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the seventy years of the exile for a time of the restoring and the building of Jerusalem. Thus Hitzig and Ewald openly declare that the reckoning is not correct, that the pseudo-Daniel has erred, and has assumed ten weeks, i.e., seventy years, too many, either from ignorance of chronology, “or from a defect in thought, from an interpretation of a word of sacred Scripture, springing from certain conditions received as holy and necessary, but not otherwise demonstrable” (Ewald, p. 425). By this change of the sixty-two weeks = 434 years into fifty-two weeks or 364 years, they reach from the year 174 to 538 b.c., the year of the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus, by whom the word “to restore Jerusalem” was promulgated. To this the seven weeks (= forty-nine years) are again added in order to reach the year 588 or 587 b.c., the year of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, from which the year-weeks, shortened from seventy to sixty, are to be reckoned.
This hypothesis needs no serious refutation. For a reckoning which places the first 7 weeks = 49 years aside, and then shortens the 62 weeks by 10 in order afterwards again to bring in the 7 weeks, can make no pretence to the name of a “scientific explanation.” When Hitzig remarks (p. 170) “that the 7 weeks form the πρῶτον ψεῦδος in the (Daniel's) reckoning, which the author must bring in; the whole theory of the 70 year-weeks demands the earlier commencement in the year 606 b.c.” - we may, indeed, with greater accuracy say that the πρῶτον ψεῦδος of the modern interpretation, which needs such exegetical art and critical violence in order to change the 70 and the 62 weeks into 60 and 52, arises out of the dogmatic supposition that the 70 weeks must end with the consecration of the temple under Antiochus, or with the death of this enemy of God.
Among the opponents of the genuineness of the book this supposition is a dogmatic axiom, to the force of which the words of Scripture must yield. But this supposition is adopted also by interpreters such as Hofmann, Reichel (die 70 Jahreswochen Dan 9:24-27, in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1858, p. 735ff.), Fries, and others, who recognise the genuineness of the book of Daniel, and hold the announcement of the angel in these verses to be a divine revelation. These interpreters have adopted this view for this reason, that in the description of the hostile prince who shall persecute Israel and desecrate the sanctuary, and then come to his end with terror (Dan 9:26, Dan 9:27), they believe that they recognise again the image of Antiochus Epiphanes, whose enmity against