Saturday, December 13, 2014

Expect Something New: Messianic Predictions and Advent in 1st C Judea


Expect Something New: 
Messianic Predictions and Advent in 1st C Judea
Rev. Douglas Olds (all rights reserved)
14 December 2014 (updated August 2022)


Messianic Predictions and Advent in First-Century Judea:

A Preterist Reading of Daniel 9 Chronologies[1]

 [Appendix V in Olds, Douglas. Architectures of Grace in Pastoral Care: Virtue as the Craft of Theology beyond Strategic and Authoritative Biblicism (2023) https://t.ly/PvMl]

 

Jesus appeared during a time of marked messianic expectation in first-century Judea, but he was an unprecedented messiah in terms of cultural expectations. He identified himself as Son of Man and validated his message not by military revolt, but he authenticated his leadership by his teachings and displays of healing.

 The Jewish/Roman historian Josephus noted at least twelve failed revolts of religious purifiers and/or military aspirants during the period from the death of Herod in 4 BCE to the fall of the Temple in 70 AD.[2]

Jesus was the “expect something new” anointed prince, a healing messiah (Matt 13:15), a messiah who announced release to captives (Luke 4:18) and healing and sustenance for the oppressed and poor. This “new expectation” was bound up in his promotion of himself as “Son of Man” and a hint from the earliest part of the earliest Gospel, Mark, that his identity as Israel’s Messiah was something he initially downplayed in favor of his identity as Son of Man. As he moved toward his Crucifixion, he identified himself as the anointed (Mark 9:41) and the “sent one” (of God) (Mark 9:37; cf. Gal 4:4).

The messianic innovation is Jesus’ bringing the announcement of the metaphysics of grace and shalom's peace to the world like a mustard seed (Matt 13:3132) one virtuous and faithful human agent at a time. His messianism was not a grand exercise of consequentialist strategy that moved assembled forces to overthrow the Roman occupiers of Judea. Rome would fall, but first Jerusalem. The corrupt Temple establishment needed address—the baleful strategic uses of the religion of peace that made common cause with the occupier’s agon. How tragic that many ethnic Judeans rejected Israel’s messiah because they did not see their grand stratagem on the world stage come forth from a peaceful source intended to radiate peace. Violence and agon could not bring forth a messianic age of shalom. The “realists” were—and continue to be—disappointed at this Gospel messiah.

An early (the earliest?) creedal statement in the New Testament of the advent of the Messiah was by Paul in Gal 4:4. The Christ (Greek for “anointed” that translates the Hebrew word for anointed, מָשִׁ֣יחַ Messiah) came in the “fullness of time.” The Roman historians Tacitus[3] and Josephus each noted that Judeans expected a divinely ordained deliverer around that time. The beginnings of Luke’s and Matthew’s Gospels likewise concerned chronology in awaiting and identifying the one who became the church’s Christ. Based on these early Christian and non-Christian witnesses, we note that chronology played a key role in the expectation and identification of messianic arrival.

Many Christians of the early church had noted that the Son of Man was prophesied by Daniel 7:13–14, and in chapter 9 of Daniel a chronology counts down the time remaining for Daniel’s people to make changes to their religious observance:

 [EXT]Dan 9:24 [punctuation not in Hebrew text, so I have repunctuated] Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

25 Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince[,] there shall be seven weeks[;] and [“for” not in Hebrew] sixty-two weeks[.] [I]t shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary (Dan 9:24–26, NRSV with emendations by author).[/EXT]

The book of Ezra 7:8 notes that during the seventh year of Artaxerxes, the Persian Emperor proposed an edict (Ezra 7:21–25) to rebuild Jerusalem, consistent with what is indicated by Dan 9:25.[4]

Applying information derived from the Greek historian Herodotus and others, modern historians date the seventh year of Artaxerxes to 458 BCE.[5] Returning to Daniel 9:24 (where contemporaries saw weeks/heptads as years), we note that seven weeks of years (a period of Jubilee where debts are forgiven in the 50th year; Leviticus 25) added to 62 weeks (of years) make 483 years in total (69 times 7) from 458 BCE. The NRSV text quoted above punctuates the Hebrew idiosyncratically. Removing the English text’s punctuation allows for the 7 and 62 heptads to be read sequentially, with the division of these two sets of heptads situating atonement in the Jubilee supercycle of debt forgiveness and grace. From this sequence, we note that the anointed is prophesied to be “cut off” (or “separated”) in or about 25 or 26 CE.

