Now, interestingly, even most conservative Christian commentaries avoid drawing much attention to the Babylonian exile coming short of 70 ‘normal’ solar years of 365+ days. If they do mention it, the ‘explanation’ may run along those lines Chris Sandoval mentions in his criticism. Indeed, the years 605 BC and 538 BC seem to be the standard dates generally given, with no explanation of the different systems of reckoning monarchial years based on the months of Nisan and Tishri. But if all such traditional explanations are useless, we may at least affirm the fact that the chief sources—the Bible and the Babylonian record—harmonize the chronology of the reigning years of kings, thereby supporting our hypothesis that the exile could have been of 69 years less 2 days, for the purpose of God wanting his people to anticipate the Messiah through a countdown of 69 ‘weeks’ of 360-day years each.
Two final thoughts should be added to these points. First, one cannot help but get the feeling, when reading portions of II Kings, II Chronicles, and Jeremiah, how specific dates or months are sometimes cited, yet none of them serve as exact ‘bookend’ markers designating the beginning or ending dates of the exile. However, they do add a kind of exactitude to the general narrative (mostly absent, for example, in the Babylonian record of the early years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign), and they help to establish the historicity of the biblical narrative. What Greek myth, for example, ever bothers with such minutia as that found in Ezra 2, with its long list of Jewish clans and their population numbers? But what strikes us as the mundane reporting of details shows that the biblical authors regarded their writings as historical and therefore not attempts at literary/historical fiction, spun for what critics have imagined was for some mere inspirational purpose.
Second, if somewhat unrelated (though we still have the exile in view), we must ask why God would suppose that the beginning of the exile in the 3rd year of Jehoiakim, because of Nebuchadnezzar‘s relatively low number of captives (3,023 Jews; see Jer. 52:28), would truly have allowed the land to enjoy her sabbaths? But II Kings 24:1-3 explains what else happened in Jehoiakim’s 3rd year:
(1)In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years; then he turned and rebelled against him. (2)The LORD sent against him bands of Chaldeans, bands of Arameans, bands of Moabites, and bands of Ammonites. So He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD which He had spoken through His servants the prophets. (3) Surely at the command of the LORD it came upon Judah, to remove them from His sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done….(NASB)
Thus in the 3rd year of Jehoiakim, the Lord sent bands of peoples to remove the Jews out of the land. And we may assume God directed these bands in coordination with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Jerusalem, even to the very day, if in the Divine mind this were necessary to firmly establish the beginning date of the exile.
(b) HARMONIZING THE BIBLE WITH JOSEPHUS
Now, a second and less complex line of evidence for a 69-year exile is a statement by Josephus, who says the 1st year of Cyrus’ reign was the 70th of the captivity [Antiquities of the Jews, Book 11, Chapter 1]
In the first year of the reign of Cyrus which was the seventieth from the day that our people were removed out of their own land into Babylon, God commiserated the captivity and calamity of these poor people, according as he had foretold to them by Jeremiah the prophet, before the destruction of the City, that after they had served Nebuchadnezzar and his posterity, and after they had undergone that servitude seventy years, he would restore them again to the land of their fathers, and they should build their temple, and enjoy their ancient prosperity.
Thus Josephus seems to contradictorily indicate that the Jews returned before 70 full solar years had passed—and we note that the end of the 1st year of Cyrus was technically in the 70th year of captivity—yet Josephus also says it happened after 70 years—which in my opinion is his concession to the traditional way of understanding the text. This ‘whipsaw’ way of expressing the length of the exile as this, yet that shows the type of confusion still often characterizing the question. I think that with Josephus the natural explanation is that two ‘readings’ are colliding to form his opinion about the length of the exile: (1) the statement of the Bible isolated unto itself, that the exile would last 70 years; and (2) the same statement of the Bible but with the attempt to harmonize other biblical statements (showing the exile ran from the 3rd year of Jehoiakim to the 1st year of Cyrus, the latter year inferred from II Chron. 36:22), to show that the 70 years were shorter than 70 normal solar years. All this to say, Josephus cannot be inferred to absolutely affirm or deny that the exile lasted 69 full solar years, but is neutral in regard to this point. But Josephus’ statement is not, as some might think, an evidence against the Bible, even despite his error elsewhere about a four-year difference between the reigning years of Jehoiakim and Nebuchadnezzar. For Josephus never cites this alleged four-year difference as a basis to calculate the length of the exile. And so, if Josephus’ statement above does not unqualifiedly harmonize with the biblical and Babylonian records, neither can it be said that it is unharmonious.
