Talk:Prophecy of Seventy Weeks

Ugarit

The figure of Danel/Daniel from the texts of [Ugarit]], does not seem to be a king as mentioned in this article. He is described as a righteous judge, or a wise man. His patron deity "Rp'u" was possibly another name for El, a supreme deity for the Canaanites. Dimadick (talk) 08:15, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Changed to "judge". This correction doesn't seem to have any bearing on the rest of the content.--Jeffro77 (talk) 08:20, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Christological readings

AlphabeticThing9, I'd like to suggest a new way of writing the Christological readings section.
For a start, the title should Christian millennialism - this isn't Christology (the nature of Christ), it's eschatology (study of last things, more popularly called millennialism).
More fundamental is the structure of the section. It should address a few basic questions, namely which passages in Daniel 9 refer to Jesus, how the "weeks" are to be interpreted, and what the beginning and end points might be. Varying answers have been given to each of these.PiCo (talk) 21:47, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Historicist interpretation

The Historicist interpretation is a valid Christian interpretation showing the 70 weeks as a prophecy of the coming of Jesus as the 'anointed one' or Messiah. It has been held by many of the Reformers and scholars and was in the text as part of the Christological readings section. Now as to whether it should stand alone, or be blended in again as a viewpoint is another option which can be looked at. Editors should not throw out valid points of view, that may not be to their liking, but still are well founded and defensible. Simbagraphix (talk) 10:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

As too whether other groups should be included, they were, and can be seen in other sections of Daniels prophecies. See Chapter 8: The Ram, He-Goat and Horn in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Simbagraphix (talk) 10:45, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Most sources which you have added are either outdated or unreliable. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:58, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

True, but we may need to search for modern sources concerning Christian history. Dimadick (talk) 11:49, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

I will continue to work on the article and we can go from there, but lets be open minded, rather than taking out what is well founded interpretation which the Reformers were holders of, just because we may not hold it. Simbagraphix (talk) 11:55, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Note about WP:SOCKs: I am not sure who is the sock now, but in the past the article has been haunted by sockpuppets. Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:29, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

This is obviously blatantly promotional and poorly-sourced material being added here, and at this point Simbagraphix has been adding it over the objections of at least three editors: myself, PiCo, and Tgeorgescu. Seriously, just read this paragraph:

• To understand 70-week prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27, one has to use the key. The Prophecy of Seventy Weeks becomes clear, as pointing to the messiah using the prophetic day-year principle. Using this, the 69 weeks, or the 483 years of Daniel 9, culminates in A.D. 27. Now "unto Messiah the Prince" makes sense and indicates the time for the coming of the "anointed one" or Messiah, with the final week during His ministry. It is not the time of the Messiah's birth but when He would appear as the Messiah, and this is right when Christ took up His ministry after being baptized. Thus the prophetic day-year principle correctly points to the anointed as the Messiah in A.D. 27 or the fifteenth year of Tiberius, not in the future or modern time. While there are other possible ways of reckoning, the beginning point of 457 B.C. as the starting point of the 70-week prophecy as the Messianic prophecies points to Jesus as the Messiah.

For an editor with 7,000 edits to do this is ridiculous. One should have some idea about Wikipedia's standards by this point. Alephb (talk) 13:23, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

On a brighter note, Simbagraphix has done us all a favor by pointing out the existence of similarly poorly sourced material over at the Daniel 8 page. Alephb (talk) 13:39, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

The Historicist interpretation has been since Jewish ancient times all the way to Christ, through the early church, the Protestant Reformers all the way till now, when you have certain people or religious entities trying to hide what has always been there or trying to come up with alternative views which obscure what was once much clearer and understood by scholars and laity alike.Simbagraphix (talk) 00:39, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

That's kind of WP:THETRUTH, in fact it is just a POV among many others. Failure to recognize that theology is subjective and arbitrary opinion as far as Wikipedia is concerned is not a mark of being a competent editor. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:12, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

This whole business of reverting over multiple editors then telling them all to "take it to the talk page" isn't the typical Wikipedia process. It is the editor who is alone on a question who should be "taking it to the talk page".

