I wanted to say a little more about the 70 weeks of Daniel 9. Although the interpretation that has the "prophecy" culminating in the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes (of 169-164 BC) far better respects the overall context of the passage than the interpretation that extends its fulfillment all the way to the lifetime of Jesus in the first century AD, there is one significant problem: 490 years, counting from when the "word" was given to Jeremiah on the rebuilding of Jerusalem (cf. Jeremiah 31:38-40, c. 587 BC if interpreted in light of the following verse in 32:1; compare also 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 and Ezra 1:1-4 which refers to the "word of Yahweh that was spoken through Jeremiah" on the building of the Temple), does not end in the reign of Antiochus but extends to 97 BC. If one presumes that the author of Daniel instead used the chronological datum of Jeremiah 25:1 as the date the "word" went forth (i.e. 605 BC; v. 11-12 mention the "seventy years" of Daniel 9:2, but it is in ch. 29-31 that specific reference is made to a return and rebuilding), this only brings us to 115 BC with an excess of 49 years. As it is, nothing of significance is known for 654 BC despite some strained attempts to start the 490 years from that date. But there two things all these attempts miss.
First, as pointed out in the first article of this thread, it is not known what the system of reckoning used by the author of Daniel was. While dates for the Seleucid era are fixed by the uniform system based on the year 312 BC (used in 1 Maccabees 13:41 and elsewhere), it is quite possible that the author was confused as to the length of the preceding Persian period. We find a marked ahistoricism in such Second Temple period works as Esther and Judith which take great liberties with historical details and chronology (cf. Judith 1:1, 4:3, 5:19; Esther 1:1a-e, 2:6). And Daniel itself inserts an unknown "Darius the Mede" into the Medo-Persian period (cf. 6:1-20, 26-29), with an unknown length of reign. In fact, Daniel 2:39 indicates that a Medean kingdom was to intervene between the Babylonian and Persian kingdoms (compare 6:29). This may partly explain the 67-year discrepency between Daniel's chronological schema and history. Yet since Daniel is represented as living to the third year of Cyrus (10:1), Daniel's Medean period could not have been for very long if internal consistency is assumed. Daniel 10:1, 11:2 also lists only five kings of Persia (i.e. Cyrus, "three more kings," a "fourth richer than all the others"), as opposed to the nine known from history. It is not known what duration Daniel would have attributed to their reigns.
My second point, however, is that Daniel may not have been interested in the actual chronological facts of the period at all. This is because the length of the 490-year period is entirely motivated by religious symbolism that would have overridden whatever specific chronological facts may have existed. 490 years as a unit of time represents an intersection between two distinct ways of computing time through sacred numbers: the "sabbath year" system and the "Jubilee" system of Leviticus 25-26. The most important passage runs as follows:
"For six years you shall sow your land, for six years you shall prune your vine and gather its produce. But in the seventh year the land is to have its rest, a sabbath for Yahweh....You are to count seven weeks of years -- seven times seven years, that is to say, a period of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years. And on the tenth day of the seventh month you shall sound the trumpet; on the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout the land. You will declare this fiftieth year sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the inhabitants of the land. This is to be a jubilee for you; each of you will return to his ancestral home, each to his own clan" (Leviticus 25:1-10).
Thus the 490 year period produces 70 sabbath-years (70 being a sacred number as a multiple of 7 x 10), or 10 jubilees (10 itself being a sacred number). In other words, 490 in Daniel is computed either as 70 x (7 x 10) or 10 x (7 x 7). The above passage also have features that have relevance to the devastation and exile of the Jews following 587 BC. It is during the period of devastation that "the land had its rest" from cultivation, and it was after the completion of the exile that the Jews "returned to their ancestral homes". In fact, this connection is made in the next chapter:
"And if, in spite of this, you do not listen to me but set yourselves against me, I will set myself against you in fury and punish you sevenfold for your sins....I will make such a desolation of the land that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. And I will scatter you among the nations. I will unsheathe the sword against you to make your land a waste and your towns a ruin. Then the land will observe the sabbaths indeed, lying desolate there, while you are in the land of your enemies. Then indeed the land will rest and observe its sabbaths." (Leviticus 26:27-34).