(c) EVIDENCE OF THE NABONIDUS CHRONICLE
A third evidence, this one circumstantial, comes from the Nabonidus Chronicle, a Babylonian record mainly about certain events of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon whom Cyrus defeated. It shows Cyrus’ policy of return, which ultimately included the Jews. It states that Cyrus, after defeating the Babylonians, began to return Babylonian city gods back to their respective cities instead of keeping them in Babylon. Arguably, Cyrus did not worship these gods nor wanted their pagan influence in his kingdom.25 For as Ezra records, Cyrus knew that the God of Heaven had given him the kingdoms of the earth, and that God now wanted him to build a house for Him in Jerusalem. That individual cities in Babylonia would have had gods was a common practice of that culture, as it was of the ancients. For Jeremiah likewise records God’s complaint that “according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah” (Jer. 2:28), and here, too, one recalls the Apostle Paul in danger of the Ephesian crowd who shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” Arguably, then, Cyrus’ return of the gods to their respective Babylonian cities, and his solicitation of volunteer Jews to return to Israel to build the house of God, shows a tolerant and even Semitic-friendly king. As for the return of the city gods, the Nabonidus Chronicle states:
In the month of Arahsamna, the third day [29 October], Cyrus entered Babylon, [unidentified objects] were filled before him – the state of peace was imposed upon the City. Cyrus sent greetings to all Babylon. Gobryas, his governor, installed subgovernors in Babylon. From the month of Kislîmu to the month of Addaru, the gods of Akkad [Babylonia] which Nabonidus had made come down to Babylon, were returned to their sacred cities.26
The Nabonidus Chronicle, obverse and reverse; [tablet] BM 35382.
The Babylonian month Kislîmu approximates the Jews’ Kislev, or ninth month, being December/January; and Addaru approximates the Jews’ Adar, or 12th month, being March/April. Again, the significance of this is that this four month period most likely served as a precursor to when Cyrus would eventually return not just idols to their places of origin, but foreign peoples, as well. The Hebrews had no idols to carry back to Jerusalem, but they were given the special vessels of gold and silver that Nebuchadnezzar had taken away in his conquest (Ezra 1:9ff). Also, of some importance is that the Nabonidus Chronicle records the death of Cyrus’ wife toward the end of these four months, since the Chronicle tells us that the official mourning for her took place from March 20–26 (538 BC). Under such loss men are often prone toward introspection about the mortality of life. This may help explain Ezra’s statement that in Cyrus’ 1st year “God stirred (Heb. lit. roused) the spirit of Cyrus,” to realize what God had done for him in obtaining his kingdom, and what was now his present obligation.
CONCLUSION OF POINTS (a), (b), & (c)
Taking these various historical records above into account, it is certainly possible that exactly 69 years less 2 days—that is, 70 years of 360 days each—took place from the beginning of the Jewish deportation in the fall of 606 BC, to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, where they offered up daily sacrifice to God beginning on the 1st of Tishri, 537. Furthermore, the timeline does not allow for an exile lasting 70 ‘normal’ solar years. But granting our hypothesis of an exile of 69 years less 2 days, the point here is that the Jews could have observed that their captivity was almost exactly a full year shy of 70 standard solar years, which should have sparked some inquiry about why this was so. And upon this reflection they should have realized that it equaled 70 years according to the calendar in use from the Creation to just a few centuries before their present era. Additionally, since they knew Daniel’s prophecy was in the context of his meditation on Jeremiah’s prophecy about the length of years of the exile (Dan. 9:2), i.e., that the Jews would be captives for 70 years, which proved to be in solar years but 69 in number, the Jews should have concluded Daniel’s prophecy, too, might also be counting its “sevens” [translated weeks in the KJV] as seven years of 360 days each, to emphasize the Creation-like restoration which the Messiah was naturally intent upon. Again, the 360-day year should have been known by the Jews to have been the actual length of the year just a few centuries earlier. At least Daniel and his compatriots who had been specially trained in the Babylonian language, culture, and sciences would certainly have known this fact. We will address the 360-day year more fully in Chapter 6 (The Black Sun). Again, then, the Divine purpose urging such counting was to build anticipation among Jews year by year of the coming of their Messiah, so that when he came he might restore his people’s hearts and even the earth to where they should be. But, sadly, the would have/could have/should have never became a reality for the Hebrew people.
