The Due Date (Series: When Was Jesus Born?)

God knew exactly when Jesus was going to be born. He knew it before He created the world. And He shared with His people a certain amount of information beforehand.

How much did the Jews know about the “due date” for the Messiah? And how much should they have known?

The Old Testament does give us some interesting clues.

There’s a rather cryptic prophecy in Genesis 49:10, for example:

The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

This could just be a description of Judah’s legal power in Israel – that power would remain until the Messiah came. But could it be saying something about timing?

That power was taken away bit by bit, never to return, in the time around Jesus. The Talmud states that power over life and death – the power to give the death sentence – was removed from the Sanhedrin a little over 40 years before the temple was destroyed (around 30 AD). It may have happened earlier, but it does seem like it was around the time of Christ. The scepter was removed – and the king came.

A useful summary of this information can be found in The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict

Perhaps the most remarkable prophecy is in the book of Daniel:

Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

Know therefore and understand that from the going out 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 with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.

Daniel 9:24-27

This is a very detailed and complex prophecy. It has been interpreted in very different ways through the years – people with different theological backgrounds have had different takes on various parts.

There’s no need to go into all the details here, but one part stands out – after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary..

There is a question, coming from the Hebrew text, whether there is one “anointed one” or two. Does one come after 7 weeks? This translation makes it sound like it. But we’ll leave that aside for now.

What we do know is that 69 weeks will pass (62+7) after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, the anointed one will be cut off, and then the city and sanctuary would be destroyed.

It seems likely that the decree is recorded in Nehemiah 2 – “In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes”.

69 weeks would be 483 days – well, actually it’s 69 “sevens”, apparently referring to weeks of years. So that’s 483 years from the decree to the anointed one.

From here on in, almost every number is a challenge. What was the year of the decree? How long is a year (there are compelling reasons to go for a 360 day year here)? And what actually happens at the end of that time – is it an exact date? Or just a general warning?

A book would be required to go through all these options. Some people believe that the prophecy can be dated to an exact day – perhaps the triumphal entry of Christ, or the crucifixion itself. Read a few more specifics here: Promises of a Messiah: Daniel 9.

But leaving the minutia aside, we still have some remarkable information here. First, the numbers do seem to point to the time of Christ. Second, we know that he will be “cut off” (and He was). Third, this had to happen before the temple and city were destroyed. That happened in 70 AD.

So looking back, this severely limits the candidates for “Messiah”. He had to come at this time.

Long before Jesus came, the Jews were doing their own calculations of Daniel’s 70 weeks. In his book Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and Christian, Roger Beckwith shares some compelling evidence that many Jews themselves expected the Messiah to come around the time of Christ. So the prophecy has power both looking forward, and looking back.

According to Scripture, the Messiah would come before the city and temple were destroyed, and the ruling Sanhedrin dispersed (a new Sanhedrin continued with greatly reduced power in another city, but the scepter had definitely departed). So before we even get into the history of Jesus’ birth, we already have fascinating reasons to believe that the actual time of His coming was prophesied long before it happened.

Next time we’ll see if history can give us a little more insight into the actual year of Jesus’ birth.