Where Are You Headed? Where are You Needed?

Where Are You Headed? Where are You Needed? 

Sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds

19 April 2015

Stinson Beach Community Presbyterian Church, CA

Calvary Presbyterian Church, Bolinas, CA

Luke 24.36 While they were talking about this [appearance report], Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.

44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

Friends, to adopt a phrase by Kipling, There is a time to paint God of The Things as They Ought to be for The Things as We See Them. 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeeemer. AMEN.

“Huddling together behind locked doors, fearing that the authorities will come after them,

the disciples struggle to take in these strange reports of “Jesus sightings” and wonder what it all means.

Then suddenly, Jesus is there among them”!^[1]—and so they encounter the time for transformation of understanding and ethics, ever proceeding like all of Christian life a progress of turning and commitment to live life fully according to God’s reality.

Jesus is alive! Jesus the healer is himself healed of death.

And his first words to the fearing disciples is, “Peace be with you.”

He does NOT say to the disciples, “you are safe.”

We cannot escape our fears except by knowing we have peace with God.

“Behind what locked doors are we hiding? Hearing that dreaded word cancer?Unemployment, loneliness, and loss? Terrorist attacks?

The fear of death, our own or that of someone we love?”[2]

Our fears hold us captive, we huddle behind closed doors, the closed doors of traditions and clubs and even churches. It becomes difficult to give witness to the great joy that is ours—

that the bonds of death could not hold Jesus.

For Luke, the disciples’ failure to recognize Jesus in his resurrection is human blindness.

Blindness that that cannot discern what divinity and spiritual power ought to look like. 

And now, in our story of the resurrection from the end of Luke’s gospel, the disciples think they see a ghost. Yet the resurrected Jesus will not have Easter faith reduced to mere private spiritualism. 

“Look at and touch my hands and feet, see that they are flesh and bones,” he says.

Strangely, Luke tells us that their joy at seeing Jesus in body causes them still to disbelieve until Jesus invites himself to some food and the disciples see him eat. Like so many another episodes of meals that Luke employs throughout his gospel,eating a shared meal symbolizes Jesus’s ongoing mutuality with humanity. Only then are the disciples ready to learn the mysteries of the Hebrew Scriptures from the Resurrected One—how they foretell and describe the Messiah.

So the continuing teaching of the disbelieving disciples is the first point of Luke’s narrative.

The gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are enigmatic.  Jesus is resurrected not as a spirit, but in a flesh and bone body that bears images of his crucifixion but somehow transformed and not entirely recognizable. It is a mystery if this resurrection body is the final form that Jesus takes as the Christ,

 or whether it is a transition body before his being taken up into heaven and becoming re-embodied and renewed in the Church. 

This mystery is not solved for us. 

One thing about eternal life that Luke’s narrative does suggest is that we don’t lose our identity when joining with the divine spirit.This powerful portrait of the resurrected Jesus has him maintaining his identity and his friendships. In this, we can trust the Holy Spirit in our lives that has a particular regard for us as individuals, and we can take heart in our participation as God’s people, where Jesus’s rising into heaven is how his spirit is reconstituted in the Church. 

Here is the first message I have for you from this passage: 

We in the Body of the Church move through life as representatives of the resurrected Christ.

It is the Holy Spirit among us as a body of believers that can pass through locked doors when we have accessed to the hiding, reaching those huddling in fear.

Luke’s Jesus tells his disciples in the locked room,You are witnesses to these things,

“these things interpreted through the light of the scriptures interpreted through the lens of resurrection. Resurrection stories, like the Creation stories, show death to be part of a larger story of the unquenchable fertility of life.Hence, the seed must fall to the ground and die to produce abundance.”[3] Jesus must die so that God’s people--the church’s bodily presence--can increase.

The first question to witnesses is,Where is your presence needed in your walled-off communities of fear today?What closed rooms of denial and hopelessness can you access to bring the message of renewed life?

The second point of this narrative is that Jesus’s chosen people have a task to live this life NOW fully and abundantly for others. Mark Davis, the pastor of St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA writes,

“The usual course of resurrection-speak lessens the value of life by positing that, since there is life after death, the reality of death is nullified into a simple passageway from a lower form of being to a higher one. That, in turn, diminishes the meaning [of this life into] nothing more than a necessary pilgrimage toward that passageway to heaven. In the end, such an approach to resurrection leaves us with no reason to care about the environment, or health, or justice, or anything beyond the one concern of getting through the door to resurrection... What Luke [instead proposes…] is the reality-bending story of the resurrection.”[4]

Resurrection is the way of living wholly for God in order to have God’s spirit live in you.

Jesus has the disciples wait in Jerusalem for the arrival of Pentecost with his commission that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.

