| Summary: | The infamous prophecy of the seventy sevens in Daniel 9:24-27 has attracted an impressive amount of scholarly and popular attention over the last two thousand years. The volume of secondary literature is massive, and the quantity is matched by a diversity of interpretive results. The history of interpretation indicates that Daniel 9 has been read in different ways at different times. Though each group of readers had its own situation that affected its appropriation of Daniel 9, something in the text enabled it to speak relevantly and even typologically to successive generations. This thesis endeavors to identify that something with the hope of jubilee. Many scholars have noticed that the seventy sevens equal ten jubilee cycles. Even so, studies of the seventy sevens often discuss the details of the seven sevens, sixty-two sevens, and one seven in isolation from the six objectives of the seventy sevens in Daniel 9:24 and the overarching theme of jubilee. In other words, the six objectives and the jubilee do not factor into the exegesis of verses 25-27. Consequently, the association of the seventy sevens with jubilee, even when mentioned, goes undeveloped. For this reason, this thesis contends that more work needs to be done on the jubilee structure of the seventy sevens and therefore the relationship of the seventy sevens to their stated objectives in Daniel 9:24. This thesis will follow the lead of the aforementioned scholars by interpreting the seventy sevens symbolically with reference to the theme of jubilee. It will also read the seventy sevens in view of their stated purpose in Daniel 9:24, which anticipates the Jubilee of Jubilees in the form of atonement for sin and the establishment of righteousness. At the same time, this effort at a theology of jubilee in Daniel 9 must take seriously the book’s interest in Antiochus IV and the events of his reign. Daniel 9 sits between two visions that discuss the Antiochene crisis. The book of Daniel considers that crisis part of redemptive history and offers a sober but hopeful analysis of it. It makes good exegetical sense, then, to try first to understand the seventy sevens—and their inherent suggestion of a Jubilee of Jubilees—with reference to the Antiochene crisis of the second century. Moreover, this interest in the Antiochene crisis receives Babylonian and Persian settings that create a typological relationship between events in the sixth and second centuries. The writer of Daniel saw a pattern between the Babylonian exile and the Antiochene crisis. Other Jewish literature (whether biblical or extra-biblical) traces this pattern in events after the Antiochene crisis. This typological hermeneutic explains why the jubilee structure of the seventy sevens can speak in fresh ways to new contexts. === PhD (Biblical Studies/Theology) North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014
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