Yet the prophecy for Daniel’s people delivered to him by the angel concerned an additional 70th week/heptad, which provides a termination of prophecy in 33 CE. According to the Crucifixion chronology in the Gospel of John, the Preparation for Passover fell on a Friday during this time frame in both 30 CE and 33 CE.[6] Seven years from 26 CE. supports the latter date for the termination of the prophecy—either at the Crucifixion or perhaps in the Apostle Paul’s call to the Gentile mission if the earlier date is accepted.[7]

This historical chronology supports the following five proposals for follow-up examination:[BL 1–5]

 1. A meaningful part of Judea is expecting a Danielic “anointed prince” around this historical moment. That the books of Ezra and Nehemiah contain at least three decrees from Persian emperors to rebuild, it is likely that messianic expectations could have timed an earlier messianic appearance based on earlier decrees of Cyrus (2 Chr 36:2223 and Ezra 1), or a later decree attested from the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes (Neh 2:1).

 2. The decree from Ezra 7 as prayed over in Ezra 9 seems identifiable as the germane edict because it is the first imperial decree to explicitly apply to the rebuilding of Jerusalem as a metropolitan administrative center. Earlier imperial decrees after the exile focused on rebuilding the Temple alone.

 3. A period of “cutting off/separation” (כָּרֵ֥תיִ kārētyi in Dan 9:26) involved the final, 70th heptad of years. The Hebrew word can be read in a variety of ways, including in the messianic text 2 Sam 7:9 and as a synonym קָטָ֑ף (qāṭāp) in Ezek 17:4, where the cedar-bound king is broken off as a branch by the Babylonian Eagle (which king is consistent with Jehoiachin—aka Jeconiah—who was taken into exile in Babylon [Jer 24:1; 2 Chr 36:10] for whom we have attestations on Babylonian tablets).[8] Dan 9:26 does not necessarily imply that the anointed would be killed after 69 heptads, just separated, perhaps in a season of liminal challenge, social isolation, and/or “desert withdrawal” in preparation for ministry at its end. If this period of privation suggests recapitulating God’s aboriginal act as an ex nihilo exercise, “cutting off” seems consistent with Jeremiah’s prophesied new (social and cosmic) creation—again, an ex nihilo phenomenon where the convenantor/creator demonstrates no access to resources save the logos/Word. Recognizing the radical and/or vicarious messianic privation יִכָּרֵ֥ת מָשִׁ֖יחַ וְאֵ֣ין ל֑וֹ (yikkārēt māšîaḥ wəʾên lô) allows for the recovery of a creative hermeneutical and missiological scheme such as we find in Jesus’ use of the Old Testament for his ministry and intended audience.

 4. Jesus uses the term “seventy times seven” as the number of times a co-religionist may expect to be forgiven in Matt 18:22. The Greek ἑβδομηκοντάκις ἑπτά (hebdomēkontakis hepta) supports the better translation “70 times 7” rather than the alternate “Seventy-seven times” (the suffix of ἑβδομηκοντάκις implies multiplication rather than a cardinal number). This magnitude suggests that Jesus perceives a limit to the number of yearly yom kippur atonement cycles left for a people contained in the prophecy of Dan 9:24 and consistent with a 490-year period of repentance and the 70x7 Super-Jubilee ordained therein.

