"Daniel's seventy weeks are about Cyrus, the Maccabees, or the Second Temple. Christians read Jesus into them." Many Jewish readers say this, and so do many modern scholars.
Short answer: Daniel 9:24–27 is hard, and honest readers differ; even the Catholic NABRE notes read it of the persecution under Antiochus IV. But the passage promises an end to sin and "Everlasting justice," and it places an anointed one "cut down" before the destruction of "the city and the sanctuary" (Daniel 9:26). Jewish tradition (the Talmud and Rashi) counted the seventy weeks to the Second Temple's fall, and Christians see Jesus as the Anointed who came before it. Daniel does not hand us a stopwatch; it hands us a deadline. Several men stirred Israel's hopes before that deadline passed, but only one was proclaimed risen by His own Jewish disciples and is now worshiped by the nations as Israel's Messiah.
Key verses on Daniel's seventy weeks
- "Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and for your holy city" (Daniel 9:24)
- "guilt will be expiated, Everlasting justice will be introduced" (Daniel 9:24)
- "an anointed one shall be cut down with no one to help him. And the people of a leader who will come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." (Daniel 9:26)
- "When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place" (Matthew 24:15)
- "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand." (Mark 1:15)
Scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What Catholics Actually Teach
The Church honors the Jewish people as "the first to hear the Word of God" (CCC 839) and shares their hope: both "tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah" (CCC 840). Catholics believe that "Jesus fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel" (CCC 436).
The Church has never defined a chronology for Daniel's seventy weeks. Catholic scholarship is candid here: the NABRE note on 9:24 says "the four hundred and ninety years here is not to be taken literally," and identifies the "anointed one" of 9:26 as "the high priest Onias III, murdered in 171 B.C." Catholics may weigh these interpretations freely, while holding that Jesus is the Messiah.
What Catholics do not teach:
- That Daniel 9 proves Jesus by arithmetic alone. Calculations are interpretations, and we label them that way.
- That readers who apply it to Cyrus or Antiochus are dishonest. Rashi and the NABRE notes do.
- That the Jewish people are rejected or to blame. The Council taught that "the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures" (Nostra Aetate 4).
The Biblical Case
1. The seventy weeks aim at messianic goals
Daniel had read that "Jerusalem was to lie in ruins for seventy years" (Daniel 9:2; Jeremiah 29:10). St. Gabriel the Archangel answers with seventy weeks of years, and with goals far larger than a return from exile: "Then transgression will stop and sin will end, guilt will be expiated, Everlasting justice will be introduced, vision and prophecy ratified, and a holy of holies will be anointed" (Daniel 9:24). The NABRE note says the "holy of holies" could be a place "or a person." Rashi links that anointing to what "they will bring to them through the king Messiah" (Rashi on Daniel 9:24).
2. The order of events: an anointed one cut down, then the sanctuary destroyed
"After the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall be cut down with no one to help him. And the people of a leader who will come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Daniel 9:26). The 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation reads, "shall an anointed one be cut off, and be no more." Whatever else the passage means, its anointed one is cut off before a destruction of the city and sanctuary. Christians note that Jesus, the Anointed, was crucified around A.D. 30, and the Second Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70.
3. Jewish tradition counted to the Second Temple's fall
Rashi explains the seventy weeks as running "from the day of the first destruction in the days of Zedekiah until it will be [destroyed] the second time," and identifies the destroyer of 9:26 as "Titus and his armies" (Rashi on Daniel 9). The Talmud reads 9:24 the same way (see below). In this tradition, the seventy weeks end in A.D. 70, about forty years after Jesus' crucifixion.
4. Jesus and Josephus read Daniel of the Roman destruction
Jesus warned, "When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place ... then those in Judea must flee to the mountains" (Matthew 24:15–16). The NABRE note on Daniel 9:27 says, "Jesus refers to this passage in his prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem in Mt 24:15." The Jewish historian Josephus, writing after A.D. 70, agreed that "Daniel also wrote concerning the Roman government, and that our country should be made desolate by them" (Antiquities 10.11.7).
5. Other prophets bring the Lord to the Second Temple
Of the rebuilt Temple, Haggai said, "I will fill this house with glory" (Haggai 2:7) and "Greater will be the glory of this house the latter more than the former" (Haggai 2:9). Malachi promised, "the lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his temple" (Malachi 3:1); the NABRE note says some read this figure as divine and others as "a messianic earthly ruler." Both spoke of the rebuilt Temple, the one destroyed in A.D. 70. Whatever these promises mean, they had to be fulfilled while that house stood.
