Why On Earth Did Justus of Tiberias Think It Was Possible that Daniel's Prophesy of the Seventy Weeks Pointed to Agrippa as the Messiah?

I have been trying to reconcile how it was that the rabbinic sources could have believed that Agrippa was the messiah (Daniel 9.26) ever since I wrote the Real Messiah.  It is generally assumed that Daniel wrote in the Babylonian period because the narrative explicitly tells us so.  As such there is no way seemingly to stretch four hundred and ninety years from that epoch to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

I mentioned there is an explanation current among the Jews - there always is - but because it seems so stupid to begin with I never bothered to even listen to what it had to say. 

Anyway my wife was watching the House Sitter with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn (who was very attractive even in the 90s thanks to plastic surgery) so I went away and for no reason in particular started thumbing through the International Critical Commentary on Daniel for no reason whatsoever (I wasn't even thinking about bacht's question I just didn't buy the central premise of the movie that Goldie could meet Steve Martin's parents in a small town and claim to be married to him without prompting them to call Martin).

Montgomery's commentary is the finest out there, I think. It is amazing how every page of a book like this is packed with so much useful information. 

So I start reading from page 1 (instead of my usual picking random pages of information in a book like this, like 'spin the globe' as used to play when I was a kid). Montgomery begins by noting that the name Daniel was widespread in Semitic antiquity. He takes Ezekiel's (14:14,20) Daniel - who is ranked with Noah and Job - as another entirely legendary Daniel. 

Montgomery says that the name Daniel was taken from 'living Jewish folk-story.' (p. 3)

He then writes that "there is no reference to our Daniel as an historical person in the Heb. OT although his life is attributed by the book to the 6th century." (ibid)

Montgomery goes through all the allusions to Daniel in ancient literature. He notes strong parallels with 1 Maccabees and the Zaddokite text of Qumran. He notes the differing division of chapters (at least traditionally) between the Jewish and Christian texts of Daniel. 

He then goes through the linguistic evidence to help set a date. At the end of his discussion of the use of Hebrew by the author he writes that "to sum up, the argument from the Hebrew points to a late age in comparison with the known Biblical literature, and it can be assigned with entire philological satisfaction to the 2nd century,; while a date earlier than the 4th century cent. cannot on comparative evidence be easily attributed to it." (p. 15).

The section on the author's use of Aramaic presents evidence which he says "forces the present writer to hold that the Aramaic of Daniel is not earlier than within the 5th century, is more likely younger, and is certainly not 6th century." (p. 20).

He also points to three words of Greek origin which help fix the date even further. 

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about the question about the chronology in Daniel. 


So I did the unthinkable. I just counted back four hundred and ninety years from 70 CE just to see where that would lead us in terms of a historical period. 

420 BCE approximately. The Persian period. 

I wasn't paying attention to any internal evidence right now. I just wanted to see if it was at all possible that someone in the first century might have thought that Daniel was writing in 420 BCE.

I know people are going to say that the work claims to be written in the Babylonian period. But the work is also obviously a composite text. 

The first account is in Hebrew; then Aramaic is used from ch. 2:4, beginning with the speech of the "Chaldeans", through chapter seven. Hebrew is then used from chapter eight through chapter twelve. 

Anyway, when I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the list of Persian kings I who ruled in 420 BCE I found a figure called Darius II:

Quote:

Darius II (Dārayavahuš), originally called Ochus and often surnamed Nothus (from Greek νόθος), was king of the Persian Empire from 423 BC to 404 BC. Artaxerxes I, who died on December 25, 424 BC, was followed by his son Xerxes II. After a month and a half Xerxes II was murdered by his brother Secydianus or Sogdianus (the form of the name is uncertain). His illegitimate brother, Ochus, satrap of Hyrcania, rebelled against Sogdianus, and after a short fight killed him, and suppressed by treachery the attempt of his own brother Arsites to imitate his example. Ochus adopted the name Darius (in the chronicles he is called Nothos"). Neither Xerxes II nor Secydianus occurs in the dates of the numerous Babylonian tablets from Nippur; here the reign of Darius II follows immediately after that of Artaxerxes I. Of Darius's reign historians know very little (a rebellion of the Medes in 409 BC is mentioned by Xenophon), except that he was quite dependent on his wife Parysatis. In the excerpts from Ctesias some harem intrigues are recorded, in which he played a disreputable part. As long as the power of Athens remained intact he did not meddle in Greek affairs; even the support which the Athenians in 413 BC gave to the rebel Amorges in Caria would not have roused him, had not the Athenian power been broken in the same year before Syracuse. He gave orders to his satraps in Asia Minor, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, to send in the overdue tribute of the Greek towns, and to begin a war with Athens; for this purpose they entered into an alliance with Sparta. In 408 BC he sent his son Cyrus to Asia Minor, to carry on the war with greater energy. In 404 BC Darius II died after a reign of nineteen years, and was followed by Artaxerxes II.

