Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Bernard Muller wrote:to spin,

However, Zerubbabel is introduced in the reign of Darius in 1 Esd 4:13.

Zerubbabel is introduced in Judah right after Cyrus issued his proclamation in 538 BC (Esd 2:2).
Zerubbabel is still in Jerusalem during the beginning of the reign of Darius in Esd 5:2

You seem to be confused. 1 Esd certainly doesn't talk about Zerubbabel before 4:13. Ezra does, but I said...

spin wrote:Sadly, Ezra is a secondary work cobbled out of the Hebrew Vorlage to 1 Esdras. Ezra doesn't show that the first wave of exiles under Sheshbazzar is distinct from the second wave under Zerubbabel and Yeshua. However, Zerubbabel is introduced in the reign of Darius in 1 Esd 4:13.

You still seem to be quoting Ezra, not 1 Esdras.

Bernard Muller wrote:

You are hoping that the writers are accurate when they only give four Persian kings down to Alexander (11:2)?

"And now will I shew thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia." (Dan 11:2)
That comes after the fictional Darius the Mede (whom the author of Daniel part 2 inherited from the author of Daniel part 1, and had to take in account), and the three Persians kings would be Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, Bardiya.
The fourth one is obviously Darius I, the first of the Persian kings to go against the city states of Greece.
The next two verses refer to Alexander the Great:
"And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will
And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those." (Dan 11:3-4)
But I do not see why you accuse the author of not knowing about the Persian kings following Darius I, presented as the greatest of the Persian kings and of great interest for our author. The author never said Alexander immediately followed Darius I and terminated him & his empire. He only said Alexander came (some time) after Darius I.

Alexander just immediately follows the fourth Persian king, so that if you were reading Daniel and not better historical sources you'd think that there were only fourth Persian kings before him. You are not reading the text for what it shows here. The last Persian king was also Darius (III): one can understand the writers of Daniel conflating the Dariuses... and the Xerxeses and the Artaxerxeses.

Bernard Muller wrote:

He did, when he said Yeshua "shall bear royal honor and sit upon his throne and rule" (6:13). (And no, not many crowns. In Zech 4:14 there are still two anointed ones, Zerubbabel and Yeshua. Although it was only Yeshua who is crowned, he gets both. Zerubbabel had disappeared between 4:14 and 6:11.)

Zec 6:11b-13a RSV "...Joshua, the son of Jehoz'adak, the high priest;
and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD.
It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD, and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule upon his throne. And there shall be a priest by his throne, ..."
Here Joshua is being told by God to expect "the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD". That does not say Joshua is that man.
And being anointed does not mean you have to become a ruler. High priests were anointed.
Furthermore, Zechariah's prophecies are just wishful thinking and does not have to reflect history.

Again, you are refusing to read what the text says. It has Yeshua crowned as ruler and sat on the throne.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Daniel clearly favors Onias III, who is the anointed one cut off before the last week. Jason appears during that last week, ie he cannot be this anointed one.

Probably, but that does not mean the author of Daniel part 2 did not have Jason in mind for his anointed one who got cut off (as rejected, banished) in 167 BC, as I calculated it (for me the last week is the last year). By that time, it was several years ago that Onias III had been cut off.

Before the last week of years, whose end coincides with the end of the tribulation, ie when the temple is regained. By this timescale Onias III's death was just before the last week and Jason's massacre was after half the week and coincides with the start of Antiochus III's full hellenization.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The prince of the covenant, the name of the figure in 11:23 is broken before Antiochus III goes to Egypt. Again, not Jason.

Yes, I agree. But that was before Antiochus goes to Egypt for the first time.
Jason took Jerusalem and rule over it when Antiochus went to Egypt the second time.

Which I have clarified elsewhere, but the prince of the covenant, prince of the host and the anointed one are all the same figure in the same sequence of events in the different visions.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Clause #2: "and for sixty-two weeks it shall be constructed again with streets and moat, but in troubled time."

You are still going with streets. Streets are not open space, but plaza and squares (as translated by the RSV) are more appropriate.

Stop trifling with tangents.

Bernard Muller wrote:And your translation makes it sounds it took 434 years to rebuild Jerusalem, which is wrong.

It would help if you knew something about the language involved here, so you wouldn't make such irrelevant comments. The verb is a niphil perfect, ie a finished or complete action in the passive. You could paraphrase with "it remained built".

And the same RSV gave us "seventy weeks of years" (9:24). "of years" does not exist in the Hebrew and LXX texts.[/quote]
I'm glad you've cleared that up for yourself. Do you not find it interesting that 9:27 talks of half a week, while elsewhere we have "a time, two times and a half a time"? One example is 12:7, which is followed by two adjustments in 12:11, 1290 days, and in 12:12, 1335 days. This helps to show the same basic timescale in each of the four visions. The half a week in 9:27b is the time, two times and half a time, which is approximately 1260 days, so the weeks are to be interpreted as the RSV has it, as weeks of years, which is not a strange notion in the Hebrew literature.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The linkage that exists is the "and" before the sixty-two weeks: it links the second clause to the narrative structure

I have no problem with that. For what you wrote before and after in the paragraph, I have no idea what you are saying.

That the prince the anointed was at the end of the seven weeks, which I have repeated several times for clarity's sake. He is a separate figure from the anointed one cut off sixty-two weeks later. Here is your entry into the discourse (Mon Mar 13, 2017):

Bernard Muller wrote:

spin wrote:There are three distinct figures mentioned in 9:25-27: 1) a prince an anointed (who arrives after 7 weeks), 2) an anointed one (cut off 62 weeks later), and 3) a prince (whose forces destroy the city when #2 is cut off)

I do not agree about the 7 weeks. The anointed one, a prince comes during the 7+62=69 'sevens'.

To be precise he comes at the end of the seven weeks and before the 62 weeks, as the text says.

Bernard Muller wrote:

As I pointed out before and it is a fact you did not respond to, the anointed one in 9:26 was cut off before the last week, which started in 9:27. Onias III was the one cut off. Jason was still alive in the first years of that last week. He cannot be the anointed one of 9:26. He is the figure 2 Macc 4:7 recalls as having obtained the high priesthood by corruption. He was responsible for negotiating Greek ways for Jerusalem to the horror of the conservatives. 1 Macc 1:14-15 doesn't mention Jason but show the result of Jason's efforts, including efforts to remove signs of circumcision, the sign of the "holy covenant".

The last week is for me the last year, that is 167 BC.

You have no ignore all the other visions to arrive at that claim and you have to ignore the timescale in those other visions, which clearly parallel the details in 9:26-27. There is nothing in the text of Dan 9:27 to allow you to think that that week is a year. I think you should stick to the fact that the time of tribulation which involves the stoppage of the Tamid and the pollution of the temple with the abomination involving half a week is the same timescale as the same events in the other visions.

Bernard Muller wrote:Onias II is long gone by then.

I note the rhetoric but "long gone" here just means prior to the last week of years, which reflects 9:26.

Bernard Muller wrote:Of course, you consider last week as meaning last seven years, but as shown in my previous post, the math from your understanding of weeks totally destroyed your theory (the seventy weeks would bring you to 55 BC).

It means you are basically taking a naive literalist approach to the text in this particular case that doesn't allow such an approach and retrofit it to point to your preferred scenario.

The last week of seven years follows the exile and eventual assassination of Onias III, the anointed one who is cut off. That last week starts circa 171 BCE, the second half began toward the end of 168 with the stoppage of the Tamid and the installation of the abomination. The text was written in 164, probably as military progress towards Jerusalem was made, with final victory thought to be in sight, but not quite coming as quickly as hoped for causing the need for slight adjustment to the timescale. This period needs to be accurate for the text to function and it needs to cover a long enough period to convince as prophecy, albeit mainly living history.

Bernard Muller wrote:My calculation fits perfectly Jason.

As perfectly as the fundies' calculations that show Dan 9 refers to their Jesus.

However, your Jesus, real name of Jason, came with glowing expectations but showed his "wickedness" later (by "betraying" Jewish traditions). He got his job through bribery (2 Macc 4:7-8)—only to be outbid later by Menelaus—, so Jason was not the poster boy for sterling character. 2 Macc 5:6 adds to his character regarding the slaughter on his return ("not realizing that success at the cost of one's kindred is the greatest misfortune").

(I just discovered a nice link between 9:26 with its reference to the flood (shetep) after the anointed one is cut off and 11:22 which links the flood (shetep) to the loss of the prince of the covenant. In both cases the timescale is before Jason's attempt to regain Jerusalem. It seems to me there are now too many anachronisms to your scenario.)

to spin,

Alexander just immediately follows the fourth Persian king, so that if you were reading Daniel and not better historical sources you'd think that there were only fourth Persian kings before him. You are not reading the text for what it shows here. The last Persian king was also Darius (III): one can understand the writers of Daniel conflating the Dariuses... and the Xerxeses and the Artaxerxeses.

Whatever you imagine ...

Again, you are refusing to read what the text says. It has Yeshua crowned as ruler and sat on the throne.

NO, the text does not say that. Period. You are seeing a lot more than what the texts are saying, including about the Persian kings and Alexander.

Before the last week of years, whose end coincides with the end of the tribulation, ie when the temple is regained. By this timescale Onias III's death was just before the last week and Jason's massacre was after half the week and coincides with the start of Antiochus III's full hellenization.

"Weeks of years" does not appear in the Hebrew or the LXX (but it does in the RSV!). It is an invention by Sextus Julius Africanus (160-240 AD), a Christian apologist of the worst kind.

Which I have clarified elsewhere, but the prince of the covenant, prince of the host and the anointed one are all the same figure in the same sequence of events in the different visions.

That's what you say. But the the text does not say that. Furthermore the prince of the host in Daniel 8:11 is about Antiochus IV "It magnified itself, even up to the Prince of the host; and the continual burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown."
Who is the prince of the host here: probably any high priest, possibly Jason (but he fled Jerusalem before the Jewish sacrifices were ended), possibly Onias III. I already agree the prince of the covenant is Onias III. But that does not mean that Onias is also the anointed prince or the anointed in Dan 9.

