The great and awesome Day of the Lord

[Mithrae]

As y'all know despite being raised as one I'm no longer a Christian and haven't been for over a decade: I don't accept core Christian doctrines (eg. I'd only guess ~70-90% probability for the existence of some kind of 'God' and consider it significantly more probable than not that Jesus didn't rise from the dead), and more importantly I don't even adhere to the teachings of Jesus (to sell what you have and give to the poor, don't worry about tomorrow but trust in God's provision, stop working for money and start working for the kingdom of God).

But I try to keep an open mind, and over the past ten months or so I've been troubled by the topic of biblical prophecy. It actually began all the way back in 2011, when one prophecy enthusiast came to the forum with all kinds of fallacies and arbitrary conclusions, claiming that his pet theory had only 112 trillion to one odds of being false. So in response I did a more objective assessment, and came up with something like 100 to one instead; which is not mind-blowing or miraculous, but is still somewhat intriguing.

I've privately gnawed on that issue at times over the years, but never managed to falsify it to my own satisfaction and even found a couple of additional points worth considering too. So hopefully the rest of you can help prove me wrong.

As I see it, if a prediction has been made and parts of it had already come true, that's either coincidence or it's indicative of genuine foreknowledge. Hence the likelihood that the rest will come true is the inverse of the likelihood that the first part was coincidence. (Plus the likelihood that it would happen anyway, prophecy or no, but in the case of biblical prophecies that's basically zero and therefore irrelevant.) That is absolutely critical to my reasoning, but I can't find a fault with it: Either the fulfillment of the first part was coincidence or it was indeed foreknown, and if it was foreknown then the rest of it presumably is foreknown also; so the likelihood that the first part was not coincidence is roughly the same as the likelihood that the whole prophecy is genuine.

Thus we have -
Prediction: Prophecy and interpretation
Confirmation: Signs and complete fulfillment

The biggest problem I've found with many Christian prophecy enthusiasts is that they tend to include their interpretation as part of the 'sign,' like that fellow from 2011 (and with some particularly enthusiastic folk, simply make up what constitutes a sign from whole cloth!), and that's a key error I've tried to avoid in my reasoning. In each case I've tried to justify an interpretation of biblical prophecy as legitimate, not arbitrary, and only then begun to consider how likely it is that the 'sign' which came to pass is mere coincidence. I will try to be as brief as possible with the signs I've been interested in, but I'll still put them in another post because this is already getting on the long side for an OP. However I'll briefly comment on two of the most obvious objections first:

1 - Biblical prophecies are too vague
It's a fair point, but firstly, that is why I've tried to specifically quantify the likelihood of a fulfillment or 'sign' being mere coincidence, distinct from and after establishing a legitimate interpretation; and secondly, what would the alternative be? If a prophecy were very specific then anytime since 400 CE or so basically any 'fulfillment' would be subject to the criticism that it was engineered by Christians to match the existing prophecy. Some miraculous exceptions which could not possibly be engineered by humans might apply (though not for any of the ones below), but then there's the endless debate over whether there's good reasons why a deity would not openly and universally reveal himself in such a manner. Criticisms on those grounds are not particularly valid to my mind, since they simply assume certain things about what 'God' or prophecy should be like, rather than addressing the actual data available.

2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return) falls more into this category than being a valid objection in its own right, I think; after all on its own, it amounts to nothing more than the absurd 'some prophecies are false therefore they all are.' However the more nuanced recognition of how large numbers interact with the notion of coincidence is important, and is potentially valid, if it can be shown that that the real probability of a 'fulfillment' is in fact other than what I have calculated. I have tried to be careful in considering other scenarios, other possible 'fulfillments' in my estimations of probability, so I don't consider it a valid objection to blithely state that it simply must have been more probable than I've concluded.



Questions for debate:
Is the reasoning above valid, particularly the section in blue?
And if so, are the assessments of probability for the prophecies/signs in post #2 correct (or at least reasonable)?