Now we see where the 490 years of Daniel comes from. It comes from an interpretation of the 70 years of Jeremiah that interprets them as years of desolation (whereas in the original Jeremiah prophecy they are only years of servitude) but treats them as multiples of 7 because the curse in Leviticus promises to "punish you sevenfold". Thus it is 7 cycles of 70 years, or 490 years. The 70 years itself, on the other hand, represents an accumulated 70 sabbath-years that the Israelites failed to observe. This implies a preceding 490-year period of disobedience. There is a similar interpretation in 2 Chronicles which smuggles the Leviticus sabbath-years into Jeremiah's original prophecy:
"They burned down the Temple of God, demolished the walls of Jerusalem, set fire to all its palaces, and destroyed everything of value in it. The survivors were deported by Nebuchadnezzer to Babylon; they were to serve him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. This is how the word of Yahweh was fulfilled that he spoke through Jeremiah, 'Until this land had enjoyed its sabbath rest, until seventy years have gone by, it will keep sabbath throughout the days of its desolation" (2 Chronicles 36:19-21).
This raises the issue of Carl Olof Jonsson's interpretation of the 70 years prophecy of Jeremiah. He is undoubtedly correct that within the context of Jeremiah, the 70 years denote a period of servitude and Babylonian supremacy. This necessitates an earlier starting-point for the 70 years than the desolation of 587 BC (as Babylonian supremacy and Judean servitude existed before then). However, I believe his analysis is a little weak with respect to how the 70-year period is treated in Daniel and 2 Chronicles. It is technically true that 2 Chronicles only mentions the terminus of the 70 years as ending when "the kingdom of Persia came to power," thus opening up the possibility that the "sabbath rest" and the "seventy years" had different lengths. However the parallelism between the two temporal expressions seems to disfavor this analysis. It is entirely possible, casting aside the presumption of biblical inerrancy, that Daniel and 2 Chronicles proposed a different interpretation of the 70 years than Jeremiah. However there is one fact that seems to support Jonsson's interpretation, tho equivocal as it is. If we assume that the author of 2 Chronicles did not imply that the sabbath rest was identical in length to the seventy years and only refers to both ending at the time "the kingdom of Persia came to power," and if we additionally assume that the author knew that the period of desolation was 49/50 years by the time of Cyrus (depending on 587/586 as the year of Jerusalem's fall), then one interesting chronological fact follows. If the land observed a 49-year sabbath rest, then we would assume that it was preceded by a 343-year period (7 x 49) which was marked by disobedience from the Law. Well, perhaps coincidentally, if we add up the chronological data contained within 1 and 2 Chronicles on the length of the reigns of the Judean kings, 343 years is exactly the length of time of the Divided Kingdom (930 BC to 587 BC). Moreover, the same 343-year period is mentioned in another 70 weeks of years prophecy (from the Testament of Levi), as we shall soon see. However, the correspondence may well be a coincidence. Conversely, 490 years preceding 587 BC would lead us to 1077 BC -- a period antedating even the United Kingdom of Saul according to the chronological data of the books of the Chronicles.
Daniel, on the other hand, by interpreting Jeremiah's 70 years in light of the "punish sevenfold" clause of Leviticus 26:27-28 (which turns 70 into a multiple of 7 x 70, or 490 years), appears to indeed equate the 70 years with the sabbath rest period. It even explicitly mentions the curse from Leviticus 26: "The whole of Israel has flouted your Law and turned it away .... He has carried out the threats which he made against us and against the princes who goverened us, that he would bring so great a disaster down on us that the fate of Jerusalem would find no parallel in the whole of the world. And now all this disaster has happened to us, just as it is written in the Law of Moses" (Daniel 9:11-13). However it is possible that, like what is suggested for 2 Chronicles, Daniel may treat the exile and the period of desolation as having two different lengths. This is because Leviticus mentions two separate things: a 50-year jubilee period for "return of slaves" and a shorter 7-year sabbath period that pertains to the land remaining fallow. The 50-year period is suggested by 49 years of captivity for the Jews (e.g. 587/6 BC to 538/7 BC) and a release from captivity the following year (e.g. 537/6 BC). Since "one week" in the 70 weeks prophecy is equivalent to one 49-year jubilee period, it is therefore of note that 70 weeks of Daniel 9 (cf. 9:25) is subdivided first into an initial week that runs "from the time the word went out to return and rebuild Jerusalem" (i.e. in 587/6 BC) to "the coming of an anointed Prince" (i.e. 538/7 BC), who is usually identified with Cyrus the Great or Daniel's fictional Darius the Mede. The edict of Cyrus of Ezra 5:14, on the return from exile, is usually dated to 537 BC and the foundation of the Second Temple is laid in spring 536 BC according to Ezra 3:8, 5:16. The year for the exiles' return would thus fall on the traditional jubilee. However, as for the 70 years of Jeremiah, these are not really 70 literal years but 70 weeks of years....so even though they start in 587 BC (the same year that the first jubilee period of the 70 weeks of years starts) they do not really end until many generations later. That is, the exiles may have returned at the end of their jubilee period of captivity, but the "desolation" continues for the nation under further oppression by foreign "enemies" (including Antiochus Epiphanes in the final week) until the 70 weeks are complete.
