Daniel, Herod, and the Jewish Y6K Problem
Usually, for obvious reasons (including, among other things, the fact that literally everyone with authority — including, as of January, my own pastor — is preaching about it from the pulpit), I very rarely, if ever, weigh in on end times theology. However, it is something that I have been intrigued by since early adolescence, and given the fear that the current deadly pandemic is instilling in people, I figured it’s time to pull out the cross-referencing big guns again and dive into the cryptic world of eschatological symbolism.
There are actually not one but two apocalyptic texts in the Bible — one in the New Testament and the other in the Old Testament. The one in the New Testament is the more famous of the two, the Revelation of John, and it is where people will often go out of habit to try and explain things. So wait, what’s the Old Testament apocalyptic book? That would be Daniel.
Before we dive in, it’s important to keep in mind that when it comes to interpretation of the Bible and of apocalyptic texts within it especially, cultural context means everything. In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the Israelites, having turned away from the one true God and toward the worship of Canaanite idols for centuries after the division of Israel into two kingdoms, were overrun by the Babylonians under their most famous emperor, Nebuchadnezzar II. It is during this exile that Daniel writes down this text, which not only prophesied some end-times stuff but also predicted events related to classical antiquity.
Wait, what classical antiquity events did he predict, exactly? Well, this here is probably the biggest:
The “word that went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” came from Achaemenid Persian emperor Artaxerxes I in 444 BC — the -444 that the calculation starts with. Adding (7*7+62*7) 360-day Jewish years (that’s what the subtraction part is in the second half: going back and taking 5 days off all those years that are added here) to 444 BC gets you, of all possibilities, precisely 32.[38356164]<repeating unit> AD. That’s so close to 33 — the year of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth — that to call this a mere coincidence is to jump through a million hoops.
This isn’t the only time Daniel refers to Jesus however, nor is “Anointed One” (Messiah) the only name Daniel gives Him. In Chapter 10, a description eerily similar to another description given in the Book of Revelation is thrown out:
On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris, I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.
Daniel 10:4-6
Compare this to the description given in Revelation 1:13-18, and the details become so similar that they are reconcilable:
and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
What do these descriptions have in common? Let’s see: dressed in linen, golden sash/belt around the midriff, face that is too brightly shining to look at without it being blinding, bright red eyes, a loud, slow, high-pitched voice, and yellow skin (topaz and brass/bronze are both yellow) — Yeah, there’s no question that Daniel and John are both talking about the same guy here.
Details aside, Daniel 9:25 isn’t the only math problem Daniel lays out for us. In Chapter 8, a prophecy is given of what would happen during the Hellenistic period, and it’s a grim prophecy to say the least. In it, Daniel is given a vision of a ram from the east and a goat from the west fighting each other, and then, towards the end of the text, the archangel Gabriel appears to give an explanation of it. This prophecy also includes a reference to Jesus, this time to when He was a young child:
He said: “I am going to tell you what will happen later in the time of wrath, because the vision concerns the appointed time of the end. The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between its eyes is the first king. The four horns that replaced the one that was broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation but will not have the same power. “In the latter part of their reign, when rebels have become completely wicked, a fierce-looking king, a master of intrigue, will arise. He will become very strong, but not by his own power. He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy those who are mighty, the holy people. He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior. When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the Prince of princes. Yet he will be destroyed, but not by human power. “The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been given you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.”
Daniel 8:19-26
Gabriel explains everything regarding the Persians and Greeks fighting each other in great detail, including the moment when Alexander the Great finally pushed back against Persian expansion, which for the record was already about 200 years after the setting of this prophecy.
As if that’s not enough, there’s also the description of the “little horn” which is often interpreted by modern scholars to be a reference to Antiochus IV “Epimanes” Epiphanes — but is that really the case? Not if the command to seal up the vision is any indication, because in Chapter 7, Daniel is given a vision of four beasts representing four empires, one of which is clearly Rome — which became an empire after Antiochus came and went, yet Daniel is not told to seal that vision up — but he’s told to seal this one up? Why? There’s another guy who came out of the Hellenistic line who matches this account even better than Antiochus ever did.
