Appendix, Note I

(See p. 71 ante.”)

As the punctuation of Daniel ix. 25 is doubtful, I have given the passage without any punctuation whatever. The Revisers decided by a majority vote to follow the Massoretic punctuation; and this has been adopted by Dean Farrar, who fails to see that it is fatal to his pseud-epigraph theory of Daniel. The passage thus read appears to limit to 62 “weeks” the period during which Jerusalem was to remain as an inhabited city. But it is quite certain that no Jew writing “in the days of the Seleucid tyrant, anxious to inspire the courage and console the sufferings of his countrymen,” could have framed words which would have been construed to mean that the destruction of their holy city was imminent. Assuming the genuineness of the Book of Daniel, the R.V. punctuation renders the meaning of the passage more obscure, but it cannot alter it, for as 7 + 62+1 make up 70, it is obvious that the lesser periods mentioned are subdivisions of the 70 weeks of the prophecy. It is clear, therefore, that the 62 weeks follow the 7 weeks, and that the death of Messiah (according to verse 26) was to be at the close of the 69th week.

As every one knows, there are no punctuation marks in the old Hebrew Scriptures, and the insertion of these is largely a matter of editing. And further, “The Received, or, as it is commonly called, the Massoretic Text of the Old Testament Scriptures has come down to us in manuscripts which are of no very great antiquity, and which all belong to the same family or recension” (Preface R.V.). In adopting the Massoretic punctuation of Daniel ix. 25, the Revisers have followed the accepted axiom of criticism, that of various readings the more difficult is to be preferred. But that rule is of course inapplicable when the difficult reading can be accounted for. And as in this instance a very slight change in the punctuation sufficed to obscure, though it could not destroy, the Messianic reference of the passage, it is impossible not to suspect that the Jewish editors thus

H sought to lessen the overwhelming weight of proof which Daniel affords of the truth of Christianity.

There need be no hesitation, therefore, in reverting to the punctuation which has the authority of the A.V., the distinguished American Company of the Revisers, and the margin of our own R.V.

I will only add, that whether the Book of Daniel be regarded as a divine prophecy or a literary fraud, the idea that such a prediction of blessing to the Jews could have been framed without any reference to their Messiah is so preposterous that it would be mere waste of time to discuss it. The force of this is wholly independent of the fact that Messiah was manifested and “cut off” at the identical time which the prophecy indicated — namely, “after the threescore and two weeks” — that is to say, at the close of the 69th week of the era. In other words, the death of Messiah was to take place 483 years after the issue of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem.