Over the years, I have studied dozens of interpretations of Daniel 9:24-25, the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks . To refresh your memory, those verses say: “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and…
In my books on prophecy and chronology, I have used selected chronologies from the Seder Olam, the basic text on which all historical understanding of Jewish tradition in the Talmud is based. I do so mainly as a way of cross-checking the biblical chronology. For example, the Seder Olam says…
Why is the Jewish New Year celebrated in modern times in Tishri, the seventh month, not in Nisan, which is specified as the first month in Exodus? There is no mention of a New-Year Day in the Jewish Tanakh (Old Testament). However, in Exodus 12:2, God commanded the Children of…
There is much confusion in Christian circles about the meaning and application of the phrase “times of the Gentiles” as spoken by Jesus and recorded in the Book of Luke. Many modern expositors consider the “times of the Gentiles” to still be underway, despite what Jesus said about its duration,…
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is observed on the 10th day of Tishri on the Hebrew calendar. Jews all over the world will go to their local synagogue on that day for the purpose of achieving atonement. However, the Tanakh says Yom Kippur as celebrated by Jews today will…
The Jewish people have been taught by their rabbis for twenty centuries that Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah, and that his death proved to all Jewish people that he was a renegade Jew making false claims. Maimonides firmly established that thought with his teachings. In his Mishneh Torah Maimonides…
How long did the Israelites sojourn in Egypt? The Bible is correct, they were there 430 years. In the Tanakh (Old Testament), it says “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, [was] four hundred and thirty years.” (Exodus 12:40) But, despite that clear statement about…
The most popular traditional interpretations of Daniel 9:24-27 (aka the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks or the Messiah Prophecy) begin their exposition with a Persian decree, most often the one issued by Artaxerxes I Longimanus to Nehemiah. That decree is usually dated by most traditional interpreters to 445 BCE. The…
Today, the hope for a coming Messiah, an Anointed One from God who will usher in an age of peace, is shared by Jews and Christians alike, with one important difference: Judaism believes that the Messiah is yet to come to reign over a future kingdom of Israel. The followers…
Were there really more than half-a-million men (and more than 2 million Israelites if women and children are included) who left Egypt in the Exodus, as the Bible seems to say? If so, why is there no mention of such a mass exit in the ancient Egyptian records or any…