Jerome's Preface to the Twelve Prophets

Jerome translated the Twelve Prophets (i.e., “Minor Prophets”) around AD 394.[1] As was his custom, he prefixed this brief note to his translation, dedicating it to two of his friends (Paula and Eustochium).

The order of the Twelve Prophets is not the same among the Hebrews as it is among us. Hence, according to that which is read there [in the Hebrew], here [in my version] also they are set down. Hosea is broken up into clauses, and speaks as if in aphorisms.[2] Joel is clear at the beginning, quite obscure at the end. And the individual [prophets] have their own characteristics all the way to Malachi, which the Hebrews assert to be Ezra, the scribe and teacher of the law. And because it would take too long now to speak concerning all of them, this alone, O Paula and Eustochium, I wish you to take to heart, that the Twelve Prophets are one book, and Hosea is a contemporary of Isaiah, but Malachi lived in the times of Haggai and Zechariah. But when no date is given in the title, that prophet prophesied under the same kings as the preceding prophet that does have a date in the title.[3]

The old NPNF translation of Jerome's prefaces does not contain this preface, but merely the following brief note:

This Preface, dedicated to Paula and Eustochium in A.D. 392, contains nothing of importance, merely mentioning the dates of a few of the prophets, and the fact that the Twelve Prophets were counted by the Hebrews as forming a single book.

On the contrary, I find this preface to be a helpful introduction to the reception of the Minor Prophets among early Christians. Jerome crams a lot of interesting tidbits into this brief introduction.

First, he names them the Twelve Prophets, rather than the title more traditional for Western Christians, viz., “Minor Prophets”. This is because this latter title was apparently not yet coined by the time Jerome published his translation. The earliest attestation for the designation “Minor Prophets” is found in Augustine’s City of God, book 18, published in the early to mid-420s.[4] Before Augustine, everyone called these books “The Twelve”, going back as early as Ben Sira (49:10) in the early second century BC. This is the unanimous testimony of the early Jewish and Christian canonical lists,[5] and is still the custom among Jews.

These same sources also provide testimony for the custom of counting the Twelve Prophets as one book, a matter stressed by Jerome in this preface. Again, Augustine seems to be the first writer to count the Twelve as twelve instead of as one, and his numbering system became standard in western Christianity.[6] All Christians before Augustine, and Jews up to the present day, counted the Twelve as a single book.

One thing further on this point: it is interesting that Jerome is so insistent in this preface that the Twelve count as one book, and in his translation he does not provide prologues for each prophet. In other words, he treats them as one book in his translation. However, in his commentary on the Twelve, which he would begin to publish shortly after this translation, and which would be complete in 406, he does not at all treat them as one book. There, he offers no general preface for the entire corpus, but instead writes introductions for each prophet separately. In this, he does not differ from his contemporaries or predecessors. Despite this preface, Jerome was not, after all, a forerunner of the recent scholarly attempts to read the Twelve as a single book.

The second point of interest in this preface is that Jerome points out the divergence in order of the Twelve Prophets between the Septuagint (LXX) and Jewish tradition. We are familiar with the Hebrew order, thanks to Jerome’s reliance on the Hebraica veritas (“Hebrew truth”) in his Vulgate translation of the OT. The LXX differs from it in the first half of the Twelve, giving the following order: Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah. The order for the rest of the books is identical.

It is unclear how early the internal order of the Twelve was fixed in the Hebrew tradition, though many scholars assume that Ben Sira’s reference to the twelve prophets (49:10), and most of the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, confirms that it was fixed by the early second century BC. It is equally unclear what principles governed the arrangement of the books, though they are assembled roughly chronologically. The books that don’t fit this paradigm are Joel and Obadiah, though they do not explicitly indicate a time period and are notoriously difficult to date, so they may in fact fit this schema, at least in the mind of their ancient editor.

It is generally assumed that the LXX order was determined by the length of the books, so that Joel and Obadiah follow the longer books of Hosea, Amos, and Micah. Jonah is set by itself because it is unique in not offering prophetic oracles, but instead a story about a prophet. Why these principles were not carried through the entire corpus, but only affected the first half, is, again, unclear. The reader can judge for himself how convincing is this line of reasoning, and he is also invited to propose a better solution.

These comments on Jerome’s preface to the Twelve cover only the first sentence. Perhaps in the future I will have something to say about the rest.

