Ephraim Stern in the previous edition. Now Abba Hillel Silver - July 2012 Awake!

by AnnOMaly 7 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  AnnOMaly

  P.24.

  Prophecy 3: "From the going forth of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Leader, there will be seven weeks, also sixty-two weeks."-Daniel 9:25.

  Fulfillment: The period of time specified in Daniel's prophecy amounts to 69 units of 7 years each, or 483 years. The rebuilding of Jerusalem began in 455 B.C.E. As prophesied, 483 years (69 weeks of years) later, in 29 C.E., Jesus became the Anointed One, or Messiah, when he was baptized and anointed with God's holy spirit.*-Luke 3:21, 22.

  * For more information on this prophecy relating to the timing of the Messiah's appearance, see pages 197-199 of the book What Does the Bible Really Teach? published by Jehovah's Witnesses.

  What history reveals: In the early part of the first century C.E., "the people were in expectation" of the Messiah's arrival. (Luke 3:15) In his book A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, Jewish scholar Abba Hillel Silver writes that the period before the destruction of Jerusalem "witnessed a remarkable outburst of Messianic emotionalism." He also notes that "the Messiah was expected around the second quarter of the first century." The anticipation of the Jews, Silver writes, was based on "the popular chronology of that day."

  Apparently Silver is concurring with the idea that the Jews' Messianic expectations around the 'second quarter of the first century' was based on the above mentioned 69 'weeks of years' calculation in Daniel - 'the chronology of that day.' Right? Isn't this the impression the reader is meant to go away with? (The 455 BCE date is another discussion.)

  As with the Ephraim Stern quote in the previous Awake!, this isn't the first time Abba Hillel Silver has been quoted on this. A search of the latest WT Library CD-ROM reveals that this author is cited at least 5 times to support the idea that the Jews expected the Messiah on the basis of Daniel's 'weeks of years' prophecy. One example:

  w84 4/1 pp. 13-14 pars. 14-16 Jehovah's Word Is Sure!

  Hence, the 69 weeks of years from 'the word to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Leader' amounted to 483 years (7 × 69) and extended into 29 C.E.

  15 In that year John the Baptizer was busy "preaching baptism in symbol of repentance for forgiveness of sins." And what about the Jews? "The people were in expectation and all were reasoning in their hearts about John: 'May he perhaps be the Christ?'" (Luke 3:3-6, 15) With regard to such expectation, Jewish scholar Abba Hillel Silver stated: "The first century, however, especially the generation before the destruction [of Jerusalem], witnessed a remarkable outburst of Messianic emotionalism. This is to be attributed . . . not to an intensification of Roman persecution but to the prevalent belief induced by the popular chronology of that day . . . The Messiah was expected around the second quarter of the first century C.E." That "popular chronology" was based on the book of Daniel.

  16 Daniel's prophecy had indicated that the 69 weeks of years would extend into 29 C.E. Well, did the Messiah appear on time in that year? Indeed he did!

  [Italics in the original.]

  However, Silver does not mention the 69 'weeks of years' in connection with 'the chronology of the day.' While he mentions the book of Daniel, he specifically alludes to Dan. 12:13 - "the end of days" (p. 4) which the Jews believed related to the Millennium. 'The chronology of the day' Silver was talking about was the end of 5000 years of the Jews' Creation calendar which, the Jews anticipated back then, would "usher in the sixth millennium - the age of the Kingdom of God" (p. 6) and he further noted that 'the second quarter of the first century' was a "period of many Messianic movements" [emphasis mine]. This puts a whole new light on it, does it not?

  You can read the full section yourself at http://www.scribd.com/Abegael88/d/89480223-Abba-Hillel-Silver-A-History-of-Messianic-Speculation-in-Israel, pp. 3-13. See also p. 16-19.

  So again, we have yet another case of selecting small pieces of an author's comments and using them to bolster a position that the author himself wasn't supporting.

  School Guidebook, study 31 p. 155 par. 11 Convince Your Audience, Reason with Them

  A word of caution. All evidence must be used honestly. Do not take a quotation out of context. Make certain that what you say is exactly what the authority you are quoting had in mind to say. Be specific in your references.
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  Cadellin
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  Cadellin

  Geez--I thought I was using Firefox!!

  Okay, so where's my previous post??? AAGH. And it was a good one too!
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  Cadellin

  Well anyway, thanks, AnnOMaly for posting that--very interesting. Looks like the boys in Brooklyn are still up to their old unethical tricks when it comes to using sources.