5. Unlike the exegesis of Darbyite “dispensationalists” who parochially insert an extended hiatus (“parenthesis”) between the 69th and 70th heptad,[9] my exegesis reflects the continuity of the angel’s announced seventy heptad period of repentance for Daniel’s people. However, the prophecy seems to allow for a hiatus before a one heptad-encompassing one-half heptad period for the “people of the coming prince” and its abomination(s).[10]

This interpretation of chronology and its linguistic supports the recognition of the renewed creation—a messianically mediated covenant proceeding from the “breaking off” that concludes Ezekiel 17, where God Godself will קָטָ֑ף (qāṭāp) a youthful, noble branch from the highest cedar, standing for the central institution of the Temple people. An “inner biblical exegesis” of קָטָ֑ף (Ezek 17:22) as a synonym and referent for the Daniel 9:26 action of כָּרֵ֥ת (kārēt) suggests how the Son of Man saw his function as a radically separated historical and (new or reformed) hermeneutical moment executed by the anointed:

[EXT] After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 27 He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator (Dan 9:26–27, NRSV).[/EXT]. [/BL 1–5]

My interpretation is that the “heptad and the half a heptad” of the “people of a coming prince” (עַ֣ם נָגִ֤יד הַבָּא֙ ʿam nāgîd habbāʾ) cannot be part of the 70 weeks chronology. The seventy heptads are already accounted for in my exegesis, and a heptad and half-a-heptad add on time frame does not fit. Josephus identified the “coming prince” as the Roman emperor Vespasian (or his son, Titus). Josephus may be reading Vespasian’s career[11] to fulfill Dan 9:27, that “he [or it: the troops] shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator [or ‘desolate’].”[12]

This exegesis is consistent with identifying a healing messiah and the “something new” divine role outlined by the allegory in Ezekiel 17. Jesus symbolically linking in the parables his Kingdom with a new institution of the cedars is consistent with the conclusion of Ezek 17:22–23—the divine establishment of a new messianic role outside the physical temple establishment:

[EXT] 22 Thus says the Lord GOD:

 I myself will take a sprig

 from the lofty top of a cedar;

 I will set it out.

 I will break off a tender one

 from the topmost of its young twigs;

 I myself will plant it

 on a high and lofty mountain.

 23 On the mountain height of Israel

 I will plant it,

 in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,

 and become a noble cedar.

 Under it every kind of bird will live;

 in the shade of its branches will nest

 winged creatures of every kind (Ezek 17:22–23, NRSV). [/EXT]

Matthew quotes Jesus as identifying his Kingdom with similar though seemingly evolving or developing ecological images in Matt 13:31 (Cf. John 15:1ff).

If the proposals of this appendix have merit, they expose the faulty hermeneutics of “dispensational premillennialism” and its resulting tragic ethics. Because dispensationalism postpones the applicability of the Sermon on the Mount to a future “third-temple millennium” its leaders are complicit in syncretism with violent agon (and Christian totemism). I stand with my Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination that finds dispensational premillennialism subversive if not heretical.[13] It is a significant problem for those religious denominations which propose vicious readings of the Bible to base their claims in “biblical inerrancy” and “plain readings of Scripture” while deferring to an explosively and antagonistically idiosyncratic, pessimistic Darbyite hermeneutic that denies the timelessness of the Sermon on the Mount. This hermeneutic ironically allows poorly trained charlatans to convince their followers of a claimed “plain” but nonsensical view of God’s salvation history detailed in Scripture. Darbyite dispensationalism is not a “plain reading” of Scripture but instead twists it (2 Pet 3:16) with the ignorant acquiescence of those in the pews who propose to live inside an unfettered grace that demands no justice, few peaceful ethics, no virtue—no Sermon on the Mount. Paraphrasing Voltaire: those who can convince you of Darbyite nonsense can make you perform atrocities. Tragically, Christian forms have been recently and increasingly cemented to this project, continuing Christianity’s historical episodes of cooptation by—and syncretism with—toxic cultures and stupefying imperatives of political agon.

The end of this world is catastrophic for those who envision something other than the grace of God suffusing all who have chosen to humbly participate and embody it.  Catastrophe for those who have accorded their assurance in terms of exalting themselves and denying the eternal call of the Sermon on the Mount. For those who reject other-directed grace (the Golden Rule) as the metaphysical absolute of will, the omega point will come like a thief in the night.

For the blessed, there is no omega point. There may be a transition, but the seas will calm. Darkness will ebb its last to become ceaseless dawn’s palette and harmonies. The will of grace is becoming all-in-all. There is no hiatus: we are all under Christ’s millennial reign.


