The time of the coming of the Messiah was accurately prophesied

It is amazing to see that the time of the Messiah's coming was accurately predicted by several prophecies well known to Jews and to those living at the time of Christ. According to the patriarch Jacob, the "scepter" first had to depart from Judah (Gen 49:1); for the prophet Haggai, the Messiah would come at the time of the Second Temple; for the prophet Daniel, it would coincide with the time of the fourth kingdom "after Nebuchadnezzar" (Dan 2:39) and "Seventy Weeks" after a prophecy announcing the rebuilding of the Temple (Dan 9:24); as for the prophet Isaiah, he predicted that the "Prince of Peace" would arrive at a time when the world would have ceased to fight (cf. Is 9:5), in the "fullness of time" (Ga 4:4; Eph 1:10). Even the pagans (Tacitus, Suetonius, the Sibyl of Cumae, the Babylonian astrologers) sensed the coming of a "world-dominating" Messiah from Israel. At the time of Christ, therefore, "the people were waiting" (Lk 3:15) in a very singular way. So, when John the Baptist appeared, they all asked him: "Are you the One who is to come, or must we wait for another?" (Lk 7:19). The anticipation had become so strong in this period of history that historians have identified dozens of candidate Messiahs (cf. Vittorio Messori, Hypothèses sur Jésus, Mame, 1995, ch. 4), and Gamaliel alluded to it during his address to the Sanhedrin on behalf of the apostles (Acts 5:34-39). Lastly, even if some Jews did not recognize Christ, they nonetheless bear indirect witness to the great precision of this expectation: after the first century and the failed revolt of Bar Kochba "son of the star" (died 135) - thought to be the Messiah by Rabbi Akiva and the Jewish leaders of the time - they acknowledged in the Talmud that "all the dates calculated for the coming of the Messiah have now expired" ( Tractate Sanhedrin no. 97).

Horloge astronomique de Prague / ©Unsplash/Nikita Voloshyn

Reasons to believe:

That all the afore-mentioned prophecies were written before the time of Christ is undisputed.
Israel's unique sense of expectation at the beginning of our era is a documented fact.
The 70 weeks can be interpreted both in years (490 years) or days (490 days), both calculations pointing precisely to the time of Christ.
"The time [of the Messiah's coming] was foretold by the state of the Jewish people, by the state of the Gentiles, by the state of the Temple, and by the number of years [...]. The four monarchies, the scepter taken from Judah and the seventy weeks had to arrive at the same time, and all before the second Temple was destroyed", as Blaise Pascal summed it up (Pensées, 314 and 317). Pascal also said that "the greatest proof of Jesus Christ are the prophecies" (Pensées, 316).
The astonishing testimonies of the pagans reinforce the biblical prophecies, and the only reasonable conclusion is that the Messiah indeed came at the appointed time, as he himself proclaimed: "This is the time of fulfillment" (Mk 1:15).

Summary:

Unique in the history of the world, the coming of a Savior Messiah was awaited in Israel, due to numerous prophecies received by a long series of men, over many centuries.

The Messiah was especially awaited at the beginning of our era, at the time of the Virgin Mary, because certain prophecies spoke explicitly and precisely of the moment of his coming.

The Gospel testifies to the pervasiveness of this very special expectation that had seized everyone. "As the people were filled with expectation" (Lk 3:15) when John the Baptist appeared, they all asked him: "Are you the One who is to come, or must we wait for another?" (Lk 7:19). This was an absolutely unprecedented time, and this characteristic aspect of the birth of Christianity alone is enough - in the opinion of many specialists - to set it quite apart from other religions throughout history.

The expectation of the fulfillment of the times had become so strong and precise, in this particular period of history, that there were more than a hundred would-be Messiahs listed by historians. Gamaliel referred to this in his intervention on behalf of the apostles before the Sanhedrin: "But a Pharisee in the Sanhedrin named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up, ordered the men to be put outside for a short time, and said to them, “Fellow Israelites, be careful what you are about to do to these men. Some time ago, Theudas appeared, claiming to be someone important, and about four hundred men joined him, but he was killed, and all those who were loyal to him were disbanded and came to nothing. After him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census. He also drew people after him, but he too perished and all who were loyal to him were scattered. So now I tell you, have nothing to do with these men, and let them go. For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God."(Acts 5: 34-40).

