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Monday, May 18, 2020

Jesus' Fulfillment Of The Seventy Weeks Prophecy

One of the themes I've been emphasizing about prophecy fulfillment is that a fulfillment can be evidential for Christianity even if the fulfillment is thought to be of a secondary or typological nature. For example, though I've argued that the Servant Songs in Isaiah are about the Messiah in their original context, Jesus' alignment with the passages is evidentially significant in support of Christianity even if the passages are about the nation of Israel, a Jewish remnant, or some other entity instead. See the article just linked for a further discussion of that example.

The same is true of Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy. See the article on that prophecy here by Robert Newman. I consider his interpretation of the passage the best one I've seen. I take it as the original meaning of the passage. But even if I'm wrong, it still seems evidentially significant that Jesus' life lines up so well with the passage in the manner discussed by Newman. Even if you think the passage in its original context refers to some entity other than the Messiah, that Jesus fulfilled it in some significantly different way than how Newman proposes, or whatever, it's still significant that Jesus was crucified during the sixty-ninth sabbatical cycle after the 445 B.C. decree to rebuild Jerusalem. And there are other ways in which Jesus' life lines up well with the passage. See the second-to-last paragraph of the post here for further discussion.

The more Jesus' life lines up so well with passages like the Servant Songs and the Seventy Weeks prophecy, the more difficult it is to deny that something supernatural has occurred. It's noteworthy that you don't even have to grant a Christian understanding of the original meaning of these passages to reach the conclusion that there's been a supernatural fulfillment of the passages.

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