[Mithrae]

What I find strange is that you were seemingly insisting that there should be a noteworthy marker or event which would further explain the 7-62 division, in contrast to your previous suggestions that the passages as written could/should refer to even the most trivial things like regular eclipses or unimportant anointed ones. But I might have misunderstood you.

That's a fair criticism, though it's one that can be applied in reverse as well (since you insist Joel must be talking about something major, but you are OK if Daniel isn't).

But for me it's mostly a grammar thing I guess. Joel simply said "Sun into darkness", which doesn't imply anything about how interesting the event is beyond just that. But the 7-62 split implies something happened at a specific time, even if it's not an especially interesting event.

Again, it is not simply "sun into darkness" - else you may as well start arguing that he was talking about the nighttime before the day of the Lord - it is signs or wonders in the heavens and the earth; blood, fire and pillars of smoke on the earth, with darkened sun and bloody moon in the heavens. Nor have I said that there needn't be something significant to Daniel's 7/62 split - quite the opposite, I've provided two plausible significances to it - I've simply pointed out that even if we were ignorant of what it might mean it would not change how remarkable it is that the 69 sevens as a whole proved to be correct.

From what I've seen Christians tend to suggest that 7 sevens refers to the period during which Jerusalem "will be rebuilt with streets and a trench [Septuagint; wall], but in times of trouble." It's difficult to puzzle out the chronology of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, but if Jerusalem had walls when Ezra arrived there (Ezra 9:9), then since Nehemiah returned to build those walls in the 20th year of Artaxerxes I it would imply that Ezra's return was in the seventh year of Artaxerxes II (7:1,8). If so, then that was around 48 years after Nehemiah's return, and Ezra's religious restoration of the people would make a fitting complement to Nehemiah's structural restoration of Jerusalem. So by all means, go with that perspective if you think it is more appropriate - it does have a lot going for it.

That is certainly better, in that it provides an explanation. I was suspicious that it makes sense grammar-wise though. Being as I don't understand Hebrew, I found this site to be pretty useful.
http://christianthinktank.com/punctydan9.html
About halfway down it shows all the Hebrew mapped directly to its English meaning. It appears to me that English and Hebrew have very similar grammar compared to that of English and Japanese (the one foreign language I know).

Supposedly, punctuation didn't exist in ancient Hebrew, so basically it has to be inferred. Naturally, the religious interests of the translators will determine the outcome.

The main point of interest here is where the stop goes between (A) and (B). Jews prefer (A) and Christians prefer (B).


I see no objective reason whatsoever to think it should be (B). It makes the whole passage weird and confusing for no reason. And then to suppose the "wall and moat" part is what is being referred to by the seven sevens just makes it all the more ridiculous.

It's actually a small miracle in itself that the passage is even as clear as it is, since it's based on the Jewish scribal tradition culminating in the extant text of the Masoretes in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. It's a credit to the dedication and integrity of those Jewish scribes that for centuries they preserved words so readily understood in reference to Jesus with apparently little or no tampering of their meaning.

A textual tradition which probably was largely distinct from the Hebrew since before the time of Jesus is the Greek Septuagint, so that might be worth considering also:

• Daniel 9:25 And thou shalt know and understand, that from the going forth of the command for the answer and for the building of Jerusalem until Christ the prince seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks; and then shall return, and the street shall be built, and the wall, and the times shall be exhausted.
  26 And after the sixty-two weeks, the anointed one shall be destroyed, and there is no judgment in him: and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince that is coming: they shall be cut off with a flood, and to the end of the war which is rapidly completed he shall appoint to desolations.

'Christ' is simply the Greek equivalent of Hebrew 'messiah' of course. I don't know anything about the grammar of either Greek or Hebrew, but this seems to support what you have dubbed the Christian translation. As for which makes more sense, have you looked at the alternative? Seven sevens until an anointed prince sure, that's fine, but then for sixty-two sevens the city is being built with its wall. Imagining that it takes 434 years to rebuild a city makes a lot less sense than the slightly stilted phrasing of the 'Christian' translation!