  A bigger problem, IMHO, is how they arrive at the year 29 CE for the arrival of Christ. It requires quite a bit of chronological tapdancing in order to rationalize an earlier date for Artaxerxes' reign and to make everything else seem to work. The Daniel book has a few pages on the WT's unique brand of Persian chronology; even when I was active and studying it in the bookstudy, I thought it sounded a stretch!
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  Leolaia

  Very interesting, AnnOMaly. Indeed, it does appear that the Society here is wrongly applying Silver's comment to Jewish exegesis of Daniel 9 when, in fact, Silver refers to "the opinion universally held that the year 5000 in the Creation calendar, which is to usher in the sixth millennium — the age of the Kingdom of God — was at hand. It was this chronologic fact which inflamed the Messianic hope of the people rather than Roman persecutions" (p. 6). This Anno Mundi dating has no more relation to the Seventy Weeks passage than the Society's 1975 speculation (re the completion of 6,000 years of human existence) did.

  I might also point out that Silver's assertion is questionable. Silver wrote in the 1920s; long before the discovery of most of the Dead Sea Scrolls and before much of the modern scholarship on the Second Temple period. Silver states that 1) Messianic hopes were inflamed by A.M. chronology re the completion of millennial periods and 3) reckoning the year 5000 A.M. as falling sometime in the first century AD was "universally held". These claims are exaggerated. First of all, chronological speculation on the timing of the end of the world/Judgment Day (which is not necessarily messianic) did not necessarily orient itself to millennialism. The later actually was a rather late and atypical stream of eschatological thought, found mainly in Barnabas 15:4, Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 5.28.3, b Sanhedrian 97a, and Pirqe R. Eleazar 28; none of these sources date to the first century AD. And none of these sources actually construct a chronology in an attempt to determine when the final millennium would begin. A variety of different chronographical and periodized schemes are attested in the late Second Temple period. The Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch (third century BC) expects that Judgment Day would occur after 70 generations have elapsed since Enoch's day; this is likely the reason why the Lukan genealogy of Jesus regards Jesus as born in the 77th generation (with Enoch being the 7th generation from Adam). The Animal Apocalypse (second century BC) reckoned the end times -- including the appearance of the Messiah (1 Enoch 90:37) -- from a period of 70 watches accorded to apostate angels (possibly embracing a period of 490 years), and the Apocalypse of Weeks (second century BC) periodized history from creation into a series of ten grand "weeks" (likely a week of jubilees, consisting of 343 years each), leading to "eternal judgment" occurring "in the tenth week in the seventh part". 11QMelch (first century BC) expected Melchizedek to execute divine judgment and "establish a righteous kingdom" after ten jubilees (= 490 years), and the Testament of Levi (first century BC) similarly claims that a corrupt priesthood would prevail for ten jubilees until the Lord raises up a "new priest" who would bring "peace in all the earth". The expectation in the Assumption of Moses (early first century AD) comes closest to Silver's scheme: it claims that 2,500 years spanned between Creation and the death of Moses and from Moses' death and burial "until [the Lord]'s coming there will pass 250 times" (1:2, 10:12). If the 250 times = 2,500 years, then Moses' death occurs midway in the history of the world and the Day of Judgment (as well as the the appearance of the end-time priest Taxo), with the latter occurring 5,000 years after Creation. But there is no use of a millennial scheme here or a concept of a messianic millennium; rather the author reckons the end as occurring after fifty 50-year jubilees after Moses' death....so we are dealing with jubilee rather than millennial thinking. But it most definitely not "universally held" that the year 5000 A.M. fell in the first century AD. The Septuagint and Josephus put the creation of the world somewhere around 5500 BC (about 500 years too early), the Seder Olam Rabbah dated it to 3751 BC and Hillel II put it at 3761 BC (about 1,250 years too late), and the Masoretic text has the date around 4000 BC (about 1,000 years too late). The dates range around and none of the actual chronological schemes place it around 5000 BC. Also the logic of the millennial schemes in Barnabas and elsewhere put the end times after 6,000 years (with the sabbath rest following), not 5,000 years.

  Also the Society's interpretation of the Seventy Weeks passage in no way corresponds to early Jewish interpretations of this survey of history and the use of this text as an oracle prophesying the Messiah. The Society, following the Theodotionic revision of the LXX instead of the Hebrew, lumps together the two indefinite anointed ones mentioned in the passage ("an anointed one, a ruler" coming at the beginning of the 62 weeks and "an anointed one" cut off at the end of the 62 weeks), and chronologically locates the arrival of the Messiah by the timing of the "cutting off" of the anointing. The early Jewish interpretation did not view the "anointed" ones as messianic figures but as the high priests of the Second Temple, with Jeshua ben-Jozadek being the "anointed ruler" starting the 62 weeks and with the priesthood continuing throughout the Second Temple period until it would be "cut off" (cf. the Theodotionic text referring to a cessation of "anointing") in advance of the Temple's destruction during the 70th week. The messianic figure expected in the prophecy was not either of the anointed ones mentioned but the "coming ruler" who installs the Abomination of Desolation and destroys the Temple; this interpretation was facilitated by regarding the "coming ruler" as the same Gentile figure as the Shiloh figure in Genesis 40:10. I highly recommend William Adler's article "The Apocalptic Survey of History Adapted by Christians: Daniel's Prophecy of 70 Weeks" (pp. 201-238), published in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (ed. by James VanderKam and William Adler, 1996), which lays out the early history of how the Seventy Weeks passage was interpreted. In the late first century BC, the "coming ruler" was interpreted to be Herod the Great (of Idumaean, i.e. Gentile descent) who had murdered the high priest Hyrcanus II (the last of the Hasmoneans) and who tore down the Temple in order to rebuild it. There is even a story in the Slavonic recension of Josephus of the priests using the Seventy Weeks prophecy to count down the years to determine when Herod's rule would come to an end (completing the 70th week). Then in the first century AD, the "coming ruler" was interpreted to be Vespasian and the cut-off "anointed one" was Ananus, the high priest assassinated 3 1/2 years before Jerusalem's destruction. This was Josephus' own implied interpretation and he acclaimed Vespasian as the messiah prophesied in scripture (who indeed became "world ruler" on Jewish soil). The synoptic gospels have a related interpretation, seeing Daniel 9 as foreseeing the events of AD 66-70, identifying the "abomination of desolation" with the Roman forces of Vespasian and general Titus (which desolated the sanctuary), thereby associating Vespasian with the "coming ruler" of the prophecy. The Seder Olam Rabbah also engineers the chronology in order to make the 490 years end in AD 70. There is no trace of a Christian interpretation associating Daniel 9 with Jesus Christ until the early third century AD. The early interpretation of Hippolytus retains many features of early Jewish exegesis of the text. In harmony with the MT and in contrast with the very Theodotionic rendering he was citing, he distinguished between the two anointed figures and recognized that a large span of time (62 weeks) separated the two from each other. He recognized that the reference is to the high priesthood of the Temple and he identified the first anointed figure as Jeshua ben-Jozadek (which in the opinion of most scholars is what the author of Hebrew Daniel probably intended). But he obtained a christological interpretation by following the Theodotionic text which has, instead of a second "anointed" being cut off at the end of the 62 weeks, a ceasing of the "anointing" which he construed as occurring when the Temple veil was ripped during the crucifixion. This is quite a different interpretation than the one espoused by the Society which depends on the Theodotionic conflation of the two anointed figures, lumping together the initial 7 with the later 62 weeks. The idea that this prophecy about the desolation of the Temple could be used as a chronographical datum to date the arrival of the Messiah arose later in the third century AD, cf. especially the varied chronographical schemes pursued by Julius Africanus. However even Eusebius in the fourth century AD still advanced the interpretation that the "anointed one, a ruler" from Daniel 9:26 was meant to signify the high priesthood of the Temple from Jeshua to Hyrcanus II (reckoning 483 years from the rebuilding of the Temple under Darius II to the 15th year of Augustus Caesar when Herod was appointed ruler), brought to an end by Herod the Great, the "coming ruler".
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  breakfast of champions

  Thanks-- this is all great stuff, especially this:

  School Guidebook, study 31 p. 155 par. 11 Convince Your Audience, Reason with Them

  A word of caution. All evidence must be used honestly. Do not take a quotation out of context. Make certain that what you say is exactly what the authority you are quoting had in mind to say. Be specific in your references.
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  AnnOMaly

  Thanks for all your comments - especially Leolaia's. When I was following the quote trail, it raised questions about how exactly the Jews interpreted the 69/70 weeks of years back then. Doug Mason (in an email a few hours ago - he also drew my attention to his own study where, incidentally, he references Adler a lot) also pointed out that the application of the 69/70 weeks of years to Jesus the Messiah originated in the 3rd century CE. Most interesting - I did not know that as this was one of those topics shelved until I was ready to look at it. I also came across the thought (Silver and elsewhere) that the Jews strongly discouraged the interpretation of Dan. 9 because it was not meant to be understood until the end time.

