This is very different from what I’ve argued for in the past. It is a model that makes the 70 weeks end during the First Jewish-Roman War, but not like what I’ve seen any Preterist argue for before.
I was reading Daniel 9:24 as it is in the KJV, and realized that the text isn’t as unclear about how to distinguish the Seven Weeks from the 62 Weeks as I’d long thought. A plain reading of the text does support it saying this “Anointed Prince” translated “Messiah The Prince” comes at the end of the Seven at the End of the Seven Weeks and start of the 62 weeks.
It’s our Christian bias to want that Prince to be Jesus that has blinded us to that reason.
And that distinction weakens my past argument for beginning the 70 weeks with the Decree Artaxerxes second year from Nehemiah 2. But I still don’t believe it can refer to the Cyrus Decree.
This theory starts with my argument for changing who we assume each Darius and Artaxerxes mentioned in Ezra-Nehemiah are on my other blog.
Instead the key phrase in Daniel 9 defines the Decree as to “Build Jerusalem” in the traditional Canonical Scripture that is only in Daniel 9. But my Ezra-Nehemiah argument made use of 1 Esdras, a Greek alternate account of Ezra, and in the 4th chapter of that text “Build Jerusalem” is associated with the decree that Darius issues in the second year of his reign, a Darius I now view as Darius II.
Nisan of the second year of Darius II could be 422 BC. Seven Weeks or 49 years later is 373 BC the Nisan of which can be argued to be part of the 32nd year of Artaxerxes II. Which is significant because of Nehemiah 5:14 and 13:6. In this argument Nehemiah is the Anointed Prince of Daniel 9:25.
So when is 483 years from 422 BC and 434 years from 373 BC? That would be AD 62.
What typically reads “Messiah shall be cut off” or “Anointed one shall be destroyed” has been argued should be translated “the anointing shall be cut off”.
Josephus Wars of The Jews Book 6 Chapter 5 Section 3 includes an account of supernatural signs that preceded The Temple’s destruction, the timeline of when these happened have different interpretations. But one interpretation does put the events said to happen in Nisan 4 years before the War started in AD 66, thus AD 62. And the meaning of those signs can be interpreted to represent the Anointing of The Temple being Cut Off.
This ends the 70th Week in March of April of AD 69, when then rather than 70? Well that’s when Simon Bar Giora entered Jerusalem. Josephus in Wars of The Jews Book 4 Chapter 9 introduces Giora in section 6 and his taking of Jerusalem happens in section 10-12. I think a compelling argument for that being the end of the 70 weeks can be made, the physical destruction of The Temple Building is a symbolic epilogue.
I was myself quite surprised how well this all lined up.
