concerning the children of righteousness and concerning the elect of the world,
And concerning the plant of uprightness, I will speak these things,
Yea, I Enoch will declare (them) unto you, my sons:
According to that which appeared to me in the heavenly vision,
And which I have known through the word of the holy angels.
And. have learnt from the heavenly tablets.'

3. And Enoch began to recount from the books and said:
'I was born the seventh in the first week,
While judgement and righteousness still endured.

4. And after me there shall arise in the second week great wickedness.
And deceit shall have sprung up;
And in it there shall be the first end.
And in it a man shall be saved;
And after it is ended unrighteousness shall grow up,
And a law shall be made for the sinners.

5. And after that in the third week at its close
A man shall be elected as the plant of righteous judgement,
And his posterity shall become the plant of righteousness for evermore.

6. And after that in the fourth week, at its close.
Visions of the holy and righteous shall be seen,
And a law for all generations and an enclosure shall be made for them.

7. And after that in the fifth week, at its close,
The house of glory and dominion shall be built for ever.

8. And after that in the sixth week all who live in it shall be blinded,
And the hearts of all of them shall godlessly forsake wisdom.
And in it a man shall ascend;
And at its close the house of dominion shall be burnt with fire,
And the whole race of the chosen root shall be dispersed.

9. And after that in the seventh week shall an apostate generation arise,
And many shall be its deeds,
And all its deeds shall be apostate.
10. And at its close shall be elected
The elect righteous of the eternal plant of righteousness.
To receive sevenfold instruction concerning all His creation.

11 -14 [probable dislocation from Book of the Heavenly Luminaries]

XCI. 12-17. The Last Three Weeks. [Obviously displaced in the preserved Ethiopic text]

91:12. And after that there shall be another, the eighth week, that of righteousness,
And a sword shall be given to it that a righteous judgement may be executed on the oppressors.
And sinners shall be delivered into the hands of the righteous.
13. And at its close they shall acquire houses through their righteousness,
And a house shall be built for the Great King in glory for evermore,
14d And all mankind shall look to the path of uprightness.

14a. And after that, in the ninth week, the righteous judgement shall be revealed to the whole world,
14b. And all the works of the godless shall vanish from all the earth,
14c. And the world shall be written down for destruction.

15. And after this, in the tenth week in the seventh part.
There shall be the great eternal judgement.
In which He will execute vengeance amongst the angels.
16. And the first heaven shall depart and pass away,
And a new heaven shall appear,
And all the powers of the heavens shall give sevenfold light.

17. And after that there will be many weeks without number for ever,
And all shall be in goodness and righteousness,
And sin shall no more be mentioned for ever.'

The first seven weeks takes history up to the time of the writer. Charles interprets the structure of these weeks as follows:
First week, 93:2: Creation to the birth of Enoch.
Second week, 93:4: Period including Flood, salvation of Noah and God's covenant with him.
Third week, 93:5: Period ends with God's call for Abrahan and his seed to reveal God's righteous judgments.
Fourth week, 93:6: Period includes Exodus, receipt of the Law by Moses, which would govern life within the "enclosure" of Palestine.
Fifth week, 93:7: Period includes the building of the first temple by Solomon, the institution of which shall endure forever, but perhaps in various forms over time.
Sixth week, 93:8: The divided kingdoms, Elijah ascends (Ixxxix. 52), the Temple's fall and the Captivity.
Seventh week, 93:9-10: Period from the captivity to the author's time, an apostate period. Enoch's apocalypse of weeks is published at the end of it.

Weeks 8-10 relate to the future:
Eighth week, 91:12-13; 14d: Sees the setting up of the Messianic kingdom, and the first act of the final judgement - the period of the sword (xc. 19), when the wicked are given into the hand of the righteous. At the close, 91:13, after the a period of rest and quiet possession of the earth. Cf. Isa. Ix. 21, 22, Ixv. 20-23. A new Temple and Jerusalem shall be built.
Ninth week, 91:14a,b,c: May refer to the conversion of the Gentiles, as l. 2-5, xc. 30, 33, 35, cf. 14d. Or it may refer to the open punishment by God of the wicked. Cf. 14c.
14c. God's decree for the world's destruction is written in this week, but is to be fulfilled at the end of the tenth week.
Tenth week, 91:15-17; Judgement of the world by the angels, the replacement of the old heavens by a newer, brighter one (but nothing about a new earth), followed by a blissful eternity without sin for the inhabitants.

I only throw this out because "metrics" or "seasons' are what someone interprets them to be.

DCH

[Ben C. Smith]

I only throw this out because "metrics" or "seasons' are what someone interprets them to be.

Oh, absolutely. Such vague predictions can be manipulated to designate practically any period of time one wishes. Yet people do make and have made precise predictions based upon them. I think of the Millerites, for example, with their specific dates which failed to come to pass, their subsequent reinterpretations of those dates, and then the formation, out of the remnants of disappointment, of Christian church bodies which no longer depend upon the prediction of certain exact dates (such as the Seventh Day Adventists).