And so, when we consider all the evidences above, it is hard to understand the confidence Chris Sandoval expresses in his calculations that the exile could only have been of 67 or 72 years. Sandoval, assuming wrong ‘bookend’ dates for the exile which he then imagines disproves Daniel’s prophecy, believes the book of Daniel is a 2nd century BC work. Thus he states:
the author’s tidy but artificial scheme of seventy sevens is too long to fit the messy facts of real history.
Thus ignorant of the above historical records we have given, Sandoval makes an apples to oranges comparison and proposes that real history is found in some 2nd century BC writer working in the genre of inspirational fiction a la the Left Behind series, featuring Daniel, a prophet of 400 years past. Why Sandoval thinks such ipso facto ‘predictive’ prophecy would inspire the believer toward a greater faith in God, any more than a fictional Job (as some would have it) should inspire the believer to persevere under trial on the grounds that a novelized character had done so, is never addressed. Continuing the implausibility, Sandoval proceeds to claim that ‘Daniel’s’ message was that the 7 weeks and 62 weeks ran concurrently, and that the “governor” mentioned twice in Daniel 9:25-26a is not Messiah the Prince but rather two priests, one active shortly after the exile, the other at the end of 434 years (62 weeks), and that the beginning of Daniel’s 69 weeks began with a decree by Cyrus in 538 BC, not by Artaxerxes in 444 BC. That Cyrus’ decree, Darius’ decree, and Artaxerxes’ decree (the last of these in 457 BC) all pertain only to the rebuilding of the temple, not the restoring and building of the City (which is what Daniel’s prophecy specifies) should be overlooked by Sandoval, is remarkable, except, perhaps, for Sandoval’s passing reference to Ezra 9:9 and the mention of a wall. Says Ezra:
For we are slaves; yet in our bondage God has not forsaken us, but has extended lovingkindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us reviving to raise up the house of our God, to restore its ruins and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem (emphasis mine).
But the immediate context of this verse and especially the decree itself by Artaxerxes (Ezra 7) concern themselves only with the temple and the sacrifices to be made, especially on behalf of the king and his sons. Moreover, it was 13 years later that Artaxerxes specifically allowed Nehemiah to restore and to build Jerusalem, activity which Nehemiah profusely details when describing the reconstruction of the wall(s) of Jerusalem. This shows that the wall in Ezra 9:9 is merely the temple wall or the outer wall of the temple Complex, which was not synonymous with the wall(s) of the City. It was, as Ezra states, “a wall in…Jerusalem,” not of Jerusalem.
Nehemiah Rebuilding the Wall. An engraving from 1886.
And so, when Sandoval chides theologians for not facing up to the “messy facts of history,” one wonders what facts he is talking about? Is it the ‘facts’ of assuming the wrong monarchial decree 90 years too early because of mistaking the temple for the City, and from there insisting on a two-fold concurrent timeline of two persons that defies the natural reading of the text, and then ignoring more than 30 verses in Nehemiah 3 which detail the building of the wall(s) and gates of Jerusalem—in order to suggest that Ezra’s passing mention of a “wall” 13 years earlier was something other than that of the temple? If so, one can only imagine what other “facts” Sandoval’s assertions might reveal, if one had the strength to trudge through them all.
THE 490 YEARS, AND THE 360-DAY STANDARD
Two more things should be observed before we consider the NASA moon phase charts in point 4. As Thomas Ice in his article “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel” points out, there is a recurrent theme in the number 490 years. For note that each year of the 70-year exile was imposed because the Jews had not allowed the land to rest for one year in seven, implying there were a total of 490 years in play during this law (not contiguously).27 Therefore when Gabriel gives Daniel the vision, he implicitly makes him understand that the Messiah should not be expected to come into his earthly kingdom at the end of the current 70 year exile, but that in fact another 490 years ( i.e., 70 weeks) would be determined upon the Jews. Therefore Messiah’s rule would not be imminent after the 70 years of exile Daniel was witnessing, as perhaps he had supposed. Incidentally, this implicit theme of two sets of 490 years refutes the kind of Islamic and other criticisms of Daniel’s prophecy that interpret any or all of the “weeks” according to some unit of measurement other than years.28
Finally, notice that on the Day of Triumphal Entry, when Christ declared the house of Jerusalem desolate, it was because the Jews neglected to recognize the 360-day standard (and thus his Coming). This meant the loss of Messiah’s kingdom until a much later (and still yet future) time. But one day that kingdom will come, when one who dies at 100 will nevertheless be called a “child” (Is. 65:20). This implicitly means the earth will be returned to its original, Edenic-like, terrestrial environment—when men lived over 900 years long—to best serve man’s physical needs.