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[1] The translation of this preface by Kevin P. Edgecomb may be viewed at his site or here. I offer in the present post my own translation. The differences are mostly stylistic.

[2] This phrase is translated thus by A.A. Macintosh, Hosea, ICC (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1997), p. lxiv. Macintosh considers Jerome’s evaluation of Hosea’s style “entirely apposite”.

[3] This is a loose translation of Jerome’s much more complicated syntax. A more literal translation runs as follows: “But in those for which the time is not displayed in the title, they prophesied under those kings under whom also they prophesied who have titles before them.”

[4] The first sentence of ch. 29 runs as follows in the NPNF translation: “The prophecy of Isaiah is not in the book of the twelve prophets, who are called the minor from the brevity of their writings, as compared with those who are called the greater prophets because they published larger volumes.”

[5] See the lists provided by H.B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek² (1914), pp. 198ff.

[6] See On Christian Doctrine 2.13 . Augustine does say that the Twelve are counted as one, but later in the same paragraph he asserts that the books of the OT total 44, a number which assumes that the Twelve count as twelve. Augustine also includes the Apocrypha, of course.

John Barton on the OT Canon

John Barton’s Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile has recently been reissued after 21 years (Oxford: University Press, 2007). Though called a “New Edition” on the title page, it is new only by including a “Preface to the Second Edition” by Barton, in which he says that this is a reprint (except for errors) of the 1986 edition.

Last year also saw a special article of The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures dedicated to the reissue of the book, with contributions by Ehud Ben Zvi (as the editor), Philip R. Davies, James Kugel, Hindy Najman, and Barton himself, whose response to the other scholars here comprises the aforementioned “Preface to the Second Edition” in the book, with only minor changes.

Barton’s book is clearly important, though as he says in his new preface, it has not impacted scholarship on the reception of the prophets as much as he had hoped. It has had more influence in discussions of the canon, for which it is often cited as an early articulation of the view that the formula “The Law and the Prophets”, which appears often in literature of NT times, references the entirety of Scripture, and not just the first two sections of the Hebrew Bible, which is now divided into Law, Prophets, and Writings. In other words, the “Prophets” in this formulation constituted not just the second section of the Hebrew Bible (as it is now divided), but all non-Pentateuchal literature, including all the literature now found in the Writings (e.g. Psalms, Chronicles, etc.). Though the traditional theory of OT canon formation connects the three sections of the Hebrew Bible to three periods of canonization, with the Law canonized first, then the Prophets, then the Writings, Barton says this is anachronistic. The canon was bipartite, not tripartite, in NT times, as witnessed by the formula, “The Law and the Prophets”.

If this is so, how did it come about that the Hebrew Bible is now tripartite, as it has been at least since Talmudic times (see Baba Bathra 14b–15a)? Barton’s answer is that the creation of the third section, the Writings, is connected to the development of the liturgy (see Oracles, pp. 75–82). In synagogues today, there is regularly a public reading of the Torah, followed by a reading from the Prophets, i.e., the second division of the modern Hebrew Bible. These readings from the Prophets are called haftaroth. Barton’s suggestion for the development of the tripartite Bible is that all those books that were not included as haftaroth were relegated to the newly formed third section of the Bible, the Writings. This leaves only what we now think of as “The Prophets” (in the Hebrew Bible) in this section which formerly encompassed all non-Torah literature. Barton is able to cite (p. 78) as precedent for this view Sid Leiman’s The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture (1976; p. 168 n. 287).

But Leiman and Barton give different answers to the question: “On what basis were certain books chosen for haftaroth readings?” Leiman says that those books that tell of Jewish national history were included in the weekly readings, an explanation Barton dismisses rather easily (p. 79). Barton’s own solution is to suppose that the haftaroth readings were taken from books that were more commonly available in local synagogues, and those books that hadn’t quite established themselves as sufficiently important to possess were left aside. He writes on p. 79:

By New Testament times the scrolls of the ‘Deuteronomistic History’ and of the three great prophets and the Twelve were, we may suppose, widely known, and all synagogues would aspire to possess copies. Later books, such as Chronicles or Daniel, were becoming known but were not yet common property.

