Nehemia’s Wall, 2,451 Years Later
An ancient wall found in Jerusalem has messianic significance.
According to a Yahoo News Report:
A wall mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Nehemiah and long sought by archaeologists apparently has been found, an Israeli archaeologist says…
The findings suggest that the structure was actually part of the same city wall the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt, Mazar said. The Book of Nehemiah gives a detailed description of construction of the walls, destroyed earlier by the Babylonians.
We were amazed,” she said, noting that the discovery was made at a time when many scholars argued that the wall did not exist.
The significance of this wall may be greater even than these archaeologists suppose… because of its place in prophecy. The book of Daniel, 9:24-26, lays out a timeframe from the rebuilding of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s time to the death of the Messiah: 483 years. This lines up well with the facts. Scholars believe King Artaxerxes decree to rebuild Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8)ocurred around 444 BC. 483 years later would be 39 AD, right about the time when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.
HeartQuest said,
December 1, 2007 at 11:55 am
Great observation, thanks for bringing attention to this find.
Scott
Navro said,
December 21, 2007 at 4:06 am
“The book of Daniel, 9:24-26, lays out a timeframe from the rebuilding of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s time to the death of the Messiah: 483 years. This lines up well with the facts. Scholars believe King Artaxerxes decree to rebuild Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8)ocurred around 444 BC. 483 years later would be 39 AD, right about the time when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.”
This is plainly laughable.
First off, JC was born 4 BCE and crucified in 31 AD at the latest. So you’re off by 8 years — not a negligible difference.
Second of all, when I read Daniel 9 in context I see no reason to associate the “mashi’ah” mentioned therein with JC — the same man who wasn’t a scion of King David from his father’s side and who never fulfilled a myriad of other Tanakhic criteria for the messiah would-be. So how in YHWH’s green earth could he have been the messiah? Daniel obviously refers to a man who rules or leads the entire Nation of Israel, so this alone removes JC from consideration!
Bill said,
December 21, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I appreciate your comments, though I think that rhetoric like “This is plainly laughable” is not helpful.
As far as the dating, I don’t think several years either way is significant since I doubt we know either the date of the decree to rebuild or the date of Jesus birth with greater certainty than that. I realize that I may have given the impression of greater certainty in my original post, and perhaps I should change it.
It is my opinion that Jesus was a son of David through Joseph, though he was not Joseph’s biological son.
As far as other messiah criteria, I do not know what criteria you are referring to. What is “Tanakhic”?
As far as Messiah ruling over the Nation Israel: I believe he will return and set up such an earthly Kingdom headquartered at Jerusalem and will in fact rule the whole earth from there. I think that world events may be lining up for this to occur in the not so distant future.
How do you interpret the Messiah being “cut off” in Daniel 9:26?
Navro said,
December 22, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Alright Bill, I recant my first sentence.
For one thing, in recent decades historical research has managed to more accurately arrive at JC’s birth and death years. I’ve seen no serious scholarly material assigning him a different birth year than 4 BCE and he couldn’t have been older than 35 years of age when executed. There’s enough certainty in research concerning this point for me to reject the line claiming that several years either way is insignificant for our purposes.
Secondly, all you have concerning JC’s pedigree is your own opinion. Sorry, this doesn’t suffice to me with all due respect.
The Tanakh is what you Christians refer to as the OT. You may find the criteria too difficult to pinpoint within the Tanakh itself all by your own, so I’ll you help you in this matter by pointing you to a webpage whose author has already done it for the most part: http://faithstrengthened.org/FSpart1chapter01.html
The cold hard reality is that JC failed to perform his ostensible messianic duty (in line with the Tanakh criteria) during his lifetime and he never ruled over Israel. This is what really matters as far as your above blog is concerned which I responded to, and any belief concerning what JC might do in the future is irrelevant to me.
The Messiah being “cut off” in Daniel 9:26 means he’ll be killed. That’s my take.
I have no interest in converting to your brand of Christianity any more than I think you have in converting to my form of Judaism, so let’s not get dragged into attempts at proselytzing.
Nehamiah’s Wall, Revisited « The Wind in His Fists said,
March 2, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[...] at 3:12 pm (faith, religion) (christianity, faith, religion) When I wrote my first post regarding Nehemiah’s Wall, I lacked a few interesting details. From Daniel 9:24-26 (NAS): “Seventy [...]