Now what is especially interesting is that the 490-year period (or similar prophetic periods of "weeks") reoccurs throughout Second Temple apocalyptic writings. These writings also sometimes show an indifference of the actual chronological facts, suggesting caution in interpreting the 490 years of Daniel 9 as an exact time unit. The impression gained from these writings is that prophetic time periods like the 490 years are prefabricated units, or prophetic motifs, that are employed regardless of whatever the actual chronological facts are. One of the oldest uses of the 490-year concept occurs in the Testament of Levi, which dates either to the period immediately before the persecution of Antiochus (e.g. c. 200 BC) or to the reign of John Hyrcanus (137-107 BC):
"Now I have come to know that for seventy weeks you shall wander astray and profane the priesthood and defile the sacrificial altars. You shall set aside the Law and nullify the words of the prophets by your wicked perversity?.Because you have heard about the seventy weeks, listen also concerning the priesthood. In each jubilee there shall be a priesthood: In the first jubilee the first person to be anointed to the priesthood will be great, and he shall speak to God as father; and this priesthood shall be fully satisfactory to the Lord, and in the days of his joy, he shall rise up for the salvation of the world. In the second jubilee the Anointed One shall be conceived in sorrow of the beloved one, and his priesthood shall be prized and shall be glorified by all. The third priest shall be overtaken by grief, and the fourth priesthood shall be with sufferings, because injustice shall be imposed upon him in a high degree, and all Israel shall hate each one his neighbor. The fifth shall be overcome by darkness; likewise the sixth and the seventh. In the seventh there shall be pollution such as I am unable to declare in the presence of human beings, because only the ones who do these things understand such matters. Therefore they shall be in captivity and will be preyed upon; both their land and their possessions shall be stolen. And in the fifth week they shall return to the land of their desolation, and shall restore anew the house of the Lord. In the seventh week there will come priests: idolators, adulterers, money lovers, arrogant, lawless, voluptuaries, pederasts, those who practice bestiality. When vengeance will have come upon them from the Lord, the priesthood will lapse. Then the Lord will raise up a new priest to whom all the words of the Lord will be revealed. He shall effect the judgment of truth over the earth for many days and his star shall rise in heaven like a king; kindling the light of knowledge as day is illuminated by the sun, and he shall be extolled by the whole inhabited world ... and there shall be peace in all the earth" (Testament of Levi 16:1-18:4).
It is not clear whether this passage was influenced by Daniel (or influenced Daniel), but there are a number of commonalities. One is the intersection of jubilee periods and the sabbath-week periods, revealing an awareness of the connection of the two from Leviticus and that jubliee periods correspond to multiples of "weeks of years" and vice versa. Another is the focus on the priesthood, which we find in the allusions to Onias III and the "anointing of the Holy of Holies" in Daniel 9. However, interpretation of this passage is extremely difficult. Are the seven weeks mentioned at the end of the prophecy follow immediately after the seven jubilees, or is there an intervening period so that these are the last 7 weeks of the prophecy? Or are these the first seven weeks of the 70 weeks and the seven jubilees are contemporaneous with the weeks? When do the seventy weeks start and do they start at the same time as the numbered jubilee periods start? Is the messianic "new priest" mentioned in ch. 18 an actual historical figure that lived at the time the passage was written, or was it someone still future? The one sure chronological datum in the prophecy is the reference to people having "their possessions stolen" and being sent into "captivity" to later "return to the land of their desolation" to rebuild the Temple (17:10-11). These are clear references to the events of 587 BC and the later return from exile. The former occurs after the seventh jubilee (i.e. after 7 x 49 years, or 343 years) while the latter occurs "in the fifth week". Is that five weeks (e.g. 35 years) after the Temple was destroyed? Or is this an error for "fiftieth week"? There is so much that is uncertain. But it is interesting that this passage mentions 7 jubilees that transpired before the desolation of Judea....this points back to 930 BC as the start of the jubilee reckoning of when the priesthood began to fall from grace, which is the start of the Divided Monarchy according to the books of Kings and Chronicles. Should the 70 weeks be reckoned from this year, they would end in 440 BC....far too early for the messianic period to begin in such a late work as the Testament of Levi. Some scholars, such as R. H. Charles, see a reference to the priest-king of John Hyrcanus in ch. 18 -- but it is far from clear how this would resolve the interpretation of the timing of the jubilees and weeks. One possibility is that the author was influenced by Daniel and reckoned the "70 weeks" from the start of Jeremiah's 70 years, but made the mistake of assuming that the 70 years were years of desolation and backdated the destruction of the Temple to sometime around 607 BC. Counting 490 years forward from there would take one to 117 BC, directly into the time of John Hyrcanus' priesthood. But this is directly contradicted by the statement indicating the length of the exile as only five weeks -- half of the expected number. Presently, most prefer to instead interpret the time-periods as symbolic units of time that simply show the progressive decline of the priesthood until its restoration by the "new priest".