The reason for this expectation on the part of the people is to be found in five great prophecies which pointed precisely to the time of the coming of the Messiah:

1. The first of these prophecies evoking the moment of the Messiah's coming is found in Genesis, when Jacob, born of Isaac, blesses his sons before dying: "Gather around, that I may tell you what is to happen to you in days to come" (Gen 49:1-10). And Jacob also predicted: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the rod of command from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and to whom the peoples owe obedience."

This passage, which has always been understood by Israel's exegetes in a messianic sense, takes on new relevance in the Virgin's time, after Herod I was appointed king of Judea, putting an end to the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty. The Jews of Israel would henceforth be ruled by an Edomite king, the son of a Nabataean woman from an Arab tribe, and a friend of the Romans, even though he had officially converted to Judaism. Judea became a vassal province of Rome, and remained so until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

When Octavian confirmed Herod I as king of Judea, Samaria, Idumaea and Galilee, offering him the Golan Heights and the Mediterranean coastal cities he had previously given back to Cleopatra, Jerusalem was shaken by an earthquake that killed ten thousand people. With the advent of Herod I, control of the region passed to the Romans: the messianic sign was fulfilled, as the scepter was finally taken away from Judah.

In fact, when Christ was put on trial, the Jews were correct in replying to Pilate: "We have no king but Caesar" (Jn 19:15).

2. The second most important prophecy about the time of the coming of the Messiah is found in the last book of the Old Testament, that of Daniel, which by the time of the Virgin had already been composed and read in its present form for two centuries. Chapter 2 relates Nebuchadnezzar's dream, in which the king sees a small stone shatter a large statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. Disturbed, the king can't sleep until Daniel gives him the right interpretation: "Another kingdom shall take your place, inferior to yours, then a third kingdom, of bronze, which shall rule over the whole earth.. There shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; it shall break in pieces and subdue all these others [...]. It shall be a divided kingdom… partly strong and partly fragile. [...]. In the lifetime of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed or delivered up to another people; rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever [...]. The great God has revealed to the king what shall be in the future; this is exactly what you dreamed, and its meaning is sure." (Dan 2:39-45).

Now, after Nebuchadnezzar came the Persians and the Medes together; then the Greeks, who dominated the whole earth with Alexander; then the Romans who, with iron, reduced all their adversaries to dust, before Israel was divided in the 1st century between the iron of Rome and the clay of Herod. Rome, then, is the so-called "fourth kingdom after Nebuchadnezzar" (Dan 2:39), in which the stone that shatters the statue is to become a great mountain that will fill the whole earth. The humble Virgin of the Lord perhaps was able to envision the modest beginnings of the Messianic reign that "will never be destroyed and will endure forever" (Dn 2:44), by meditating on the above prophecy of the small stone that becomes a mountain, as Blaise Pascal would later write: "It was foretold that Jesus Christ would be small in his beginning and that he would then grow" (Pensées, 310).

3. The third great prophecy indicating the time of Messiah's coming also comes from Daniel, who amazingly stated that there would be "70 weeks" (literally “70 septenaries”) before his arrival. This famous passage from Daniel chapter 9 prophesies as follows: "Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and for your holy city: Then transgression will stop and sin will be sealed up, guilt will be expiated, everlasting justice will be introduced, vision and prophecy ratified, and a holy of holies will be anointed" (Dan 9:24). The new world (iniquity ceasing and being atoned for, sin being "sealed up", and eternal justice reigning) will therefore come about when Christ has "received the anointing". Then the visions of the prophets themselves will come to an end. And all this was to happen after "70 weeks".