He gives a similar explanation as to why early Christians quoted so often from particular books, such as the Psalms and Isaiah. From p. 148:

The horribly simple explanation that their preference had something to do with the distribution of scrolls of these two books—worse still, that these were the only two non-Torah scrolls that happened to be in the book-cupboard of the synagogue at Nazareth or Capernaum—cannot be discounted.

I cannot now evaluate Barton’s position in full, and it may well be that the distribution of particular scrolls had something to do with the development of the haftaroth readings and with Christian preference for Isaiah and the Psalms, but I would be hesitant to say that this was a significant factor for at least two reasons.

First of all, as the second quotation from Barton above makes clear, the Psalms were widely known and used in early Judaism. Why would they not, then, be included in the haftaroth readings, if the decisive factor for inclusion in these readings was the availability of the scroll? The inadequacy of Barton’s explanation with regard to the Psalms is the more apparent since the psalms themselves are so clearly “liturgical”, and they were regarded in some ways as prophetic (see Barton, p. 40), meaning that they could legitimately stand among the Prophets, at least as legitimately as the Book of Judges.

Secondly, the evidence available for book distribution in the first century indicates that none, or very few, of the documents now in the Writings were unavailable to large numbers of Jews. David Goodblatt has recently examined the distribution of biblical scrolls in first century Judah, and has arrived at results that are startling, even to him. (See his Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism [2006], chapter 2: “Constructing Jewish Nationalism: The Role of Scripture,” pp. 28–48.)

Goodblatt’s evidence includes the scrolls found in the Judaean Desert (mostly in the caves around Qumran) analyzed according to the survival ratio of ancient texts. A survival ratio allows us to estimate the number of texts that would have existed in a particular time and place based on the number of texts that we now possess from that time and place. Goodblatt says that a survival ratio for first century Judah of 1:5000 (one extant text representing 5000 that did not survive) would be rather conservative. Given that we have about 900 scrolls from the Qumran library, we can estimate that tens of thousands of biblical scrolls circulated in first century Judah. “Even taking into account the fact that these copies span three centuries of production, these are still astronomical numbers” (Goodblatt, p. 45).

These results make Goodblatt somewhat uncomfortable, but not enough to dismiss them. “These extraordinary results suggest that the survival ratio we are using must be off kilter. But unless we are willing to assume that the Qumran collection constitutes a large percentage of all the scrolls in circulation in first-century Judah, as the Golb thesis might allow, then these findings suggest the existence of thousands of scrolls in the country” (p. 45).

This indicates that Barton’s proposal for the reason that certain documents were chosen for the haftaroth is inaccurate. Since every book of the current Hebrew Bible was found at Qumran (except for Esther and Nehemiah), we can estimate that thousands of copies of these books would have existed in first century Judah. To say that certain books were relegated to the Writings because they were not widely available, as Barton does, fails to take account of these data.

This is the more true if one accepts Goodblatt’s explanation for the large number of texts:

And such a large number in a small, predominantly nonliterate population would make widespread public recitation much more likely. (pp. 45–46)

The archaeological evidence from late first century (Qumran and Masada) and early second century (caves with refugees from the Bar Kokhba revolt) Judah thus suggests that biblical scrolls were fairly plentiful and widely diffused. Why were so many texts needed in an overwhelmingly nonliterate society? The most probable explanation is that many of these manuscripts, like many or most ancient books, were performance texts. (p. 47)

Goodblatt proposes that the large number of scrolls is indicative of their use in the public reading of Judaean synagogues. This is obviously the case not only for those books now included in the Prophets, but also for those now included in the Writings. If these documents really were so widely available as Goodblatt’s evidence suggests, and used in the way Goodblatt suggests, then Barton’s idea that the haftaroth were chosen based on availability is shown to be false.

This does not entail that Barton is wrong in thinking that the tripartite canon arose in connection with the liturgy, which I am inclined to accept.[*]

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[*] I appreciate the comments of my colleague Michael Jackson regarding this post.

C.S. Lewis on Old Books

C.S. Lewis makes his case for reading old books in his introduction to St. Athanasius on the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (London: Mowbray, 1944), 3–10. The full text of the book is available here.

His arguments are:

1. Old books are easier to understand than modern commentaries on those old books.
2. The content of old books is assumed in much modern writing, so that if you read only the modern works, you are clueless as to the basis of the work you are reading.
3. Since we are a product of modern times, recent books share our modern perspective, thus reinforcing our own beliefs, even wrong ones. Old books provide a corrective to this.
4. Regarding Christian books in particular, reading the classics allows one to see that “mere Christianity” which runs through writers of all Christian divisions.