 



[1] This appendix substantially reproduces a 2014 essay by Olds, “Expect Something New.” https://web.archive.org/web/20220106172246/https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2014/12/expect-something-new-messianic.html

[2]  Evans, Craig. Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1992, 242–52.

[3] Reported by Hengstenberg, Christology, II. 274. Hengstenberg, E. W. Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1858. https://Bit.Ly/3plR3mH.

The Roman historian Suetonius in Divus Vespasianus 4 accords with Tacitus Hist. V. xiii. 3.

—Thomson, Divus Vespasianus, 4 n. 3. Thomson, Alexander, ed. C. Suetonius Tranquillus: Divus Vespasianus. Perseus Digital Library. https://bit.ly/3kh89TB.  

[4] The contents of this decree to rebuild a municipal center with (non-metaphorical) walls beyond temple repair (specifically in 7:25) may be consistent with Ezra's (later?) prayer:

 [EXT] Though we are slaves, our God has not forsaken us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem (Ezra 9:9, NRSV). [/EXT]

I do not argue that Ezra 9:9 is harmonized with Dan 9:25. The word to rebuild the municipal structure of Jerusalem is not Ezra's but contained in Artaxerxes' decree.

[5] See dating of Artaxerxes’ reign in Klein, “Artaxerxes,” I.275. Klein, Ralph W. “Artaxerxes.” In New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by K. D. Sakenfeld, 1:275. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006.

See also Gertoux, Gerard. “Dating the Reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes” https://www.academia.edu/2421036/Dating_the_reigns_of_Xerxes_and _Artaxerxes. 

[6] Downs, “Chronology of the NT,” I.260 (sec. A.3). Downs, David J. “Chronology of the NT.” In New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by K. D. Sakenfeld, 1:633–36. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006.

[7] Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 56. Schnelle, Udo. Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

The division inside the last week between Jesus’ crucifixion and the Gentile mission is implied by Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on Daniel. Translated with an introduction and notes by Robert C. Hill. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006, 255–57.

[8] See Kim, “Jehoiachin,” III: 207.

[9]  Richard S. “The Seventy Sevens of Daniel 9: A Timetable for the Future?” Bulletin for Biblical Research 21 (2011) 315–30. Vlach, Michael J. “Dispensational Theology.” The Gospel Coalition, n.d. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/dispensational-theology/.Hess

[10]“Dispensationalism can't be true because its fundamental conviction that the original, Old Testament people of God was an ethnic group is unbiblical. Israel was the church from its inception (Gen 28:3, 35:11, 48:4.).” https://twitter.com/JohnCarpenter64/status/1620127203592642560

[11] The terminus ad quem of the 70 week chronology proposed by Tertullian in Adv. Jud. 8 also aligns it with Vespasian's career.

[12] A preterist reading of this heptad period encompasses half-a-heptad as when Vespasian’s son Titus—a newly named Caesarian prince—set up and sacrificed to Roman standards (the “abominable” idols of Imperial Rome) in the temple precincts around 70 AD:

[EXT] AND now the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city, and upon the burning of the holy house itself, and of all the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns to the temple and set them over against its eastern gate; and there did they offer sacrifices to them, and there did they make Titus imperator. [/EXT]

—Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.6.1.

This event comes in or near the middle (half a heptad when temple sacrifices were disrupted) of the 66 to 73 (or 74) CE period of Judean rebellion (“the First Jewish Revolt”) that captured and possessed, then lost, the Roman garrison at Masada (a heptad).

See the dating in Shirokov and Lizorkin-Eyzenberg, “Jewish Revolts.” Shirokov, P. and Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg. “Jewish Revolts.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, L. Wentz, E. Ritzema, and W. Widder, Bellingham, WA:  Lexham, 2016.

[13] A precursor of the Presbyterian Church (USA), “the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States stated that dispensationalism is ‘evil and subversive’ (A Digest of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States 1861–1965 [Atlanta: Office of the General Assembly, 1966], 50; see also 45–49).”

—Cited in Walvoord, “Reflections on Dispensationalism,” n. 3. Walvoord, John F. “Reflections on Dispensationalism.” Bible.org, n.d. Accessed January 10, 2023. https://bible.org/article/reflections-dispensationalism.

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