The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

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Bernard Muller
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by Bernard Muller »

to spin,
The expression "three weeks" is in Hebrew "three weeks of days" (see also 10:3). The seemingly unnecessary precision "weeks of days" allows for "weeks" being used for groups of seven time units other than days and left unqualified to make the passage seem more cryptic.
But that does not mean that "Daniel" wanted his audience to think that the "weeks" in Dan 9 are weeks of years. He just wanted to make sure that his weeks in Dan 10 would not be understood as the same as the "weeks" in Dan 9.

"For I assign to you a number of days, three hundred and ninety days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment; so long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel." (Eze 4:5 RSV)
Here are days being reassigned as years.
No that's not the case. One day is assigned for punishment for each one of the previous 390 years. Ezekiel never said that one day equals one year.
In the book of Jubilees, 23:8 we learn that Abraham lived three jubilees and four weeks of years. In 4:7 Adam and Eve mourned Abel four weeks of years. 6:18 has the flood after the fifth week of years into the 27th jubilee. Etc. Jubilees was roughly contemporary with Daniel's visions. A jubilee is seven weeks of years. So at the time of the visions the notion of weeks of years was in circulation. If the weeks in 9:25-27 were not weeks of days, another contender is weeks implying "weeks of years", which strangely enough reflects all scholarly analysis of Dan 9.

Following the same logic as Jubilees, the Cairo Damascus Document (CD) 16.4 talks of time divisions as jubilees and their weeks. The Community Rule (1QS) 10.7 talks of "years up to their their weeks", with the clear implication of weeks of years.
For a first, Jubilees has "weeks of the jubilees" at 1:29, "Sabbath of years" at 2:9, "week of days" at 3:10, "first week of the first jubilee" at 3:15 and "week of years" at 6:18.
"week(s) of years" occurs 12 times in Jubilees.
The author never took as granted that his audience knew that "week(s)" means period(s) of seven years.
And it looks the author took his clue from Leviticus "Sabbath of years".
Any meaning for weeks is fully explained. That's not the case in Daniel 9 for "weeks".

Jubilee is normally dated after "the apocalypse of the animals" in Enoch 1. But because that passage knows about the success(es) of Judas Maccabeus (90:9-19a), it had to be written after 165 BCE. Therefore Jubilee was written later, that is after Dan 9.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Jubilees
http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/jubilees.html
http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/1enoch.html

So I do not think Jubilees is a witness of "weeks" being understood as period(s) of seven years for the Jews of the time nor than "Daniel" knew about Jubilees (not written yet).

Cordially, Bernard
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spin
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by spin »

Bernard, we have seen from Leviticus through to Qumran texts the notion of weeks of years is well represented in Hebrew literature. Daniel is accommodated on that continuum.

The notion of sevens (and forcibly including seventies) is simply speculative, without any justification in the literature, offers no simple reduction from the vision into real world terms and yet is transparently accounted for as "weeks", which can be used both for days and years. The cohesion I talked about in 9:25-27 involves "weeks", the same thing in 25, 26 and 27. You instead offer "(7) sevens", "(62) sevens", and 1 week. That doesn't work. You have an aversion to the issue, ignoring the one week in your seventy scheme and the incoherence of your offering an unindicated "whatever" between the 69 weeks and the one week. This unindicated single week requires you to force אחרי to exclude the possibility that it can have stuff at the end, ie be inclusive, rather than exclusive as you insist. There is no stated week between the sixty-nine and the one. You just need there to be one. An unstated week is no week at all in Daniel's scheme of things.
Bernard Muller wrote:The perfect indicates that the building of those items was done, or they remained built, for 62 "weeks", but that has ended. Which is very odd in either cases.... But the difference between perfect and imperfect, is, in the first case, that duration has ended, and in the second case that duration is still not over at the time of writing.
You didn't respond: how long has your house been built?
Bernard Muller wrote:Where does moed specifically mean a yearly feast?
Moed doesn't mean "a yearly feast". It indicates them 2 Chr 8:13, sabbaths, new moons and moedim. 3.5 days (half a week) = 3.5 years (indicated by moedim).

I enjoy your efforts to force "cut off" to mean "separated" in 9:26, but there are no contextual indicators to allow you to metaphorize the verb.
Bernard Muller wrote:"days" is a duration
No, it is not. It generally needs to be quantified to be a duration, eg one, 365, several. "Those days" is a generic point in time, like July or 1066 or the middle ages or "in my prime".
Bernard Muller wrote:Furthermore, for these 7 years, you had to put the strengthening of the (Greek) covenant at 171 BCE, when Menelaus met Antiochus. That's hardly a covenant.
1 Macc 1:11, 13, "let us go and make a covenant with the gentiles...." Many were misled. They "went to the king who authorized them". Covenant made.
Bernard Muller wrote:And I already shot down your "time, times and a half" in Dan 7 as meaning 7 years, with the help of Collins.
Talking about firing blanks! Collins, indeed! Whatever made you think that it meant seven years? Why have I been talking about 3.5 moedim = 3.5 days (=years)? Perhaps you meant 3.5 years? If a moed indicates a year and we have 3.5 moedim...
Bernard Muller wrote:They [early Jewish readers] had no way to know what "Daniel" was thinking.
They were using the same language, which gives them a head start from those who couldn't.
Bernard Muller wrote:And the 49 years does not match by a huge lot (236 % error) the dating of the so-called coronation of Jeshua.
How long is it going to take till you twig to the fact that ultra-accuracy is irrelevant to Hebrew historiography? Remember the Seder Olam? All I need do is to stand out of the wind and watch you piss into it. You aren't doing anything useful with such an approach. Are the writers who show no knowledge of history beyond a few generations before their own times likely to mean anything more with seven weeks and sixty-two weeks than a shortish time and a longish time?
Bernard Muller wrote:What break?
The vision comes to an end in 12:3. Gabriel's discourse ends with a comment to Daniel in 12:4. That break. This is followed by a change of subject: two figures appear, not related to the vision of the kings of the north and south. One says literally, "to what end [timewise] the wonders?" The response harks back to 7:25.
Bernard Muller wrote:I published it on the internet and I got complimentary remarks from readers. And what about your crap? did you publish it in any way?
On internet with the christian nitwits and the Wikipedia ignoranti. I'm not offering anything that needs peergroup analysis, because it is mainly published stuff. Other than that I'm dealing with the specific fallout from your efforts to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

Time and time again you fail to get past basic problems. The text specifically outlines the seventy weeks: seven weeks till the prince the anointed, sixty-two weeks as the city remains built from the time of Yeshua and Zerubbabel until the anointed one is cut off, and one week for the covenant of the many. The text provides those three durations adding for a total of seventy weeks. The one week is the focus of interest, while the sixty-nine supply the pseudo-prophetic background to make the listener think that the last week will be fulfilled as the previous 69 have.

