When the Messiah will appear; after 49 or after 483 years?

EXCERPT: Daniel 9 promises both 490 years and a messiah. Due to different assumptions about punctuation, in some translations, a messiah appears at the end of the first 49 years. In others, the messiah appears only after the first 483 years. The article provides reasons why there is no messiah after the first 49 years.

A summary of this article is available HERE.

THE TWO TRANSLATIONS

In the RSV and some other translation of Daniel 9:25, the messiah appears after the first 49 years:

Daniel 9 Seven weeks… from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks.  Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again …

The AB, ERV, and NEB follow a similar translation.  Given this translation, the messiah cannot be Jesus Christ because the decree to restore Jerusalem, which began the 490 years, was issued more than 400 years before Christ. (See, Which Decree.)

But in the NASB, KJV, NIV, ASV, ERV [margin], MLB and the JB and some other translations, the messiah appears after 7 + 62 weeks (483 years), and therefore can be Jesus Christ:

… from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again …

The reason for the difference in the translations is punctuation (commas, full stops, etc.).  In the original Hebrew, there was no punctuation.  The original Hebrew did not even have spaces between words.  When it comes to the Old Testament, all punctuation is interpretation.  The context must determine the punctuation.

WHICH TRANSLATION IS CORRECT?

For the reasons below, the translations where the Messiah appears after 483 should be accepted as correct:

Septuagint(A) When the Hebrew was first translated into Greek, in the centuries before Christ came to this world, punctuation was added.  The punctuation of all the ancient Greek translations, namely the Septuagint (LXX) and those of Theodotion, Symmachus, and Aquila and the Peshitta, treat the 7 and 62 weeks of Daniel 9:25 as a single period at the end of which the Messiah appears.  The Vulgate and Syriac, and in modern times, also the NASB, adopted this punctuation.

Masoretic Text(B) The Jews first added punctuation to the Hebrew about 500 years after Christ; in the Masoretic period.  The Masoretic version of Daniel 9 adds an athnach (a principal disjunctive divider within a verse) after the words “seven weeks.”   This resulted in the RSV transla­tion, in which the messiah appears at the end of the first 7 weeks.  There seems to be no reason to follow the Jewish translation.  The Jews had a motive to remove Jesus from the prophecy. Pusey, p. 190, n. 1, quotes Rashi to the effect “that on account of ‘heretics,’ i.e. Christians,” the clause was divided by an athnach.

(C) Fair treatment of the text requires that the Messiah in Daniel 9:26 be the same as the Messiah in Daniel 9:25. Two different messiahs in two consecutive verses are unlikely. If only one messiah appears in this prophecy, and if he appears at the end of the first seven weeks (49 years), and if he is killed after the end of the 69th week, as verse 26 states, then he is at least 434 years old when he is killed, which is not possible.  He must, therefore, appear at the end of the 7+62 weeks, as in the NASB, NIV, KJV, Young’s Literal, and many other translations.

(D) The problem can be solved by noting that this passage is poetry and then by analyzing the structure of the poem. This shows that verses 25 and 26 alternate between the City (Jerusalem) and the Messiah:

(A) City Jerusalem
from … decree to restore … Jerusalem
seven weeks
will be built again
(B) Messiah
until Messiah the Prince
and sixty-two weeks
cut off after 62 two weeks

This table shows that the seven weeks relate to the rebuilding of the city, while the end of the sixty-two weeks relates to the Messiah. (source William Shea) This poetic analysis rules out the Masoretic punctuation and confirms that the Messiah appears at the end of the 62 weeks.

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