The latest edit adding Walvoord's book published by Moody Press is just one more example of Simbagraphix editing out of line with the principles of WP:RS. Check out this newest gem:

• Prominent leaders, theologians, and scholars among them, including John Wycliff, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, Isaac Newton, Campegius Vitringa, William Whiston, and John Thomas, John Knox, and Cotton Mather, and many others. -- John F. Walvoord, The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1966), 18.

Notice, first that even though there's a period at the end, that thing's not a sentence, so it's not actually claiming anything in particular. And that "Moody Press" is the distinguished publishing house that produced Joseph Dillow's The Waters Above: Earth's Pre-Flood Vapor Canopy, which is such a scientifically preposterous exercise in creationist "science" that even the other creationists have disavowed it as unworkable. This is looking more and more like a competence issue.Alephb (talk) 02:33, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

We are looking to the contention as to the validity which is what is the question, so if you think that is settled, then we go from there. Simbagraphix (talk) 13:06, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

It is not the purpose of this article to 'establish the validity' of historicism as a method. Do not add superfluous content about the history of the method to this article.--Jeffro77 (talk) 05:24, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Undecided whether the whole section is necessary, but there is definitely undue weight to the SDA view.--Jeffro77 (talk) 09:47, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, I think the most efficient way to go about this is cut through the whole knot and remove the section, while of course allowing for any editor who wants to to add some well-sourced and appropriate content to do so. Instead, what's happening so far is that anyone who removes any poorly-sourced content is being met with immediate restoration of the poorly sourced content by a single editor, and then even more poor sources added. I suppose that if multiple editors wanted to fix all the problems piecemeal, that would be possible, but it would probably take a persistent group of editors to pull it off.

One example among several of the problems: there's a giant table that claims a whole bunch of expositors as proponents of "historicism", sourced entirely to the 1946, 1948, and 1950 works of someone called "Froom". But no corresponding entry for who this "Froom" is exists in the article -- and "Froom" is cited a number of times in the article, even outside the table.

One concern I have here is that some of the material might be copy-pasted from other Wikipedia articles similarly afflicted with poorly-sourced Adventist content, although I welcome clarification of where this text is coming from. Alephb (talk) 15:37, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

I have trimmed the section, reducing 1) a bunch of content about historicism more broadly and doesn't belong at this article at all and 2) undue weight to the SDA view.--Jeffro77 (talk) 04:52, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I think that's a pretty good start. Alephb (talk) 05:07, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

"Moody Press" is an an alias for Moody Publishers, a company that focuses on publishing "Christian books". It is apparently fully owned by the Moody Bible Institute. They are quite a bit biased when it comes to matters of Christology. Dimadick (talk) 10:08, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

And on history their track records shows that they make no serious attempt to separate fact from fantasy. Alephb (talk) 19:01, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

The same can be said for the U.S. Congress and they get quoted, but hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and I will work on the sources when I get back shortly.Simbagraphix (talk) 13:39, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I see some additional superfluous detail about the historicist method is creeping its way back in (sigh). There is significant duplication between the Christological readings and Historicist interpretation sections, and this needs to be reduced rather than adding material. I see no reason why historicism requires a special introduction whereas futurism is not handled the same way (and there is no reason for this article to go into an out-of-scope explanation of futurism either. I will merge the sections relevant to scope and weight.--Jeffro77 (talk) 03:09, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

The whole concept of "historicism" could use more sourcing as to its definition. Right now the article defines it by fiat: "Christian historicism interprets prophecy as an overview of the history of the Christian church, asserting connections between historical events and statements in the Bible, and distinguishing between prophecies considered already fulfilled and those still to come." That definition isn't sourced, and is awful broad. Does Christian historicism interpret all prophecy as an overview of the history of the Christian church? By this definition, very few Christians are historicists. Not even Adventists, who surely read some biblical prophecies as referring to things other than the Christian Church. Or does Christian historicism interpret some prophecy as pertaining to the Christian Church. In that case, just about 'all Christians who believe in biblical prophecy at all are historicists.