(Although the initial view I suggested - that of seven sevens from Herod's temple work to Jesus' death - could make some speculative sense of that alternative translation, with messiah coming seven sevens after a construction project in Jerusalem and Daniel, misunderstanding, aghast that the temple seemingly still hadn't been completed after those sixty two sevens.)

Either way, the fact remains that Daniel predicted that a messiah would be "cut off" sixty-nine sevens after the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and that "The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary." Regardless of whether that prediction was made in the 2nd or the 6th century, it's impressive that history's most significant messiah was indeed killed on schedule, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and - for the one and only time in the past 2500 years - the Jewish temple. Can I take it from the absence of further comment that you'd agree this is quite remarkable?

No. Not in the sense you are implying. I mean, of course the fact that it can be interpreted that way is interesting, but it is hardly convincing.

The argument rests on a lot of assumptions- the period(s) of time being as you advocate, the idea that the person described was meant to be The Messiah, and the destruction of the temple some decades later being what is referred to.

I think all of these assumptions can be seriously questioned.

The period of time is not an assumption; it clearly says seven and sixty-two sevens from the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, which happened in the time of Nehemiah. I agree that it's possible to bend and twist and question the biblical record that Jerusalem essentially 'lay in ruins' until that time (Nehemiah 2:3) - lacking the defenses mentioned by Daniel and its former stature as a regional center - but all such efforts that I have so far seen look more like attempts to avoid the plain meaning of the verse than anything else.

That the passage refers to the coming of an "anointed ruler" or prince - m--a n- - is not an assumption either; it's plainly written there in the verse itself! Of course the significance of this messiah being "cut off and left with nothing" or "destroyed, and there is no judgement in him" (Septuagint) or "cut off, but not for himself" is open to question, but that the prophecy is about more than just some random priest or prince dying a normal death is clear.

And nor is it an assumption that it predicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple shortly afterwards. Yet again it's plainly written there: "The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary." One of the most common criticisms about Jesus (or his earliest followers) is that he/they apparently told his disciples to expect the destruction of the temple and his final return to occur within a matter of decades at most, and Daniel's abomination of desolation is explicitly cited in the gospels as the reason for that expectation. Of course by their day it might not have been particularly hard to guess that Roman rule and insensitivity might one day come to a head against Jewish unrest and anticipation of a more glorious messiah, but evidently their expectations were shaped by Daniel's prophecy also. If the temple had stood unmolested for hundreds of years after the death of this messiah that'd be one thing, but the two were well within living memory of each other (in fact about as many years as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness in punishment for rejecting their first chance to enter the promised land).

Never mind Daniel 9:27 which seems like a complete non-sequitur by the Christian interpretation.

It's a non-sequitur by any interpretation, but as I've shown there is a pattern set by substantial gaps even in the 'historical' material of chapter eleven, and 9:25-27 imply such a gap themselves: The seven and sixty-two sevens are distinguished but also explicitly tied together, unlike the 70th seven; the temple is destroyed in 9:26 but there's sacrifices and offerings in 9:27; and in between the two we have the indefinite ambiguity of "War will continue until the end."

[FarWanderer]

Even if there were thousands of universally-acknowledged instances of prophetic foreknowledge, the existence of incorrect predictions generally, a few probably fraudulent prophecies and dozens of potentially false ones would make a 99.99999% prior confidence that any particular example is genuine an unreasonable position, wouldn't you agree?

I agree but I am not sure how this scenario is relevant to anything. Right now we have zero universally-acknowledged instances of prophetic foreknowledge, but plenty of incorrect predictions. However, some incorrect predictions don't invalidate prophetic foreknowledge in general (as you would rightly argue).

The real situation is that there are presumably thousands of universally-acknowledged examples of false or fraudulent prophecy, but genuine knowledge of future events does occur,

All undisputed foreknowledge is based on induction.

there's a number of prophecies which plausibly could be genuine, plus dozens of potentially genuine ones:

You are begging the question.