This time reference, the only one found in the Old Testament, has never been an object of much controversy among interpreters. The prophecy clearly uses the word "septenaries" (or "weeks"), i.e. "periods of seven", and are counted a priori in years; the prophecy thus points to the coming of the Messiah at the end of 490 years. But when should we start counting? According to Scripture (Dn 9:23), the counting starts "from the mention of rebuilding Jerusalem'' after the Babylonian exile. Some calculated it from Artaxerxes' decree in 458 BC, others from Nehemiah's first mission in 445, others from Cyrus' liberation of Israel in 538, some in solar years, others in lunar years. The 1st century BC scrolls discovered at Qumran show that the community living there was very attentive to the signs of the times, and that they also relied on the prophecy of the "70 weeks". They had calculated that the time of the Messiah would begin in 26 BC, and it was because of this expectation that they withdrew to the desert. There was still a small "error" of twenty years in their calculation, but, as Hugh Schonfield says, "we can see today just how much - almost to the letter - Jesus could proclaim in inaugurating his mission: 'The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand' (Mk 1:15)."

The prophecy speaks of seventy septenaries (or seventy weeks) to be counted from an announcement of the rebuilding of the Temple, but it does not specify whether this count is to be made in years, months, days, or other. From this, the traditional interpretation has been to count years, but it's also possible to imagine that it was referring to the lunar years used in the Jewish calendar. In this case, since 490 lunar years represent 441 solar years, if we count from 445 BC, the date of Nehemiah's reconstruction of the city walls (Neh 2:3-20), we arrive at 4 BC, which is indeed the exact date of Jesus' presentation in the Temple.

But there is more: if one counts the seventy septenaries in days, it all fits together just as neatly! In fact, there are exactly 490 days between the Announcement to Zechariah and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, to which the prophecy refers: 6 months between the Announcement to Zechariah and the Angel's Announcement to Mary (180 days), 9 months of Mary's pregnancy (270 days) and 40 days before the Presentation in the Temple. The total is exactly 490 days!

4. A fourth prophecy is given by the prophet Haggai, who indicates that the Messiah was to come at the time of the Second Temple, and therefore not after its destruction in 70 AD. The prophet was in Jerusalem when the Second Temple was being built, and pronounced the messianic oracle that "Greater will be the glory of this house, the latter more than the former" (Hag 2:9). Yet the Second Temple no longer had the Ark of the Covenant, the Tables of the Law, the jar of manna (Ex 16:33) and Aaron's branch (cf. Heb 9:4). How, then, could the glory of the Second Temple be greater than that of the first, which was so prestigious? Simply because the Second Temple had the unsurpassed honor of being visited by the Messiah in person. Malachi confirms this vision: "And suddenly the Lord you seek will enter his Temple - and the messenger of the Covenant, behold, he is coming" (Mal 3:1), a verse that has always been understood messianically by the Jews. For example, a 12th-century scholar, Rabbi David Kimchi, refers to this verse when he says: "The Lord, the angel of the Covenant, is the Messiah" (LRC 2, p. 165). And this prophecy was indeed fulfilled, for apart from the coming of the Messiah, it is clear that there was no historical event to justify such "glory" for the Second Temple.

5. A fifth prophecy states that the Messiah will be "Prince of Peace" (Is 9:5), which has been interpreted in Jewish tradition as meaning that he will come "when the world has ceased to fight" (Talmud). And that's exactly what happened: Jesus was born during the Pax Romana, at the time of Cesar Augustus (Octovian), an unprecedented 25-year period of peace, without a single war.

Inexplicably, there was also a unique sense of expectation, around that same time, among the pagans: we have unmistakable and precise testimonies to this universal expectation of a "world dominator" who was to come from Judea.

Two of the greatest Latin historians, Tacitus and Suetonius, tell us how the Romans, too, were waiting for the century that we now call "the first after Jesus Christ".

1. Tacitus writes in Histories: "Most were convinced that it was written in the ancient books of the priests that, towards these times, the East would grow in power. And that from Judea would come the rulers of the world."

2. Likewise, in his Life of Vespasian, Suetonius writes: "Throughout the East, an idea was gaining ground: the constant and ancient opinion that it should be written in the destiny of the world that from Judea would come the dominators of the world at that time."

These two historians were writing at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, without being able to foresee the triumph, yet to come, of the Man who would one day effectively "dominate" the Western world.

