Cold Case Christianity: Sorry Wallace, Daniel 9 isn't about Jesus

 This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Perhaps the Greatest Old Testament Prophecy of All

Posted: 08 Mar 2019 01:21 AM PST

Fulfilled prophecy is an important evidence of Divine origin, and I’ve already highlighted just a few of the more important fulfilled prophecies in the Old Testament.

 The OT contains no predictions about Jesus' life or death, except in the uselessly subjective "typological" sense. Since even Christian scholars admit this, who are spiritually alive, it is rather stupid for you to "expect" that spiritually dead people would or "should" appreciate the divine authenticity of your interpretation.

A fellow law enforcement brother, Sir Robert Anderson, described perhaps the greatest Old Testament prophecy, if his calculations were accurate. Anderson was the Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) from 1888 to 1901; he was also a theologian and author. He wrote many books related to Christianity, science and prophecy, including The Coming Prince. In this short volume, Anderson makes the case for a remarkable Old Testament prophecy from the prophet Daniel. While the Israelites were certainly comforted by prophecies predicting their enemies would eventually be destroyed, there was a far more reassuring prophecy described by Daniel. He predicted the coming of a Messiah, a savior who would deliver the Jews. Daniel’s prophecy was incredibly specific. I’ll do my best to reconstruct the case made by Anderson, but I encourage you to research his work for yourself.

Already have.  Years ago.  And there are even Christian bible believers who find Anderson's exegesis and calculations to be incorrect.  See here.  If spiritually alive people cannot even agree on what a bible verse means, how stupid must you be to insist that spiritually dead people "should" know better?  But if Christian common sense says atheist bible critics are just dumb dogs who cannot be expected to know better, then how stupid is it to try and "reason" with them?  Do you ever attempt teaching algebra to a dog?

Other Christian scholars disagree with Anderson's populist account:

Perhaps the most popular interpretation of this passage has been given by Sir Robert Anderson.  He pinpoints the end of the sixty-ninth week, the coming of “Messiah the Prince,” as Sunday, April 6, A.D. 32, and claims that this was the very day of our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Unfortunately this view, as spectacular as it is, faces some serious problems.

Robert C. Newman, Daniel’s Seventy Weeks And The Old Testament Sabbath-Year Cycle  

JETS 16:4 (Fall 1973) 230

Interpreters should hesitate before entering afresh into the exegesis of Daniel’s seventy weeks, a passage that has been characterized as “the Dismal Swamp of Old Testament criticism.”  

 J. Barton Payne,  The Goal Of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks, JETS 21/2 (June, 1978) 97-115, 

citing J. A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel  

(ICC; New York: Scribner’s, 1927) 400.

Wallace continues in his blissful ignorance:

In 538 B.C. Daniel wrote the following bold prediction:

No, the 6th century B.C date for Daniel is nothing but a fundamentalist pipe dream, insisted upon solely because dating it that early would then require the conclusion that the author was empowered by God to accurately predict the future.  Responsible scholars who are more concerned about truth than defending bible inerrancy, date Daniel to the 2nd century B.C.  But obviously the issues are too involved to get into here.

Daniel 9:25

“So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks of years and sixty-two weeks of years”

In this prophecy (written 538 years before Christ was born), Daniel claimed there would be 69 “weeks of years” between the issuing of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the appearance of the Messiah.

But even Christian scholars acknowledge that getting Jesus out of Daniel 9 has more to do with flights of fancy than with serious exegesis: 

24–27 Jeremiah had spoken of seventy-years’ desolation for Jerusalem, but it was actually to last centuries longer than that. God is free to exact whatever chastisement he chooses. But the message’s good news is that it is not chastisement without end. The number 490 is not an arithmetical calculation to be pressed to yield chronological information. It is a figure that puts together two symbolic figures, the seventy years (a lifetime) of Jer 25:11/29:10 and the sevenfold chastisement of Lev 26:28. The result is a doubly symbolic figure extending from the beginning of chastisement in the exile to whenever it is seen as ending. The description of the end in vv 24–27 is allusive...In Jewish and Christian tradition, Gabriel’s promise has been applied to rather later events: the birth of the messiah, Jesus’ death and resurrection, the fall of Jerusalem, various subsequent historical events, and the still-future manifesting of the messiah. Exegetically such views are mistaken. The detail of vv 24–27 fits the second-century b.c. crisis and agrees with allusions to this crisis elsewhere in Daniel. The verses do not indicate that they are looking centuries or millennia beyond the period to which chaps. 8 and 10–12 refer...There is another aspect to the significance of Gabriel’s allusiveness. It accompanies an inclination to speak in the words of Scripture reapplied. Daniel is doing with Isaiah what subsequent exegetes do with Daniel. This, too, reflects the fact that the author speaks “with faith rather than knowledge” (Heaton). The period of deepest oppression did last about 3 1/2 years, but that is not the point. This is not prognostication or prediction. It is promise.