Remember that Luke often recounts Jesus taking meals with followers and the curious,

promoting the divine obligation of hospitality,“inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at his table.”[5] This passage asks, With which hungering and thirsting can you take a meal as a way of living in the benefits and joys of proclaiming our hope?—

proclaiming the forgiveness that comes from repentance of past sins, entrusting them to the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus in the scriptures means the God-backed historical reputation of Jesus’s saving message, crucifixion, and resurrection that promise forgiveness for those who repent.

God will fulfill the promise backed by the name of Jesus.

That is our trust.  Amen.

Here’s a philosophical suggestion from my simple understanding of the physics theory of relativity as it applies to the benefit of repentance--Relativity which relates time, matter, and light. 

The scriptures speak of God as light: the alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet symbolizing the spiritual ground of eternity and the final end of material creation.God, though timeless and eternal as Spirit, is always coming toward us as historical, material beings at the speed of light,for God desires relationship with all. But we move away from God at the non-negligible speed of sin--the anti-spirit opposition to God’s good creation.

According to my understanding of relativity, our destiny in sin is not part of the future creation read at lightspeed, but its fallen past. Yet when we repent, we turn and move at some accelerating commitment towards God who is constantly coming at lightspeed toward us.

This addition of velocities, ours and God’s toward each other, allows God to see the condition of our advancing heart to read and transform our future, so that in turning we die to the old life and plant the seed for a new life. In this, God’s eternal alpha Spirit becomes merged in God’s people as omega matter.

God is always drawn to our better nature—

the outbreaks of godliness in our biographies,

the times before we turned away, and better, when we turn toward.

In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables the ex-convict Jean Valjean,[6] under a new name,

had buried his past and became the prosperous mayor of a provincial town.

But one day he learned that in a neighboring village an old man arrested for stealing apples had been identified as the notorious and long-sought ex-convict, Jean Valjean.

       That news precipitated a crisis in the soul of the real Jean Valjean. Should he keep silent, or should he reveal his identity and be sent back to the gallows? Should he remain in a false paradise and become a demon, or repent in truth and become an angel of real life?

      A voice comes to him, saying, “Jean Valjean, there will be many voices around you which will bless you, and only one which will curse you in the dark.

All those benedictions will fall back before they ascend to God.”

       He fights an awful battle with his conscience all night in front of his fire, until, in the morning, he goes to the court about to pronounce sentence.

      There, the true convict stood up before the court and confessed, “I am Jean Valjean.”  Some thought that he was mad, and others pitied him for the sacrifice he had made.

As he left the courtroom, he said: “All of you consider me worthy of pity, do you not?

“When I think what I was on the point of doing, I consider that I am to be envied.

“God, who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and that suffices.”

Jean Valjean turns and moves toward God-- 

Through his trust in Jesus’ name—Jesus’ promise that God forgives, accepts and guides his future through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

This is Victor Hugo’s story of the power of trusting repentance.

Being sorry for sins is not enough.

Repentance is to be so sorry for sins that you’ve resolved to quit them.    

Which leaves us Luke’s second message this morning,

proclaiming repentance learned through the teaching of the resurrection.

This is how Christ comes to live in us—

To live through all his Church by his various gifts and individual ways of being in the world for others.

The power of the resurrection is the power to plant the seeds of repentance to live this life fully and abundantly for others. The hope of the resurrection is grounded in the renewed experience of those first followers. Closed minds can be opened.

Today’s text challenges us to abound in and cherish the resurrection now, fully and fearlessly:

It has us pick up where the prophet Isaiah 43 says,

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

Progress requires forward movement and leaving behind old ways of being, thinking and doing. This is the path of risk and it risks the ridicule of the closed minded, releasing us from destiny in a prophetic way, so that God can guide our futures and join our material beings with his Holy Spirit for eternal life. 

The word of God calls us to focus on Spiritual peace rather than material security.

Repentance in the light of the resurrection is the path of peace for those whom the past’s search for security is not an option. It is the path of the intrepid and courageous who perceive what God is doing for the future, where no one has ventured ahead except in the death-defying Spirit of Christ. 

The word of our God is a claw hammer:

it either drives us forward or draws us away.

Let us gently hammer home Jesus’ pioneering work and healing on earth.  

“Arise, shine, for your light is come!

Fling wide the prison door,

Proclaim the captive’s liberty

Good tidings to the poor…

Arise, shine for your light is HERE,

Rise up like eagles on the wing,

Bind up the broken-hearted ones.

God’s power will make us strong!"  AMEN//

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^[1] Blakely, N. R. (2008). Pastoral Perspective on Luke 24:36b–48. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B (Vol. 2, p. 424). Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press.

[2] Ibid

[3] Mark Davis, http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-resurrection-hermeneutics-luke-2436-48/ accessed 041414.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Henri Nouwen.

[6] The text of the next two paragraphs is abridged and edited from “4968 Jean Valjean Could Not Remain Silent” in Tan, P. L. (1996). Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times (p. 1133). Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc.

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 13:31–32) 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 70^th 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 36:22–23 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, 70^th 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.

 

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[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.