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Out of them arose another lesser horn, which he said, waxed great; and that God showed to him, that it should fight against his nation, and take their city by force, and bring the temple worship to confusion, and forbid the sacrifices to be offered for one thousand two hundred and ninety-six days.
Works of Josephus, “Antiquities of the Jews Bk. 10, 11.7.271 (Whiston edition) (emphasis added)
Hippolytus, “Treatise on Christ and Antichrist,” 62, Ante-Nicene Fathers v. 5, p. 218 (Schaff edition) (emphasis added)
And Daniel says, “And they shall place the abomination of desolation a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand two hundred and ninety-five days.”
Clement of Alexandria, “The Stromata,” Bk. I, Chap. XXI, ANF, v. 2, p. 334, Ibid. (emphasis added)
These two thousand three hundred days, then, make six years four months, during the half of which Nero held sway, and it was half a week; and for a half, Vespasian with Otho, Galba, and Vitellius reigned. And on this account Daniel says, “Blessed is he that cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.” For up to these days was war, and after them it ceased. And this number is demonstrated from a subsequent chapter, which is as follows: “And from the time of the change of continuation, and of the giving of the abomination of desolation, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.” Flavius Josephus the Jew, who composed the history of the Jews, computing the periods, says that from Moses to David were five hundred and eighty-five years; from David to the second year of Vespasian, a thousand one hundred and seventy-nine; then from that to the tenth year of Antoninus, seventy-seven. . .
These “timeline” prophecies of Daniel have not gone unnoticed by the early Church Fathers. Hippolytus and Clement of Alexandria cited above, for example, represent 2nd and 3rd Century opinions. Clement clearly offers a Preterist point of view, meaning that the prophetic days represent literal days, but unlike the Futurist school which dominates Evangelical religion today, the Preterists believed that these prophecies had already been fulfilled in a “Great Tribulation” period which ended in 70 AD at the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.
But in addition to this, the numbers are different. As mentioned already, Josephus calculates 1,296 days instead of 1,290. Hippolytus has the 1,335 days as 1,295 days. Clement appears to have gotten it right.
William Whiston translated Josephus. It is difficult to believe that he made an error in translation, yet it never come up in his commentaries. It could be an error of the printer’s typist. If you revisit Newton’s handwritten notes, 0’s, 6’s, and 9’s can sometimes require closer scrutiny. Even to this day, hastily written zeros may have tails that look six’s or nine’s. But keep in mind that in these ancient texts, the numbers are written out. The Arabic numerical system of digits was not in use.
As for the commentaries of Clement and Hippolytus, all of this would have been known to Whiston who was a master of the patristic writings. It is not known how much of this would have been known to Newton, but he, too, was a master of the patristic writing and should have had an opinion on these timelines other than what has been shown here.
However, in the early years, Whiston was Newton’s avatar. His writings can be assumed to be Newton speaking through him, since it was forbidden of members of the Royal Academy to write on subjects of religion.
Much of Whiston’s later opinions on the patristic writings came after his affiliation with Newton, and since he was much younger than Newton, much of his works on religion would come after Newton was dead. But certainly, Whiston was influenced by Newton’s view of cosmology and Historicist school of Bible prophecy.
[As a side note of human interest, Edmond Halley was an avowed atheist and yet a friend of both Newton and Whiston. He was the older of the three, but still appreciative of the sometimes jocular exchanges between them. One story has it that Newton presented a watch to Halley who admired it asked him where he got it. To which Newton replied that it came into existence quite by chance.]
The angel tells Daniel that this 1,335 day time period is a time of blessing: either the entire period is, or that it marks the beginning of the blessed period which has no stipulated length. We have suggested in other articles that it can be broken down into two time periods: 1000 years as representative of the millennium, and 335 years, or 3 and one half generations as a preparatory period of Christian conquest leading up to the Millennium. Why should it be three and a half? God guarantees that sin will not be compounded beyond “three or four generations,” 100 years representing a generation. But the remaining 35 seems to be an odd number by any calculation, unless the translations are wrong.
So, either it is a period which could begin at the point when the 1290 day period ends (2046 AD) or it too can end in 2046 or another later date as suggested in previous installments. If it ends in 2046, then it would have had to start prior to the Donation of Pepin by 45 years.
None of these views seem satisfactory.
As cited above, Clement believed that the end of the 1,290 day/year period marks the beginning of the 1,335 day/year period, and unlike Newton, did not believe they overlap. The 1,290 day prophetic period is a time of war; the 1,335 period is a time of peace. If they do overlap, we would need to discover either an historical event or celestial sign such as a comet which would suggest the inauguration of that time-period. Or, as suggested earlier by Newton there is a “war of the saints” by which the Babylonian kingdom is finally brought to an end:
[After which] the judgment is to sit, and they shall take away his dominion, [not at once, but by degrees,] to consume, and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall, [by degrees], be given unto the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.
Daniel 8:26-27 (text provided in Newton’s commentary with his interpolations in brackets), Observations, p.35-36 (Anodos edition, 2019)
to be continued
James Wesley Stivers 8/13/23