Adding the seven and the sixty-two year durations together as though they were one duration is just as looney as when christians presented the idea. The syntactic structure in 9:25 is exactly the same as the one used in 9:27, but you cannot apply the same logic to both, because of your need to add the durations together in the first, when the evidence does not allow you, so you take extreme measures with the waw, the total lack of evidence for adding them together and your explaining away the atnach. Divide and conquer does not work, as I said before, you are a gambler taking extra risk with each explaining away. You are fighting consilience and losing.

It is totally unaccountable that you would want to remove the 3.5 days (=years) and the 3.5 moedim (=years) durations from the other four in the visions: they sit between 1150 and 1290 days without strain. There is a clear connection between weeks of days and weeks of years and moedim are yearly feasts. They easily fit into the ranges supplied by the various visions. Moedim do not mean years, but can as yearly feasts stand for years. And it truly doesn't matter if scholars place Daniel little before Jubilees, they are part of a literary continuum that goes back via Ezek 4:5 to Leviticus.
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Bernard Muller
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by Bernard Muller »

to spin,
Bernard, we have seen from Leviticus through to Qumran texts the notion of weeks of years is well represented in Hebrew literature. Daniel is accommodated on that continuum.
But it is not represented before 'Daniel' except in one verse of Leviticus which explained thoroughly what a Sabbath of years means.
The notion of sevens (and forcibly including seventies) is simply speculative, without any justification in the literature,
Why need justification in the preceding literature? "Daniel" was innovative in many ways, and necessity is a cause for invention: "Daniel" looked for something which would make 167 BCE very special and he found one with the seventy שבע.
offers no simple reduction from the vision into real world terms and yet is transparently accounted for as "weeks", which can be used both for days and years.
That's right, "Daniel" did not indicate "weeks of days" or "weeks of years" in Dan 9 for a simple reason: his "weeks" were not meant to be understood as such.
The cohesion I talked about in 9:25-27 involves "weeks", the same thing in 25, 26 and 27.
I do not see why "Daniel", who was rather tricky, should display that coherence. His audience would know the "week" שבוע in 9:27 was a period of seven days because they lived through it. And they knew also that the "weeks" in Dan 9:24, 25 & 26 could not be either of years or of days or seventy, enticing them to look for an explanation, that the secret author would, nudge, nudge, suggest. And one of the literate ones would find it (counting the years (starting at 1) from Cyrus' decree up to all occurrences of שבע ("seven") in the numbers add up to 70).
You instead offer "(7) sevens", "(62) sevens", and 1 week. That doesn't work.
Why not: by the way "week" in Dan 9:27 is spelled שבוע which is different of the singular of שבעים (שבע). So there is no inconsistency: two different words, two different meanings.
And in Dan 10:2-3, the "three weeks of days" could be more closely & accurately translated as "three sevens days" as shown here: http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInte ... /dan10.pdf

A recapitulation: in the Hebrew part of 'Daniel', "week(s)/sevens" appears only in 7 consecutive verses (9:24-10:3).
If we allow שבעים (singular form שבע) to mean "sevens" (9:24,25,26; 10:2,3) and שבוע (plural form שבועות) to mean "week", then we have full coherence. שבעים is different of שבוע in spelling & pronunciation. It cannot be any confusion.

I cannot figure out what is your aversion for that: after the 69th "week" comes the 70th "week". If I write I will visit China after this year, do I need to mention that will be in 2018?
After the 69th "week" has to be the 70th "week" (which is within the seventy "weeks" (Dan 9:24) as the last "week" of them).
You have an aversion to the issue, ignoring the one week in your seventy scheme and the incoherence of your offering an unindicated "whatever" between the 69 weeks and the one week.
I don't have any aversion. I don't see any problem here. Yes I am offering a week of days which fit into my last year, that is the one mentioned in Dan 9:24.
This unindicated single week requires you to force אחרי to exclude the possibility that it can have stuff at the end, ie be inclusive, rather than exclusive as you insist.
אחרי is a preposition meaning "after". You have not proven this Hebrew word means also "towards the end of (the sixty-two "weeks)".
There is no stated week between the sixty-nine and the one. You just need there to be one. An unstated week is no week at all in Daniel's scheme of things.
After the 69th "week", we are in the 70th week. That's it. No need for "Daniel" to say (what I bolded), "And after the sixty-two "weeks", that is in the 70th "week", an anointed one shall be cut off ..."
You didn't respond: how long has your house been built?
50 years ago.
Moed doesn't mean "a yearly feast". It indicates them 2 Chr 8:13, sabbaths, new moons and moedim. 3.5 days (half a week) = 3.5 years (indicated by moedim).
From 2 Chr 8:12-13 RSV "Then Solomon offered up burnt offerings to the LORD upon the altar of the LORD which he had built before the vestibule, as the duty of each day required, offering according to the commandment of Moses for the sabbaths, the new moons, and the three annual feasts--the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles." how can you deduct that?
Solomon is offering burnt offerings for each of the mentioned "sabbaths, the new moons, and the three annual feasts ['moed']"
And here, there are 3 moedim per year, but you claim that one moedim represents one year.
I enjoy your efforts to force "cut off" to mean "separated" in 9:26, but there are no contextual indicators to allow you to metaphorize the verb
"Cut off" means "cut off". Having it meaning "killed" is also metaphorization of the verb. I agree that cut off from the living means killed, but cut off from people means separated. Of course none of these two options are specified in Dan 9:26 but what is added to it, usually translated as "and shall have nothing" (NRSV) suggests the second option (separated).
No, it is not. It generally needs to be quantified to be a duration, eg one, 365, several. "Those days" is a generic point in time, like July or 1066 or the middle ages or "in my prime".
They may be not quantified, but the days in "after those days" (Jer 31:33) are at least two days.
And they are not generic: "those days" are mentioned & implied as a (long) duration in Jer 31:29, and preceding a new covenant.
1 Macc 1:11, 13, "let us go and make a covenant with the gentiles...." Many were misled. They "went to the king who authorized them". Covenant made.
That covenant was with Jason & friends in 175/174 BCE, who implemented it (the gymnasium, etc.), which does not fit your timeline. Menelaus, 3-4 years later is not said to have made that covenant any stronger.
Talking about firing blanks! Collins, indeed! Whatever made you think that it meant seven years? Why have I been talking about 3.5 moedim = 3.5 days (=years)? Perhaps you meant 3.5 years? If a moed indicates a year and we have 3.5 moedim...
Yes, I made a mistake in a previous post. I should have said 3.5 years instead of 7 years.
According to Collins & myself, the "moedim, moedims and a half" was written in Dan 7:25, some 10 years before the "saints" were not in the hands of Antiochus anymore. That would make these "moedim, moedims and a half" not equal to 3.5 years. That was my point.
There is a huge mismatch of 3.5 years against 10 years. In other words, here is a demonstration that "moedim, moedims and a half" cannot mean 3.5 years.
They were using the same language, which gives them a head start from those who couldn't.
The masorete put his atnach here, but later, the Rabbi did not use that to put his stop. Even if they both knew Hebrew, they did not agree.
How long is it going to take till you twig to the fact that ultra-accuracy is irrelevant to Hebrew historiography? Remember the Seder Olam? All I need do is to stand out of the wind and watch you piss into it. You aren't doing anything useful with such an approach. Are the writers who show no knowledge of history beyond a few generations before their own times likely to mean anything more with seven weeks and sixty-two weeks than a shortish time and a longish time?
I already explained that the Seder Olam wanted the 490 years to point to about 135 CE.
Also, a bit later, Africanus used tricks to get to 30 CE with the 490 years.
"Daniel", very likely, also wanted to point to a particular year (167 BCE) with his seventy "weeks/sevens".
As I explained in a previous posting, 69 is not a God's number but 7 is, and 62 is the age of (the fictional) Darius the Mede when conquering Babylon. So the 69 is made up of two numbers which are not random but seem parts of a God's plan.
(Darius the Mede originated with the author of Dan 1-7 (minus a few interpolations). That author was history challenged for sure, but that does not appear to be the case for the author of Dan 8-12. However the 2nd author felt he had to also mention that Darius the Mede for sake of homogenization)

