Daniel's 70 Weeks - The Gap Theory Revisited

A bad Greek translation causes trouble for 2000 years.

I'm working on wrapping up the three overviews of Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation into something downloadable and easy to read. But the kerfuffle over Daniel's 70 Weeks has been intriguing.

Why is this issue so difficult?

When the Hebrew is clear about what the angel Gabriel is saying, why is it not clear to everyone else?

Then it hit me. It's the Septuagint - the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. And, the more I dug into its origins, the more I realized what an awful translation it was. And, it explained why so many of our translations are messed up.

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Daniel's 70 Weeks - The Gap Theory Revisited

Far too many Christians believe in this theory that there's a gap between Week 69 and Week 70. There is no such gap, but we can't move forward until we have extracted this error and tossed it into the dustbin of history. And yes, history has a lot to do with it.

How The Gap Theory Inserted Itself

There has been a lot of fuss and feathers over this part of the prophecy that Gabriel gives Daniel. And, there shouldn't be any, since it is remarkably straightforward... in Hebrew. But, Hebrew is a difficult language to master, so the early church used a translation of the Hebrew scriptures - the Septuagint.

Everyone spoke Greek. The books of the New Testament were in Greek. To the first Christians, there seemed no need to learn Hebrew when the Septuagint was just fine. Except the Septuagint wasn't fine.

When Alexander the Great captured the Middle East, Egypt and Persia up to the Indus river, Greek became the language of commerce, politics and civilization. And, Alexander's careful and persuasive attitude towards Israel had won many Israelis over. Israel had already demonstrated a willingness to become corrupt, and Alexander was more than ready to encourage this.

After the death of Alexander - who was probably poisoned - the empire fractured into four parts, and Ptolemy I took over Egypt, Israel and Syria. When Ptolemy II took over from his father, he commanded the chief librarian to copy or purchase all the books in the world and built the Great Library of Alexandria to house them. The Letter of Aristeas describes the request by Ptolemy II to obtain a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Eleazar, the High Priest in Jerusalem, was asked by the chief librarian in Alexandria to choose six elders of each tribe to come to Alexandria and translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Eleazar complied, sending 72 men who knew both Hebrew and Greek to Alexandria. From here the story has gotten embellished with claims that it was completed in 72 days, and that each of the translators were locked in separate cells, miraculously producing 72 different manuscripts that were exactly alike in every detail.

And THAT is a lot of hogwash.

By the time that the request for the Septuagint to be created arrived in Jerusalem, Israelis were already rushing headlong into corruption. They had already murdered Zechariah ben Berechiah some two hundred years before, and covered up that murder. And, they made sure that Zechariah's murder stayed covered.

It was only Jesus who revealed the evil that they had done. Zechariah ben Jehoidah during the time of King Joash was NOT the prophet that Jesus was referring to in Matthew 23:35. And, I will never disagree with the words of Jesus.

NOTE: The common explanation today is that Jesus was talking about Zechariah ben Jehoidah, not Zechariah ben Berechiah. And THAT just doesn't make sense. Jesus was talking about all the righteous people that had been murdered from Abel until that time. Yes, Zechariah ben Jehoidah was murdered in the temple by King Joash, but he was hardly the last prophet to be murdered. Worse, do you really want to twist the words of Jesus? That's a sin that you should never commit. And, it is easy to see how Zechariah ben Berechiah would ALSO have been murdered in the temple, since the prophet Zechariah was also a priest and Israel had become that corrupt.

Anyway, the point that I'm making is that the Septuagint is a flawed translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the reasons for those flaws lay in the corruption of the translators. A few examples of their translation errors:

• In Hebrew, the Red Sea is Yam Soof (Sea of Reed), yet the Septuagint says Erythra thalassa meaning 'Red Sea'.

• In Proverbs 6, they replace the ant with the honeybee.

• They totally messed up the book of Daniel, where it had to be rewritten hundreds of years later by an unsaved scholar, Theodotian in AD 150. Few versions survive of the original corrupted version of Daniel. But, his fixes didn't arrive in time to stop the honest error by Irenaeus.

• When discussing unclean animals, the Septuagint replaces rabbit with Young Pig, Pelican for Owl, and Ibis for owl.

• They cut out a sixth of the book of Job, later corrected by Theodotion.

• They cut out an eighth of Jeremiah and changed the order of passages.

• And, the faithful Jews who got their first look at this translation were horrified and have been reported to have said:

"That day was as ominous for Israel as the day on which the golden calf was made since the Law could not be accurately translated" (Mesechet Sopherim [Tractate for Scribes] 1.7).

(Read more, here.)

Some of the errors of the Septuagint were fixed by Theodotian, a Hellenist Jewish scholar in AD 150. But, the idea of an unsaved man trying to fix what other unsaved men damaged, is not my idea of a good translation. But, it was better than nothing. Unfortunately, his fixes did not make it out into early Christian Churches to stop the gap theory from taking form.

All of this is why there is a battle over Daniel's 70 weeks. Those in the early church who described a gap separating the last week of the 70 Weeks, did so because they were reading the Septuagint.

