But to those who are guided in their exegesis, not by unnatural inventions, but by the great guiding principles of history and literature, this consideration presents no difficulty. Any exact accuracy of chronology would have been far more surprising in a writes of the Maccabean era than round numbers and vague computations. Precise computation is nowhere prevalent in the sacred books. The object of those books always is the conveyance of eternal, moral, and spiritual instruction. To such purely mundane and secondary matters as close reckoning of dates the Jewish writers show themselves manifestly indifferent. It is possible that, if we were able to ascertain the data which lay before the writer, his calculations might seem less divergent from exact numbers than they now appear. More than this we cannot affirm.
What was the date from which the writer calculated his seventy weeks? Was it from the date of Jeremiah's first prophecy (xxv. 12), b.c. 605? or his second prophecy (xxix. 10), eleven years later, b.c. 594? or from the destruction of the first Temple, b.c. 586? or, as some Jews thought, from the first year of "Darius the Mede"? or from the decree of Artaxerxes in Neh. ii. 1-9? or from the birth of Christ—the date assumed by Apollinaris? All these views have been adopted by various Rabbis and Fathers; but it is obvious that not one of them accords with the allusions of the narrative and prayer, except that which makes the destruction of the Temple the terminus a quo. In the confusion of historic reminiscences and the rarity of written documents, the writer may not have consciously distinguished this date (b.c. 588) from the date of Jeremiah's prophecy (b.c. 594). That there were differences of computation as regards Jeremiah's seventy years, even in the age of the Exile, is sufficiently shown by the different views as to their termination taken by the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxxvi. 22), who fixes it b.c. 536, and by Zechariah (Zech. i. 12), who fixes it about b.c. 519.
As to the terminus ad quem, it is open to any commentator to say that the prediction may point to many subsequent and analogous fulfilments; but no competent and serious reader who judges of these chapters by the chapters themselves and by their own repeated indications, can have one moment's hesitation in the conclusion that the writer is thinking mainly of the defilement of the Temple in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, and its reconsecration (in round numbers) three and a half years later by Judas Maccabæus (December 25th, b.c. 164).
It is true that from b.c. 588 to b.c. 164 only gives us four hundred and twenty-four years, instead of four hundred and ninety years. How is this to be accounted for? Ewald supposes the loss of some passage in the text which would have explained the discrepancy; and that the text is in a somewhat chaotic condition is proved by its inherent philological difficulties, and by the appearance which it assumes in the Septuagint. The first seven weeks indeed, or forty-nine years, approximately correspond to the time between b.c. 588 (the destruction of the Temple) and b.c. 536 (the decree of Cyrus); but the following sixty-two weeks should give us four hundred and thirty-four years from the time of Cyrus to the cutting off of the Anointed One, by the murder of Onias III. in b.c. 171, whereas it only gives us three hundred and sixty-five. How are we to account for this miscalculation to the extent of at least sixty-five years?
Not one single suggestion has ever accounted for it, or has ever given exactitude to these computations on any tenable hypothesis.[635]
But Schürer has shown that exactly similar mistakes of reckoning are made even by so learned and industrious an historian as Josephus.
1. Thus in his Jewish War (VI. iv. 8) he says that there were six hundred and thirty-nine years between the second year of Cyrus and the destruction of the Temple by Titus (a.d. 70). Here is an error of more than thirty years.
2. In his Antiquities (XX. x.) he says that there were four hundred and thirty-four years between the Return from the Captivity (b.c. 536) and the reign of Antiochus Eupator (b.c. 164-162). Here is an error of more than sixty years.
3. In Antt., XIII. xi. 1, he reckons four hundred and eighty-one years between the Return from the Captivity and the time of Aristobulus (b.c. 105-104). Here is an error of some fifty years.
Again, the Jewish Hellenist Demetrius[636] reckons five hundred and seventy-three years from the Captivity of the Ten Tribes (b.c. 722) to the time of Ptolemy IV. (b.c. 222), which is seventy years too many. In other words, he makes as nearly as possible the same miscalculations as the writer of Daniel. This seems to show that there was some traditional error in the current chronology; and it cannot be overlooked that in ancient days the means for coming to accurate chronological conclusion were exceedingly imperfect. "Until the establishment of the Seleucid era (b.c. 312), the Jew had no fixed era whatsoever";[637] and nothing is less astonishing than that an apocalyptic writer of the date of Epiphanes, basing his calculations on uncertain data to give an allegoric interpretation to an ancient prophecy, should have lacked the records which would alone have enabled him to calculate with exact precision.[638]