6. The first century was expectant
St. Luke reports that "the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah" (Luke 3:15). Josephus records "an ambiguous oracle" in the Jewish scriptures that "about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth" (Jewish War 6.5.4); he applied it to Vespasian and did not say which prophecy he meant. St. Paul wrote, "when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son" (Galatians 4:4).
What about the arithmetic? Some Christians add the seven and sixty-two weeks together (483 years; the NABRE punctuation of 9:25 separates them) and start with Artaxerxes' decree to Ezra (Ezra 7:13), usually dated 458 or 457 B.C. That reaches about A.D. 26–27, near the start of Jesus' public ministry. Others start with Nehemiah's commission to "rebuild" the city (Nehemiah 2:5), as Julius Africanus did in the third century. The starting point, the calendar, and whether the weeks are exact are all debated. These are interpretations.
Objections Answered
(a) "Daniel 9 is about Antiochus IV, not the Messiah."
At its strongest: The NABRE notes read the passage historically: the anointed one is Onias III; "A leader: Antiochus IV"; and "the Temple was desecrated by Antiochus from 167 to 164 B.C." Daniel 8 and 11 clearly describe Antiochus, and Josephus says the Jews "suffered these things under Antiochus Epiphanes, according to Daniel's vision."
Answer: Catholics need not deny a reference to Antiochus. But the goals of 9:24, sin ended and "Everlasting justice" introduced, were not reached in 164 B.C. And Jesus treated Daniel's "desolating abomination" as still to come (Matthew 24:15). The NABRE note on that verse says St. Matthew sees Daniel's "prophecy" fulfilled "in the desecration of the temple by the Romans." Josephus, too, saw Daniel reaching to Rome. A prophecy can have a near reference and a fuller fulfillment, and 9:24 itself demands the fuller one. The New Testament names it: Christ "has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice" (Hebrews 9:26).
(b) "The 'anointed one' is Cyrus or Agrippa. Mashiach just means anointed."
At its strongest: Isaiah calls Cyrus God's "anointed" (Isaiah 45:1). Rashi applies 9:25 to Cyrus and 9:26 to "Agrippa, the king of Judea," adding that mashiach "is purely an expression of a prince and a dignitary." The Hebrew of 9:26 has no article: "an anointed one."
Answer: Agreed: kings and priests were anointed (CCC 436). The Christian case does not rest on one word but on the pattern: an anointed one cut off, then the sanctuary destroyed, within a period meant to end sin. Rashi's own count ends with Titus. The question is which anointed one in that era fits Daniel 9:24 and the servant who "shall justify the many" (see Who Is the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53?).
(c) "The Hebrew accents split the seven weeks from the sixty-two. The Christian count is built on a mistranslation."
At its strongest: In the Masoretic text, a major accent falls after "seven weeks" in 9:25. Read that way, an "anointed ruler" comes after seven weeks, and a different "anointed one" is cut off after a further sixty-two. The NABRE follows this punctuation: "Until there is an anointed ruler, there shall be seven weeks. In the course of sixty-two weeks it shall be rebuilt" (Daniel 9:25), and its note names Cyrus or the high priest Jeshua as that first anointed ruler. The 1917 JPS has the same division. On this reading the popular 483-year calculation collapses.
Answer: Grant the accent; the Christian case does not need the arithmetic. Read the verses exactly as the Masoretic punctuation has them. An anointed one is still "cut down" "After the sixty-two weeks" (9:26). The city and sanctuary are still destroyed after him. The seventy weeks still end in the goals of 9:24. And the Talmud and Rashi, using this very text, still end the count at the Second Temple's fall (Nazir 32b; Rashi on 9:24). So the debate over the accent decides how one calculates, not where the prophecy lands. It lands before A.D. 70. The Jewish sources below show that the rabbis themselves felt that deadline.