Proceeding from this vague definition, the article then burnishes the credentials of "historicism" by announcing that various Protestant reformers were historicist. In the case of William Tyndale, this was done by citing one of William Tyndale's own sermons, which referred to prophecy a number of times but never used the term "historicism". The combination of an unsourced definition plus use of individual's own writings to pattern-match them to historicism amounts to original research. Alephb (talk) 05:08, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I've started removing unsourced material. A lot of it superficially looks sourced, because there's footnotes, but the footnotes, to an astonishing degree, do not directly support the claims being made in the article. It's really bad. It's just chock-full of original research. Alephb (talk) 05:46, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

As indicated before I started changing the article, I have merged the previously redundant repetition of the two sections into a single section, and removed much of the undue weight that was given to the historicist view. This article should not seek to define historicism (especially in the absence of a corresponding consideration of futurism), it only needs to give the historicist view of the Prophecy of 70 Weeks; broader consideration of the topic is out of scope here. If people want to learn more about "the whole concept of "historicism"", they should read that article.--Jeffro77 (talk) 06:53, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree on scope. However, even if someone thought you were defining scope too narrowly here, they shouldn't be putting in original research. A well-sourced off-topic excursus on historicism would be better than a badly-sourced off-topic on historicism, while no off-topic excursus is even better. Alephb (talk) 20:23, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's worth discussing content that is out of scope and no longer present in the article, but obviously in principle material should be properly sourced. (If the material is reintroduced, inappropriate scope and sourcing are both valid arguments for removal.)--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

The intent of the undue weight previously given to the historicist view (and which I feel some editors will want to reintroduce) seems to have been to give the impression that the idea has been around for a long time (appeal to tradition) and that lots of people believe it (argumentum ad populum).--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:42, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. A lot of this material was cribbed from Adventists apologetic writers, and the talk page history makes it clear that the goal was to demonstrate that the Adventist view is "valid". Alephb (talk) 03:39, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Consensus

Many Christian scholars disagree with the theologically traditional-orthodox view, since:

Modern Bible scholarship/scholars (MBS) assumes that:

• The Bible is a collection of books like any others: created and put together by normal (i.e. fallible) human beings; • The Bible is often inconsistent because it derives from sources (written and oral) that do not always agree; individual biblical books grow over time, are multilayered; • The Bible is to be interpreted in its context: ✦ Individual biblical books take shape in historical contexts; the Bible is a document of its time; ✦ Biblical verses are to be interpreted in context; ✦ The "original" or contextual meaning is to be prized above all others; • The Bible is an ideologically-driven text (collection of texts). It is not "objective" or neutral about any of the topics that it treats. Its historical books are not "historical" in our sense. ✦ "hermeneutics of suspicion"; ✦ Consequently MBS often reject the alleged "facts" of the Bible (e.g. was Abraham a real person? Did the Israelites leave Egypt in a mighty Exodus? Was Solomon the king of a mighty empire?); ✦ MBS do not assess its moral or theological truth claims, and if they do, they do so from a humanist perspective; ★ The Bible contains many ideas/laws that we moderns find offensive;

• The authority of the Bible is for MBS a historical artifact; it does derive from any ontological status as the revealed word of God;

— Beardsley Ruml, Shaye J.D. Cohen's Lecture Notes: INTRO TO THE HEBREW BIBLE @ Harvard (BAS website) (78 pages)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:17, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Christian interpretation of the prophecy - Messianic Jews as well

In the short form it predicts the coming of a Messiah or anointed one, and that Messiah is Jesus

Now somewhat longer

From the time when an edict goes out to restore Jerusalem, to the time of the coming of the Messiah is 7 and 62 weeks (of years) or 69 weeks (of years). This is generally taken to mean 483 years (69 times 7).