Each one of them used an artifice to get to the targeted year. The artifices had to be different, of course.

A 117 years error in 'Daniel' is not realistic, even in the days of "Daniel". I cannot imagine the educated Jews then were totally clueless about the duration of the Persian era, more so for the relative dating of the king (Cyrus) who allegedly allowed for the rebuilding of their dear temple in his first year (2Ch 36:22, Ezra 1:1) .
I indicated how that could have been recorded from father to son in educated aristocratic families, for about 12 generations, imitating the dating of the patriarchs in 'Genesis' and of the kings of the Davidic dynasty in '1 & 2 Kings'.
The vision comes to an end in 12:3. Gabriel's discourse ends with a comment to Daniel in 12:4. That break. This is followed by a change of subject: two figures appear, not related to the vision of the kings of the north and south. One says literally, "to what end [timewise] the wonders?" The response harks back to 7:25.
Yes, but my point was about "... Yet he shall come to his end, with no one to help him. At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book." (NRSV 11:45-12:1). It shows that the deliverance of the Jews will be coming (through Michael) at the same time than Antiochus' end, and not before (same idea in Dan 9:27).

Let's examine what follows: "Then I Daniel looked, and behold, two others stood, one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream.
And I said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, "How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?"
The man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven; and I heard him swear by him who lives for ever that it would be for a time, two times, and half a time; and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be accomplished."
(RSV 12:5-7)
It is clear that the duration starts when (fictional) Daniel hears the words of the two and the demigod (that is in the time of Daniel) and ends during or after the time of Antiochus IV, when Daniel will resurrect (at the end, 12:4, 13). That's quite a few centuries. So "a time, two times, and half a time" would be that long and certainly not equivalent to 3.5 years.
As I said before, that phrase in Dan 7:25 & 12:7 is an undefined amount of time.
On internet with the christian nitwits and the Wikipedia ignoranti. I'm not offering anything that needs peergroup analysis, because it is mainly published stuff. Other than that I'm dealing with the specific fallout from your efforts to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.
Who published that stuff? Publication on that matter are usually crap anyway. Publication on paper is not a guarantee of veracity, far from that.
Time and time again you fail to get past basic problems. The text specifically outlines the seventy weeks: seven weeks till the prince the anointed,
The prince anointed appears well before 49 years, that is 19 years only.
sixty-two weeks as the city remains built from the time of Yeshua and Zerubbabel until the anointed one is cut off,
Because of the (niphal) perfect of the verb "build", then after hundred of years (but before the writing of Dan 9), the city would not remain built. That does not make sense. What makes sense is that during these centuries, the city was rebuilt, and after a time (and before the writing of Dan 9), the rebuilding had stopped because of completed.
And the time of Yeshua and Zerubbabel in Jerusalem starts right after Cyrus' decree, not 49 years later.
And the original Hebrew (before the atnach and versification) can be translated as following:
"Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven "weeks" and sixty-two "weeks".
It shall be built again with plaza and moat, but in a troubled time."
and one week for the covenant of the many. The text provides those three durations adding for a total of seventy weeks. The one week is the focus of interest, while the sixty-nine supply the pseudo-prophetic background to make the listener think that the last week will be fulfilled as the previous 69 have.
Yes, according to 1 Macc. 1:41-50, the (Greek) covenant was made strong by Antiochus (but that action was terminated when Dan 9 was written because of the perfect in the verb) and the Jewish sacrifices ceased (at about the same time). These two actions could have happened easily within 7 days, except the second one was continuing at the time of writing, so the imperfect.
Yes, the last "week" will be fulfilled, as the previous 69 ones. That last "week" is the 70th, because declared after the 69th "week". The fulfillment would include the exile of Jason, Antiochus strengthening his covenant, the cessation of Jewish sacrifices, pagan sacrifices in the temple, massacres of Jews (all of that done within one year or less), and (hopefully!) the stuff in Daniel 9:24.
Adding the seven and the sixty-two year durations together as though they were one duration is just as looney as when christians presented the idea.
I explained on this post that adding the two together is the only way the verse can make sense. Never mind the Christians. I am looking for the historical correctness, not doing anti-Christian propaganda.
The syntactic structure in 9:25 is exactly the same as the one used in 9:27, but you cannot apply the same logic to both, because of your need to add the durations together in the first, when the evidence does not allow you, so you take extreme measures with the waw, the total lack of evidence for adding them together and your explaining away the atnach. Divide and conquer does not work, as I said before, you are a gambler taking extra risk with each explaining away. You are fighting consilience and losing.
Logic in a vision narration?
But the waw can as well link the seven "weeks" with the sixty-two "weeks".
The evidence from the perfect of "build" does not allow you to have a clause starting as such "And for sixty-two years ..."
The atnach was added on not before the 9th century, and certainly not by the original author. And later, the Rabbi who put stops in the text did not agree that atnach started a new clause.
It is totally unaccountable that you would want to remove the 3.5 days (=years) and the 3.5 moedim (=years) durations from the other four in the visions:
What 3.5 days? You probably meant 3.5 "weeks".
I have proved, again and again, that "weeks" in Dan 9:24-26 & "week" in Dan 9:27, cannot mean period(s) of 7 years.
The same thing for moedim not being equal to one year.
they sit between 1150 and 1290 days without strain.

I said, because these so-called prophecies were given with a precise number of days, they had to be written (for updates) after the fact (which "Daniel" did a lot), and after Dan 9 was written.
Your understanding (first "Daniel" guessed 1150 days when it appeared the reconsecration will happen very soon, but because it did not yet, a second guess for 1290 days was added, then a third guess for 1335 days) does not make any sense: why would "Daniel" take the risk of making prophecies so accurately before the facts? What would he gain, except throwing a lot of doubt against the veracity of his book when the targeted events did not happen in time.
So, at the time of writing of Dan 9, these prophecies in days were not written yet and "Daniel" did not know the reconsecration or the death of Antiochus will happen about 3.5 years after the desecration.
There is a clear connection between weeks of days and weeks of years and moedim are yearly feasts. They easily fit into the ranges supplied by the various visions. Moedim do not mean years, but can as yearly feasts stand for years. And it truly doesn't matter if scholars place Daniel little before Jubilees, they are part of a literary continuum that goes back via Ezek 4:5 to Leviticus.
There were more than one moedim (appointed time and feast) within a year and moedims in plural does not mean only two of them.
I do not see where there is a connection between weeks of days and weeks of years.
Ezekiel 4:5 does not equate day with year.