Lewis then sings the praises of St. Athanasius, and his De Incarnatione in particular. Here follows some of his more interesting and eloquent observations. The first three passages concern the value of old books. The fourth passage continues this topic, but is interesting primarily for Lewis’ views on Christian divisions. The last passage articulates a stuggle common to earnest Christians eager to “devote” their minds to God but unable to extract any insight or emotion from “devotional” literature.

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire (p. 3)

[…]

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones (p. 4).

[…]

Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us (p. 5).

[…]

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. (p. 7).

[…]

For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand (p. 8).

Jerome's Prologue to the Books of Solomon

Jerome completed his translation of the Books of Solomon over a three day period during the summer of 398.[1] He apologizes for not being able to fulfill the request of Bishops Cromatius and Heliodorus for commentaries on Hosea, Amos, Zechariah, and Malachi, and he blames this on a recent illness. Instead of the commentaries, he offers a translation of the three books of Solomon. He would finally complete his commentaries on the requested books in 406,[2] which year marks the completion of Jerome’s commentaries on the Minor Prophets, and his turn toward the Major Prophets.[3]

The following preface is especially interesting for the comments on the deuterocanonical books of Ecclesiasticus (a.k.a Ben Sira, a.k.a Sirach), and Wisdom of Solomon, which temper somewhat the remarks made earlier in Jerome’s preface to the Books of Kings. In that preface, he gave no indication that Jewish books outside the Jewish canon should be used by the church, but termed all these outside books “apocrypha”, thus anticipating modern Protestant use of the term. In this preface, he allows for continued use in the church of at least some of these “apocrypha”, and he explicitly names here Judith, Tobit, the books of Maccabees (presumably just the first and second books of Maccabees), Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon. (The modern Catholic canon includes all six of these books as deuterocanonicals, along with Baruch and the longer forms of Esther and Daniel.)

Jerome’s view articulated here parallels that of his bosom-buddy Rufinus (Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed 36–37), and that of the great Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (in his famed 39^th Festal Letter). Of course, these latter two Fathers did consider canonical the LXX text form of the OT books, whereas Jerome definitely favors the Hebrew text.[4] This mediating view, though, contradicts that of Cyril of Jerusalem, who leaves no room for Christian use of the deuterocanonicals (in theory, though not in practice; Catechesis 4.33–36), and also that of Augustine of Hippo, who includes all the aforementioned books in his canon with equal authority (On Christian Doctrine 2.13).

Jerome to the bishops Cromatius and Heliodorus,

Let the epistle join those whom the priesthood joins; nay indeed, let not a page divide those whom the love of Christ binds together. You request commentaries on Hosea, Amos, Zechariah, and Malachi; I would have written them if I had been healthy. You send compensation for expenses, you sustain our stenographers and scribes, so that our ablest ingenuity may sweat for you. And behold from the side a crowded and diverse mob of requesters, as if either it would be fair for me to labor for others while you are hungry, or I would be liable to others more than you in the matter of giving and receiving. Therefore, though weakened by a long illness, lest I should be silent within this year and be mute among you, I have dedicated to your name a work of three days, viz. a translation of the three volumes of Solomon: Masloth, which the Hebrews call Parables, but the common edition calls Proverbs, Coeleth, which in Greek is Ecclesiastes, and in Latin we can say Speaker, and Sirassirim, which is rendered in our language as Song of Songs.

There is also the ever-virtuous book of Jesus son of Sirach, and another which is a pseudepigraph, inscribed Wisdom of Solomon. The first of these I have found also in Hebrew, not titled Ecclesiasticus as among the Latins, but Parables; to which were joined Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, so that it equaled the resemblance of Solomon not only in the number of books, but also in the type of material. The second book is nowhere among the Hebrews, but even the very style smells of Greek eloquence; and several old writers affirm that it is from the Jew Philo. Therefore, just as the church reads Judith and Tobit and the books of the Maccabees, but does not receive them among the canonical scriptures, so also let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogma.

If the edition of the seventy translators pleases anyone more, he has it from us previously emended; for we do not establish new things so that we might destroy the old. And also, when he reads most diligently, let him know that our things are better understood, which have not been corrupted by being poured into the third jar, but, having been entrusted to the purest jar straight from the wine-press, preserve their own flavor.