It would help if you knew something about the language involved here, so you wouldn't make such irrelevant comments. The verb is a niphil perfect, ie a finished or complete action in the passive. You could paraphrase with "it remained built".

So the author prophesied Jerusalem would stay built up for 434 years (62*7) after the 49 years (7*7), those starting in 539 BC, that is up to 56 BC. That does not make sense. That's way beyond the year of Antiochus IV's death.
Obviously, something is wrong with your weeks of years.

And the same RSV gave us "seventy weeks of years" (9:24). "of years" does not exist in the Hebrew and LXX texts.

I'm glad you've cleared that up for yourself. Do you not find it interesting that 9:27 talks of half a week, while elsewhere we have "a time, two times and a half a time"? One example is 12:7, which is followed by two adjustments in 12:11, 1290 days, and in 12:12, 1335 days. This helps to show the same basic timescale in each of the four visions. The half a week in 9:27b is the time, two times and half a time, which is approximately 1260 days, so the weeks are to be interpreted as the RSV has it, as weeks of years, which is not a strange notion in the Hebrew literature.

I do not see how "a time, two times and a half a time" has anything to do with the half week in 9:27b, or the 1290 & 1335 days in Dan 12.
"a time, two times and a half a time" is the unspecified time between the anticipated death of Antiochus IV, immediately followed by Michael's intervention with the resurrections and "the end of these wonders".

About 9:27 "Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week;
But in the middle of the week
He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.
And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, ..."
"week" is really "week" here, and the half week is the interval between when Antiochus started to confirm his covenant and when he put an end to Jewish sacrifice and offering.
No relation with "a time, two times and a half a time".

About Dan 12:11 "And from the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days."
Do you think there were 3.5 years between these two events, during Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem?
Most likely only a few days (between the end of Jewish burnt sacrifice and pagan swine sacrifice or gentile occupation of the temple.
These thousand two hundred and ninety days point to an unspecified event after "the continual burnt offering is taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up"

About Dan 12:12 “Blessed is he who waits, and comes to the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days."
This is another event (a good one) happening 45 days after the unspecified one in the preceding verse.
That implies the one in 12:12 is a bad one and thanks to Josephus, I know what these two events were: see here towards the end of http://historical-jesus.info/danielx.html

Can you direct me where these weeks of years are not a strange notion in the Hebrew literature?

You have no ignore all the other visions to arrive at that claim and you have to ignore the timescale in those other visions, which clearly parallel the details in 9:26-27. There is nothing in the text of Dan 9:27 to allow you to think that that week is a year. I think you should stick to the fact that the time of tribulation which involves the stoppage of the Tamid and the pollution of the temple with the abomination involving half a week is the same timescale as the same events in the other visions.

Actually, I take the week in 9:26-27 as being really a week. Your timescale is wrong. I explained that already.

The last week of seven years follows the exile and eventual assassination of Onias III, the anointed one who is cut off. That last week starts circa 171 BCE, the second half began toward the end of 168 with the stoppage of the Tamid and the installation of the abomination. The text was written in 164, probably as military progress towards Jerusalem was made, with final victory thought to be in sight, but not quite coming as quickly as hoped for causing the need for slight adjustment to the timescale. This period needs to be accurate for the text to function and it needs to cover a long enough period to convince as prophecy, albeit mainly living history.

I notice you are not addressing the fact that the sixty-nine/seventy weeks, as you calculated it, bring you to 62/55 BC, and not to the times of Onias III.

As perfectly as the fundies' calculations that show Dan 9 refers to their Jesus.

My calculation is very different of the ones of fundies, and certainly does not bring me to Jesus' time, but almost 2 centuries before.

However, your Jesus, real name of Jason, came with glowing expectations but showed his "wickedness" later (by "betraying" Jewish traditions). He got his job through bribery (2 Macc 4:7-8)—only to be outbid later by Menelaus—, so Jason was not the poster boy for sterling character. 2 Macc 5:6 adds to his character regarding the slaughter on his return ("not realizing that success at the cost of one's kindred is the greatest misfortune").

The author of Daniel part 2 did not say Jason was a poster boy, just an anointed (as for every high priest) and a ruler. He also happened to be the last high priest of the Zadokite line.
Our author did not call Jason a prince of the covenant (which is complimentary) as he did for Onias III.

(I just discovered a nice link between 9:26 with its reference to the flood (shetep) after the anointed one is cut off and 11:22 which links the flood (shetep) to the loss of the prince of the covenant. In both cases the timescale is before Jason's attempt to regain Jerusalem. It seems to me there are now too many anachronisms to your scenario.)

What is that link?

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller wrote:to spin,

Alexander just immediately follows the fourth Persian king, so that if you were reading Daniel and not better historical sources you'd think that there were only fourth Persian kings before him. You are not reading the text for what it shows here. The last Persian king was also Darius (III): one can understand the writers of Daniel conflating the Dariuses... and the Xerxeses and the Artaxerxeses.

Whatever you imagine ...

Not a meaningful response. Whatever the case, there are only four kings according to 11:2.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Again, you are refusing to read what the text says. It has Yeshua crowned as ruler and sat on the throne.

NO, the text does not say that. Period. You are seeing a lot more than what the texts are saying, including about the Persian kings and Alexander.

Read the text. You haven't so far.


So, yes, the text does say that. Period.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Before the last week of years, whose end coincides with the end of the tribulation, ie when the temple is regained. By this timescale Onias III's death was just before the last week and Jason's massacre was after half the week and coincides with the start of Antiochus III's full hellenization.

"Weeks of years" does not appear in the Hebrew or the LXX (but it does in the RSV!). It is an invention by Sextus Julius Africanus (160-240 AD), a Christian apologist of the worst kind.

I've already said that it is no literally in the text. That is why I argued the case in my last post, showing that we are dealing with the same basic duration for the tribulation which in cludes the loss of the Tamid and the pollution of the temple in all four visions: "a time, two times and a half a time", half a week, 1150 days, 1290 days, 1335 days.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Which I have clarified elsewhere, but the prince of the covenant, prince of the host and the anointed one are all the same figure in the same sequence of events in the different visions.

That's what you say. But the the text does not say that.

It says that the time of the prince the anointed with be after seven weeks. 62 weeks later an anointed one will be cut off and then the prince's forces will do nasty things. Note that regarding both statements regarding anointed figures that there is no definite article, the lack of which usually indicates new information. The prince the anointed is not the same figure as the anointed one who is not the same figure as the prince who is to come. They are treated as distinct figures by the text.

Bernard Muller wrote:Furthermore the prince of the host in Daniel 8:11 is about Antiochus IV "It magnified itself, even up to the Prince of the host; and the continual burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown."
Who is the prince of the host here: probably any high priest, possibly Jason (but he fled Jerusalem before the Jewish sacrifices were ended), possibly Onias III. I already agree the prince of the covenant is Onias III. But that does not mean that Onias is also the anointed prince or the anointed in Dan 9.

When all four visions are compared there is no alternative. Besides, the prince of the host of heaven must be a strongly positive figure, which Jason isn't.

Bernard Muller wrote:

It would help if you knew something about the language involved here, so you wouldn't make such irrelevant comments. The verb is a niphil perfect, ie a finished or complete action in the passive. You could paraphrase with "it remained built".

So the author prophesied Jerusalem would stay built up for 434 years (62*7) after the 49 years (7*7), those starting in 539 BC, that is up to 56 BC. That does not make sense.
That's way beyond the year of Antiochus IV's death.
Obviously, something is wrong with your weeks of years.

I've already responded to this. You want an accuracy that is not to be expected from the text. I pointed to only four Persian kings. We can mention the non-existent Darius the Mede or the erroneous son of Nebuchadnezzar. The writers are not big on accuracy regarding the past which is outside their experience. We do however get accuracy when it comes to the period just prior to and contemporary to the writing of Daniel. That is necessary for the text to function. Daniel 11 is quite accurate for the duration of the Seleucid kingdom up to the reign of Antiochus, but quite sketchy before that... the four Persian kings!

Bernard Muller wrote:

And the same RSV gave us "seventy weeks of years" (9:24). "of years" does not exist in the Hebrew and LXX texts.

I'm glad you've cleared that up for yourself. Do you not find it interesting that 9:27 talks of half a week, while elsewhere we have "a time, two times and a half a time"? One example is 12:7, which is followed by two adjustments in 12:11, 1290 days, and in 12:12, 1335 days. This helps to show the same basic timescale in each of the four visions. The half a week in 9:27b is the time, two times and half a time, which is approximately 1260 days, so the weeks are to be interpreted as the RSV has it, as weeks of years, which is not a strange notion in the Hebrew literature.

I do not see how "a time, two times and a half a time" has anything to do with the half week in 9:27b, or the 1290 & 1335 days in Dan 12.
"a time, two times and a half a time" is the unspecified time between the anticipated death of Antiochus IV, immediately followed by Michael's intervention with the resurrections and "the end of these wonders".

Three and a half time periods; half a week or three and a half days; 1150 days, a bit under three and a half years; 1260 days, a bit over three and a half years; and 1335 days which stresses the last duration. That is the length of the tribulation, after which will come the restoration.

Bernard Muller wrote:About 9:27 "Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week;
But in the middle of the week
He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.
And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, ..."
"week" is really "week" here, and the half week is the interval between when Antiochus started to confirm his covenant and when he put an end to Jewish sacrifice and offering.
No relation with "a time, two times and a half a time".

Not reading the text again: " and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering." Half a week: three and a half time periods for the prince to have full power over the Jews. 7:25 talks of three and a half time periods for Antiochus to have power over them. 8:14 says 1150 days until the sanctuary is restored after the stoppage of the Tamid. And...

Bernard Muller wrote:About Dan 12:11 "And from the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days."
Do you think there were 3.5 years between these two events, during Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem?
Most likely only a few days (between the end of Jewish burnt sacrifice and pagan swine sacrifice or gentile occupation of the temple.
These thousand two hundred and ninety days point to an unspecified event after "the continual burnt offering is taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up"

This period is yet again how long the Tamid will be stopped and the abomination will remain in the temple. That's four out of four.