The same thing may have happened at Qumran. The Habakkuk pesher scroll is supposed to date to Herodian times, I think:

1QpHab, column 7, lines 5b-8: 5b "For the vision has an appointed 6 time, it will have an end and not fail" [Habakkuk 2.3a]. ~ 7 Its interpretation: the final age will be extended and go beyond all that 8 the prophets say, because the mysteries of God are wonderful.

This sounds to me like whatever exact date the Qumran folks were originally predicting fell through, and now the final age has been extended beyond what the prophets predicted.

Thanks for sharing the Apocalypse of Weeks; I was just reading about it in particular today and yesterday. Charles had already rearranged the Ethiopic text to make the weeks come out correctly, a move later justified by one of the Dead Sea Scrolls:

4Q212, column 4, lines 1-26: 1-10 [....] 11 [...] his [deeds] will be in er[ror.] 12 [At its close, {that is, at the close of the seventh week,}] the ch[osen one]s [will] be chosen as witnesses to justice from the p[lant] 13 of ever[last]ing justice; sevenf[old] wisdom and knowledge shall be giv[en to them]. 14 They shall uproot the foundations of violence and the work of deceit in it in order to carry out [judgment.] 15 After this, the eighth week will come, the one of justice, in which [a sword] will be giv[en] 16 to all the just, for them to carry out {the judgment} just judgment against the wicked 17 and they will be delivered into their hands. At its close, they will gain riches in justice 18 and there will be built the temple of the [k]in[g]ship of The Great One, in his glorious greatness, for all eternal generations. 19 And after that, the ninth week. [In it] will be revealed jus[tice and just] ju[dgment] 20 to all the sons of the whole earth. All those who ac[t wickedly will vanish] completely from the entire 21 earth and they shall be hurled into the [eternal] pit. All [men will see] 22 the just eternal path. And after [that, the tenth week. In] its [seve]nth (part) 23 there will be eternal judgment and the moment of the great judgment [and he will carry out revenge in the midst of the holy ones.] 24 In it, the first heaven will pass away and [there will appear a new] hea[ven and all the forces of] heaven 25 will ri[se] and shine throughout all eternity, [seven times more. After that there will be] many [w]eeks 26 [the number of which will not] have an end [ever, in which] they shall practice [goodness and just]ice ....

Charles had also bracketed 93.11-14 in the Ethiopic text as an intrusion (writing, "These verses are quite out of place in their present context, and suit rather the Book of the Heavenly Luminaries..."), and the Qumran version lacks them in this context, fully vindicating his appraisal.

[Ben C. Smith]

Toward the end of chapter 5 of his collaboration with James C. VanderKam, William Adler summarizes some of his findings on the use of Daniel 9 in Jewish and Christian exegesis:

James C. VanderKam & William Adler, The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, page 236: What we have pointed to is the existence of a pre-Christian interpretation of Dan 9:24-27, whose orientation to Daniel's apocalypse was chiefly sacerdotal and eschatological. What is striking about this interpretation is its continuity. Throughout the history of the Hasmanean priesthood. some perceived degradation of the high-priestly line served to arouse interest in determining whether the first 69 year-weeks of Daniel's prophecy had been completed. In its original context, this disruption was identified with the death of Onias III. It was later associated with Alexander Jannaeus' corruption of the office, and then with the disruption caused by his death. Because Herod's rule was chronologically most proximate to Jesus' birth and ministry, Jewish Christianity adapted the tradition that saw in his murder of Hyrcanus and the ensuing chaos the determinative event defining the end of Daniel's first 69 weeks and the dawning of the eschatological week. Fundamental to this interpretation was the role that Herd's foreign-born Ashkelonite lineage played in the unfolding of the eschatological drama of Daniel 9. Already attested by the early second century, this legend was mediated to Christian commentators and chroniclers from a Palestinian Jewish Christian tradition associated with the early human family of Jesus.

If Jewish speculations on Daniel 9 tended to center disruptions in the priesthood, then is there perhaps a priestly disruption near the time of the rebellion against Rome which could have been involved in the ambiguous oracle which Josephus attributes to the rebels? As it happens, there is, and one which Josephus himself credits as the main cause of the eventual capture of Jerusalem:

Josephus, Wars 4.5.2 §318: 318 Οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτοιμι δ᾽ εἰπὼν ἁλώσεως ἄρξαι τῇ πόλει τὸν Ἀνάνου θάνατον, καὶ ἀπ᾽ ἐκείνης τῆς ἡμέρας ἀνατραπῆναι τὸ τεῖχος καὶ διαφθαρῆναι τὰ πράγματα Ἰουδαίοις, ἐν ᾗ τὸν ἀρχιερέα καὶ ἡγεμόνα τῆς ἰδίας σωτηρίας αὐτῶν ἐπὶ μέσης τῆς πόλεως εἶδον ἀπεσφαγμένον. / 318 I should not be wrong in saying that the capture of the city began with the death of Ananus; and that the overthrow of the wall and the downfall of the Jewish state dated from the day on which the Jews beheld their high priest, the captain of their salvation, butchered in the heart of Jerusalem.