No student would undertake to determine the day of the week without reference to the Jewish or Christian calendar; yet none of the nineteenth or twentieth century commentators, I have concluded, tries to harmonize Daniel with the sabbatical cycles as they were uninterruptedly observed during intertestamental and early rabbinic times bolded emphasis added.
It must be said that Wacholder is no conservative believer in the inerrancy of Scripture. For instance, on pp. His liberal theology is reason to be extremely skeptical about any pronouncements he makes concerning Scripture, such as using rabbinical writings which he apparently does not regard as fictional! I will just give here the evidence he cites from the Dead Sea Scrolls:. These and similar passages allude to the sabbatical cycles known to have been observed in Palestine from the post-exilic period to the fifth or sixth Christian century.
It reads:. Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One—comes.
Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses, despite the perilous times emphasis added. If this is indeed the case, then what Daniel says can be paraphrased thus, basically following the NIV:. From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a ruler, comes, there will be seven sabbatical year cycles one Jubilee plus sixty-two sabbatical year cycles.
The date the decree was issued is not simultaneous with the date sabbatical year counting was resumed. Hence, we should approach our study with an eye to relate the prophecy of Daniel —27 to a sabbatical year calendar. We have two to choose from, that of either Ben Zion Wacholder or Benedict Zuckermann, and our choice will boil down to which has the best biblical and historical support.
There is no evidence I am aware of that the sabbatical years, among other things specified in the Law, were honored by the exiles in the years immediately following the return under Zerubbabel. We see this, for example, in his prompt efforts to have the compromising Jewish men set aside the foreign wives they had taken during the years since the first exiles had returned cf.
Ezra 9— Having a functioning Temple and priesthood in place had not been sufficient to either prevent this problem from arising or deal with it before Ezra came, so why should we think the first returned exiles would have paid any attention to enforcing sabbatical year observance? It makes sense that this was when he mandated its resumption, rather than delaying a whole year until Tishri 1, BC, or even later. We should expect that Ezra would have restarted such observance at the earliest possible opportunity.
Is there any evidence this was the case? In a word, yes. Notice that when the people signed the document Neh covenanting to honor sabbatical years and other stipulations of the Law Neh , it was in the context of the public reading of the Law.
As Nehemiah —2, 8 records:. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month…. They read from the book, from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading.
Why is this significant? Deuteronomy —12 reads:. Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the L ORD your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law.
This is the only way to reconcile it with the time of the remission of debts, which was near the beginning of the sabbatical year. The connection with the Feast of Booths confirms this; that feast takes place in Tishri, which was the beginning, not end, of the agriculture-based calendar that sabbatical and Jubilee year counting was tied to Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1a.
The principle of release at the beginning of year seven, not at its end, is also given by several Scriptures:. If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, then he shall serve you six years, but in the seventh year you shall set him free ….
It shall not seem hard to you when you set him free, for he has given you six years with double the service of a hired man; so the L ORD your God will bless you in whatever you do. Exodus is self-explanatory. In Deuteronomy , the focus on the approach of the seventh year, with the accompanying remission of debts and the servitude that arose from it, means that the start of that year was in view. Besides, if the creditor had waited until the end of the seventh year, the debtor would have given him seven years of service, not six!
And the verse from Nehemiah 10 ties together the start of each seventh sabbatical year with the remission of debts. Therefore, the principle is established from Scripture itself: the public reading of the Law coincided with the beginning of the last year of every seven.
If, then, Tishri 1, BC marked the start of a sabbatical year, it follows that the preceding sabbatical year, seven years earlier, began on Tishri 1, BC. From this we may tentatively conclude that sabbatical year counting in the post-exilic period began on Tishri 1, BC.
There is no actual printed decree mentioned here, but we can probably assume that Nehemiah was given some sort of orders and this could be interpreted as a decree. It is more difficult to date these events. To me, the most likely thing that the prophecy of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem is a reference to is the decree in Ezra , although I will admit that this is somewhat debatable.
The most likely date of the execution and resurrection of Jesus is AD This is very strong evidence, not only that the Bible is inspired by God, but that Jesus is the Messiah. For your information, some use the fourth decree in about BC and use the lunar day year and also arrive at an appropriate date for the death of Jesus. I do not agree, but I find the alternative calculation interesting. Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace, and at such a time.
I make a decree, that all they of the people of Israel, and of his priests and Levites, in my realm, which are minded of their own freewill to go up to Jerusalem, go with thee. Completion of Wall Under Nehemiah. And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.
That prophecy also indicates the anointing of Christ occurred at the beginning of the 70th week, or the completion of rd year. Will they believe the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, or will they believe the heathen astrologer, Claudius Ptolemy?
Will they believe the biblical record that clearly points to the decree of Cyrus as the commandment to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, or will they insist on the command of Artaxerxes in his 20th year in order to force the Bible to somehow agree with the chronology of Ptolemy? Floyd Nolen Jones. In the section of his book devoted to the decree of Cyrus pp. Jones acknowledges that the Bible appears to strongly support Cyrus as the king who gave the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem. But Dr.
Jones does not believe that that is actually the case. Jones believes that the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem in Daniel was given by Artaxerxes in his 20th year, because that is the royal decree spoken of in the Bible that lines up the best with the chronology of Ptolemy. Having made his decision to believe Ptolemy, Dr. Jones then makes several attempts to demonstrate why Cyrus was not the king who gave the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem.
Jones wants you to believe that he has sided with Ptolemy and the Bible at the same time; however, Dr. Jones has not done this at all. But we have shown conclusively that the Bible clearly points to Cyrus as the king who issued the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem in Daniel If we accept the biblical record, we must reject the chronology of Ptolemy, for the chronology of Ptolemy places the first year of Cyrus some eighty years earlier than the biblical record requires.
And since the starting point of the 70 week prophecy of Daniel is based on the command to restore and to build the city of Jerusalem, Artaxerxes must have been the king that made that decree, for only Artaxerxes specifically mentioned the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem in his royal decree. To this argument we respond that the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem was unquestionably included in the decree of Cyrus, though it is not specifically thus stated in Ezra 1. While modern Bible teachers and chronologers may try to argue that Cyrus did not specifically give the command to rebuild Jerusalem, we know from the biblical record that the God of the Bible considered Cyrus to have given the commandment of Daniel Conclusion: Who will we believe?
Will we believe the Hebrew prophets directed by the God of heaven or will we believe the heathen astrologer from Alexandria, Egypt? Will we accept what the Bible clearly states regarding Cyrus, or will we reject the biblical account in favor of the unsubstantiated chronology of Ptolemy that differs materially from the biblical record? The Scriptures are correct and accurate in every detail, and we will not be coerced into reconciling the biblical record with the unsupported speculations of the astrologer from Alexandria.
Let God be true, but every man a liar! Other chronologers who believed Cyrus gave the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem in Daniel Ernest L. Martin, Chronological Falsehoods, Robert R.
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