1290 days "during Antiochus' second foray"?? The question is unrelated to the text or argument. 1290 days is the duration of the stoppage.

Bernard Muller wrote:About Dan 12:12 “Blessed is he who waits, and comes to the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days."
This is another event (a good one) happening 45 days after the unspecified one in the preceding verse.
That implies the one in 12:12 is a bad one and thanks to Josephus, I know what these two events were: see here towards the end of http://historical-jesus.info/danielx.html

You know that linking someone to a flood of musings which one has to pick through to get what you could have said simply here is counterproductive. That you may be able to explain why the time is stretched to 1335 days does not have an impact on the use of the durations in the four visions which deals with basically the same events.

Bernard Muller wrote:Can you direct me where these weeks of years are not a strange notion in the Hebrew literature?

You haven't contextualized this question, but weeks of years is not a strange notion in Hebrew: Lev 25:8 talks of sabbaths of years.

Bernard Muller wrote:

You have no ignore all the other visions to arrive at that claim and you have to ignore the timescale in those other visions, which clearly parallel the details in 9:26-27. There is nothing in the text of Dan 9:27 to allow you to think that that week is a year. I think you should stick to the fact that the time of tribulation which involves the stoppage of the Tamid and the pollution of the temple with the abomination involving half a week is the same timescale as the same events in the other visions.

Actually, I take the week in 9:26-27 as being really a week. Your timescale is wrong. I explained that already.

Empty triumphalism means nothing. But then, you've explained no such thing. There is a difference between your asserting your notions and explaining them. Contextually, ie taken with the other visions it is clear that we are basically dealing with the same duration, three and a half time periods, half a week.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The last week of seven years follows the exile and eventual assassination of Onias III, the anointed one who is cut off. That last week starts circa 171 BCE, the second half began toward the end of 168 with the stoppage of the Tamid and the installation of the abomination. The text was written in 164, probably as military progress towards Jerusalem was made, with final victory thought to be in sight, but not quite coming as quickly as hoped for causing the need for slight adjustment to the timescale. This period needs to be accurate for the text to function and it needs to cover a long enough period to convince as prophecy, albeit mainly living history.

I notice you are not addressing the fact that the sixty-nine/seventy weeks, as you calculated it, bring you to 62/55 BC, and not to the times of Onias III.

I notice that you continue to be the naive literalist.

Bernard Muller wrote:

As perfectly as the fundies' calculations that show Dan 9 refers to their Jesus.

My calculation is very different of the ones of fundies, and certainly does not bring me to Jesus' time, but almost 2 centuries before.

You have your arithmetical manipulations, they have theirs. Neither deal with Daniel.

Bernard Muller wrote:

However, your Jesus, real name of Jason, came with glowing expectations but showed his "wickedness" later (by "betraying" Jewish traditions). He got his job through bribery (2 Macc 4:7-8)—only to be outbid later by Menelaus—, so Jason was not the poster boy for sterling character. 2 Macc 5:6 adds to his character regarding the slaughter on his return ("not realizing that success at the cost of one's kindred is the greatest misfortune").

The author of Daniel part 2 did not say Jason was a poster boy, just an anointed (as for every high priest) and a ruler. He also happened to be the last high priest of the Zadokite line.

That depends on whether the maligned Menelaus is a third brother or not.

If Jason was not a golden boy, there is no benefit in mentioning him, whereas Onias III on the other hand was much respected and able to stimulate an emotional response from a sympathetic audience such as the one Daniel is aimed at.

Bernard Muller wrote:Our author did not call Jason a prince of the covenant (which is complimentary) as he did for Onias III.

Nor did he call him an anointed one. The author was dealing with Onias III.

Bernard Muller wrote:

(I just discovered a nice link between 9:26 with its reference to the flood (shetep) after the anointed one is cut off and 11:22 which links the flood (shetep) to the loss of the prince of the covenant. In both cases the timescale is before Jason's attempt to regain Jerusalem. It seems to me there are now too many anachronisms to your scenario.)

What is that link?

It is a philological smoking gun, such a highly specific reference in the context of the chronology following the removal of Onias III, showing that 9:26 and 11:22 related to the same narrative.

Vision:	7:25-27	8:9-14	9:26-7	11:22-
Figure:	-	prince of the host (of heaven)	anointed one	prince of the covenant
Event:	-	little horn acted arrogantly to prince	cut off	broken
Context:	-	-	flood	flood
Villain:	little horn	little horn	the prince who is to come	king of the north
Relations:	-	-	make a strong covenant with the many	pay heed to those who forsake the holy covenant (11:30c)
Action:	attempt to change sacred seasons & law	overthrow sanctuary	destroy city and sanctuary	profane the temple and fortress (11:31a)
The righteous:	the little horn will wear out the holy ones	the host given over to the little horn (8:12)	-	take action against the holy covenant
Tribulation:	-	end burnt offerings + trasgression of desolation	end of sacrifices & offerings + abomination that makes desolate	end burnt offerings + abomination that makes desolate (11:31b)
Duration:	three and a half time periods, presumably years	2300 evenings and mornings = 1150 days	three and a half days, presumably years	three and a half time periods, presumably years
Then:	little horn's dominion taken away & destroyed + holy ones get dominion	sanctuary restored + little horn shall be broken (8:25c)	desolator gets come-uppance	the holy people will get their power back

to spin,

Zech 6:11 Take from them silver and gold, and make crowns, and set [them] on the head of Yeshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. 12 And say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne.

So, yes, the text does say that. Period.

I already told you that the one who "shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne" is not Yeshua but "the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord".

I've already said that it is no literally in the text. That is why I argued the case in my last post, showing that we are dealing with the same basic duration for the tribulation which in cludes the loss of the Tamid and the pollution of the temple in all four visions: "a time, two times and a half a time", half a week, 1150 days, 1290 days, 1335 days.

I already explained that "a time, two times and a half a time", half a week, 1290 days, 1335 days, are about different periods of time.
"a time, two times and a half a time" is the unspecified time between the anticipated death of Antiochus IV, immediately followed by Michael's intervention with the resurrections and "the end of these wonders".
1290 and 1335 days refer to events happening after the desecration of the temple.
I want to add here that the 1150 days are the time interval between the desecration and the reconsecration of the temple.
In other words, the "a time, two times and a half a time" is an unspecified time period happening after the death of Antiochus. The start time is the death of Antiochus with Michael's intervention to follow soon afterwards.
1150 days, 1290 days, 1335 days are different time periods. The start time is the desecration of the temple and it ends before Antiochus' death.

You haven't contextualized this question, but weeks of years is not a strange notion in Hebrew: Lev 25:8 talks of sabbaths of years.

But it is fully explained in Lev 25:8 “ ‘Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years."
But we do not see in Daniel "sabbath years". Instead we see "weeks" or "sevens", and not even "years".
The sabbath year happens once every seven years, so it is obvious seven sabbath years happened in a period of time of 49 years.

Empty triumphalism means nothing. But then, you've explained no such thing. There is a difference between your asserting your notions and explaining them. Contextually, ie taken with the other visions it is clear that we are basically dealing with the same duration, three and a half time periods, half a week.

I covered that already.

I notice you are not addressing the fact that the sixty-nine/seventy weeks, as you calculated it, bring you to 62/55 BC, and not to the times of Onias III.

I notice that you continue to be the naive literalist.

That's not a valid answer to my comment. You are continuously evading that your 69 weeks of years bring you to the wrong time, wrong years, wrong dates, by a huge lot (more than 100 years). Don't drop these weeks of years when that shows you are wrong about this 7 years unit of time, and then use them when you think it is at your advantage (as for the last year of the seventy weeks of years).
So what is your non naive non literalist view of the 69 weeks of years?

You have your arithmetical manipulations, they have theirs. Neither deal with Daniel.

My so-called calculation is not manipulation. I just consider שָׁבֻעִים to mean "sevens" rather that "seven years". Actually, I just added up the שְׁבַע. I did not fudge anything.

If Jason was not a golden boy, there is no benefit in mentioning him, whereas Onias III on the other hand was much respected and able to stimulate an emotional response from a sympathetic audience such as the one Daniel is aimed at.

Jason was not a golden boy but he was the last Zadokite high priest. After that, the temple was desecrated and with no high priest. So Jason being cut off is very significant. BTW, Jason as an anointed, a ruler then just as an anointed, is only briefly mentioned in two verses with his reappearance and him being cut off. The author did not linger on him.
Onias III is not forgotten either, because he is mentioned in his proper time slot as the prince of the convenant.

Nor did he call him an anointed one. The author was dealing with Onias III.

How many times do I have to tell you Jason was anointed because he was the high priest?

It is a philological smoking gun, such a highly specific reference in the context of the chronology following the removal of Onias III, showing that 9:26 and 11:22 related to the same narrative.

This is far-fetched. In both cases, "flood" is used as imagery to indicate the arrival of sudden and massive bad events.
According to the immediate context:
In Daniel 9:26, the "flood" happens during & right after Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem after his second invasion of Egypt.
In Daniel 11:22, the "flood" starts right before the removal of Onias III, Antiochus' first foray in Jerusalem and his first invasion of Egypt.

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller wrote:to spin,

Zech 6:11 Take from them silver and gold, and make crowns, and set [them] on the head of Yeshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. 12 And say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne.

So, yes, the text does say that. Period.

I already told you that the one who "shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne" is not Yeshua but "the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord".

This is amazing houdini rabbit-out-of-a-hat conjuring, Bernard. The crown gets placed on the head of Yeshua and God says "behold, the man who is the branch" and you amazingly claim that the branch is not Yeshua. There is no other person in the narrative at this point. Place the crown on Yeshua and declare to Yeshua some unmentioned person "shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne." Talking about a dissociative approach to reading, you simply refuse to make sense of the obvious links in the narrative. No wonder you've made such a mess of Daniel 9!!