And you've suggested that for any given prophecy there is a 99.99999% prior confidence that it is not genuine (0.00001% prior confidence that it's genuine).

You then asked about the converse scenario, which would be one in which there are thousands of universally-acknowledged instances of prophetic foreknowledge, but with the existence of incorrect predictions generally, a few probably fraudulent prophecies and dozens of potentially false ones: However you've agreed that a 99.99999% prior confidence that a given prophecy is genuine would be an unreasonable position in that case.

When I said the converse is true, I simply meant that any failed prophecy is evidence against all prophecies. I was not talking about an entirely mirrored scenario.

Furthermore, you are incorrect about the implications of that mirrored scenario, because you are making the same mistake again here as you did with Joel: neglecting the principles behind Baye's theorem. The expected outcomes between foreknowledge and guessing are not symmetrical. If a prophecy is fulfilled then that doesn't prove it was foreknowledge, however if a prophecy is not fulfilled then that DOES prove it was NOT foreknowledge. This asymmetry is extremely important when assessing the meaning of what evidence we have. It's why Baye's theorem exists.

Again, some measure of scepticism about any particular claim may be reasonable, but you simply have not provided the evidence to justify your position that this single point utterly overwhelms any other evidence about date of composition, and as an unwarranted premise it is a circular approach to the question of whether or not such foreknowledge ever occurs.

I'll have you know that from my perspective you are doing the exact same thing that you call "circular". You appear quite arbitrary and dogmatic that a 1-10% (or w/e) prior expectation is "reasonable" (constantly insisting something is "reasonable" is not an argument). As far as I can tell you seem to think "reasonable" skepticism warrants "some" reduction in the prior expectation, but I can't for the life of me understand why "reasonable" skepticism would set the prior expectation at 1-10% and not some other % (be it lower OR higher). Therefore what you are doing here appears to me as entirely arbitrary (meanwhile you keep asserting that I need to provide evidence).

That being said, I completely acknowledge that I haven't made a convincing case for my position. I don't even know where to start, because the topic is so broad it may as well be a general debate about whether the supernatural exists at all.

But that is not only my problem. It is yours just as much.

It might be, if you defined what 'natural' is supposed to mean in order for 'supernatural' to be a meaningful juxtaposition. Pretty much every attempted definition of the terms that I've seen have been either circular (eg. definitions of 'natural' which presupposes materialism or philosophical naturalism) or useless in this context (eg. definitions which suppose that there are proscriptive 'laws of nature' but acknowledge that our descriptive laws may not be too close to the mark, or definitions of 'natural' which simply mean 'normal' and thereby imply that 'supernatural' is just anything that's not so common!). Until then I don't accept that what you're describing is a valid distinction; it seems to me you're engaging in a category error.

Interesting you should raise this objection, because I was only using the term "supernatural" to mirror your language for the sake of facilitating discussion.

Question: Does this word "prophetic" rely on the term "supernatural" for its definition? And if it doesn't, what does it mean?

As for what is reasonable, hopefully the above provides some clarification. As I said in my previous post, what we're talking about are largely questions of behaviour rather than mechanical probabilities, so a precise level of confidence may be impossible to assign, but your 0.00001% figure literally demands better evidence than convicts people of murder before you'd consider a prophetic example even half as likely to be genuine as not. It's not all that difficult to see why that is unreasonable.

There isn't an argument here, just an assertion.

But the point of discussion is to refine our ideas after all, and it's good to have nominated a ballpark figure to at least begin discussing.

Well I am glad you think our discussion has been and/or will be of value.

That was broadly the kind of point I wanted to raise a few months ago in my thread on the 'Miracle of Calanda,' in which the only plausible alternative explanation for 3-4 doctors' testimony of a man who allegedly regrew an amputated leg would be to invoke a conspiracy among them not because of but to explain away the available evidence. For my part (building on my earlier research into the alleged miracles at Lourdes) I figured the conspiracy to be perhaps twice as likely as the miracle; but besides one Christian asserting 100% confidence in the miracle not a single other person offered even a ballpark estimate of how plausible they found the conspiracy theory 'explanation.'