Cordially, Bernard
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spin
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Still pushing ultra-accuracy for lack of evidence

Post by spin »

Bernard Muller wrote:But it is not represented before 'Daniel' except in one verse of Leviticus which explained thoroughly what a Sabbath of years means.
The notion exists before Daniel and contemporary with Daniel, but you want it not to apply to Daniel.
Why need justification in the preceding literature?
Othewise all you are doing is speculating and you've been wasting everyone's time, as in the following:
"Daniel" did not indicate "weeks of days" or "weeks of years" in Dan 9 for a simple reason: his "weeks" were not meant to be understood as such.
Pure unadulterated assertion, ie you have no evidence for such cogitation.
I do not see why "Daniel", who was rather tricky, should display that coherence.
That's because it is you seeing. It is not directly related to the text of Daniel at all.
You instead offer "(7) sevens", "(62) sevens", and 1 week. That doesn't work.
Why not: by the way "week" in Dan 9:27 is spelled שבוע which is different of the singular of שבעים (שבע). So there is no inconsistency: two different words, two different meanings.
Rubbish. You have already been through the fact that Hebrew has "defective" spellings (ie purely consonantal) and "plene" spellings and you have no way to demonstrate that שבעים is not just a defective representation of the masculine form of "weeks". (See Gen 29:27 for the defective spelling of the singular, so that its consonants make it look like the number, though the Masoretes pointed it shabua`. The singular is less frequently reduced to its defective spelling.)
A recapitulation: in the Hebrew part of 'Daniel', "week(s)/sevens" appears only in 7 consecutive verses (9:24-10:3).
If we allow שבעים (singular form שבע) to mean "sevens" (9:24,25,26; 10:2,3) and שבוע (plural form שבועות) to mean "week", then we have full coherence. שבעים is different of שבוע in spelling & pronunciation. It cannot be any confusion.
As I said above, see Gen 29:27 for the defective spelling of "weeks". You have no argument here.
I cannot figure out what is your aversion for that: after the 69th "week" comes the 70th "week". If I write I will visit China after this year, do I need to mention that will be in 2018?
After the 69th "week" has to be the 70th "week" (which is within the seventy "weeks" (Dan 9:24) as the last "week" of them).
I cannot figure out why you retroject your notion that has no support in any biblical Hebrew literature. It does not come from text: it comes from you. It is your invention and you will hold onto your theory for grim death, because it is your commitment, not from the text.
I don't have any aversion. I don't see any problem here. Yes I am offering a week of days which fit into my last year, that is the one mentioned in Dan 9:24.
And here you are jumping between seven/seventy and year. Either you talk about sevens and the last seven or you talk about years and the last year.

I should state that "seven" is an adjective, ie it qualifies nouns, and as such should not take a plural ending. Why would a speaker of Hebrew use "seven" as any grammatical way other than what it is usually used for. We might be easy about such things today, but there is no reason for you to assert that Hebrew speakers would use it as a noun. What would seem to be the plural is used for the number "seventy", which itself is an adjective. The "plural" form of "seven" is understood as "seventy", which has the consonantal appearance of the defective form of "weeks". It's nice that you can conceive of "seven" today in such a way as to be able to refer to a plural "sevens", but that reflects nothing about the Hebrew language.
This unindicated single week requires you to force אחרי to exclude the possibility that it can have stuff at the end, ie be inclusive, rather than exclusive as you insist.
אחרי is a preposition meaning "after". You have not proven this Hebrew word means also "towards the end of (the sixty-two "weeks)".
You can only assert the above by ignoring the last week in 9:27. After sixty-nine weeks things happened then one more came to make seventy. The text is clear. You obfuscate for obvious reasons: you are committed to your error. It doesn't come from the text.
After the 69th "week", we are in the 70th week.
As is clearly stated in 9:27. Your efforts to convert what happened at the end of the sixty-nine week into another week is contradicted by 9:27.
50 years ago.
That is not an answer to the question asked of you: How long has your house been built? You indicate when your house was built. Can you answer my question, please?

Click this. I note the English present perfect is little understood even among school teachers, but if you feel the question is strange, you can get there from the fact that your house is built and therefore has been built for some time. You shouldn't have trouble with the question "how long have you been married?" though you were married on a specific day. How long has your house been built?

When God says in Ps 89:3 that he will "build your throne for all generations" does that mean he will never stop building it or that it will stay built for that long?
Moed doesn't mean "a yearly feast". It indicates them 2 Chr 8:13, sabbaths, new moons and moedim. 3.5 days (half a week) = 3.5 years (indicated by moedim).
From 2 Chr 8:12-13 RSV "Then Solomon offered up burnt offerings to the LORD upon the altar of the LORD which he had built before the vestibule, as the duty of each day required, offering according to the commandment of Moses for the sabbaths, the new moons, and the three annual feasts--the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles." how can you deduct that?
Solomon is offering burnt offerings for each of the mentioned "sabbaths, the new moons, and the three annual feasts ['moed']"
And here, there are 3 moedim per year, but you claim that one moedim represents one year.
And the RSV translates moedim as "annual feasts". The translators understood moed as a yearly feast. The connection is transparent: a moed, moedim and half.
I enjoy your efforts to force "cut off" to mean "separated" in 9:26, but there are no contextual indicators to allow you to metaphorize the verb
"Cut off" means "cut off".
Yes, it does. It doesn't mean "separated". Like heads and trees, the implication is obvious.
They may be not quantified, but the days in "after those days" (Jer 31:33) are at least two days.
And they are not generic: "those days" are mentioned & implied as a (long) duration in Jer 31:29, and preceding a new covenant.
I've already demonstrated that those days is a generic term like July (not for 31 days), 1066 (not for year), the middle ages (not for hundreds of years). There is no duration involved in talking of "those days" in pinpoints when in a generic manner. So try to find a functional counter-example rather than showing you don't understand the term you are trying to use in English.
That covenant was with Jason & friends in 175/174 BCE, who implemented it (the gymnasium, etc.), which does not fit your timeline. Menelaus, 3-4 years later is not said to have made that covenant any stronger.
So you specifically have a covenant being made. You don't know when it was made despite the dates you guess. None mentioned in 1 Macc 1:41-51. Josephus (AJ 12.240-241) states specifically that Menelaus and the Tobiads petitioned Antiochus to build the gymnasium.
According to Collins & myself, the "moedim, moedims and a half" was written in Dan 7:25, some 10 years before the "saints" were not in the hands of Antiochus anymore. That would make these "moedim, moedims and a half" not equal to 3.5 years. That was my point.
There is a huge mismatch of 3.5 years against 10 years. In other words, here is a demonstration that "moedim, moedims and a half" cannot mean 3.5 years.
Collins is not here to justify himself. Perhaps you could be his proxy.
The masorete put his atnach here, but later, the Rabbi did not use that to put his stop. Even if they both knew Hebrew, they did not agree.
You are trying to argue on one commentator's comments.
How long is it going to take till you twig to the fact that ultra-accuracy is irrelevant to Hebrew historiography? Remember the Seder Olam? All I need do is to stand out of the wind and watch you piss into it. You aren't doing anything useful with such an approach. Are the writers who show no knowledge of history beyond a few generations before their own times likely to mean anything more with seven weeks and sixty-two weeks than a shortish time and a longish time?
I already explained that the Seder Olam wanted the 490 years to point to about 135 CE.
Your ultra-accuracy argument dissipates here. Faded into oblivion. Seder Olam can present information lacking ultra-accuracy, but Daniel can't. *Poof*
"Daniel", very likely, also wanted to point to a particular year (167 BCE) with his seventy "weeks/sevens".
As I explained in a previous posting, 69 is not a God's number but 7 is, and 62 is the age of (the fictional) Darius the Mede when conquering Babylon.
It's still ridiculous. If it had been "one thing happened 3 weeks and 12 weeks something else happened" you'd try arguing for it simply being 15 weeks for the first thing because 3 is the number of patriarchs and twelve is the number of tribes, so we have to add them together. This is absurd. It's bad enough that loony christians do this sort of nonsense.