Bernard Muller wrote:

I've already said that it is no literally in the text. That is why I argued the case in my last post, showing that we are dealing with the same basic duration for the tribulation which includes the loss of the Tamid and the pollution of the temple in all four visions: "a time, two times and a half a time", half a week, 1150 days, 1290 days, 1335 days.

I already explained that "a time, two times and a half a time", half a week, 1290 days, 1335 days, are about different periods of time.

You should stop using the word "explain" for what you are doing. So insistent that three and a half time periods and the last half of the last seven or three and a half time periods are not the same thing, especially, if they are years, they equal 1260 days, which is miraculously so similar to the other durations. I can see you have a straight face.

I prefer to see the durations as basically dealing with the same thing—as their contexts deal with the same issues—, just getting stretched a little longer as the circumstances change.

Bernard Muller wrote:"a time, two times and a half a time" is the unspecified time between the anticipated death of Antiochus IV, immediately followed by Michael's intervention with the resurrections and "the end of these wonders".
1290 and 1335 days refer to events happening after the desecration of the temple.
I want to add here that the 1150 days are the time interval between the desecration and the reconsecration of the temple.

So we have time periods that start from the desecration of the sanctuary + Tamid stoppage and overlap and measure very similar lengths of time of around three and a half years. This is what I have been saying.

Bernard Muller wrote:In other words, the "a time, two times and a half a time" is an unspecified time period happening after the death of Antiochus. The start time is the death of Antiochus with Michael's intervention to follow soon afterwards.

Naa. It's the same duration Daniel heard the angel say in 8:13. The fourth vision ends in 12:3, then the narrative framework returns to Daniel standing by the river, as he was in the prologue of the vision at 10:4. The question "how long" yields a reiteration of the answer in 8:13 for the duration of the desecration, so that the readers will not forget it at the end of the book.

Bernard Muller wrote:1150 days, 1290 days, 1335 days are different time periods. The start time is the desecration of the temple and it ends before Antiochus' death.

Well, yes, 1150 days, 1290 days, and 1335 days are literally different time periods!

Bernard Muller wrote:

You haven't contextualized this question, but weeks of years is not a strange notion in Hebrew: Lev 25:8 talks of sabbaths of years.

But it is fully explained in Lev 25:8 “ ‘Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years."
But we do not see in Daniel "sabbath years". Instead we see "weeks" or "sevens", and not even "years".
The sabbath year happens once every seven years, so it is obvious seven sabbath years happened in a period of time of 49 years.

Again, you didn't read the text (properly):


The footnote (c) merely explains that the word "weeks" is actually "sabbaths". The text doesn't deal with sabbath years but groups of seven years. The "seven weeks of years" is literally seven sabbaths of years, which it says is forty-nine years.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Empty triumphalism means nothing. But then, you've explained no such thing. There is a difference between your asserting your notions and explaining them. Contextually, ie taken with the other visions it is clear that we are basically dealing with the same duration, three and a half time periods, half a week.

I covered that already.

Here, "covered" means "obfuscated". I ran with your previous claim, ie that you explained it. You are just repeating "I explained that" and "I covered that". You haven't explained anything in any clear way to anyone.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Bernard Muller wrote:I notice you are not addressing the fact that the sixty-nine/seventy weeks, as you calculated it, bring you to 62/55 BC, and not to the times of Onias III.

spin wrote:I notice that you continue to be the naive literalist.

That's not a valid answer to my comment. You are continuously evading that your 69 weeks of years bring you to the wrong time, wrong years, wrong dates, by a huge lot (more than 100 years). Don't drop these weeks of years when that shows you are wrong about this 7 years unit of time, and then use them when you think it is at your advantage (as for the last year of the seventy weeks of years).
So what is your non naive non literalist view of the 69 weeks of years?

The text is full of errors and you want the 70 sevens to be exact. Who are you kidding other than yourself?

Bernard Muller wrote:

You have your arithmetical manipulations, they have theirs. Neither deal with Daniel.

My so-called calculation is not manipulation. I just consider שָׁבֻעִים to mean "sevens" rather that "seven years". Actually, I just added up the שְׁבַע. I did not fudge anything.

You had to start somewhere just as your fellow naive literalists, the fundies, do. So, you look for a beginning that will suit your conclusion and manipulate the data. I can imagine you seeing the authors showing a massive piece of papyrus to readers to show how you—sorry, they—deciphered Daniel's seventy sevens by calculating the literal number sevens. You forgot to mention that the Hebrew had no numerals whatsoever, so they couldn't count sevens. The number seven was represented by a zayin, while the number seventy was an ayin, so seventy seven was zayin ayin. Plainly they did not count sevens, as you imagine. Perhaps they counted zayins and ayins. Perhaps you are happy with this absurdity. I can see you running into a Jewish gathering of the wise with your scroll outlining all the zayins and ayins, crying "Eureka! There are thirty-seven zayins and thirty-three ayins on my chart of years. This is what Daniel means by seventy sevens!!" They'd look at you blankly. They did not think like you do. Perhaps they wrote your chart out long hand, counting all appearances of שבע and שבעים in the chart and adding them together as you could do with the zayins and ayins. If you hadn't guessed, this counting of your seems nonsensical to me.

Just to be clear, there are not seventy sevens except in your modern conceptualization. There would be only thirty-seven instances of שבע, so you certainly did not just add up the שבע. You fudged the whole thing.

Bernard Muller wrote:

If Jason was not a golden boy, there is no benefit in mentioning him, whereas Onias III on the other hand was much respected and able to stimulate an emotional response from a sympathetic audience such as the one Daniel is aimed at.

Jason was not a golden boy but he was the last Zadokite high priest.

Was he? Josephus disagrees with you.(AJ 12.238)

Bernard Muller wrote:After that, the temple was desecrated and with no high priest.

To be accurate there was a high priest all the way through, Menelaus, who got put to death under Antiochus V Eupater, 2 Macc 13:3-8.

Bernard Muller wrote:So Jason being cut off is very significant.

Oh, that it were so!

Bernard Muller wrote:BTW, Jason as an anointed, a ruler then just as an anointed, is only briefly mentioned in two verses with his reappearance and him being cut off. The author did not linger on him.

Briefly? The vision proper is only three verses and you have him in two of them. The argument is all rhetoric and no content.

Bernard Muller wrote:Onias III is not forgotten either, because he is mentioned in his proper time slot as the prince of the convenant.

Nor did he call him an anointed one. The author was dealing with Onias III.

How many times do I have to tell you Jason was anointed because he was the high priest?

You failed to understand the discourse. You are packaging Jason as shit with frills. The frills here being that he was anointed. The shit is the fact that he was a disaster who earned no respect and therefore fails the merit to be mentioned as significant in this three verse vision. The writer did not call Jason "an anointed one" in 9:26, because Jason was unacceptable for such attention nor does he compare with Onias III, who you omit from the vision. The vision deals with the same context as all the others and there is no place for Jason in the narrative.

Bernard Muller wrote:

It is a philological smoking gun, such a highly specific reference in the context of the chronology following the removal of Onias III, showing that 9:26 and 11:22 related to the same narrative.

This is far-fetched. In both cases, "flood" is used as imagery to indicate the arrival of sudden and massive bad events.
According to the immediate context:
In Daniel 9:26, the "flood" happens during & right after Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem after his second invasion of Egypt.
In Daniel 11:22, the "flood" starts right before the removal of Onias III, Antiochus' first foray in Jerusalem and his first invasion of Egypt.

The flood is not an event, it is turmoil or outrage. The visions have different interests, but the fact that the infrequently used word shetep is used in both cases in close proximity to the high priest relate the two visions by subject interest. Here, shetep is what was brought by Antiochus IV on Jerusalem. The use of the particular word with its metaphorical significance links visions #3 & #4 philologically. The choice of word may even represent the same writer. It does show that the visions are related in thought. You just want to disengage the third vision from the others to make it about Jason and not Onias III... because the seventieth zayin or ayin occurs in 167.

We are looking at four visions whose main interest is the same basic events, but you want one vision to give Jason two thirds of its interest, two verses out of three, but then play the game that bad boy Jason was only a passing mention. That is not credible. Three of the visions deal with the removal of a high priest in analyzing the impact of Antiochus IV on the Jews. You want two of those visions to contain the removal of Onias III, but the third to be of Jason. You can see the interest of the writers in two visions, but your arithmetical cogitations misdirect you away from Onias III in the seventy weeks vision. I'd ditch the cogitations, if I were you, as pure fantasy. The Jews of the period didn't use spreadsheets.

to spin,

This is amazing houdini rabbit out of a hat conjuring, Bernard. The crown gets placed on the head of Yeshua and God says "behold, the man who is the branch" and you amazingly claim that the branch is not Yeshua. There is no other person in the narrative at this point. Place the crown on Yeshua and declare to Yeshua some unmentioned person "shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne." Talking about a dissociative approach to reading, you simply refuse to make sense of the obvious links in the narrative. No wonder you've made such a mess of Daniel 9!!

That crown is sometimes in plural in translations. It is plural in the LXX.
The man who is the branch is still to come. Zec 3:8 "Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH."
The servant/man called branch is never identified as being Jeshua. If it were Jeshua, it would have been easy to say it for Zechariah.
Later, the crown, if singular, is meant to be in the temple, when rebuilt:
Zec 6:14 RSV "And the crown shall be in the temple of the LORD as a reminder to Heldai, Tobi'jah, Jedai'ah, and Josi'ah the son of Zephani'ah."

So we have time periods that start from the desecration of the sanctuary + Tamid stoppage and overlap and measure very similar lengths of time of around three and a half years. This is what I have been saying.

The 1150, 1290, 1335 days are three different periods which start at the desecration of the temple.
However "a time, two times and a half a time" starts at the death of Antiochu IV.
So these 1150, 1290, 1335 days have nothing to do with "a time, two times and a half a time".