The original Hebrew does not proclaim this gap, but the Septuagint (or maybe even the Theodotian version) does. And, when it comes to a conflict between the original Hebrew and the Septuagint, the Hebrew should always win. But, our 'scholars' are refusing to accept the original Hebrew. They are teaching the corrupted version because it agrees with their eschatology.

They like to cite Irenaeus, who grew up learning from the original Septuagint. And they hold tight his implicit claim of a gap between the 69th and 70th Week, and that the 70th was about the Antichrist. And the reason why he said that, is due to what the Septuagint said in the last verse of Daniel 9:

27 And one week shall establish the covenant with many: and in the midst of the week my sacrifice and drink-offering shall be taken away: and on the temple [shall be] the abomination of desolations; and at the end of time an end shall be put to the desolation.

From ellopolos.net

The point is that ANYONE reading the Septuagint will be led astray from the correct meaning which is in the Hebrew. And, since I could not find a translation that fit the original Hebrew, I had to make a word-for-word translation myself:

So, here is verse 27, but this time I have looked at the original Hebrew:

VERSE 27 – And, [He/Messiah] shall confirm a covenant to many, for one week. And, [at] half of the week, there is a ceasing of sacrifice and offering. And, to the wing of abominations, devastation – until completeness and destruction is poured on [the] devastated.

– Daniel 9:27, JLV (John Little Version)

Except for three words in [brackets], that is a word-for-word translation of the original Hebrew. It is also important to note the first word of verse 27 is the verb Higbir, which is:

Hiphil; Sequential Perfect (v'qatal); 3rd Person Masculine; Singular

This means that the subject of the previous statement is being referred to by Higbir. What is the subject of the previous statement?

Well, here's my word-for-word translation of verse 26:

VERSE 26 – And after sixty and two weeks will Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and a people of a prince that shall come and destroy the city and the holy place, and its end in the overflow, and to an end war is desolations determined.

- Daniel 9:26

The subject of verse 26 is Messiah. What follows after the reference to Messiah is a parenthetical phrase that describes what will happen at a later time after Messiah was cut off. And, we know this time to be AD 70.

Then we have a beloved brother in Christ, Irenaeus, in AD 180, who writes a treatise against the growing heresies of his time. He knew Greek, but did not know Hebrew. And, just like we quote our own flawed English translations, he quoted his. And, here is what he said about Daniel 9:27, where he attributes the verse to the Antichrist:

“And in the midst of the week,” he says, “the sacrifice and the libation shall be taken away, and the abomination of desolation [shall be brought] into the temple: even unto the consummation of the time shall the desolation be complete.“(8) Now three years and six months constitute the half-week.

– Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 25

Because Irenaeus was reading from a deeply flawed translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, he would not have known that he had just attributed to the Antichrist, what was for the Messiah.

The Mistakes Get Worse

So, when an Anglican gold medalist (Trinity College, Dublin 1819) in classics arrived, he would have known what Irenaeus had said. He also would have been able to read the Septuagint fluently. And, he began to look at the Bible as a series of dispensations. And, this idea from Irenaeus of the Antichrist putting a stop to Temple sacrifices, meant that the Dispensation of Grace (the church) was over. But, he couldn't figure out how that would happen.

This Anglican polyglot was John Nelson Darby and was 30 years old when Edward Irving told everyone who would listen, about the two raptures - the secret one before the Great Tribulation and the visible one after the Great Tribulation. And Irving got that inspiration from Jesuit priest Manuel Lacunza.

It was the one piece that Darby needed to make his theory of Dispensationalism to work. And, after years of refining his concept and preaching it throughout Britain, he traveled six times to the US between 1859 and 1874 to preach his theories. Cyrus Ingerson Scofield incorporated these theories into the first ever study bible - just in time for the electric printing press to arrive in 1902 and make his bible inexpensive and available to everyone who wanted one.

From that moment on, the 'Gap Theory' of Daniel's 70 Weeks became the accepted standard everywhere.

The Hebrew Of Verse 24 Removes The Gap

The irony is that the first verb in Daniel 9:24 would have been all you would have needed to prove the gap theory wrong.

Why?

Well verse 24 starts out like this:

"70 weeks are determined"

Well, the verb for 'are determined' is נחתך (Nech-Tak, 'ch' as in Bach), and it is singular. It means that this time period is contiguous, continuous and unbreakable. It is a single time period.

This means that there is no room for a gap. It means that Daniel 9:27 is about Messiah and NOT the Antichrist. It also means that the Dispensationalism as portrayed by Darby cannot be true. And, it also means that the Body of Christ will be going through the Great Tribulation.

Why?

Because the Pretribulation Rapture Theory requires the Gap Theory to be viable. Without the Gap, you cannot have a pretrib rapture. And...

There's no Gap.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
שאלו שלום ירושלים

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My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you... Hosea 4:6

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Keep this ministry alive with a donation.

And, read my books and guides for free:

https://revelationsix.com/books/

I created five Android Apps that will help you read through the Bible in a Year. You can find them here:

https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/

If you miss my rantings about geopolitics, idiocy, resource collapse and incompetent globalism, follow me on X @revelation_six.

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