4. NASA’S MOON AND ECLIPSE CHART
Before I was assured by an astronomy professor that the online NASA charts were reliable, I had stupidly busied myself with fruitless attempts at establishing possible crucifixion dates based on (1) calculating backwards multiple new moons with an average of 29.530589 days, and (2) extrapolating what time the new moon would have occurred on a given month in a given year in the 1st century AD. Thus I tried to determine when the Jews would have first seen the beginning crescent following the new moon which designated the first “evening” of their first “evening/morning” day of the month. From this I counted off 14 days inclusively to when the Passover Lamb would have been slain, to see whether a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday crucifixion was possible in the year I thought the crucifixion should have taken place. As for the year, I eventually came to the proper conclusion that any year prior to 33 AD did not allow enough time for Daniel’s prophecy to be fulfilled. This is why, in light of Luke’s statement that Jesus was “about 30 years old,” a 1 BC, not a 4 BC, date for Herod’s death becomes desirable if the prophecy is to be proved. I’ll discuss the reasons for a 1 BC date in greater detail in the next point.
Now, the problem with moon and earth orbits is that although they align nearly perfectly after a certain number of years constituting specific cycles known to astronomers, these cycles are only nearly so. They are never exact repeats, since the elliptical nature and slight wobble of the moon and the earth in their respective orbits make for incredibly sophisticated mathematical calculations quite beyond anyone but the mathematical/astronomical specialist (and, without computers, perhaps beyond even him or her). Therefore I was mistaken to assume I could figure out when a particular new moon took place 2,000 years ago, especially since I was ignorant at that time that lunar months themselves vary in length. At the beginning of my research I faced a learning curve the length of which I had no idea.
Now, the comprehensive article found at [http://www.cogeternal.org/text/004hebrewcalreliable.htm] shows that determining the new month in ancient Hebrew calendars was rarely if ever as simple as observing the new crescent, even in the 1st century AD,29 and that calculation of some sort has (presumably) been in use among Jews since at least the 5th century BC. In this book it is assumed the Jews always used the new moon to mark the beginning of months. From records it appears the intercalation was akin to that used by the Babylonians, based on the Metonic cycle (235 synodic lunar months = 19 solar years, to within 2 hours).
However, NASA’s moon phase chart does enable us to see when new moons (and thus the beginnings of months) occurred in any year. So the next question that naturally arises is, did the Jews intercalate a month in either 33 AD or 444 BC or both? The solution, as far as I could see, necessarily involved the time of two new moons in 33 AD, only one of which I ultimately thought was likely to have been used to determine when Nisan began in 33 AD. From this I calculated up to the 14th of Nisan and concluded that the crucifixion was Friday, May 1 (Julian Calendar). As already noted earlier in this book (“Introduction to the Fourth Edition”), we may calculate the ending of Daniel’s 69 weeks to be April 27, 33 AD. Thus we can know the opening ‘bookend’ date of the 69 weeks (we will give a specific date later in this book). 30 31 32 For those wondering, Passover, unlike Easter, can occur as late as the very early days of May.
Pope Gregory XIII, by his contemporary, Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614). The Gregorian calendar corrected the Julian calendar’s 365¼ days to our present value, which is about 12 minutes less per year. The correction required skipping 10 calendar days in 1582, such that Thursday, October 4 was followed by Friday, October 15. Shown on right is a page form a 1584 calendar.
Of further note is that the NASA moon phase chart treats all BCE dates according to the Julian Calendar. This means that from the time of the Nicene Council in 325 AD—which is the point in time back to which the Gregorian Calendar (in 1582) attempted to correct the Julian calendar (which was slightly longer than an actual tropical solar year, and so had ‘overtaken’ [on average] one calendar day about every 128 years by including one leap day when it should not have, thus making the spring equinox in 1582 fall on Mar. 11, and so compelling the Pope to authorize a skipping of 10 days to restore the calendar)—the drift in the vernal equinox from 325 AD means that the equinox at the time of Julius Caesar was about (Julian) March 24,33 and in 444 BC was about March 27. In other words, the NASA chart and other scientific charts use the Julian calendar without making adjustments to our standard, tropical, solar year. (See “Julian Calendar” in the Glossary.) So when one looks at a date like 444 BC to see when the new moon occurred, the date appears to be ‘seasonally’ ahead by about 6 days compared to the proleptic Gregorian calendar (that is, ‘seasonally’ on average, since to some extent the lunar-solar year ‘floats’ because of intercalation)