THE SEVENTY-WEEKS PROPHECY OF DANIEL 9:24-27. . . 23
argued for this principle based on Second Temple and early rabbinic Jewish
mterpretation of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9:24-27 as weeks of years.!> Shea
did not explore the historical development of expectation nor the implications of
such expectation for validating the prophecy itself.
By contrast, in One Who Is to Come, Joseph Fitzmyer traces the development of
the messianic idea mn Judaism and early Christianity, arguing for its mception in
Daniel 9:24-27. Whether that text plays an incipient role or a pivotal role,
Fitzmyer’s work 1s significant mn that his treatment of the primary sources
foregrounds the messianic significance of Melchizedek on account of its reference
to the seventy-weeks prophecy. In Fitzmyer’s exhaustive survey of the Second
Temple literature, Melchizedek is the only source that explicitly combines
apparently messianic language with an allusion to the seventy-weeks prophecy.
Finally, Lester Grabbe, writing mn the decade following Beckwith’s initial
publication on the subject, yet seemingly unaware of, or independent of,
Beckwith’s work, found that the “70-weeks prophecy—in whatever form—served
as a basis for apocalyptic speculation for two centuries until the fall of the Temple
m [AD] 70.717 Surveying the same sources as mentioned above, Grabbe links the
Damascus Document’s anticipation of a “Teacher of Righteousness” to the
seventy weeks.!® While acknowledging our historical ignorance of the textual
sources for any possible religious motivations for Jewish first-century revolts,
Grabbe finds hints that Daniel 9:24-27 may have been in the background of
Josephus’s description of the final days of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem
in AD 70.19
Ben Zion Wacholder is the author of the earliest secondary source consulted in
this research. In 1975 he attempted to correlate the dates of messianic figures to
sabbatical years, including John the Baptist, Jesus, and Bar Kochba.?’ Taking the
Bln Hebrew usage, the time periods that the concept of a week organizes mto cycles
of seven can be either days (as in the English usage) or years. The latter type of week can
be referred to as a “week of years” (Lev 25:8) or a sabbatical cycle. Seven weeks of years 1s
a jubilee cycle (Lev 25:10). In this research, “sabbatical chronology” refers to the
periodization of history, mcluding predicted events, according to sabbatical and jubilee
cycles.
“Despite the best efforts of Joseph Fitzmyer, messianic expectation cannot be
reduced to the use and interpretation of the word wn” (John J. Collins, Scriptures and
Sectarianism: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls |Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014], 101).
"ester 1.. Grabbe, “The Seventy-Weeks Prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27) in Harly Jewish
Interpretation,” in The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertexctuality in Honor
of James A. Sanders, ed. Craig A. Evans and Shemaryahu Talmon (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 611.
18Thid., 601-602.
19Tbid., 605.
“Ben Zion Wacholder, “Chronomessianism: The Timing of Messianic Movements
and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles,” HUCA 46 (1975): 201-218.