Naa. It's the same duration Daniel heard the angel say in 8:13. The fourth vision ends in 12:3, then the narrative framework returns to Daniel standing by the river, as he was in the prologue of the vision at 10:4. The question "how long" yields a reiteration of the answer in 8:13 for the duration of the desecration, so that the readers will not forget it at the end of the book.

That cannot be, because the three durations in days starts years before the beginning of "a time, two times and a half a time". The texts with their context are very clear on that.

The footnote (c) merely explains that the word "weeks" is actually "sabbaths". The text doesn't deal with sabbath years but groups of seven years. The "seven weeks of years" is literally seven sabbaths of years, which it says is forty-nine years.

Most bible translations have sabbaths (probably because of Lev 25:6). The LXX has sabbaths. But that does not matter much. At least here it is well explained in Lev 25:8 (because it was needed) and we have "of years" which is absent in Daniel.

The text is full of errors and you want the 70 sevens to be exact. Who are you kidding other than yourself?

Daniel part 2 has few errors as compared with Daniel part 1. The seventy sevens (for you 490 years) is a lot more than not exact, it is wrong by some 112 years. As for me I am exact.

You had to start somewhere just as your fellow naive literalists, the fundies do,

You are using weeks of years, just like the fundies.

So, you look for a beginning that will suit your conclusion and manipulate the data.

My beginning is the same than yours (1st year of Cyrus as king over Babylon) and I don't manipulate the data.

I can imagine you seeing the authors showing a massive piece of papyrus to readers to show how you—sorry, they—deciphered Daniel's seventy sevens by calculating the literal number sevens. You forgot to mention that the Hebrew had no numerals whatsoever, so they couldn't count sevens.
These ancient authors could count and they did not have to have numerals; The number seven was represented by a zayin, while the number seventy was an ayin, so seventy seven was zayin ayin. Plainly they did not count sevens, as you imagine. Perhaps they counted zayins and ayins. Perhaps you are happy with this absurdity. I can see you running into a Jewish gathering of the wise with your scroll outlining all the zayins and ayins, crying "Eureka! There are thirty-seven zayins and thirty-three ayins on my chart of years. This is what Daniel means by seventy sevens!!" They'd look at you blankly. They did not think like you do. Perhaps they wrote your chart out long hand, counting all appearances of שבע and שבעים in the chart and adding them together as you could do with the zayins and ayins. If you hadn't guessed, this counting of your seems nonsensical to me.

Who is talking about Arabic number? Let's keep it at a Hebrew numeral written as שבע in a number, once or twice as in מאתיים ושבעים ושבעה (two hundred and seventy-seven).
A simple way to figure out the scheme is that the first "seven" is after 7 years after Cyrus' decree. After that, "seven", as the lower digit, appears every ten years (17, 27, 37 ... 357, 367, 377) . However also the "seven" in the second digit are to be counted in years from 70 to 79 (10 of them), 170 to 179 (ditto), 270 to 279 (ditto), 370 to 379 (ditto), etc.
Then we add up, 1 at 7 years, then 7 + 10 at 79, then 10 + 10 at 179, then 10 + 10 at 279, then 10 + 10 at 379, etc.
And for 372 we have 1 + 17 + 20 +20 + 2 = 70. And 372 years is 539 (Cyrus' first year) - 167 (Antiochus IV second foray in Jerusalem and massacres of Jews).
No need for a huge table on a manuscript. Just some annotations in the sand will do.

Was he? Josephus disagrees with you.(AJ 12.238)

No, Josephus did not. He said "they gave the high priesthood to Jesus [Jeshua later called Jason] his brother"
After, Antiochus deprived Jeshua because he was angry at him. But that still makes that Jeshua an anointed. The anointment is not something which can be deleted. Onias III was also deprived of his high prieshood. That does not mean he became a non-anointed.

To be accurate there was a high priest all the way through, Menelaus, who got put to death under Antiochus V Eupater, 2 Macc 13:3-8.

Hardly so. When Menelaus was loosing to Jeshua: "Menelaus and the sons of Tobias were distressed, and retired to Antiochus, and informed him that they were desirous to leave the laws of their country, and the Jewish way of living according to them, and to follow the king's laws, and the Grecian way of living. Wherefore they desired his permission to build them a Gymnasium at Jerusalem. (15) And when he had given them leave, they also hid the circumcision of their genitals, that even when they were naked they might appear to be Greeks. Accordingly, they left off all the customs that belonged to their own country, and imitated the practices of the other nations." (Ant. book 12, Ch. 5)
In this condition, it is rather impossible for Menelaus to be accepted as a high priest.

Briefly? The vision proper is only three verses and you have him in two of them. The argument is all rhetoric and no content.

"the coming of an anointed one, a prince, ... an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing;"
That's all we have about Jason. And the vision narration starts at Dan 9:21 and ends at 9:27. And most of the 7 verses are very long.

The writer did not call Jason "an anointed one" in 9:26, because Jason was unacceptable for such attention nor does he compare with Onias III, who you omit from the vision. The vision deals with the same context as all the others and there is no place for Jason in the narrative.

Jason did not compare to Onias III, but that did not prevent that Jason to have been anointed as high priest. That means he was not so bad after all, when he got anointed. Menelaus was a lot worse about Jewishness.
And Josephus told us the greater part of the people of Jerusalem rallied around Jason, at first.

The flood is not an event, it is turmoil or outrage. The visions have different interests, but the fact that the infrequently used word shetep is used in both cases in close proximity to the high priest relate the two visions by subject interest. Here, shetep is what was brought by Antiochus IV on Jerusalem. The use of the particular word with its metaphorical significance links visions #3 & #4 philologically. The choice of word may even represent the same writer. It does show that the visions are related in thought. You just want to disengage the third vision from the others to make it about Jason and not Onias III... because the seventieth zayin or ayin occurs in 167.

The two "flood" is used at two different time slots as I explained already:
In Daniel 9:26, the "flood" happens during & right after Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem after his second invasion of Egypt.
In Daniel 11:22, the "flood" starts right before the removal of Onias III, Antiochus' first foray in Jerusalem and his first invasion of Egypt.
Needless to say, I do not believe to your far-fetched interpretation.
"because the seventieth zayin or ayin occurs in 167". According to your 7 years, that would occur in 55 BC (OK, + or - 10 years because we cannot expect the writer to be exact!).

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller wrote:to spin,

This is amazing houdini rabbit out of a hat conjuring, Bernard. The crown gets placed on the head of Yeshua and God says "behold, the man who is the branch" and you amazingly claim that the branch is not Yeshua. There is no other person in the narrative at this point. Place the crown on Yeshua and declare to Yeshua some unmentioned person "shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne." Talking about a dissociative approach to reading, you simply refuse to make sense of the obvious links in the narrative. No wonder you've made such a mess of Daniel 9!!

That crown is sometimes in plural in translations. It is plural in the LXX.

I've already stated it is in the plural. It doesn't change the fact that the text puts the crowns on the head of Yeshua.

Bernard Muller wrote:The man who is the branch is still to come. Zec 3:8 "Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH."
The servant/man called branch is never identified as being Jeshua. If it were Jeshua, it would have been easy to say it for Zechariah.

Still not reading the text. Zechariah has God say it immediately after Yeshua receives the crowns. Why do you try to separate the crowning of Yeshua from God's words? There is no-one else acknowledged. The text doesn't point you to anyone else. Why do you repeatedly refuse to read the text?

Bernard Muller wrote:Later, the crown, if singular, is meant to be in the temple, when rebuilt:
Zec 6:14 RSV "And the crown shall be in the temple of the LORD as a reminder to Heldai, Tobi'jah, Jedai'ah, and Josi'ah the son of Zephani'ah."

Still plural.

Bernard Muller wrote:

So we have time periods that start from the desecration of the sanctuary + Tamid stoppage and overlap and measure very similar lengths of time of around three and a half years. This is what I have been saying.

The 1150, 1290, 1335 days are three different periods which start at the desecration of the temple.
However "a time, two times and a half a time" starts at the death of Antiochu IV.
So these 1150, 1290, 1335 days have nothing to do with "a time, two times and a half a time".

It certainly does not in 8:14, where it is given as the duration of the tribulation.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Naa. It's the same duration Daniel heard the angel say in 8:13. The fourth vision ends in 12:3, then the narrative framework returns to Daniel standing by the river, as he was in the prologue of the vision at 10:4. The question "how long" yields a reiteration of the answer in 8:13 for the duration of the desecration, so that the readers will not forget it at the end of the book.

That cannot be, because the three durations in days starts years before the beginning of "a time, two times and a half a time". The texts with their context are very clear on that.

8:13-14 certainly starts with the other durations. 12:7 reiterates it.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The footnote (c) merely explains that the word "weeks" is actually "sabbaths". The text doesn't deal with sabbath years but groups of seven years. The "seven weeks of years" is literally seven sabbaths of years, which it says is forty-nine years.

Most bible translations have sabbaths (probably because of Lev 25:6). The LXX has sabbaths. But that does not matter much. At least here it is well explained in Lev 25:8 (because it was needed) and we have "of years" which is absent in Daniel.

Thank you for the demurral. You can now accept that the notion of weeks of years is not a strange one in Hebrew culture.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The text is full of errors and you want the 70 sevens to be exact. Who are you kidding other than yourself?

Daniel part 2 has few errors as compared with Daniel part 1. The seventy sevens (for you 490 years) is a lot more than not exact, it is wrong by some 112 years. As for me I am exact.

There is only less historical content, so that you cannot judge its error rate as easily. Your attempted explanation of Persia's four kings was amusing. Your gamble here is that the writers are historically accurate with the presentation of the seventy sevens when a) you have no reason to think so and 2) you have text with a track record for inaccuracy.

So please answer why the text says that the time of the prince the anointed was seven sevens after the proclamation and when exactly was that?? Was it the end of 472 BCE, ie after the seventh seven??

Bernard Muller wrote:

You had to start somewhere just as your fellow naive literalists, the fundies do,

You are using weeks of years, just like the fundies.