  I'm going to have to read your post (Leo) a few times before the details will sink in, but I found your comments about Silver's questionable assertion on what was universally accepted intriguing.
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  Leolaia

  I also came across the thought (Silver and elsewhere) that the Jews strongly discouraged the interpretation of Dan. 9 because it was not meant to be understood until the end time.

  Hmm, I'm not sure about that. It seems pretty freely interpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and those inclined to utilize Daniel for apocalyptic speculation had no problem making reference to it (such as the synoptic gospels and Revelation). Of course, the Christians and many Jews did believe they were at the end times anyway. And it is a modern misundertanding to interpret the Danielic references to "sealing" as stating that the understanding of the book was sealed to the end times; it was the book itself that was sealed up until the end times (a conceit to explain why no one had seen this book before when it was published), a trope also utilized in the Assumption of Moses and subverted in Revelation (in which the author is told to NOT seal up the book, as the fulfillment was supposed to occur right away). Since the apperance of the current form of Daniel can be dated to c. 164 BC, the unsealing is presumed to have occurred around that time. Perhaps by the first century AD, the passage of two centuries would have necessitated a reinterpretation of the sealing references, although it can be noted that the "end times" were moved up from the Seleucid era to then-present domination of the Rome (the reinterpretation of the "fourth kingdom" as Rome is made explicit in 4 Ezra, written at the end of the first century AD, where it is stated that the Roman interpretation is not the one originally offered by the prophet Daniel). Josephus was also very oblique in his references to Daniel as the specific "ancient oracle" prophesying the victory of Rome, but that is because he did not want his Gentile patrons to know that the same prophecy spells the doom to this kingdom.

  One rather interesting angle is the possibility that Jesus' adversaries (or later Christian adversaries) construed Jesus as either fulfilling the "coming ruler" role, or as a pretender to that role. This would have been the kind of interpretation of the Seventy Weeks oracle in the first century AD that could have potentially had it relate to Jesus. Although a few may have embraced the idea of the Messiah fulfilling this role (such as the Herodian party wrt Herod and Josephus wrt Vespasian), most Jews would have viewed such a person corresponding to the "little horn" of Daniel as an evil figure. But the attested "slanders" against Jesus recorded in the gospels and in early Christian literature are suggestive. Jesus was thought by some to have Gentile ancestry, the son of a Roman named Panthera/Pantira. Jesus was condemned on the basis of hearsay testimony about his intent to destroy the Temple: "He said, 'I have the power to destroy the Temple of God and raise it up in three days' " (Matthew 26:61, cf. John 2). And during the festival of Hanukkah, when Jews' attentions were particularly focused on the actions of Antiochus Epiphanes and the book of Daniel, Jesus stood at the Portico of Solomon (the only portion of the complex surviving from the First Temple) and infuriated the Jews by his teaching, who want to stone him for "blasphemy because you, a mere man, claim to be God" (John 10:33). This perfectly fulfilled the role of the end-times antagonist in Daniel, the "little horn" and "coming ruler" who would despoil the Temple, who "had a mouth that spoke boastfully ... against the Most High (Daniel 7:20, 25), who "will exalt and magnify himself above every god and say unheard-of things against the God of gods" (11:36-37). When Antiochus recants of his deeds on his deathbed, he says: "It is right to submit to God; no mortal man should equal himself to God" (2 Maccabees 10:12); this is very close to the thought in John 5:18 in which the Jews wanted to stone Jesus for "making himself equal to God". And the main charge when Jesus was crucified was that he was the "King of the Jews", suggesting that he was convicted of being a messianic pretender. So it is possible that some might have thought that the Seventy Weeks prophecy pointed to Jesus as the "coming ruler" who would despoil the Temple, or at least as taking upon himself the "little horn" role from Daniel. Credit goes to James VanderKam who first proposed such an idea, in a CBQ article iirc.