Another example of the chronological indeterminancy of such prophecies can be found in 1 Enoch, in the so-called Apocalypse of Weeks (dating to the second century BC). Here each "week" corresponds to a much longer period of time:
"I [Enoch] was born the seventh during the first week, during which time judgment and righteousness continued to endure. After me there shall arise in the second week great and evil things; deceit shall grow, and therein the first consummation [i.e. the Flood] will take place. But therein also a certain man [i.e. Noah] shall be saved. After it is ended, injustice shall become greater, and he shall make a law for the sinners. Then after that at the completion of the third week a (certain) man [i.e. Abraham] shall be elected as the plant of the righteous judgment, and after him one (other) [i.e. Jacob] shall emerge as the eternal plant of righteousness. After that at the completion of the fourth week visions of the old and righteous ones [i.e. the Exodus] shall be seen; and a law [i.e. the Mosaic Law] shall be made with a fence, for all the generations. After that in the fifth week, at the completion of glory, a house and a kingdom shall be built [i.e. Solomon's Temple and the United Monarchy]. After that in the sixth week those who happen to be in it shall all of them be blindfolded, and the hearts of them all shall forget wisdom [i.e. the apostasy of the Divided Kingdom]. Therein, a (certain) man shall ascend [i.e. Elijah]. And, at its completion, the house of the kingdom shall be burnt with fire [i.e. the attack by Nebuchadnezzer's army in 587 BC]; and therein the whole clan of the chosen root shall be dispersed. After that in the seventh week an apostate generation shall arise; its deeds shall be many, and all of them criminal. At its completion, there shall be elected the elect ones of righteousness from the eternal plant of righteousness [i.e. the Maccabeans?], to whom shall be given sevenfold instruction concerning all his flock....Then after that there shall occur the second eighth week -- the week of righteousness. A sword shall be given to it in order that judgment shall be executed in righteousness. A house shall be built for the Great King in glory for evermore. Then after that in the ninth week the righteous judgment shall be revealed to the whole world. All the deeds of the sinners shall depart from upon the whole earth, and be written off for eternal destruction, and all people shall direct their sight to the path of uprightness. Then, after this matter, on the tenth week in the seventh part, there shall be the eternal judgment and it shall be executed by the angels of the eternal heaven, the great judgment that emanates from all the angels. The first heaven shall depart and pass away; a new heaven shall appear; and all the powers of heaven shall shine forever sevenfold. Then after that there shall be many weeks without number forever" (1 Enoch 93:3-10, 91:12-17)
A popular interpretation designates 490 years as the length of each "week" (that is, a sequence of 10 jubilee periods or 70 year-sabbath cycles). There is thus a very, very rough equivalence between the dispensationalist periods of the Apocalypse of Weeks and standard Masoretic-based biblical chronology, usually within a margin of about 200 years (reckoning from the Maccabean victory of 164 BC. Then 980 years (is this dependent on the millenial period concept?) would pass for the 8th and 9th weeks, ending in Judgment Day in the 10th week. However, the vision does not specify the length of each week, and it is probable that no real fixed length is really intended....the "weeks" are simply eras that depict the flow of history. The "week" concept is thus used without any concern for chronology, much less chronological precision.
