The Day I Started Asking Questions
(It is important for you to read these post in order – here is where you can click to get to part 1)
For many years, I accepted the famous Daniel 9 calculation without giving it much thought.
Honestly, why wouldn’t I?
It seemed airtight.
Daniel’s prophecy spoke of sixty-nine weeks.
Those weeks were converted into years.
The years were converted into days.
The days were counted forward.
The calculation landed on April 6, AD 32.
Case closed.
At least that was how it appeared.
I wasn’t looking for a different answer.
I wasn’t trying to challenge anyone’s work.
In fact, I was impressed by it.
Very impressed.
The idea that Daniel could predict the arrival of Messiah centuries in advance and that someone could trace that prophecy all the way to a specific day in history was fascinating to me.
The calculation felt precise.
Elegant.
Perfect.
Then I started asking questions.
Not because I doubted Daniel.
And not because I doubted Jesus.
Ironically, it was because I believed both.
The more I studied Scripture, the more questions I found myself asking about the calculations.
The Famous Calculation
Most readers are probably familiar with it.
Daniel’s sixty-nine weeks are understood as sixty-nine groups of seven years.
That produces:
483 years.
Those years are then converted into prophetic years consisting of 360 days.
483 × 360 = 173,880 days.
The countdown begins with a decree associated with Nehemiah.
Sir Robert Anderson famously identified that date as March 14, 445 BC.
Count forward 173,880 days and you arrive at April 6, AD 32.
Many believers identify that date with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
And I understand why.
The calculation is impressive.
But Then I Started Pulling On Threads
What began as simple curiosity eventually became something more.
The first question seemed harmless enough.
How do we know Nisan 1 was March 14, 445 BC?
That led to another question.
How do we convert an observational Jewish calendar into a precise modern calendar date?
Then another.
Why are we converting prophetic years into days and then inserting those days into a calendar system that wouldn’t exist for another fifteen hundred years?
Then another.
How certain are we about leap months?
Moon observations?
Calendar reconstruction?
One question led to another.
And before long I realized something.
The calculation itself wasn’t really the issue.
The assumptions behind the calculation were.
The Math Never Bothered Me
To this day, the arithmetic doesn’t bother me.
483 × 360 still equals 173,880.
It always will.
The math isn’t controversial.
What interested me were the decisions required before the math ever begins.
For example:
- Why 360-day years?
- Why that decree?
- Why that date?
- Why that calendar conversion?
- Why that ending date?
The more I studied, the more I realized that every calculation rests upon assumptions.
And assumptions deserve examination.
Something Else Was Happening
Around the same time, I found myself paying closer attention to the Gospel accounts.
Particularly the final week of Jesus’ life.
Certain details kept capturing my attention.
Jesus’ statement about three days and three nights.
John’s reference to a high Sabbath.
The relationship between Passover and the weekly Sabbath.
The timing of the crucifixion itself.
I wasn’t looking for problems.
I was looking for understanding.
And the more I studied, the more I found myself revisiting conclusions I had previously accepted without much investigation.
An Unexpected Discovery
What surprised me most was this:
The less certain I became about some of the calculations, the more impressed I became with Daniel’s prophecy.
At first that felt backward.
Shouldn’t it have worked the other way around?
But it didn’t.
Because my confidence was never supposed to rest in a calculation.
It was supposed to rest in the prophecy itself.
Daniel saw Messiah coming.
Daniel saw Messiah being cut off.
Daniel saw Jerusalem’s destruction.
Those realities remain astonishing whether we can identify a specific day with absolute precision or not.
Where This Journey Led Me
Eventually my questions led me to reconsider several commonly accepted conclusions.
Not because I wanted a different answer.
But because I wanted to understand the assumptions behind the answers.
One of those conclusions involved the year of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Most discussions focus on AD 30 or AD 33.
A few focus on AD 32.
But as I continued studying, another possibility began to emerge.
AD 34.
Do I think I can prove it beyond question?
No.
That would undermine much of what I’ve argued throughout this series.
But I do think it deserves serious consideration.
And that’s where we’re headed next.
In our next post, we’ll examine the evidence that led me to revisit the chronology of the crucifixion and consider whether AD 34 may fit the biblical data better than many people realize.
Not because I’m certain.
But because I think the question is worth asking.
phillipbrande.com 