I wouldn't call J.J. Collins or people of his calibre writing on Daniel a fundy. But go ahead if it makes your silliness seem more reasonable!

Bernard Muller wrote:

So, you look for a beginning that will suit your conclusion and manipulate the data.

My beginning is the same than yours (1st year of Cyrus as king over Babylon) and I don't manipulate the data.

When there are only thirty-seven sevens? Oh, but there are sevens in the seventies as well!? They didn't have the numerals to even allow your theory to make sense.

Bernard Muller wrote:

I can imagine you seeing the authors showing a massive piece of papyrus to readers to show how you—sorry, they—deciphered Daniel's seventy sevens by calculating the literal number sevens. You forgot to mention that the Hebrew had no numerals whatsoever, so they couldn't count sevens.
These ancient authors could count and they did not have to have numerals; The number seven was represented by a zayin, while the number seventy was an ayin, so seventy seven was zayin ayin. Plainly they did not count sevens, as you imagine. Perhaps they counted zayins and ayins. Perhaps you are happy with this absurdity. I can see you running into a Jewish gathering of the wise with your scroll outlining all the zayins and ayins, crying "Eureka! There are thirty-seven zayins and thirty-three ayins on my chart of years. This is what Daniel means by seventy sevens!!" They'd look at you blankly. They did not think like you do. Perhaps they wrote your chart out long hand, counting all appearances of שבע and שבעים in the chart and adding them together as you could do with the zayins and ayins. If you hadn't guessed, this counting of your seems nonsensical to me.

Who is talking about Arabic number?

??

Bernard Muller wrote:Let's keep it at a Hebrew numeral written as שבע in a number, once or twice as in מאתיים ושבעים ושבעה (two hundred and seventy-seven).
A simple way to figure out the scheme is that the first "seven" is after 7 years after Cyrus' decree. After that, "seven", as the lower digit, appears every ten years (17, 27, 37 ... 357, 367, 377) . However also the "seven" in the second digit are to be counted in years from 70 to 79 (10 of them),
170 to 179 (ditto), 270 to 279 (ditto), 370 to 379 (ditto), etc.

There are no שבע in those numbers. There is just שבעים. These are two distinct notions and are indicated by different letters. But don't let fatal impediments interrupt your theory.

Bernard Muller wrote:Then we add up, 1 at 7 years, then 7 + 10 at 79, then 10 + 10 at 179, then 10 + 10 at 279, then 10 + 10 at 379, etc.
And for 372 we have 1 + 17 + 20 +20 + 2 = 70. And 372 years is 539 (Cyrus' first year) - 167 (Antiochus IV second foray in Jerusalem and massacres of Jews).
No need for a huge table on a manuscript. Just some annotations in the sand will do.

You've failed to respond to what you were ostensibly trying to. There are simply not seventy שבע, only 37. You've faked your results based on modern thinking projected onto the past.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Was he? Josephus disagrees with you.(AJ 12.238)

No, Josephus did not. He said "they gave the high priesthood to Jesus [Jeshua later called Jason] his brother"
After, Antiochus deprived Jeshua because he was angry at him. But that still makes that Jeshua an anointed. The anointment is not something which can be deleted. Onias III was also deprived of his high prieshood. That does not mean he became a non-anointed.

I never made such a claim. Did you? Why are you talking about it? The claim I was responding to is this one by you:

Jason was not a golden boy but he was the last Zadokite high priest.

Josephus says that Menelaus was another brother. He became high priest, so Jason was not the last Zadokite high priest according to Josephus. Hence, Josephus does not agree with you.

Bernard Muller wrote:

To be accurate there was a high priest all the way through, Menelaus, who got put to death under Antiochus V Eupater, 2 Macc 13:3-8.

Hardly so. When Menelaus was loosing to Jeshua: "Menelaus and the sons of Tobias were distressed, and retired to Antiochus, and informed him that they were desirous to leave the laws of their country, and the Jewish way of living according to them, and to follow the king's laws, and the Grecian way of living. Wherefore they desired his permission to build them a Gymnasium at Jerusalem. (15) And when he had given them leave, they also hid the circumcision of their genitals, that even when they were naked they might appear to be Greeks. Accordingly, they left off all the customs that belonged to their own country, and imitated the practices of the other nations." (Ant. book 12, Ch. 5)
In this condition, it is rather impossible for Menelaus to be accepted as a high priest.

Sadly, you are not playing with the full deck. Josephus states the Menelaus was of the Zadokite line. 1 Macc 4 tells you he was high priest.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Briefly? The vision proper is only three verses and you have him in two of them. The argument is all rhetoric and no content.

"the coming of an anointed one, a prince, ... an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing;"
That's all we have about Jason. And the vision narration starts at Dan 9:21 and ends at 9:27. And most of the 7 verses are very long.

Umm, the payload of the vision starts with 25 "Know therefore and understand..." Don't include the preamble with the actual prophecy, which is outlined by the pesher on the seventy sevens. That's just three verses. The only reason you contest the fact is that you are left with the exaggerated presence of Jason in your theory and you need to lessen that presence.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The writer did not call Jason "an anointed one" in 9:26, because Jason was unacceptable for such attention nor does he compare with Onias III, who you omit from the vision. The vision deals with the same context as all the others and there is no place for Jason in the narrative.

Jason did not compare to Onias III, but that did not prevent that Jason to have been anointed as high priest. That means he was not so bad after all, when he got anointed. Menelaus was a lot worse about Jewishness.
And Josephus told us the greater part of the people of Jerusalem rallied around Jason, at first.

Have you noticed how many people are talking about George W. Bush today as compared with how many are talking about Kennedy? People usually only remember the good ones (and the ones who get caught out in lies on TV). You have no reason to think that Jason has anything to do with Dan 9:25-27. Oh..., anything beside the schemozzle about sevens and seventies. You should write an article about that and try to get it published. See how far you get.

Bernard Muller wrote:

The flood is not an event, it is turmoil or outrage. The visions have different interests, but the fact that the infrequently used word shetep is used in both cases in close proximity to the high priest relate the two visions by subject interest. Here, shetep is what was brought by Antiochus IV on Jerusalem. The use of the particular word with its metaphorical significance links visions #3 & #4 philologically. The choice of word may even represent the same writer. It does show that the visions are related in thought. You just want to disengage the third vision from the others to make it about Jason and not Onias III... because the seventieth zayin or ayin occurs in 167.

The two "flood" is used at two different time slots as I explained already:

You are not listening: the flood is not an event. It was a description of a state of affairs. And by your continued pedantry here, you don't seem to have got the fact that it is an infrequent word used to describe what things were like in the aftermath of the removal of an anointed one and the prince of the covenant. Its use is one of the pointers to the fact that the vision deals with the same general narrative. That that state is mentioned in passages that have different elements to them doesn't allow you to turn it into an event and place it into a strict chronology. You don't know how long that state of affairs (shetep, שטף) lasted or when it started. You've unintentionally made a case that it lasted from the start of Antiochus's involvement in Jerusalem through till the final removal of Jason and of course after that. There is no reason for you to think that "flood" references different things in the different contexts.

Bernard Muller wrote:In Daniel 9:26, the "flood" happens during & right after Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem after his second invasion of Egypt.
In Daniel 11:22, the "flood" starts right before the removal of Onias III, Antiochus' first foray in Jerusalem and his first invasion of Egypt.
Needless to say, I do not believe to your far-fetched interpretation.
"because the seventieth zayin or ayin occurs in 167". According to your 7 years, that would occur in 55 BC (OK, + or - 10 years because we cannot expect the writer to be exact!).

You just fake a date by slight of hand (37 sevens and 33 seventies) and stick to it for decades, propping it up with literalness in a culture not known for the accuracy that you desperately need to maintain your theory.

to spin,

I've already stated it is in the plural. It doesn't change the fact that the text puts the crowns on the head of Yeshua.

So why you did you write "crown" (singular) twice: "The crown gets placed ... Place the crown on Jeshua ..."?

Still not reading the text. Zechariah has God say it immediately after Yeshua receives the crowns. Why do you try to separate the crowning of Yeshua from God's words? There is no-one else acknowledged. The text doesn't point you to anyone else. Why do you repeatedly refuse to read the text?

No other one is acknowledged because the servant/man called the branch is still to come. That's what the text is pointing to. Receiving the crowns is not the same as being crowned as king. You are the one seeing way to much in the text.
And this quote certainly tell me that Jeshua is not "my servant, the Branch":
Zec 3:8 "Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH."
The Branch might refer to a descendant of David (Jer 23:5, 35:15) and Jeshua could not have been one.

8:13-14 certainly starts with the other durations. 12:7 reiterates it

For Dan 12:6 the RSV says "How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?". The wonders have to be Michael's intervention and the resurrections of good Jews for everlasting life with this time period in 12:7 starting at Antiochus' death. The RSV translation and the LXX are similar to most translations of this verse.
But a few other translations for 12:6 are similar to "How long will it be before these astonishing things are fulfilled?" (NIV). That would be to your liking but I wonder if the Hebrew can support these minority translations. I do not think so.
Anyway in 12:7, we are dealing with "times" and not "weeks". And, according to the minority translations, the "time" would be one year and not 7 years as for your week of years.

Thank you for the demurral. You can now accept that the notion of weeks of years is not a strange one in Hebrew culture.

The problem is Daniel never mentioned "of year". So I do not see as probable that the "weeks" of Daniel 9 have to be read as weeks of years, that is seven years period.
I also note that the "weeks" of Lev 25:8 reads שַׁבְּתֹת . However, the "weeks" in Daniel 9 reads שִׁבְעִים . Not the same.

There is only less historical content, so that you cannot judge its error rate as easily. Your attempted explanation of Persia's four kings was amusing. Your gamble here is that the writers are historically accurate with the presentation of the seventy sevens when a) you have no reason to think so and 2) you have text with a track record for inaccuracy.