Explicit prologus.

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[1] Jean Gribemont, “The Translations: Jerome and Rufinus,” in A. DiBerardino (ed.), Patrology, vol. 4 (Italian, 1978; ET Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1986), 195–254 (225). This is a continuation of the Patrology begun by Johannes Quasten.

[2] See Gribemont, p. 234.

[3] It is doubtful whether Jerome was familiar with this terminology. He always called the Minor Prophets “The Twelve” or similar (e.g. see his prefaces to the Twelve Prophets and to the Books of Kings). In fact, most Christian writers thought of these prophets as a group under the designation Book of the Twelve (see the canon lists cited by H.B. Swete in his An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek² [Cambridge: University Press, 1914], 203–14, or available online here). The term “Minor Prophets” is not recorded for another few years, by Jerome’s contemporary Augustine (City of God 18.29, available here), though it appears that Augustine is citing common usage.

[4] Though see his Apology against Rufinus 2.33, where he does defend his use of the LXX additions to Daniel. This is probably just a matter of politics in his heated rivalry with Rufinus. On the whole question of Jerome’s attitude toward the Hebrew text, see Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).

Incipit prologus Iudith

St. Jerome translated the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, like Tobit, from Aramaic into Latin during the first decade of the fifth century. The following is my translation of Jerome’s preface to his version of Judith. It is based on the Stuttgart edition of the Vulgate (ed. R. Weber, 4^th edition, 1994, p. 691).

Among the Hebrews the book of Judith is read among the Agiografa; whose authority is considered less suitable for the confirmation of those things that come into contention. Nevertheless, having been written in Chaldean speech, it is reckoned among the histories. But because the Nicene Synod is read to have reckoned this book in the number of holy Scriptures, I have assented to your request, nay, demand, and having set aside occupations by which I was being violently squeezed, I have given to this one a single night, translating sense for sense rather than word for word. I have eradicated the terrible variety of the many codices; only that which I could find in Chaldean words with complete comprehension did I express in Latin words.

Take up the widow Judith, an example of chastity, and with perpetual proclamations acclaim her in triumphal praise. For he has given her as a model not only to women, but also to men, and he, the rewarder of her chastity, has provided such power that she overcame the one not overcome by anyone, and conquered the unconquerable.

Explicit prologus

Incipit prologus Tobiae

St. Jerome (ca. 347-420 AD) translated the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit from Aramaic into Latin during the first decade of the fifth century. Here follows my English translation of Jerome's preface to his version of Tobit. It is based on the Stuttgart edition of the Vulgate (ed. R. Weber, 4th edition, 1994, p. 676).

Jerome to Cromatius and Heliodorus, bishops, greetings in the Lord.

I do not cease to marvel at the urgency of your demand. For you demand that I bring into Latin style a book composed in Chaldean speech, namely, the book of Tobit, which the Hebrews, excising [it] from the catalogue of divine Scriptures, transfer to those which they term Agiografa. I have satisfied your desire, but not with my own enthusiasm (studium). For Hebrew studies (Hebraeorum studia) accuse us and charge us with transferring them for Latin ears contrary to their own canon. But considering (iudicans) it better to displease the opinion (iudicium) of Pharisees and to be subject to the commands of bishops, I have done as well as I can, and because the language of the Chaldeans is close to Hebrew speech, finding a speaker expert in both languages, I set aside (arripui, lit. “seized”) the labor of a single day and whatever he expressed to me in Hebrew words, these things I related in Latin speech to the scribe that I had summoned.

I will consider your utterances (or “prayers”; orationes) the wages for this work, when I will have learned that I have completed in a manner pleasing to you what you saw fit to command.

Explicit prologus

Calvin on the 70 Weeks

John Calvin (1509–1564) wrote his commentary on Daniel in 1561. It was quickly translated into English, with a second English translation by Thomas Myers published in 1853 in two volumes (Smith, n.p.). Below is a summary of Calvin’s interpretation of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9:24–27.

I should make clear that I am not a Calvin scholar. That will probably become clear by reading the postings.

