Appendix, Note II

(See pp. 81, 84 ante.)

Just as in apostolic times a false tradition concealed the meaning of the First-fruits as a type and prophecy of the resurrection, so (as already shown, p. 64 ante) prevailing errors in Jewish chronology destroyed the moral value of Daniel’s testimony to the truth of Christianity; and if the force of that testimony was thus lost even in apostolic times, it is still more hopelessly disparaged to-day. Common men are but little influenced by what needs a treatise to enforce it. And this is precisely the position in which the well-meaning but mistaken zeal of Christian expositors and “reconcilers” have now placed the great prediction of the ninth chapter of Daniel. Theologians are wanting in confidence in the Bible, and thus, instead of being content to leave a pressing difficulty unsolved, they are too apt to have recourse to wild hypotheses to explain it.

It is by Christian exponents alone that any doubts have been raised respecting a single date involved in the problem of the seventy weeks. But to them we owe it that such a cloud of conjecture now envelops the whole question that the prophecy is almost lost both to Church and world. The epoch of the era was declared to be “the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem.” The words may imply a secret and divine decree; but the public fact referred to was the edict of the 20th year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, in virtue of which the city was in fact rebuilt. But rinding, as they supposed, that the era, if computed from that date, would not work out correctly, some maintained that the decree of the king’s 7th year was meant, though this had no reference at all to the building of the city; and others, relying upon the errors of Ctesias, set themselves to “cook” the whole chronology of Artaxerxes’ reign. But the date of the battle of Actium is not more certain than the date of this, the terminus a quo of the prophetic era. And the terminus ad quern can be fixed with equal certainty.

In the whole range of history, sacred or profane, there is not a chronological statement more unequivocal and definite than that contained in the opening verses of the third chapter of St Luke’s Gospel. The 15th year of Tiberius was a date as well known in the days of the Evangelist as is the 15th year of Victoria in our own. And in that very year every one of the persons named held the position there assigned to him. It is thus made absolutely certain that our Lord’s ministry began in the latter part of A.D. 28, and thus we are enabled to fix A.D. 32 as the year of the crucifixion. But here, again, apologists and reconcilers have raised difficulties innumerable; and though every one of these can be solved and silenced, the discussion this involves would half fill a volume. I have not overlooked a single one of them. But I must take the liberty of referring the reader to my book, The Coming Prince, or The Seventy Weeks of Daniel, where I have dealt exhaustively with the whole subject.

While it is idle to expect the many to follow such discussions, I claim from the student and the scholar due recognition of the fact that, so far as this prophecy related to Messiah, it was literally fulfilled, and of the proof that fact affords of the authenticity of the Book of Daniel.