Daniel likely read Ezra and Nehemiah (or if you prefer 1 Ezra & 2 Ezra). In these books, there are mentions of a Persian king after Darius I's times (Ezra 7:1, Nehemiah 2:1). So I cannot accept the author of Daniel part 2 thought that Darius I was the last Persian king and he lost his empire to Alexander the Great. More so that the author did not say that.

So please answer why the text says that the time of the prince the anointed was seven sevens after the proclamation and when exactly was that?? Was it the end of 472 BCE, ie after the seventh seven??

That's what your RSV translation tells you, but this is a minority translation according to the other bible translations and the LXX. I went through that already. One thing: your preferred translation would have Jeshua, son of Josedek's time starting 49 years after the first year of Cyrus' rule over Babylon. But in Ezra, that high priest is in Jerusalem soon after Cyrus' proclamation, not 49 years later.

When there are only thirty-seven sevens? Oh, but there are sevens in the seventies as well!? They didn't have the numerals to even allow your theory to make sense.

Maybe no numeral, but the word "seven" exists in Hebrew. The numerals allow for simplification & calculations, but are not necessary when dealing for additions. In my case you just have to count the occurrences of שבע in spelled out numbers in a series of consecutive numbers starting at 1.

There are no שבע in those numbers. There is just שבעים. These are two distinct notions and are indicated by different letters. But don't let fatal impediments interrupt your theory.

You have to add the שבע regardless if they are singular or plural.

You've failed to respond to what you were ostensibly trying to. There are simply not seventy שבע, only 37. You've faked your results based on modern thinking projected onto the past.

Yes but within the "שבעים" there is "שבע" (seven) . That's what matter.

Sadly, you are not playing with the full deck. Josephus states the Menelaus was of the Zadokite line. 1 Macc 4 tells you he was high priest.

Menelaus became an apostate Jew. So he could not be considered a high priest anymore. There is nothing which says in Maccabees or Josephus that Jason did not remain a Jew. As a Jew, he would be the legitimate high priest and the last one of the Zadokite line.

Have you noticed how many people are talking about George W. Bush today as compared with how many are talking about Kennedy? People usually only remember the good ones (and the ones who get caught out in lies on TV). You have no reason to think that Jason has anything to do with Dan 9:25-27. Oh..., anything beside the schemozzle about sevens and seventies. You should write an article about that and try to get it published. See how far you get.

That analogy is irrelevant. If somebody refers to the events of 1993, he/she would talk about George W. Bush and not JFK. The author of Daniel part two referred to 168 & 167 BC. Then the high priest was Jason, good or bad. And Onias III is not forgotten as the "prince of the covenant", but at an earlier time.

You are not listening: the flood is not an event. It was a description of a state of affairs. And by your continued pedantry here, you don't seem to have got the fact that it is an infrequent word used to describe what things were like in the aftermath of the removal of an anointed one and the prince of the covenant. Its use is one of the pointers to the fact that the vision deals with the same general narrative. That that state is mentioned in passages that have different elements to them doesn't allow you to turn it into an event and place it into a strict chronology. You don't know how long that state of affairs (shetep, שטף) lasted or when it started. You've unintentionally made a case that it lasted from the start of Antiochus's involvement in Jerusalem through till the final removal of Jason and of course after that. There is no reason for you to think that "flood" references different things in the different contexts.

The two "flood" is used at two different time slots as I explained already:
In Daniel 9:26, the "flood" happens during & right after Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem after his second invasion of Egypt.
In Daniel 11:22, the "flood" starts right before the removal of Onias III, Antiochus' first foray in Jerusalem and his first invasion of Egypt.
"There is no reason for you to think that "flood" references different things in the different contexts.": "flood' might mean the same things: massive sudden bad events, turmoil, outrage and now state of affairs, but the textual contexts placed them at a different time.

You just fake a date by slight of hand (37 sevens and 33 seventies) and stick to it for decades, propping it up with literalness in a culture not known for the accuracy that you desperately need to maintain your theory.

You are the one who desperately needs to maintain your theory.
That the total of 37 sevens and 33 seventies points exactly to 167 BC cannot be just a coincidence. As for you, you call inaccuracy an error of 112 years, plus problems with your 49 years which does not fit Jeshua son of Josedek as the high priest in Jerusalem.

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller wrote:to spin,

I've already stated it is in the plural. It doesn't change the fact that the text puts the crowns on the head of Yeshua.

So why you did you write "crown" (singular) twice: "The crown gets placed ... Place the crown on Jeshua ..."?

Because I cut and pasted a known translation.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Still not reading the text. Zechariah has God say it immediately after Yeshua receives the crowns. Why do you try to separate the crowning of Yeshua from God's words? There is no-one else acknowledged. The text doesn't point you to anyone else. Why do you repeatedly refuse to read the text?

No other one is acknowledged because the servant/man called the branch is still to come. That's what the text is pointing to. Receiving the crowns is not the same as being crowned as king. You are the one seeing way to much in the text.

Nonsense. Note the word הנה ("behold/here/look") in the verse, drawing the attention to what is present at the time of speaking. It's a deictic reference that you have ignored at your lost of understanding. The referent is present at the time of speaking, not a non-present future referent. You are simply wrong.

Bernard Muller wrote:And this quote certainly tell me that Jeshua is not "my servant, the Branch":
Zec 3:8 "Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH."
The Branch might refer to a descendant of David (Jer 23:5, 35:15) and Jeshua could not have been one.

8:13-14 certainly starts with the other durations. 12:7 reiterates it

For Dan 12:6 the RSV says "How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?". The wonders have to be Michael's intervention and the resurrections of good Jews for everlasting life with this time period in 12:7 starting at Antiochus' death. The RSV translation and the LXX are similar to most translations of this verse.
But a few other translations for 12:6 are similar to "How long will it be before these astonishing things are fulfilled?" (NIV). That would be to your liking but I wonder if the Hebrew can support these minority translations. I do not think so.
Anyway in 12:7, we are dealing with "times" and not "weeks". And, according to the minority translations, the "time" would be one year and not 7 years as for your week of years.

You're wearing me out with this refractory lack of analysis. It is like much of what you've done here, eisegesis. It's not the text itself, but what you force it to say.[/quote]
In 7:25 the 3½ times is the same duration as in 12:7. The former duration deals with how long the holy ones are given into the power of Antiochus IV. From the start of the repression to the death of Antiochus was about 3½ years. You don't see the connection.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Thank you for the demurral. You can now accept that the notion of weeks of years is not a strange one in Hebrew culture.

The problem is Daniel never mentioned "of year". So I do not see as probable that the "weeks" of Daniel 9 have to be read as weeks of years, that is seven years period.
I also note that the "weeks" of Lev 25:8 reads שַׁבְּתֹת . However, the "weeks" in Daniel 9 reads שִׁבְעִים . Not the same.

This last is irrelevant. The biblical Hebrew corpus is small. I can find no examples of the feminine plural of "seven" and although there are examples of masculine singular sevens (see entry in BDB or here) the only examples of the masculine plural are in 9:25-27.

The year issue can simply rest on the 3½ times in 7:25, being the time from 168/7-164 BCE. 3½ times = 3½ years.

Bernard Muller wrote:

There is only less historical content, so that you cannot judge its error rate as easily. Your attempted explanation of Persia's four kings was amusing. Your gamble here is that the writers are historically accurate with the presentation of the seventy sevens when a) you have no reason to think so and 2) you have text with a track record for inaccuracy.

Daniel likely read Ezra and Nehemiah (or if you prefer 1 Ezra & 2 Ezra).

It is likely that the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah didn't exist in 167 BCE. 1 Esdras may have been written, though Ben Sira shows no knowledge of Ezra in the historical portion of his text. He does know Nehemiah (49:13). The lack of reference to Ezra by Ben Sira is unfathomable, given his significance in re-establishing the law and putting Judaism in Jerusalem back on track.

Bernard Muller wrote:In these books, there are mentions of a Persian king after Darius I's times (Ezra 7:1, Nehemiah 2:1). So I cannot accept the author of Daniel part 2 thought that Darius I was the last Persian king and he lost his empire to Alexander the Great. More so that the author did not say that.

When you can demonstrate that the writers of Daniel knew the traditions in Ezra, then you can use them.

Bernard Muller wrote:

So please answer why the text says that the time of the prince the anointed was seven sevens after the proclamation and when exactly was that?? Was it the end of 472 BCE, ie after the seventh seven??

That's what your RSV translation tells you

It is what the Hebrew text says. I have given you a few linguistic reasons why most translations are wrong with their punctuation. You refuse to admit their confessional motivation for the error.

Bernard Muller wrote:but this is a minority translation according to the other bible translations and the LXX.

This is not a matter of democracy. The majority can be wrong, especially when motivated to be so.

Bernard Muller wrote:I went through that already.

You can't go through it: you have n knowledge of the language so you are a slave to christianizing translations. Look at any Jewish translation. (Of course, you'll say that they Jewish scholars are faking the text against the Christians.... like they are going to deliberately misrepresent their own sacred texts to themselves.)

Bernard Muller wrote:One thing: your preferred translation would have Jeshua, son of Josedek's time starting 49 years after the first year of Cyrus' rule over Babylon. But in Ezra, that high priest is in Jerusalem soon after Cyrus' proclamation, not 49 years later.

Just put that in the same basket of requirements of the writers to be as accurate as you need them to be. How do you explain the blunder in 8:1 which talks of King Belshazzar, when Belshazzar was never king? Another blunder in 9:1. Then the four kings blunder. That is every possibility to check the accuracy of Dan 7-12 and all of them are wrong. But you hope that the 70 sevens is accurate.

Bernard Muller wrote:

When there are only thirty-seven sevens? Oh, but there are sevens in the seventies as well!? They didn't have the numerals to even allow your theory to make sense.

Maybe no numeral, but the word "seven" exists in Hebrew. The numerals allow for simplification & calculations, but are not necessary when dealing for additions. In my case you just have to count the occurrences of שבע in spelled out numbers in a series of consecutive numbers starting at 1.

You are not responding. As I said, there are only thirty seven sevens.