3. Virgil, for his part, quotes the oracle of the Sibyl of Cumae announcing a "marvelous child, who will bring the golden age" in the Fourth Eclogue of his Bucolics, dating the event precisely to the reign of the emperor Augustus: "Here are the last times marked by the oracle of the Sibyl of Cumae: the long series of centuries begins again. Here comes the Virgin, and the reign of Saturn. A new race descends from heaven. A newborn child under the reign of Emperor Augustus will eliminate the generation of iron and raise up a generation of gold throughout the world." The Virgin Mary, in whom the Son of God would descend, surely didn't know about this oracle, but Jesus, who was indeed born during the reign of Emperor Augustus, did indeed transform the iron of oppression into the gold of love.

4. It is astonishing to note that in many of the world's shrines (e.g. Longpont, Nogent-sous-Coucy, Chartres), the "Virgo Paritura", the "Virgin who is to give birth", was revered even before Christ.

5. Another astounding point is that it now seems scientifically established that Babylonian astrologers were also awaiting the birth of the "ruler of the world" as early as 7 BC.

In December 1603, Kepler, one of the fathers of modern astronomy, observed the bright conjunction (i.e. the alignment) of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces. Thanks to his calculations, he established that the same phenomenon (which causes an intense, brilliant light in the starry sky) must also have occurred in 7 BC He then discovered an ancient commentary on Scripture by Rabbi Abarbanel, recalling that, according to a Jewish belief, the Messiah was to appear precisely when, in the constellation of Pisces, the light of Jupiter and Saturn would become one. But Kepler's discovery was not given much importance, because critics had not yet established with certainty that Jesus was born before the traditional date, following the error of Dionysius the Lesser.

More than two centuries later, the Danish scholar Münter discovered and deciphered a medieval Hebrew commentary on the "70 septenaries" of the Book of Daniel, indicating the belief recalled by Kepler. In 1902, the so-called "Planetary Table", now preserved in Berlin, was published: an Egyptian papyrus which accurately records the movements of the planets from 17 BC to 10 AD, and recalls that in 7 BC, the conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn had been noticed, visible in its most beautiful brilliance all over the Mediterranean.

Finally, in 1925, a description of the Sippar stellar calendar was published: a terracotta tablet with cuneiform inscriptions from the ancient city of Sippar, on the Euphrates, which was the seat of an important Babylonian school of astrology. This "calendar" shows all the celestial movements and conjunctions for the year 7 BC. Why? Because, according to Babylonian astrologers, this conjunction - observed only once every 794 years - had occurred three times in the year 7 BC: on May 29, October 1 and December 5 (which is entirely consistent with the Gospel, where the "star" appeared and reappeared - cf. Mt 2:2; 2:7; 2:9). The Babylonians saw Jupiter as the planet of the world's rulers, Saturn as the planet of Israel's protectors, and the constellation Pisces as the sign of the end of a time, i.e. the beginning of the messianic era. It is now certain that between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as throughout the East, not only was the Messiah expected to come from Israel, but it was also established with astounding certainty that he would be born at a specific time and moment, at the "fullness of time", as St. Paul puts it (Gal 4:4; Eph 1:10).

Finally, even Jews who did not recognize Christ testify to the precise calculation of this expectation, acknowledging in the Talmud at the end of the first century that "all the dates calculated for the coming of the Messiah have now passed" (Tractate Sanhedrin 97).

So it's a proven historical fact that, at the very moment of Jesus’ appearance in Judea, there was a universal focusing of attention, the height of an expectation never before seen in the history of the world, concentrated on a distant, small Roman province.

The date of Christ's coming was announced, and Christ reproached his contemporaries for not recognizing it: "Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Lk 12:56). Right from the start, his preaching insisted on this point: "The time is fulfilled: the kingdom of God is at hand; turn and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1:15), referring of course to the "times" defined by Daniel's prophecy and all the other incredibly precise announcements.

Olivier Bonnassies

Beyond reasons to believe:

Today, we can no longer wait for the Messiah: we must now listen to him and put his commandments into practice, for "Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him" (Jn 14:21).