Seventy weeks "unto the Messiah the Prince"
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24Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
Read the surrounding verses
21Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation.
22And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding.
23At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision.
24Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
Jesus' ministry and death, about 30-33 CE
Daniel sets out a timetable: "from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks" (), and "after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself" (). Christians have long read these weeks of years as pointing to the time of the Messiah's coming and death. The strongest form of the calculation starts from the decree of Artaxerxes I in 458 BCE and counts 483 or 490 solar years, which gives 26 or 33 CE. The passage was read as end-times prophecy before Christianity (the Qumran text 11Q13), and first-century Jews widely expected a timed deliverance, as Josephus' "ambiguous oracle" shows. The critical reading has real weaknesses too: its sixty-two weeks overshoot by about 67 years, and "destroy the city and the sanctuary" () fits 70 CE better than the second century BCE.
Daniel 11 is accurate up to the desecration of the Temple in 167 BCE and then wrong about how Antiochus died, so chapters 7-12 were most likely written around 167-164 BCE, still about 190 years before Jesus. The date that lands on Jesus also depends on the choices made. Of 36 combinations of starting point, year length and span, only 5 fall in 26-36 CE, all starting from Artaxerxes I and needing opposite year lengths.
Explore the counterarguments
The abolished sacrifice and the "abomination" recur through Daniel 8-12 and match Antiochus' desecration (1 Maccabees 1:54), and the "anointed one cut off" is usually identified as Onias III; Wacholder calls this reading "almost universally accepted", and the Catholic NABRE notes agree. The "word" that starts the count is, in the text itself, Jeremiah's prophecy (; ), and the Hebrew accents separate the seven weeks from the sixty-two. Ancient Christians used at least seven incompatible computations: Jerome declined to choose, and Apollinarius' version predicted a rebuilt Temple around 482 CE. The New Testament never applies to Jesus' death. The widespread expectation could also let people time their own movements by it.