Finally, there are Qumran texts from the 1st century BC that interpret the 70 weeks as applying to their own time. What is interesting is that the starting-point and ending point is the same as interpreted for Daniel's prophecy -- 490 years running from the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC to 97 BC, which takes the "time of the end" into the cruel reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC).
"In the time of wrath -- three hundred and ninety years at the time he handed them over to the power of Nebuchadnezzer king of Babylon -- he took care of them and caused to grow from Israel and from Aaron a root of planting to inherit his land and to grow fat on the good produce of his soil. They considered their iniquity and they knew that they were guilty men, and had been like the blind and like those groping for the way twenty years. But God considered their deeds, that they had sought him with a whole heart. So he raised up for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of his heart....Now from the day the Beloved Teacher passed away to the the destruction of all the warriors who turned back with the Man of Mockery will be about forty years" (Damascus Document, A 1:5-11, B 20:13-15)
In this passage we encounter a sum of 450 years (390 + 20 + 40) plus an implicit 40 years for the career of the Teacher of Righteousness, based on the 40 years that Moses gave the Law before his death (cf. 4Q266 1:10-17, A 1:12, B 19:33-20:2). The starting point for this era of the "time of wrath" (cf. the same expression in the great vision of Daniel 10-12) was "the time he handed them over to the power of Nebuchaznezzer king of Babylon," that is, 587 BC. However, some interpreters who favor a later date for the Damascus Document (e.g. closer to 50 BC) would start the 490 years at the end of the Jewish exile, which does not appear to be warranted by the context of the passage. A better explanation is that, as in the case of Daniel, the author of the manifesto did not know the exact length of the period following the destruction of Jerusalem or was simply plugging a symbolic number into the chronological structure.
Another Qumran document mentions a different period of 70 weeks as possibly a period of blessing for Israel, though because of the fragmentary nature of the text and the speculative reconstruction, it is impossible to determine what period is meant:
"[Abraham until he bo]re Isaac, [ten generations. The prophetic interpretation concerning Azazel and the angels who went in to] [the daughters] of men, so that [they] bore mighty me[n] to them. [And concerning Azazel...] [....] He satisfied Israel with plenty, Israel in seventy weeks he entreated ... and those who love iniquity, and cause them to inherit guilt, all [...] before all those who know him..." (Ages of the World, 4Q181 2:1-5)
Another text that mentions a period of 490 years is 11Q13, the so-called Melchizedek Scroll. As in Daniel and possibly the Testament of Levi, this is a period of "captivity" that precedes the coming of the angelic priest Melchizedek:
"And concerning what Scripture says, 'In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property' (cf. Leviticus 25:13) ... The interpretation is that it applies to the Last Days and concerns the captives, just as [Isaiah said: 'To proclaim the jubilee to the captives' (cf. Isaiah 61:1) ... just as .... and from the inheritance of Melchizedek, who will return them to what is rightfully theirs. He will proclaim to them the jubilee, thereby releasing them from the debt of all their sins. He shall proclaim this decree in the first week of the jubilee period that follows nine jubilee periods. Then the 'Day of Atonement' shall follow after the tenth jubilee period, when he shall atone for all the Sons of Light and the people who are predestined to Melchizedek ... and by his might he will judge God's holy ones and so establish a righteous kingdom" (11Q13 2:2-9).
This interpretation of Leviticus expands the 49 years of the jubilee period into 490 years (a multiple of the sacred number 10), just as Daniel expands the 70 years of Jeremiah into 490 years (a multiple of the sacred number 7). That is, the loss of freedom and property that occurred through the events of 587 BC led to a literal "captivity" of 49 years with the release of the exiles in the 50th year, but Israel was still kept in spiritual bondage to sin for an additional 10 jubilees (490 years) that would end in the "Day of Atonement" after the 10th jubilee period (i.e. after the 490 years had ended), the long-awaited "jubilee" for the nation of Israel. This interpretation comports well with what was proposed above for Daniel, except that the period of exile is the same as the Daniel's 70 weeks of sabbath years. I should note, by the way, that as a system of reckoning time, the counting of jubilee periods in Second Temple solarist writings did not include the 50th year in the jubilees being counted (cf. especially 4Q319 and the Book of Jubilees).