So I still had this problem about the fact that Daniel is originally dated in previous chapters to the Babylonian period. But I thought it was interesting to that four hundred and ninety years before the destruction of the temple there was this king name 'Darius' ruling the Jews. I could help but remember that a 'Darius' in Daniel. 

Then when I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Daniel I noticed that scholars found a problem reconciling Daniel's mention of 'Darius' with Daniel being identified as living in the Babylonian period. 

First the introduction to Daniel being in the court of Darius. After the Feast of Belshazzar we are told "that very night" (Dan 5:30) Belshazzar was slain and "Darius the Mede" took over the kingdom.

Quote:

Daniel is elevated to a pre-eminent position under Darius which elicits the jealousy of other officials. Knowing of Daniel's devotion to his God, these officials trick the king into issuing an edict forbidding worship of any other god or man for a 30 day period. Because Daniel continues to pray three times a day to God towards Jerusalem, he is accused and king Darius, forced by his own decree, throws Daniel into the lions' den. God shuts up the mouths of the lions and the next morning king Darius finds Daniel unharmed and casts his accusers and their families into the lions' pit where they are instantly devoured.

It is worth noting that the vision of the seventy weeks is specifically given in the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus (9:1).

Now here's the problem associating Darius with a figure who lived in the Babylonian period:

Quote:

Some historians criticize the notion of a separate Mede rule by pointing out that the Persians at that point in history had control over the Medes, and that the contemporary cuneiform documents, such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Babylonian Chronicle, leave no room for any Mede occupation of Babylon before the Persians under Cyrus conquered it. It has been suggested that the author's apparent confusion on this issue could be due to his reliance on Jeremiah (see Dan. 9:2): and Jeremiah prophesied (in Jeremiah 51:11), at the height of the Median empire's power, that Babylon would fall to the Medes. The personage whom Daniel describes as taking control of Babylon after Belshazzar is deposed is named as Darius the Mede, who rules over Babylon in chapters 6 and 9. Daniel reports that Darius was 'about 62 years old' when he was 'made king over Babylon.' Darius the Mede, while mentioned in the book of Daniel, the works of Flavius Josephus, and Jewish Midrash material, is not known from any primary historical sources. Neither the Babylonian nor the Persian histories record such a person. Herodotus, who wrote his history about 440 BCE, records that Babylon fell to the Persian army, under the control of King Cyrus, who had conquered the Median Empire as early as 550 BCE. As Darius the Mede is unknown to any other source, many historians view his presence in Daniel as simply a mistake of a much later author, who has perhaps inadvertently placed the Persian King Darius I at an earlier date than he actually reigned.[16] Three key pieces of information seem to support this. Firstly, Darius I, like Cyrus, also conquered Babylon and personally commanded the Persian army that took the city in 522 BCE to put down a rebellion. Secondly, Daniel's reference to Darius organising the empire by appointing satraps and administrators fits Darius I perfectly: he is known to history as the Persian king par excellence who professionalised the empire's bureaucracy and organised it into satrapies and tax districts. Thirdly, Darius I was an important figure in Jewish history, remembered as a king associated with Cyrus who permitted the returned exiles to rebuild the temple (see Ezra chs 1-6). In Daniel 9:1, Darius is said to be the son of Ahasuerus, commonly acknowledged to be a variant spelling of Xerxes (Esther 1:1). Darius I was the father of a king called Xerxes.

But Darius II while being an illegitimate son of king Artaxerxes I and it is interesting to note that he actually followed Artaxerxes's other son Xerxes as Wikipedia notes:

Quote:

Artaxerxes I, who died on December 25, 424 BC, was followed by his son Xerxes II. After a month and a half Xerxes II was murdered by his brother Secydianus or Sogdianus (the form of the name is uncertain). His illegitimate brother, Ochus, satrap of Hyrcania, rebelled against Sogdianus, and after a short fight killed him, and suppressed by treachery the attempt of his own brother Arsites to imitate his example. Ochus adopted the name Darius (in the chronicles he is called Nothos"). Neither Xerxes II nor Secydianus occurs in the dates of the numerous Babylonian tablets from Nippur; here the reign of Darius II follows immediately after that of Artaxerxes I.

Now Wikipedia lists all kinds of creative ways to make 'Darius' live in the Babylonian period. Yet what I am wondering is whether with all the change of language and the text being a hodge-podge of different writings, whether someone fused together two traditions about two separate 'prophets' named Daniel?

In other words, the point at which 'Darius' is introduced into the narrative represents a separate work which ends in chapter 12. The idea that Belshazzar was living one day, murdered one night and then Darius the king of the Medes came along in the BABYLONIAN PERIOD obviously doesn't work. 

Couldn't it be possible instead that the prophesy given in Daniel chapter 9 was written at the beginning of the reign of Darius II and that Jews and Christians who argued that the 'cutting off' of the messiah and the ending of the tamid occurred around 66 CE KNEW that the original material was dated from the Persian period?