After Antiochus was finally pushed back and overthrown during the Maccabean Revolt, Hellenized Edom (Idumea) became isolated from the rest of the Seleucid Empire — which was so large that Seleucus and his descendants had to appoint members of the Seleucid line to rule over individual provinces as governors. Since Antiochus couldn’t directly overrule Gorgias — one of the aforementioned Seleucid son/cousin governors, who just happened to be that of Idumea — with Hasmonean Israel standing in the way, Gorgias ended up staying there and founding a Hellenized Edomite (“Idumean”) kingdom of his own. One of the later descendants of Gorgias was Antipater the Idumean, who infiltrated Hasmonean Israel and went on to commit treason against them, aiding the Romans in their invasion in exchange for the appointment of his son as king. Who was Antipater’s son? Yeah, that would be Herod.
Herod matches the details of this account *much* better than Antiochus. Unlike Antiochus who inherited an empire and used his own power to invade, Herod was actually installed by a power other than his own: that of the Romans, who installed him as a puppet king. Herod also did a much better job deceiving Israel than Antiochus ever did, because whereas Antiochus provoked them to wrath, Herod instead used a propaganda campaign to brainwash a lot of Jews into supporting the Roman invasion, and it worked. Divide and conquer is what he did best, and for what? Right, nothing more than idolatry of power, which culminated in the incident that Verse 25 references: the Massacre of the Innocents, which Herod died of natural causes in the process of trying to carry out. If this was about anything other than the Massacre of the Innocents, then you would see “King of Kings” or “Lord of Lords” there, but you don’t: instead, you see “Prince of Princes” implying a young heir to the divine throne.
Now wait, what does this have to do with the vision of the 2300 days that Daniel was told by Gabriel to “seal up” despite the fact that he wasn’t told to seal up the visions concerning Rome or any other power 500 years off? Why is this the only vision that he is commanded to seal up? How distant was the future that this was a reference to? Keep in mind, in the entire book of Daniel, all other prophecies involve a vision of one thing and an explanation constituting something else entirely. These were only “evenings and mornings” in the vision, NOT in Gabriel’s explanation of it. Did Gabriel specifically mention that they are literal evenings and mornings in his interpretation of the vision? No he did not; the only interpretation Gabriel gave for it is… no interpretation at all, only a command to seal it up.
What’s more, we also have the fact that if this was about Antiochus as many claim then the command to seal up the vision would contradict Daniel 9. Why is Daniel told not to seal up the math problem pointing to 33 AD but at the same time is told to seal up a vision pointing to 165 BC? Why would 165 BC be so far into the “distant future” that it would need to be sealed up when 33 AD, which was even further off from Daniel’s time, was, according to the same angelic being, perfectly fine to talk about? If this is about Antiochus, there’s a contradiction here, but if it’s about Herod, then the contradiction disappears when you take into account the age at which one reached legal adulthood in ancient Israel. That age at that time was 12 — the age at which Bar Mitzvahs are *still* conducted today by Orthodox Jews. Herod was born in 73 BC, which means that he would have turned 12 in 61 BC. Start at 61 BC and fast forward 2300 years, and the year you end up with is 2239, which on the Jewish calendar is Year 6000.
This is profound. The 6000th year of the Jewish calendar is the latest possible deadline for the beginning of the Messianic Age — the thousand-year reign of the returned Jesus on earth mentioned in Revelation 20 — based on the fact that the 7000th year is when the Jewish calendar completely ends. Of course, Jews who still hold to that calendar don’t actually believe Jesus to be the Messiah, so consider Daniel 9 a rude awakening for them — that prophecy is too precise to be talking about anyone else. In the meantime, I hope — and pray — that I have you thinking, because if this is true, then it means the Rapture could occur at *any time* within the next 219 years.