Goldingay, J. E. (2002). Vol. 30: Word Biblical Commentary : Daniel.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 266). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

  Perhaps this might have something to do with the fact that the KJV depicts a single messiah, the RSV depicts two.  You may laugh at the idea that Jesus had an identical twin never otherwise mentioned in history, but I say God's ways are mysterious...so I win.

And after the 1943 Pope issued Divino afflante Spiritu, Catholics have largely abandoned the fundie interpretation and have espoused the position of liberal Christian scholars on Daniel's 2nd century date, and the vatacina ex eventu nature of the history which the book dishonestly presents as predictions of the future.

Wallace continues:

In 464 BC, Artaxerxes, a Persian king, ascended to the throne. Nehemiah, the Jewish cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, was deeply concerned about the ruined condition of Jerusalem following the defeat of the Jews (Nehemiah 1:1-4). As a result, he petitioned the king:

Nehemiah 2:5,6

“Send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it. So it pleased the king to send me”.

According to the Old Testament, the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem was issued “in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king” (Nehemiah 2:1). The Jewish calendar month was Nisan, and since no day is given, it is reasonable to assume the date would be understood as the first, the Jewish New Year’s Day. And, in the Julian calendar we presently use, the corresponding date would be March 5, 444 BC.

 But even inerrantist Christian scholars find a different decree given on a different date, to be the "decree" Daniel speaks of:

The view accepted here is that the decree to Ezra in 458 B.C. is the correct starting point for the seventy sevens,

Miller, S. R. (2001, c1994). Vol. 18: Daniel.
Includes indexes. (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 263).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The new interpretation of Daniel’s “sevens” presented here allows us to retain Cyrus’ decree as the terminus a quo of the seventy “sevens” while at the same time taking Daniel’s numbers at their face value. Once we realize that the “sevens” can be any integer multiple of seven years, we can see that Cyrus’ 538 B. C. decree fits the terms of Daniel’s prophecy perfectly. Finally, while it is not my purpose here to enter into the vexed question of the meaning of Daniel’s final or seventieth “seven,...

David H. Lurie, A New Interpretation Of Daniel’s “Sevens”
And The Chronology Of The Seventy “Sevens”, JETS 33/3 (September 1990) 309

At this point, one has to wonder whether the grammatical and exegetical ambiguities in Daniel 9 place an intellectual burden on the atheist bible critic to take the time to tromp through the commentaries and figure out which interpretation is "correct", or whether these uncertainties of text and translation intellectually justify the atheist bible critic to consider the issue of Daniel 9 as uselessly subjective, and choose rather to spend their time doing something more productive, such as watching Breast Monsters from Jupiter 26 times per day.

So when did the Messiah appear?

Doesn't matter, it wasn't Jesus, because Daniel 9:26 makes clear the messiah's function is limited to his earthly life, and his ultimate end is a sad thing, he is "cut off", and nothing more is asserted about him.  So unless you wish to say Jesus stopped being relevant after he was crucified...

There are several feasible interpretation not implicating Jesus:

Cyrus (539 bc, in Isaiah 45:1 god calls him :anointed’, Matthew Henry/New American Bible)
Onias III (171 bc, Jewish High Priest that was murdered, Cambridge Bible Commentary: Book of Daniel)
Zerubbabel (Interpreter’s Bible)
Joshua ben Jozadak (538 bc, see Zech. 4, Interpreter’s Bible/New American Bible)
 
And the original Hebrew doesn't set off the "messiah" in capital letters, that's limited to the English translation provided by the obviously Christian translators.

Jesus, on numerous occasions, forbade and prevented his followers from revealing His identity as the Messiah.

Or maybe those are just fabricated words the gospel authors conjured up and falsely placed into Jesus' mouth to help explain why this allegedly important person didn't make much of an impact during his earthly lifetime.  I find such viewpoint attractive given the sheer stupidity of a Jesus who runs around the countryside doing everything anybody would expect to cause his popularity to explode all over the place (Mark 1:45), and yet we are to believe such a person didn't want the very publicity he was creating for himself?

Exactly how often did Jesus act in diametric opposition to his intentions?  More than once a day?

He frequently performed miracles and swore His disciples to silence, saying his “hour has not yet come” (John 2:4, 7:6).

Yeah right...Jesus goes around causing large crowds to follow him the way deranged groupies follow rock stars (Mark 1:45)...but he didn't wish to attract any publicity?

If Jesus could cleanse the temple and somehow miraculously escape arrest/death, then apparently his swearing the disciples to silence was not something he deemed necessary to make sure his death came at the "appropriate" time. His swearing them to silence is nothing more than a fabricated literary device of the author.

But, on March 30, 33 A.D., when he entered Jerusalem on a donkey, he rebuked the Pharisees’ protest and encouraged the whole multitude of his disciples as they shouted, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord”. Jesus even said, “If these become silent, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:38-40). This was the day on which Jesus was publicly declared the Messiah.

 William Lane Craig disagrees:

Now before we look at this passage in detail, let’s set the scene geographically and chronologically. It is the spring of the year, the time of the great Passover feast in Jerusalem, during the Jewish month of Nisan, which is in early April on our calendar. Passover always began on the 14th of Nisan, which that year fell on Friday. So scholars using astronomical data have determined that the date of the Passover feast during which Jesus was crucified was either April 3, AD 33 or else April 7, AD 30.  Source here.

 So do other scholars who otherwise try to get Jesus out of Daniel 9:

This is the only occasion that Jesus presented Himself as King. It occurred on April 6, 32 AD. When we examine the period between March 14, 445 BC and April 6, 32 AD, and correct for leap years, we discover that it is 173,880 days exactly, to the very day!  Source here.

Wallace continues:

Let’s compare then, the date of the decree (March 5, 444 BC) with the date of Jesus’ declaration (March 30, 33 AD). Before we begin, we must clarify (as noted by Anderson) an important feature of the Jewish prophetic year: It was comprised of twelve 30 day months (it had 360 days, not 365 days). Since Daniel states 69 weeks of seven years each, and each year has 360 days, the following equation calculates the number of days between March 5, 444 BC (the twentieth year of Artaxerxes) and March 30, 33 AD (the day Jesus entered Jerusalem on the donkey):

69 x 7 x 360 = 173,880 days

Now let’s compare Daniel’s prophecy with the true interval between the two events. The time span from 444 BC to 33 AD is 476 years (remember 1 BC to 1 AD is only one year). And if we multiply 476 years x 365.2421879 days per year (corrected for leap years), we get the result of 173,855 days. Close, but not precisely what Daniel predicted (although I still think this is pretty amazing). Now let’s add back the difference between March 5 and March 30 (25 days). What is our total? You guessed it, 173,880 days, exactly as Daniel predicted.

What's interesting is that other Christian scholars are aware of this type of apologetic, and yet do not find it convincing, thus raising the question of whether a skeptic would be wiser to consider this issue to be nothing but useless babble, and accordingly turn away from it.  If even spiritually alive people don't think Daniel 9 is an amazingly accurate prediction of Jesus, how stupid must you be to "expect" spiritually dead people to "recognize" this prophecy as amazingly accurate? 

The ancient Jews were careful to use prophecy as a measuring stick.

A goal that clearly failed them.

If someone claimed to be a prophet, yet his predictions did not come true, he was abandoned and his writings did not make it into the Canon of Scripture:

Deuteronomy 18:22

When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, [but] the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

 Then there is a reasonable presumption that because the Jews sought to kill Jesus (John 11:53), either they were so stupid as to defy belief and suggest such stupidity is nothing but a literary device and not actual history, or, they had a reasonable basis to view Jesus as the type of lying prophet deserving of the death penalty (Deut. 13:5).

That's a question apologists never give a convincing answer to:  If in real life Jesus was just as wonderful and loving as he is presented to be in the gospel texts, then why were the Jews so pissed off at him?  Did the Jews also go around murdering little old women who sewed patches on baby blankets?  The whole business of the Jews opposing Jesus in a violent way sounds more like a dramatic literary device, because it doesn't "ring true" as literal history.  The only reasonable alternative is to presuppose that Jesus was more reactionary and insurrectionist than the gospels present him to be.  In that case, the Jews seeking to arrest and execute him rings a bit truer historically.

Sorry, Wallace, but again, your apologetics appear geared for nobody else except Christians.  When you decide to become honest, maybe some day you'll allow your devoted followers to watch you get steam rolled in a live debate with an atheist bible critic who has written a thorough critique of your Cold Case Christianity book.