Bernard Muller wrote:

There are no שבע in those numbers. There is just שבעים. These are two distinct notions and are indicated by different letters. But don't let fatal impediments interrupt your theory.

You have to add the שבע regardless if they are singular or plural.

But in this case it isn't a plural: it is a word which means "seventy". Sorry, but the rule is be as simple as you can, no simpler.

Bernard Muller wrote:

You've failed to respond to what you were ostensibly trying to. There are simply not seventy שבע, only 37. You've faked your results based on modern thinking projected onto the past.

Yes but within the "שבעים" there is "שבע" (seven) . That's what matter.

Rubbish. You are just bullshitting now. Your spreadsheet approach has been falsified. You can move the goalposts as much as you like after the fact, but to no benefit.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Sadly, you are not playing with the full deck. Josephus states the Menelaus was of the Zadokite line. 1 Macc 4 tells you he was high priest.

Menelaus became an apostate Jew.

That doesn't change the fact that he was a high priest for several years. He was an anointed one!!

Bernard Muller wrote:So he could not be considered a high priest anymore. There is nothing which says in Maccabees or Josephus that Jason did not remain a Jew. As a Jew, he would be the legitimate high priest and the last one of the Zadokite line.

Not true. Jason was outbid for the high priesthood by Menelaus. Jason stopped being the high priest and Menelaus became high priest. He was according to the facts the last Zadokite high priest.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Have you noticed how many people are talking about George W. Bush today as compared with how many are talking about Kennedy? People usually only remember the good ones (and the ones who get caught out in lies on TV). You have no reason to think that Jason has anything to do with Dan 9:25-27. Oh..., anything beside the schemozzle about sevens and seventies. You should write an article about that and try to get it published. See how far you get.

That analogy is irrelevant. If somebody refers to the events of 1993, he/she would talk about George W. Bush and not JFK. The author of Daniel part two referred to 168 & 167 BC. Then the high priest was Jason, good or bad. And Onias III is not forgotten as the "prince of the covenant", but at an earlier time.

I like that. Totally ignoring the analogy, rather than having to deal with it. The political approach.

Bernard Muller wrote:

You are not listening: the flood is not an event. It was a description of a state of affairs. And by your continued pedantry here, you don't seem to have got the fact that it is an infrequent word used to describe what things were like in the aftermath of the removal of an anointed one and the prince of the covenant. Its use is one of the pointers to the fact that the vision deals with the same general narrative. That that state is mentioned in passages that have different elements to them doesn't allow you to turn it into an event and place it into a strict chronology. You don't know how long that state of affairs (shetep, שטף) lasted or when it started. You've unintentionally made a case that it lasted from the start of Antiochus's involvement in Jerusalem through till the final removal of Jason and of course after that. There is no reason for you to think that "flood" references different things in the different contexts.

The two "flood" is used at two different time slots as I explained already:
In Daniel 9:26, the "flood" happens during & right after Antiochus' second foray in Jerusalem after his second invasion of Egypt.
In Daniel 11:22, the "flood" starts right before the removal of Onias III, Antiochus' first foray in Jerusalem and his first invasion of Egypt.
"There is no reason for you to think that "flood" references different things in the different contexts.": "flood' might mean the same things: massive sudden bad events, turmoil, outrage and now state of affairs, but the textual contexts placed them at a different time.

You just fake a date by slight of hand (37 sevens and 33 seventies) and stick to it for decades, propping it up with literalness in a culture not known for the accuracy that you desperately need to maintain your theory.

You are the one who desperately needs to maintain your theory.
That the total of 37 sevens and 33 seventies points exactly to 167 BC cannot be just a coincidence. As for you, you call inaccuracy an error of 112 years, plus problems with your 49 years which does not fit Jeshua son of Josedek as the high priest in Jerusalem.

So your farcical spreadsheet analysis of the sevens flies like a lead balloon: you are simply wrong when you say there are seventy sevens. Thirty-seven is close enough when you add the seventies. You refuse to see that the durations given in the text point to fundamentally the same starting point only to be jimmied by later exigencies (which you try to explain away by talking about the exigencies) missing the point that the exigencies by their nature change the durations (slightly). Even the half a seven in 9:27 is 3½ somethings, which would suggest to most people a direct correlation to the 3½ times. Your naysaying to this has only been effete pedantry. And that leaves you clinging to the 3½ times in 12:7 as not related to the approximate length of the other durations, not even the 3½ times in 7:25. The reason for you holding out regarding 12:7 is because you have decided what it refers to and I don't agree with your decision, as it doesn't consider the exact same length in 7:25, which in itself should put the kibosh on your holding out. And we don't really need to go other the inappropriateness of Jason being at the center of the seventy sevens vision.

to spin,

Nonsense. Note the word הנה ("behold/here/look") in the verse, drawing the attention to what is present at the time of speaking. It's a deictic reference that you have ignored at your lost of understanding. The referent is present at the time of speaking, not a non-present future referent. You are simply wrong.

If it is the case (הנה = here), the one referred to was Zerubbabel a Branch (as a descendant of David as per 'Jeremiah', that "Daniel" knew about). Zerubbabel was here, as in Jerusalem. Zechariah was hoping Zerubbabel grew up in stature and took the task with vigor of rebuilding the temple.
"here" does not mean "you are". And "look" directs the attention to the man called Branch, not to Jeshua.

In 7:25 the 3½ times is the same duration as in 12:7. The former duration deals with how long the holy ones are given into the power of Antiochus IV. From the start of the repression to the death of Antiochus was about 3½ years. You don't see the connection.

We are taking here about time(s), not week(s), and certainly not week(s) of years. Yes it looks that a time in 7:25 & 12:7 is equal to about a year. But that does not mean that your weeks have to mean 7 year periods.

This last is irrelevant. The biblical Hebrew corpus is small. I can find no examples of the feminine plural of "seven" and although there are examples of masculine singular sevens (see entry in BDB or here) the only examples of the masculine plural are in 9:25-27.

That's relevant. What is translated as weeks in Lev 25:8 is not spelled like the "weeks" in Daniel 9. "Daniel" did not get his "weeks" from Lev 25:8.
Actually, that masculine plural is also in Lev 12:5 and Daniel 10:2 & 10:3. In the three cases, it means weeks, certainly not weeks of years.

It is likely that the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah didn't exist in 167 BCE. 1 Esdras may have been written, though Ben Sira shows no knowledge of Ezra in the historical portion of his text. He does know Nehemiah (49:13). The lack of reference to Ezra by Ben Sira is unfathomable, given his significance in re-establishing the law and putting Judaism in Jerusalem back on track.

That does not matter but to me 1 Ezra seems an embellished version of Ezra. BTW, it seems that few share your opinion about a late writing of 'Esdra' according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ezra. And Nehemiah is mentioned in Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach only in the context of the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple. Ezra is not said in 'Ezra' to have participated in these reconstructions.
Anyway Artexerxes, as a Persian king after Darius I's times, is named in 1 Esd 8:11 and 4 Esd 4:3.

When you can demonstrate that the writers of Daniel knew the traditions in Ezra, then you can use them.

Daniel knew 'Jeremiah' and most likely the other books, including 'Nehemiah'. Anyway, it does not look there were Persian kings after Darius I would be a secret for Jews around 167 BC.
The author of Daniel part 1 (written a few years after the death of Alexander the Great) used the word for decree (טְעֵם) 8 times. Ezra used the same word 17 times. It is only in these two OT books that this word is used.

It is what the Hebrew text says. I have given you a few linguistic reasons why most translations are wrong with their punctuation. You refuse to admit their confessional motivation for the error.

What is important is that the LXX does not have that pause between seven sevens and sixty-two sevens.

This is not a matter of democracy. The majority can be wrong, especially when motivated to be so.

Maybe the majority was influenced by the LXX. That pause is very awkward.

You can't go through it: you have n knowledge of the language so you are a slave to christianizing translations. Look at any Jewish translation. (Of course, you'll say that they Jewish scholars are faking the text against the Christians.... like they are going to deliberately misrepresent their own sacred texts to themselves.)

A fair amount of differences has been detected between the masoretic texts and the more ancient by centuries texts from the discovered scrolls (such as DSS).

Just put that in the same basket of requirements of the writers to be as accurate as you need them to be. How do you explain the blunder in 8:1 which talks of King Belshazzar, when Belshazzar was never king? Another blunder in 9:1. Then the four kings blunder. That is every possibility to check the accuracy of Dan 7-12 and all of them are wrong. But you hope that the 70 sevens is accurate.

These blunders are mostly in Daniel part 1. About the Persian kings, I do not see any blunder. The author wanted to bring the attention on Darius I, the most powerful of the Persian kings and the one who authorized the completion of the temple. I cannot imagine "Daniel" thought that king lost his kingdom to Alexander the Great.
And then if "Daniel" thought the aforementioned, then that would put Cyrus the Great much closer in time to Alexander the Great and your 490 years, I calculated, would bring you to around 200 AD.

Bernard Muller wrote:

There are no שבע in those numbers. There is just שבעים. These are two distinct notions and are indicated by different letters. But don't let fatal impediments interrupt your theory.

You have to add the שבע regardless if they are singular or plural.

But in this case it isn't a plural: it is a word which means "seventy". Sorry, but the rule is be as simple as you can, no simpler.

I know that שבעים can mean seventy. But the root of שבעים is שבע . And that's what is counted (שבע).
The passage in Daniel 9 is an oracle which is meant not to be understood right away.
Anyway שבעים cannot mean seventy (with one exception) in Daniel 9 :24-26. You would have 7 seventies and 62 seventies and 70 seventies.

Your spreadsheet approach has been falsified. You can move the goalposts as much as you like after the fact, but to no benefit.

No, and my goal posts are the same. So far, I do not feel I have to make a change on my webpage.

Not true. Jason was outbid for the high priesthood by Menelaus. Jason stopped being the high priest and Menelaus became high priest. He was according to the facts the last Zadokite high priest

When Jason got cut off, as an apostate Jew, Menelaus could not be a high priest anymore. His anointment as high priest was null.

Cordially, Bernard