:tomato: :tomato: :tomato:
A 117 years error in 'Daniel' is not realistic, even in the days of "Daniel".
But similar is ok in Seder Olam. Ultra-accuracy is your burden, not Daniel's.
The vision comes to an end in 12:3. Gabriel's discourse ends with a comment to Daniel in 12:4. That break. This is followed by a change of subject: two figures appear, not related to the vision of the kings of the north and south. One says literally, "to what end [timewise] the wonders?" The response harks back to 7:25.
Yes, but my point was about "... Yet he shall come to his end, with no one to help him. At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book." (NRSV 11:45-12:1). It shows that the deliverance of the Jews will be coming (through Michael) at the same time than Antiochus' end, and not before (same idea in Dan 9:27).
Approximately 3.5 days = years (9:27), 3.5 moedim = years (12:7) after the Antiochus first aggressed against the temple cult.
Let's examine what follows: "Then I Daniel looked, and behold, two others stood, one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream.
And I said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, "How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?"
The man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven; and I heard him swear by him who lives for ever that it would be for a time, two times, and half a time; and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be accomplished."
(RSV 12:5-7)
It is clear that the duration starts when (fictional) Daniel hears the words of the two and the demigod (that is in the time of Daniel) and ends during or after the time of Antiochus IV, when Daniel will resurrect (at the end, 12:4, 13). That's quite a few centuries. So "a time, two times, and half a time" would be that long and certainly not equivalent to 3.5 years.
As I said before, that phrase in Dan 7:25 & 12:7 is an undefined amount of time.
When do the 1150, 1290 and 1335 days start? At the same time as the 3.5 years. If you want to believe that they all apply to the fictional time of Daniel, then you will have more problems.
Who published that stuff? Publication on that matter are usually crap anyway. Publication on paper is not a guarantee of veracity, far from that.
Peer review guarantees that the material goes through some quality control. Sticking stuff on the web self-published has none.
Time and time again you fail to get past basic problems. The text specifically outlines the seventy weeks: seven weeks till the prince the anointed,
The prince anointed appears well before 49 years, that is 19 years only.
Ultra-accuracy is your burden. Nothing to do with Hebrew historiography.
sixty-two weeks as the city remains built from the time of Yeshua and Zerubbabel until the anointed one is cut off,
Because of the (niphal) perfect of the verb "build", then after hundred of years (but before the writing of Dan 9), the city would not remain built. That does not make sense.
You'll get over this when you answer my question "how long has your house been built?"
What makes sense is that during these centuries, the city was rebuilt, and after a time (and before the writing of Dan 9), the rebuilding had stopped because of completed.
And the time of Yeshua and Zerubbabel in Jerusalem starts right after Cyrus' decree, not 49 years later.
1 Esdras (from which Ezra was later constructed) puts Zerubbabel in the reign of Darius (I).
And the original Hebrew (before the atnach and versification) can be translated as following:
"Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven "weeks" and sixty-two "weeks".
It shall be built again with plaza and moat, but in a troubled time."
You are still in denial over the Hebrew syntax, which is used again in 9:27: "He shall cause a covenant with the many to prevail one week and half the week the Tamid shall cease."
and one week for the covenant of the many. The text provides those three durations adding for a total of seventy weeks. The one week is the focus of interest, while the sixty-nine supply the pseudo-prophetic background to make the listener think that the last week will be fulfilled as the previous 69 have.
Yes, according to 1 Macc. 1:41-50, the (Greek) covenant was made strong by Antiochus.
There is no covenant in 1 Macc 1:41-50.
I explained on this post that adding the two together is the only way the verse can make sense.
You keep blundering. You have explained no such thing. You have only shown that you refuse to understand the Hebrew syntax. And you refuse to answer the question "how long has your house been built?"
Never mind the Christians. I am looking for the historical correctness, not doing anti-Christian propaganda.
You are trying to justify your lead balloon. Not understand what the text says. Adding the two numbers together is ridiculous in the light of the syntax of 9:27. The only reason why you depend on it is because of the lousy christian translations. You would not have had the idea if they hadn't put it into your head.
The syntactic structure in 9:25 is exactly the same as the one used in 9:27, but you cannot apply the same logic to both, because of your need to add the durations together in the first, when the evidence does not allow you, so you take extreme measures with the waw, the total lack of evidence for adding them together and your explaining away the atnach. Divide and conquer does not work, as I said before, you are a gambler taking extra risk with each explaining away. You are fighting consilience and losing.
Logic in a vision narration?
Absolutely. It must be able to make sense. You cannot just assert content. There must be a logic for the listener to understand and accept the interpretation.
But the waw can as well link the seven "weeks" with the sixty-two "weeks".
Only if you ignore the sentence syntax.
The evidence from the perfect of "build" does not allow you to have a clause starting as such "And for sixty-two years ..."
Explain why "Omri reigned for six years" is perfect and why you won't answer the question "how long has your house been built?".
The atnach was added on not before the 9th century, and certainly not by the original author. And later, the Rabbi who put stops in the text did not agree that atnach started a new clause.
So you prefer your reading of the Hebrew to his.
It is totally unaccountable that you would want to remove the 3.5 days (=years) and the 3.5 moedim (=years) durations from the other four in the visions:
What 3.5 days? You probably meant 3.5 "weeks".
No, I meant 3.5 days, ie half a week.