One final reference to the stereotyped period of 490 years is the prophetic apocryphon of Pseudo-Moses (4Q387, 390). As is the case with Daniel, the Testament of Levi, 11Q13, and possibly the Apocalypse of Weeks (without any clear time length indicated), the period is an era of apostasy and turmoil
"The sons of Aar[on] will return ... [after] seventy years. The sons of Aaron shall govern but they shall not walk in my ways which I am commanding you, so you must warn them. And they also shall do evil before me just as Israel did in the days of the kingdom of the forefathers; except for those who are the first to go up from the land of exile to rebuild the Temple. I shall speak with them and send them a commandment and they shall comprehend completely: namely, that they and their fathers forsook me. But at the end of that generation, in the seventh jubilee after the destruction of the land, they shall forget Law, festival, Sabbath, and covenant, and shall bring an end to everything. They shall commit evil before me. So I shall hide my face from them, give them into the hand of their enemies and deliver them over to the sword.... Neither will I search for them because of their unfaithfulness ... because they profaned me until the completion of ten full jubilees. You have walked about in m[adness] and blindness and confusion of the heart. At the end of that generation I [shall remove] the kingdom from the hand of those who possess it and [e]stablish strangers from another people over it. And the last of these shall rule in all the land. The kingdom of Israel shall be destroyed in those days... And [then he shall arise], the Blasphemer [Gadfan]. He shall commit abominations and I shall tear up that [wicked] kingdom for other kings, and my face will still be hidden from Israel. Then the Children of Israel will cry out ... and yet they will have no savior because they have certainly rejected my statutes and they despised my laws. Therefore I have hidden my face from them until they finish their iniquity.... [In] those days a king shall rise up from the Gentiles, the Blasphemer [Gadfan]. And he shall commit evil deeds..... In his days I shall shatter the kingdoms of Egypt ... [ho]ly Temple [... not] done and thus [all of] these things shall come upon them [...] the rule of Belial over them to hand them over to the sword for a week of (seven) years ... on that jubilee they shall be violating all my statutes and all my commandments..." (4Q387 3 2:1-17, 3:1-9; 4Q390 1:2-10, 2 1:2-5).
Here we have an intersection, again, between the sabbath-weeks reckoning of Daniel and the jubilee system of Leviticus, and like Daniel, the Damascus Document, and probably 11Q13, the 490 years of jubilees is reckoned from 587 BC, the time of the "destruction of the land". Note that the period of apostasy is especially acute in the final three jubilees; it is in the 7th jubilee from the "destruction of the land" that the priests "forget Law, festival, Sabbath, and covenant" and this apostasy continues "until the completion of ten full jubilees," that is, at the end of 490 years. The block of 7 jubilees is the same stereotyped period of 343 years encountered earlier. It is tempting to see in the final 3 jubilees a reference to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the subsequent period (assuming the scroll was authored in the middle of the first century BC), and the character of Gadfan the Blasphemer is particularly reminiscent of Antiochus, but the allusion to the destruction of the nation of Israel and the removal of "the kingdom from the hand of those who possess it" and the establishment of "strangers from another people over it" is strongly reminiscent of the Roman incursion in Judea that followed 63 BC, and Gadfan appears after 490 years have expired. The best explanation seems to be that the prophecy was written in the late 60s and the author reckoned 490 years from the destruction of the Temple to run to the loss of Judean sovereignty by Pompey, with the still-future Gadfan to arise at any moment. However, this is only speculative.
What does appear to be certain is that the 490 years of Daniel was a stereotyped block of time that was freely plugged into prophetic speculations without much concern for chronological specifics, though the destruction of the Temple appears to have been a favorite starting point among other apocalyptic writers as well. The concern for the author of Daniel seems more to be in pointing to salient subsections of this larger era....the first jubilee period ("seven weeks" = 49) that corresponds to the actual exile of the Jews before the coming of an anointed prince to release them (either Cyrus or Darius the Mede), and the final week of 7 years that corresponds to the period of persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes -- split into two halves from the time of Onias III's assassination to the cessation of sacrifice (in the "mid-week"), and the 3 1/2 years of Temple defilement until December 164 BC. The 62 weeks (= 434 years) in between these two pivotal periods is just filler -- added to make the whole period fulfill the curse prophesied in Leviticus 25:1-10, which turns Jeremiah's 70 years into a multiple of 7 and 70. It is this "sevenfold" curse that provides the rationale to stretch the 70 years into a much longer period -- but it also constrains the author against positing any other figure for the period than 490 years.