Just a little cursory research and it appears that we only have evidence of one doctor supporting his claim.

The means by which Daniel acquired his knowledge is not unknown; he wrote that it was told to him by an angel.

This misses the point. After saying the thing about the means being unknown, I said we "don't know if it's even possible to begin with". We don't know if angels are even possible to begin with.

This seems to be little more than sophistry, perhaps based on the same category error as above. There is no reason to suppose that angels are impossible, not even any compelling reason to suppose that they don't exist as far as I know,

Trying to burden me with proving a negative.

while we have some observational evidence suggesting that they do. That positive evidence for their existence clearly is not conclusive: But you seem to be suggesting that we first need to "know" - something approaching certainty, again? - that a thing is 'possible' before even considering it at all. Unless I've misunderstood you somehow, it's just a more semantically-sophisticated way of supposing that it's impossible until proven otherwise, rather than accepting and evaluating whatever information and evidence is available on its merits.

I didn't say we couldn't consider it. That's why I give these kinds of claims a probability higher than 0%.

By "unknown", I am half meaning "undefined". This links back to your complaint about the use of the word "supernatural". I do not know what "prophetic" foreknowledge is as opposed to other kinds of foreknowledge, nor do I have a clear conception of what an angel even is, either. Since angels and prophecy are commonly considered to be defined as examples of the supernatural, if there is a category error then angels and prophecy are part of it.

In fact there have been observational reports of encounters with angels from a range of cultures in all periods of human history, even among secular folk in this era of science and universal education. "A 2007 Baylor Religion Survey found that.... 20 percent of those who identified themselves as having no religion also claimed having encountered an angel."

And what do you think "having no religion" means in this context? Not "secular" if you ask me.

If you look at what kinds of angels exist in what times and places, it's clear they mostly evolve with the collective unconscious. And of course the only evidence they leave behind is someone's unverifiable experience, or some happy event attributed to them after the fact.

That's incorrect: There are videos on YouTube of "Angels caught on camera!!!" if you care to look at that sort of thing. Do you accept them as compelling evidence of angels' existence, or will you suppose that they're probably optical illusions, hoaxes or doctored videos? How high would you set the bar of what you'd consider 'acceptable' evidence?

I'm not sure. Define "angel".

Not everything in the world is subject to repeatable scientific experimentation, obviously. Even in the inhabited land surfaces of this planet in the past century, humans have observed probably less than 1% of all that's occurred... in tiny fractions of light and sound frequencies... and what scientists have observed is well under one percent of that!

So what's your point? That angels with knowledge of the future might be hiding deep in the Amazon rain forest?

"Secularity... is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion," although I'm not sure why that is a point of contention. Perhaps you assume that anyone who reports seeing an angel must be some crazy cultist by definition?

"Spiritual but not religious".

I can certainly understand scepticism about religious folks' reported encounters with angels; I can understand scepticism about non-religious folks' reported encounters too, for that matter. But ~20% of secular folk in a modern country with universal education is hardly an inconsequential figure. I don't see any justification for dismissing it out of hand as evidence for the plausibility of Daniel's source of knowledge.

The number of people unaffiliated with any particular religion who still believe in the "supernatural" is not insignificant. My father is one of these people. No religion, but believes in astrology and prophetic card spreads.

And angels have been part of our culture for thousands of years. Even modern atheists often underestimate how much of their thinking is informed by the religious ideas of their cultural ancestors.

As for the question of circularity, we are debating the question of the appropriate prior expectation right now. There is no logical fallacy for simply disagreeing as to what it ought to be, whether we provide evidence or not. What would be a circular (question-begging) argument would be ignoring this disagreement and moving past it with the implication that the other must necessarily accept the conclusion. This I have not done at all, though you did it when you declared the 50/50 thing.

Actually, I'll take that back. You could argue that I did beg the question when I said that divine foreknowledge was an extraordinary claim. You disagreed with that.