I have proved, again and again, that "weeks" in Dan 9:24-26 & "week" in Dan 9:27, cannot mean period(s) of 7 years.
You don't understand the English word "prove": "assert" is the word for what you have done.
The same thing for moedim not being equal to one year.
I've already shown that moed is used for yearly feasts. You have merely asserted that it cannot be used in place of "year". 3.5 years is obvious sense in connection with the other durations.
I said, because these so-called prophecies were given with a precise number of days, they had to be written (for updates) after the fact (which "Daniel" did a lot), and after Dan 9 was written.
Your understanding (first "Daniel" guessed 1150 days when it appeared the reconsecration will happen very soon, but because it did not yet, a second guess for 1290 days was added, then a third guess for 1335 days) does not make any sense: why would "Daniel" take the risk of making prophecies so accurately before the facts? What would he gain, except throwing a lot of doubt against the veracity of his book when the targeted events did not happen in time.
You are proposing nonsense when you ignore the predictive aspects of Daniel. You also ignore the relationship between 1260 days (3.5 years of 360 days) and 1150, 1290 and 1335 days.

The book goes wrong because it is partially prophetic. The durations fit happily into real prophecy that requires adjustment, when proven inaccurate.
So, at the time of writing of Dan 9, these prophecies in days were not written yet and "Daniel" did not know the reconsecration or the death of Antiochus will happen about 3.5 years after the desecration.
So you say.
There is a clear connection between weeks of days and weeks of years and moedim are yearly feasts. They easily fit into the ranges supplied by the various visions. Moedim do not mean years, but can as yearly feasts stand for years. And it truly doesn't matter if scholars place Daniel little before Jubilees, they are part of a literary continuum that goes back via Ezek 4:5 to Leviticus.
There were more than one moedim (appointed time and feast) within a year and moedims in plural does not mean only two of them.
There was only one of each moed per year. That is the significance that moed may carry in a cryptic duration. Your "no it can't" has no basis. You are just obfuscating to ignore the implication that the use of moed in the context of Dan 12:7 indicates a specific duration.
I do not see where there is a connection between weeks of days and weeks of years.
So Jubilees with its weeks of years does not make sense to you.
Ezekiel 4:5 does not equate day with year.
So how many years is Ezekiel talking about, if not 390?

Ezek. 4:5, For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment.

Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
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spin
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Days and years

Post by spin »

Bernard has such difficulty with the notion that "weeks" could be not "weeks of days" but "weeks of years", so he asserts it must mean something completely different that supports his theory, which involves transforming the Hebrew שבעים into "sevens", rather than "weeks".

However, the relationship between days and years is frequently made in Hebrew literature. The days of a person's life are measured in years: "all the days of Adam were 930 years", see similarly 5:8, 5:11, 5:14 etc. Days measured in years is also the case with 2 Sam 2:11, "the number of days that David was king in Hebron... was 7 years and 6 months."

Years and days are used in parallel in typical Hebrew style:

Job 36:11 spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures.
Prov 9:11 your days shall be multiplied and the years of your life shall be increased.
Mal 3:4 as in the days of old and as in the former years.

Years and days are strongly tied together in Hebrew thought.

I've already pointed out (at the end of the post above) that in Ezek. 4:5 the number of years of punishment assigned to Israel was the number of days Ezekiel was to lie on his side, ie 390 days. A similar indication of years for days is found in Num 14:34 "According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure." Years for days is nothing new in Hebrew culture.

Lev 25:3-4 dictates, "6 years you shall sow your field... and in the 7th year a sabbath of rest is to the land". This applies the notion of the week (of days) to years. Just as six days you shall work and on the seventh you shall rest, so too land can be used for six years and it should rest in the seventh year. Developing on this notion of a week of years, Lev 25:8 outlines the jubilee year: "You shall count off 7 sabbaths of years, 7 times 7 years, and the days of the 7 sabbaths of years gives 49 years."

When we come to Daniel, we've seen in the narrative framework in 10:2, 3 that weeks are specified as "weeks of days", but in the vision immediately before we find simply "weeks", seventy of them, divided into seven plus sixty-two plus one week, without specifying "(weeks of) days" or "(weeks of) years". Daniel moves from Jeremiah's seventy years to seventy weeks. The jump from "weeks of days" to "weeks of years", given Jeremiah's years, is a simple and straightforward one.

There is simply no justification to even contemplate Bernard's novel assertion that שבעים should been seen as "sevens". This is a modern retrojection. The history of the use of numbers is long and complex and the abstracting of the value of the number is quite recent. The Hebrew word שבעים is for all appearances just a masculine form of the plural "weeks". The word is not used frequently in the Hebrew bible, but its spelling appears to reflect a common reduced or "defective" spelling in which only the consonants are given. It looks like "weeks", though "weeks" can be used either with days or with years, as the book of Jubilees so frequently shows. Bernard will say, forgetting about the notion of weeks of years in Lev 25, that Jubilees was written a little after Daniel, as though he believed that the notion of weeks of years did not exist at the time Daniel was written. This belief has no basis.

There is no reason to follow Bernard down the path into altering word meanings to reflect his theory, into projecting modern ideas onto the past, or into thinking you don't need to have any idea of the language you are depending on as the source for your knowledge of the material under consideration.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
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One for the pot

Post by iskander »

One for the pot
Daniel 9: 22-27
"
(22) ...he made me understand and spoke to me; he said, "Daniyyél, now I
have come out to teach you how to understand.

(23) At the beginning of your prayers, a 'word' emerged and I have come to
tell you about it, because you have desirable qualities. Now pay attention to
the matter and you will begin to understand the vision.

(24) Seventy septets [of years] have been decreed on your people and the city
of your Sanctuary [for you] to make an end of transgression, to atone for sin
and to wipe away iniquity, to bring about universal justice, to confirm the
visions and the prophets and to anoint the Most Holy Place.

(25) Know and understand this: from the emergence of the 'word' about
returning and rebuilding Y'rushalayim until a 'messiah-ruler' [was] seven
septets; and [for] 62 septets it will be restored and rebuilt [with] streets and a
moat, but in turbulent times.

(26) And then, after those 62 septets, a 'messiah' will be cut off and will be no
more, and the nation of the coming 'ruler' will destroy the city and Temple;
but [that nation] will end in upheaval, and at the end of the war it will collapse
in ruins;