The passage from Daniel in the Latin translation included with Calvin’s commentary runs thus:

(24) Septuaginta hebdomades finitae sunt super populum tuum, et super urbem tuam sanctam, ad claudendum scelus, et obsignandum peccatum, et expiandam iniquitatem, et adducendam justitiam aeternam, et obsignandam visionem, et prophetiam, et ungendum sanctum sanctorum. (25) Cognosces ergo et intelliges, ab exitu verbi de reditu, et de aedificanda Jerosolyma usque ad Christum ducem hebdomadas septem, et hebdomadas sexaginta duas, et reducetur, et re-aedificabitur platea, et murus, idque in angustia temporum. (26) Et post hebdomadas sexaginta duas excidetur Christus, et nihil erit, et urbem et sanctuarium perdet populus ducis venientis, et finis ejus cum inundatione erit, vel, in diluvio, et ad finem belli definitio desolationum. (27) Et roborabit foedus multis, hebdomade una : et dimidia hebdomade quiescere faciet sacrificium, et oblationem : et super extensionem abominationum obstupescet, et ad finem, et ad determinationem stillabit super stupentem.

This paragraph comes at the end of a chapter in which Daniel has prayed to God on behalf of his people, after having read the words of Jeremiah about the exile. The reference is to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the 70 years that Israel would be exiled from their own land by the Babylonians: “This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years” (Jer. 25:11). The text says that Daniel, who himself was one of these exiles, had read this passage and discerned that the 70-year period was nearing completion (Dan. 9:2). He, therefore, called on God to forgive his people and restore them to their land. In response, God sent to Daniel an angel with a message about a 70-week period (9:24–27).

Calvin’s comments on this passage appear in the second volume of Myers’ translation, pp. 195–231. They occupy parts of four separate lectures, numbers 49–52. Calvin relies explicitly on St. Jerome's Commentary on Daniel, and he seems to access patristic interpretation largely through Jerome, who made it his habit to survey opinion, sometimes without even giving his own. Calvin also tries to interact with, and mostly refute, contemporary Jewish opinion, especially as represented by, to use Calvin’s expression, “that impure and obstinate Rabbi, Barbinel” (p. 206). Calvin mostly comments on the Latin, but does consult the Hebrew and even cites some Hebrew words in Hebrew characters (see especially the beginning of lecture 52, pp. 225–31). I don’t know anything about how proficient Calvin was at Hebrew, but Blacketer’s new book on Calvin’s OT exegesis should provide some help, especially page 11.

This post is the first in a series that will give the gist of what Calvin says about the 70 weeks. For now, I will cover the latter part of lecture 49, with references to the page numbers of the second volume of Myers’ translation. Of course, like most Christian interpreters throughout history, Calvin understands the 70 weeks to be a true prophecy about an actual chronological period that would follow the time of the prophet.

Calvin first encounters our passage at the middle of his 49^th lecture, and spends his time here refuting Jewish opinion (pp. 195–202). He points to Lev. 25:8 to justify his taking these “weeks” as “weeks of years,” and admits that the Jews do likewise, counting a total of 490 years (pp. 196–97). Why does Daniel not say 490 years, but rather 70 weeks? He wanted to draw an analogy with Jeremiah’s prophecy. “The Prophet’s language must be interpreted as follows,--Sorrowful darkness has brooded over you for seventy years, but God will now follow up this period by one of favour of sevenfold duration, because by lightening your cares and moderating your sorrows, he will not cease to prove himself propitious to you even to the advent of Christ” (p. 200).

He says that the Jews view the 70 weeks as a period of God’s wrath, which is completely wrong, according to Calvin, since it is instead a period of consolation following upon the 70-year long exile. Calvin further alleges that the Jews count the 70 weeks from the destruction of the first temple to the destruction of the second temple. “The Jews again include the years which occurred from the ruin of the former Temple to the advent of Christ, and the final overthrow of their city” (p. 197). This is easy to refute, since, as Calvin says, this time period exceeds 600 years.

In my next post, I will look at lecture 50, where Calvin really begins to deal with the chronology of the 70 weeks.

Works Cited

Calvin, John, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Daniel, 1561, trans. Thomas Myers, 2 vols. (1853; reprint: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948).

Smith, Wilbur M., “Introduction,” in John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Daniel, trans. Thomas Myers (reprint: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), vol. 1, n.p.

Blacketer, Raymond A., The School of God: Pedagogy and Rhetoric in Calvin's Interpretation of Deuteronomy, Studies in Early Modern Religious Reforms (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006).

Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, trans. Gleason L. Archer, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958).