What Ancient Sources Said
- Babylonian Talmud, Nazir 32b. Abaye cites "Seventy sevens are decreed upon your people and upon your sacred city" (Daniel 9:24); the William Davidson Edition explains that the Second Temple would fall "seventy Sabbatical cycles of seven years after the destruction of the First Temple, which is 490 years." (sefaria.org)
- Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 3a. The translator of the Prophets was stopped from translating the Writings "Because it has in it" a revelation of "the end," when the "Messiah" will arrive; Rashi says this refers to the book of Daniel. (sefaria.org)
- Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 39b. The Sages taught that "during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, the lot for God did not arise in the High Priest's right hand at all." The crimson strip of the Day of Atonement "did not turn white," the westernmost lamp "did not burn continually," and "the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves." Forty years before A.D. 70 is about A.D. 30, the years of Jesus' death. The Talmud does not draw that link; Christians note the date. (sefaria.org)
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a–97b. "The school of Eliyahu taught: Six thousand years is the duration of the world," ending with "two thousand years are the period of the coming of the Messiah." The Talmud adds: "due to our many sins, the Messiah did not come after four thousand years passed." Rav says: "All the ends of days that were calculated passed, and the matter depends only upon repentance and good deeds." (sefaria.org)
- Tertullian (An Answer to the Jews 8, c. A.D. 200) asked how Daniel showed "both when and in what time He was to set the nations free," and concluded: "in the day of their storming, the Jews fulfilled the lxx hebdomads predicted in Daniel." (Some scholars question whether chapters 9–14 of this work are Tertullian's own; chapter 8 is in the part usually accepted as his.) (newadvent.org)
- Julius Africanus (Christian chronographer, early 3rd century, Chronography fragment 16): "That the passage speaks then of the advent of Christ, who was to manifest Himself after seventy weeks, is evident." (newadvent.org)
- A word of caution, also from the Talmud: "May those who calculate the end of days be cursed" (Sanhedrin 97b). (sefaria.org)
Conclusion
Daniel 9 does not hand anyone a calendar. But it ties great messianic hopes to the era of the Second Temple, and it sets an anointed one's death before that Temple's fall. Jesus came in that window. He was cut off, the city and sanctuary fell within a generation, and the nations began to worship the God of Israel. No other figure from that window is proclaimed to have taken away sin, as Jesus is (Hebrews 9:26).
We offer this with respect to Jewish readers who share Daniel's hope. Read Daniel 9 slowly, then ask: if the Anointed was to come before the sanctuary was destroyed, who came? (For the wider case, see Is Jesus the Messiah of the Hebrew Scriptures?)
Come and see. The Anointed who came before the Second Temple fell, and whom the nations now worship as Israel's Messiah, is proclaimed today in the Catholic Church. If Jesus is Israel's Messiah, His Church is not a foreign religion. It is the home He built for Israel and the nations, and He sent His Jewish apostles to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). That Church is the Catholic Church, and she teaches that "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body" (CCC 846). With respect and love, we invite you to meet the Messiah in the Catholic Church.
Your next step: Come to Mass this Sunday at your local Catholic church. You can find one near you at MassTimes.org. Everyone is welcome; if you're not yet Catholic, pray with us but don't receive Communion yet. When you're ready to become Catholic, call the parish office and ask about OCIA, the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. They will walk you through every step. Read our guide: How Do I Become Catholic? Not ready yet? Get our free pocket guide below and keep learning.
FAQ
Does the NABRE read Daniel 9 as a prophecy of Jesus? Its notes read the passage historically (Onias III, Antiochus IV), while noting that Jesus applied Daniel to the fall of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:15).
Can Christians calculate the exact year from Daniel 9? Some try, but the starting point and calendar are debated. Those calculations are interpretations, not doctrine.
Do Catholics see the Temple's destruction as proof that God rejected the Jews? No. "God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers" (Nostra Aetate 4).
Sources
Scripture (NABRE, bible.usccb.org): Ezra 7:13; Nehemiah 2:5; Isaiah 45:1; Jeremiah 29:10; Daniel 9:2, 24–27; Haggai 2:7, 9; Malachi 3:1; Matthew 24:15–16; Matthew 28:19; Mark 1:15; Luke 3:15; Galatians 4:4; Hebrews 9:26. NABRE notes on Daniel 9:24, 9:25, 9:26, 9:27, Malachi 3:1 and Matthew 24:15.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (vatican.va): 436; 839, 840; 846.
Second Vatican Council (vatican.va): Nostra Aetate 4.
Jewish sources (sefaria.org): Rashi on Daniel 9:24–27 (Judaica Press, trans. A. J. Rosenberg); Daniel 9:26 (JPS 1917); Babylonian Talmud (William Davidson Edition): Nazir 32b, Megillah 3a with Rashi, Yoma 39b, Sanhedrin 97a, Sanhedrin 97b. Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston (sacred-texts.com): Antiquities of the Jews 10.11.7; The Wars of the Jews 6.5.4.
Church Fathers (newadvent.org): Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 8 (ANF vol. 3); Julius Africanus, Chronography, fragment 16.