Still, I am sure you at least would agree that divine foreknowledge is more extraordinary than post-event knowledge. That's the main point, and why the 50/50 thing is bogus.

I think you've misunderstood... and the figures I used were in the range of 30-70%.

You also said "roughly 50/50" at least once, so I was just going with that as shorthand for convenience. As far as the assessment of the historical data, I am fine with taking your word for it for the sake of the discussion.

You at one point said this:

Absent the circular assumption that its predictive content proves later authorship, its claim to have been written in the 6th century BCE is as likely true as not, give or take - there's good arguments for both sides. Hence we're left with a roughly 50/50 possibility that it's genuine prophecy.

Which is bogus because you are implying that the only way to avoid accepting a 50/50 chance if it being genuine foreknowledge would be through the employment of circular reasoning. But it's actually your own reasoning here that begs the question because it rests on the assumption that pre-event writing and post-event writing are equally plausible explanations generally (as opposed to historically).

'bout time for bed anyways, so I'll come back to the rest of your post later. Apologies for my infrequent responses at the moment by the way: Had to shift my sleep schedule around to crazy Vancouver hours so I can watch as much of the Dota 2 International live as possible

Take your time. I can use the breaks.

From what I've seen Christians tend to suggest that 7 sevens refers to the period during which Jerusalem "will be rebuilt with streets and a trench [Septuagint; wall], but in times of trouble." It's difficult to puzzle out the chronology of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, but if Jerusalem had walls when Ezra arrived there (Ezra 9:9), then since Nehemiah returned to build those walls in the 20th year of Artaxerxes I it would imply that Ezra's return was in the seventh year of Artaxerxes II (7:1,8). If so, then that was around 48 years after Nehemiah's return, and Ezra's religious restoration of the people would make a fitting complement to Nehemiah's structural restoration of Jerusalem. So by all means, go with that perspective if you think it is more appropriate - it does have a lot going for it.

That is certainly better, in that it provides an explanation. I was suspicious that it makes sense grammar-wise though. Being as I don't understand Hebrew, I found this site to be pretty useful.
http://christianthinktank.com/punctydan9.html
About halfway down it shows all the Hebrew mapped directly to its English meaning. It appears to me that English and Hebrew have very similar grammar compared to that of English and Japanese (the one foreign language I know).

Supposedly, punctuation didn't exist in ancient Hebrew, so basically it has to be inferred. Naturally, the religious interests of the translators will determine the outcome.

The main point of interest here is where the stop goes between (A) and (B). Jews prefer (A) and Christians prefer (B).


I see no objective reason whatsoever to think it should be (B). It makes the whole passage weird and confusing for no reason. And then to suppose the "wall and moat" part is what is being referred to by the seven sevens just makes it all the more ridiculous.

It's actually a small miracle in itself that the passage is even as clear as it is, since it's based on the Jewish scribal tradition culminating in the extant text of the Masoretes in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. It's a credit to the dedication and integrity of those Jewish scribes that for centuries they preserved words so readily understood in reference to Jesus with apparently little or no tampering of their meaning.

The Masoretic text places the stop (atnach) at (A).

A textual tradition which probably was largely distinct from the Hebrew since before the time of Jesus is the Greek Septuagint, so that might be worth considering also:

• Daniel 9:25 And thou shalt know and understand, that from the going forth of the command for the answer and for the building of Jerusalem until Christ the prince seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks; and then shall return, and the street shall be built, and the wall, and the times shall be exhausted.
  26 And after the sixty-two weeks, the anointed one shall be destroyed, and there is no judgment in him: and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince that is coming: they shall be cut off with a flood, and to the end of the war which is rapidly completed he shall appoint to desolations.

'Christ' is simply the Greek equivalent of Hebrew 'messiah' of course. I don't know anything about the grammar of either Greek or Hebrew, but this seems to support what you have dubbed the Christian translation. As for which makes more sense, have you looked at the alternative? Seven sevens until an anointed prince sure, that's fine, but then for sixty-two sevens the city is being built with its wall. Imagining that it takes 434 years to rebuild a city makes a lot less sense than the slightly stilted phrasing of the 'Christian' translation!