There are 4 Persian edicts which can be taken as the starting point of this prophecy. Two are for the rebuilding of the Temple, the 3rd for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the 4th an affirmation of the 3rd. The third is therefore the preferred starting point.

This third edict is dated to the 7th year of Artaxerxes who is currently thought to have ruled from 465 to 424 BC. The 7th year of his rule is 458 BC. Adding 483 years to 458 BC bring us to 25 AD. Was there a Messiah preaching an everlasting covenant in Jerusalem in 25 AD? Billions of Christians think so!

The prophecy continues "26Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off" There is a period of 7 weeks and then a period of 62 weeks. Two periods that total 69 weeks (of years). After the second period is over (in 25 AD) the Messiah will be "cut off" meaning killed. Was the Messiah preaching in Jerusalem killed at some point after 25 AD. Billions of Christians think so! It's called the Crucifixion!

The Messiah will have a week to preach the covenant during which he will put an end to sacrifices. "27And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering." Billions of Christians believe that the Crucifixion put an end to sacrifices and offerings.

Also in Daniel 8:27 is a related prophecy " Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed."

The people reference are the Romans and the prince is Titus, the son of Emperor Vespasian, who destroyed both Jerusalem and the Temple. Once you have the starting date the prophecy is actually easy to decipher. You also arrive to the conclusion that the Book of Daniel is actually a REAL book of prophecy and and not fiction as purported by some atheist "authorities" with an ax to grind.

https://evidenceforchristianity.org/when-was-the-decree-to-restore-and-rebuild-jerusalem-issued-daniel-925/

The third “decree” in Ezra is that of Artaxerxes in Ezra 7:11-28. This is a decree to actually rebuild the city. The decree comes from the seventh year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:8). This is somewhere around 458 BC from what we know of Artaxerxes’ reign from outside sources. This decree actually resulted in the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.174.128.111 (talk) 15:02, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Not remotely tenable

@AndriesvN: The idea that the Book of Daniel has historicity does not fly with mainstream academia. If you want to assert it as a matter of true belief, that might be so. But as a historical view is not even remotely tenable. WP:CHOPSY laugh at it, sneer at it. See more at Yale Bible Study, Daniel: Who Was Daniel? on YouTube. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

69 weeks are how many years?

In the second paragraph under Christological readings, one reads the following: "... making up a period of 69 weeks (483 years)". Now this doesn't seem to be a typo, since it's immediately followed up by a timeframe of around 483 years, but how on earth does 69 weeks equal 483 years? If it does however make sense in some way, I think it should be specified in order to avoid confusion. I hope someone more qualified than me sees this. Thanks in advance! Momsemann (talk) 22:02, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Nevermind, earlier in the article it's clearly specified that these weeks are 7-year intervals... and thus 483 makes sense as it's the 69th multiple of 7. Momsemann (talk) 22:05, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Saadia Roman theory. Undue weight?

There are extensive references to the writings of Saadia added to the end of the "historical-critical" section that do not appear to belong there and certainly require qualification. I don't think there's any controversy that the book of Daniel predates Titus and the Roman era. So, a theory that Daniel refers to Titus is also an assertion that this is a true prophecy. That is a religious argument, not a historical one and belongs in a separate section. It also requires some sort of explanation as to the proposed timeline because Titus's campaign was 6 centuries after the end of the Exile. Duxbag (talk) 08:02, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

"I don't think there's any controversy that the book of Daniel predates Titus and the Roman era." The composition date is estimated to be within the 160s BCE, with the book having veiled references to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (reigned 175-164 BCE) and the Maccabean Revolt (167-141 BCE). Dimadick (talk) 11:51, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. Saadia's claim is that Daniel was describing events that occured centuries after the book was written. It's the argument of a religious person who believes in prophets and divine revelation. That's fair enough, but it's not "historical". We have another section that's basically the Christian version of that, but we're missing a place to put other religious interpretations, especially Jewish ones. Duxbag (talk) 10:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)