(27) he will honour a treaty with the great ones [i.e. Yisrael] for one septet, but
for half of that septet he will abolish the sacrifices and flour-offerings, and the
mute sacrilege will be in the high [place] among all the [other] abominations,
until destruction and anihilation overtake the mute one." (Daniyyél 9:22-27)
"
http://mordochai.tripod.com/daniyyel9.html#top
Bernard Muller
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by Bernard Muller »

to spin,
The notion exists before Daniel and contemporary with Daniel, but you want it not to apply to Daniel.
Before 'Daniel' only one verse in Leviticus where "sabbaths of years" is mentioned.
Before 'Daniel' no precedent where "week(s)" on its own is used when not meaning to be period(s) of 7 consecutive days. "Daniel" was the first.
Othewise all you are doing is speculating and you've been wasting everyone's time, as in the following:
There is always a first for everything. If not, we would still be living in caves.
Pure unadulterated assertion, ie you have no evidence for such cogitation
""Daniel" did not indicate "weeks of days" or "weeks of years" in Dan 9": it is not a pure unadulterated assertion. And my comment on that makes sense: "his "weeks" were not meant to be understood as such".
Rubbish. You have already been through the fact that Hebrew has "defective" spellings (ie purely consonantal) and "plene" spellings and you have no way to demonstrate that שבעים is not just a defective representation of the masculine form of "weeks". (See Gen 29:27 for the defective spelling of the singular, so that its consonants make it look like the number, though the Masoretes pointed it shabua`. The singular is less frequently reduced to its defective spelling.)
"week" שבוע is feminine. The masculine suffix: שבעים occurs once (Lev 12:5) to indicate "two weeks".
In the OT, outside allegedly 'Daniel', the abnormal plural שבעים is never used for more than two weeks.
Another first for "Daniel".
As I said above, see Gen 29:27 for the defective spelling of "weeks". You have no argument here.
I said "If we allow שבעים (singular form שבע) to mean "sevens" (9:24,25,26; 10:2,3)". I did not say שבע can only mean "seven". But in the case of שבעים we have full coherence, even with the שבעים in Dan 10:2,3, as translated "three sevens days, with שבוע meaning something different: "week" (normal definition). And there not be any jumping:
And here you are jumping between seven/seventy and year. Either you talk about sevens and the last seven or you talk about years and the last year.
I cannot figure out why you retroject your notion that has no support in any biblical Hebrew literature. It does not come from text: it comes from you. It is your invention and you will hold onto your theory for grim death, because it is your commitment, not from the text.

I cannot figure why you do not understand that after 69 "weeks" comes the 70th "week" without it to be announced as just that. Of course after the 69 "weeks" comes other "weeks" such as the 71th, but it has been specified already that the 70th week is the last one (Dan 9:24).
In 2Sa 13:23 "And it came to pass after two full years, that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baalhazor, which is beside Ephraim: and Absalom invited all the king's sons." the author did not feel he had to specify "after two full year, on the third year, that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baalhazor"
I should state that "seven" is an adjective, ie it qualifies nouns, and as such should not take a plural ending. Why would a speaker of Hebrew use "seven" as any grammatical way other than what it is usually used for. We might be easy about such things today, but there is no reason for you to assert that Hebrew speakers would use it as a noun. What would seem to be the plural is used for the number "seventy", which itself is an adjective. The "plural" form of "seven" is understood as "seventy", which has the consonantal appearance of the defective form of "weeks". It's nice that you can conceive of "seven" today in such a way as to be able to refer to a plural "sevens", but that reflects nothing about the Hebrew language.
"seven is used like a noun in 1 Sam 2:5 because here it does not qualify a noun.
"Daniel" is full of first and why would he used accurate Hebrew with sound grammar in a vision, as told by a demigod in mysterious way?
You can only assert the above by ignoring the last week in 9:27. After sixty-nine weeks things happened then one more came to make seventy. The text is clear. You obfuscate for obvious reasons: you are committed to your error. It doesn't come from the text.
I commented on that posting earlier already. And if "Daniel" used שבעים for the plural of "week", why did he not use the corresponding defective form for "week" in Dan 9:27, as in Genesis 29:27 & 28, if "week", singular or plural, meant for him the same thing?
Actually, it is only here in these two verses of Genesis, beside 'Daniel', that "week" (singular) occurs in the OT. However "Daniel" used the plene form for week (another OT first), most likely to make a distinction with the שבעים.
As is clearly stated in 9:27. Your efforts to convert what happened at the end of the sixty-nine week into another week is contradicted by 9:27.
No way, if שבוע means week and שבעים something different.
That is not an answer to the question asked of you: How long has your house been built? You indicate when your house was built. Can you answer my question, please?
50 years if you mean "remained built" for "built". The question is rather strangely stated and subject to confusion.
But did I tell you my house was demolished 2 years ago and I live now in a rented flat? in that case, the Hebrew perfect would be used. But if my house is still standing, so the Hebrew imperfect would apply.
If we look at "Then for sixty-two "weeks" (434 years for you) it shall be put back (imperfect) and remained built (perfect) with squares and moat, but in a troubled time." then that would mean "Daniel" thought the city or/and temple was still put back, and, at the same time, destroyed before 171 BCE (that's where the last 7 years start for you). Destroyed, yes according to Dan 9:26, but later (in 167 BCE).
That syntax does not make sense to me.

But this does: "Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks: it shall be put back (imperfect: still restored) and built (perfect: building completed during the aforementioned years) with squares and moat, but in a troubled time."
Click this. I note the English present perfect is little understood even among school teachers, but if you feel the question is strange, you can get there from the fact that your house is built and therefore has been built for some time. You shouldn't have trouble with the question "how long have you been married?" though you were married on a specific day.
I do not know what correspondence would be between the Hebrew perfect and the English present perfect. As far as I know, English grammar was not derived from the Hebrew one.
""how long have you been married?". If I answer 23 years, that would not indicate if I am still married or my marriage had ended by divorce 3 years ago.
When God says in Ps 89:3 that he will "build your throne for all generations" does that mean he will never stop building it or that it will stay built for that long
Well, it looks the making of the covenant to David and the building of the throne were considered actions which were completed in the past, because of the perfect.
And "I will establish your seed forever" is an ongoing action obviously not completed yet at the time of writing of that psalm, so the imperfect.
And the RSV translates moedim as "annual feasts". The translators understood moed as a yearly feast. The connection is transparent: a moed, moedim and half.
And I still do not see why moed should be synonym of one year, more so because there were more than one moed per year. A yearly feast does not mean one year. There is no precedent in the OT which indicates that.
Actually, the translation should not say "yearly feasts" but "yearly appointed times". There were also other appointed times in a year for feasts (three in 2 Chr 8:12-13)
No it is not transparent: "a moed, moedim and half" can mean a multitude of yearly feasts during an undefined time period or, as a minimum, 3.5 consecutive yearly feasts for a period of a bit more than one year ("half" looks very strange regarding a feast or appointed time).
And there is no indication that the moed and moedim are about the same yearly feast.
I've already demonstrated that those days is a generic term like July (not for 31 days), 1066 (not for year), the middle ages (not for hundreds of years). There is no duration involved in talking of "those days" in pinpoints when in a generic manner. So try to find a functional counter-example rather than showing you don't understand the term you are trying to use in English.
NO, those days means a past duration as described in Jer 21: 29:30 "In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.
But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge."