Meaning it will be in a rebuilt state for 434 years. Probably.

Tense is difficult to translate from biblical Hebrew. By my understanding there is no reason to suppose "be built" is not perfect tense.

(Although the initial view I suggested - that of seven sevens from Herod's temple work to Jesus' death - could make some speculative sense of that alternative translation, with messiah coming seven sevens after a construction project in Jerusalem and Daniel, misunderstanding, aghast that the temple seemingly still hadn't been completed after those sixty two sevens.)

For the third time, the first sentence of Daniel 9:26 says the messiah will be cut off after the 62 weeks NOT 7 weeks.

Either way, the fact remains that Daniel predicted that a messiah would be "cut off" sixty-nine sevens after the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and that "The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary." Regardless of whether that prediction was made in the 2nd or the 6th century, it's impressive that history's most significant messiah was indeed killed on schedule, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and - for the one and only time in the past 2500 years - the Jewish temple. Can I take it from the absence of further comment that you'd agree this is quite remarkable?

No. Not in the sense you are implying. I mean, of course the fact that it can be interpreted that way is interesting, but it is hardly convincing.

The argument rests on a lot of assumptions- the period(s) of time being as you advocate, the idea that the person described was meant to be The Messiah, and the destruction of the temple some decades later being what is referred to.

I think all of these assumptions can be seriously questioned.

The period of time is not an assumption; it clearly says seven and sixty-two sevens from the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, which happened in the time of Nehemiah.

No it does not. It is not clear that the time periods are consecutive. Nor is it undisputed which the "decree" is being referenced.

I agree that it's possible to bend and twist and question the biblical record that Jerusalem essentially 'lay in ruins' until that time (Nehemiah 2:3) - lacking the defenses mentioned by Daniel and its former stature as a regional center - but all such efforts that I have so far seen look more like attempts to avoid the plain meaning of the verse than anything else.

That the passage refers to the coming of an "anointed ruler" or prince - m--a n- - is not an assumption either; it's plainly written there in the verse itself!

Not disputed, except to say that the standard Jewish/secular interpretation is that 9:25 and 9:26 refer to two distinct anointed ones.

Of course the significance of this messiah being "cut off and left with nothing" or "destroyed, and there is no judgement in him" (Septuagint) or "cut off, but not for himself" is open to question, but that the prophecy is about more than just some random priest or prince dying a normal death is clear.

OK. So this person is important enough to appear in a prophecy. Does that make him the one and only savior of Israel? Or humanity for that matter? This is not even remotely conveyed by the text, since this person does nothing in the prophecy but die and serve as the trigger for war and desolation.

Never mind Daniel 9:27 which seems like a complete non-sequitur by the Christian interpretation.

It's a non-sequitur by any interpretation,

Daniel 9:27 New International Version
He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."

Daniel 12:11 New International Version
From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.

but as I've shown there is a pattern set by substantial gaps even in the 'historical' material of chapter eleven, and 9:25-27 imply such a gap themselves: The seven and sixty-two sevens are distinguished but also explicitly tied together, unlike the 70th seven;

Who is the "he" referred to in 9:27? Seems clear to me it's the same person who destroyed the temple. Who else would it be?

the temple is destroyed in 9:26 but there's sacrifices and offerings in 9:27;

There is no mystery here. The word translated as "destroyed" is shakhat. As you will see, it can mean a number of things that don't entail the cessation of the temple's existence.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 122 by FarWanderer]

The Jehovah's Witnesses interpretation is as follows: We count from 455 BCE

Further on 455
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 489#909489



Further
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/book ... s-messiah/

Bible Lecture Gerrit Lsch: Fortified by "the Prophetic Word" [5"30]
https://tv.jw.org/#en/mediaitems/Studio ... 03_1_VIDEO