Just like me saying "In those days I felt sick. After those days, I was much better".
Yes, it does. It doesn't mean "separated". Like heads and trees, the implication is obvious
But "cut off" is also used for "separated" in the OT. In the Pentateuch only, I found that meaning in:
Gen17:14; Ex 4:25, 12:15,19, 30:38, 31:14; Lev 7:21,25, 17:4,9,14, 18:29, 19:8, 20:2,6,17,18, 22:3,29; Num 4:18, 15:30,31 19:13,20 & Deu 12:29.
That covenant was with Jason & friends in 175/174 BCE, who implemented it (the gymnasium, etc.), which does not fit your timeline. Menelaus, 3-4 years later is not said to have made that covenant any stronger.
So you specifically have a covenant being made. You don't know when it was made despite the dates you guess. None mentioned in 1 Macc 1:41-51. Josephus (AJ 12.240-241) states specifically that Menelaus and the Tobiads petitioned Antiochus to build the gymnasium.
Yes a covenant is made in 175/174 BCE, Menelaus is not said to make it strong, but certainly Antiochus IV did just that in 167 BCE (1 Macc. 1:41-51).
The covenant was made when Jason was selected to be the new high priest (2 Macc. 4:7-10, 1 Macc. 1:11-13). And that was three years before Menelaus became the high priest (2 Macc. 4:23) which you put around 171 BCE.
And Josephus, if he followed 1 Macc. and 2 Macc., as commonly believed, made a mistake.
Collins is not here to justify himself. Perhaps you could be his proxy.
Collins justified himself in his (very long) book: Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993)
Your ultra-accuracy argument dissipates here. Faded into oblivion. Seder Olam can present information lacking ultra-accuracy, but Daniel can't. *Poof*
I explained why Seder Olam reduced the Persian kings combined reigns. It was for religious reason at the detriment of historical accuracy.
However both wanted a chronology to point to a certain year for each. Both "succeeded", but in different ways.
Seder Olam's way was crude (and false), Daniel's way was more sophisticated (but accurate).
When do the 1150, 1290 and 1335 days start? At the same time as the 3.5 years. If you want to believe that they all apply to the fictional time of Daniel, then you will have more problems.
Yes but that does not mean that "time, times and a half" has the same starting time.
In 7:25, that start can be from 175 to 170 BCE. At that time "Daniel" had no idea there will be a desecration and, of course, reconsecration.
"He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, two times, and half a time."
No mention of destruction, desecration, looting, killing, changing the law & times (just thinking about it). But the "saints" are already under stress.
In 12:6, the start is obviously during the times of fictional Daniel.
1 Esdras (from which Ezra was later constructed) puts Zerubbabel in the reign of Darius (I)
That's a small minority position (about 1 Esdras and Ezra). Also the same for Ezra-Nehemiah not being written before 167 BCE.
You are still in denial over the Hebrew syntax, which is used again in 9:27: "He shall cause a covenant with the many to prevail one week and half the week the Tamid shall cease."
There is no rule which compels the syntax of Dan 9:25 to be the same as Dan 9:27.
Why "prevail"? "strengthen" or "confirm" is more accurate.
And because of the perfect for "confirm" and the imperfect for "cease", the strengthening/confirmation had to be completed before the cessation of the Jewish sacrifices & offering ended. How do you explain that?
There is no covenant in 1 Macc 1:41-50.
There is no "covenant" in 1 Macc 1:41-50, but the strengthening of one, big time.
But when you place your strengthening of a covenant (when Menelaus became high priest in 171 BCE, there is no "covenant" either (2 Macc. 23-25).
Explain why "Omri reigned for six years" is perfect
I told you that already, at least twice: because when the verse was written, the reign of Omri had been completed.
You don't understand the English word "prove": "assert" is the word for what you have done.

I demonstrated it, in multiple ways. The fact you don't accept my explanations (or is it not reading them?) does not change that.
I've already shown that moed is used for yearly feasts. You have merely asserted that it cannot be used in place of "year". 3.5 years is obvious sense in connection with the other durations.
I went through that on this posting. "Appointed times are used for yearly feasts" does not mean one appointed time is equivalent to one year.
You are proposing nonsense when you ignore the predictive aspects of Daniel. You also ignore the relationship between 1260 days (3.5 years of 360 days) and 1150, 1290 and 1335 days.
I have shown that "Daniel" predicting these durations does not make sense. Rather, they were "updates" after the facts.
Sure there is a relationship between 1150, 1290 & 1335 days and 3.5 years. But for that you have to set the strengthening of the Greek covenant in 171 BCE, when it is clearly stated in 1 Macc. 1:41-51 that happened in 167 BCE by Antiochus IV himself. And the "he" in Dan 9:27 is Antiochus, not Menelaus.
So how many years is Ezekiel talking about, if not 390?
Ezek. 4:5, For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment.
I explained already on a previous post it does not mean Ezekiel equated one day with one year.
It is like a judge saying: I send you in jail for five weeks, equal to the number of months you broke your parole.
That does not mean one week is equal to one month. What is equal in the number of weeks (5) and the number of months (5).

Cordially, Bernard
Last edited by Bernard Muller on Thu Apr 20, 2017 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by Bernard Muller »

to spin,
Years and days are used in parallel in typical Hebrew style:
Job 36:11 spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures.
Prov 9:11 your days shall be multiplied and the years of your life shall be increased.
Mal 3:4 as in the days of old and as in the former years.
Yes there are used in parallel, but that does not mean one day being equal to one year.

Cordially, Bernard
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spin
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by spin »

On Ezek 4:5
Bernard Muller wrote:I explained already on a previous post it does not mean Ezekiel equated one day with one year.
It is like a judge saying: I send you in jail for five weeks, equal to the number of months you broke your parole.
That does not mean one week is equal to one month. What is equal in the number of weeks (5) and the number of months (5).
You have the basic idea, though you don't see it: Ezekiel was to lie on his side for 390 days equal to the number of years of Israels iniquity (390).

It's understandable that you totally ignored this paragraph from my last post:
spin wrote:I've already pointed out (at the end of the post above) that in Ezek. 4:5 the number of years of punishment assigned to Israel was the number of days Ezekiel was to lie on his side, ie 390 days. A similar indication of years for days is found in Num 14:34 "According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure." Years for days is nothing new in Hebrew culture.
You need to accept the fact that you have misrepresented the year/day issue and its obvious application to Dan 9:24-27. Your attempt to weasel out of the text's use of "weeks" fails on the numerous grounds I've exhaustively listed. As there is no reason from the text for what amounts to your eisegesis, your theory as Doctor McCoy would say, "is dead, Jim" and your constant appeal to ultra-accuracy—contra Hebrew historiography—cannot resurrect it.
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Re: The temple saying & traditions before Mark.

Post by Bernard Muller »

to spin,
spin wrote:
I've already pointed out (at the end of the post above) that in Ezek. 4:5 the number of years of punishment assigned to Israel was the number of days Ezekiel was to lie on his side, ie 390 days. A similar indication of years for days is found in Num 14:34 "According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure." Years for days is nothing new in Hebrew culture.
The ones who spied the land (which will become Israel) for 40 days lied in their report about what they saw, discouraging the Israelites of Moses to invade it. So God says they will be punished by having them in the wilderness for 40 years, until they all die.
Once again it is well explained and that does not say one day is equal to one year. Or that one appointed time is the same than one year. Or a week is 7 years.

Cordially, Bernard
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