[627] Comp. πτερύγιον (Matt. iv. 5).
[628] Kuenen, _Hist. Crit. Onderzook._, ii. 472.
[629] Any one who thinks the inquiry likely to lead to any better results than those here indicated has only to wade through Zöckler's comment in Lange's _Bibelwerk_ ("Ezekiel and Daniel," i. 186-221). It is hard to conceive any reading more intolerably wearisome; and at the close it leaves the reader in a state of more hopeless confusion than before. The discussion also occupies many pages of Pusey (pp. 162-231); but neither in his hypothesis nor any other are the dates exact. He can only say, "It were not of any account if we could not interpret these minor details. _De minimis non curat lex._" On the view that the seventy weeks were to end with the advent of Christ we ask: (1) Why do no two Christian interpreters agree about the interpretation? (2) Why did not the Apostles and Evangelists refer to so decisive an evidence?
[630] On this, however, we may remark with Cornill, "Eine Apokalypse, deren ἀποκαλύψεις unenthülbar sind, wäre ein _nonsens_, eine _contradictio in adjecto_" (_Die Siebzig Jahrwochen_, p. 3). The indication was obviously _meant_ to be understood, and to the contemporaries of the writer, familiar with the minuter facts of the day, it probably was perfectly clear.
[631] Luke ii. 25, 26, 38; Matt. xxiv. 15. Comp. 2 Thess. ii.; Jos., _Antt._, X. xxii. 7.
[632] "Scio de hac quæstione ab eruditissimis viris varie disputatum _et unumquemque pro captu ingenii sui dixisse quod senserat_" (Jer. _in Dan._, ix.). In other words, there was not only no received interpretation in St. Jerome's day, but the comments of the Fathers were even then a chaos of arbitrary guesses.
[633] Pusey makes out a table of the divergent interpretation of the commentators, whom, in his usual ecclesiastical fashion, he charitably classes together as "unbelievers," from Corrodi and Eichhorn down to Herzfeld. But quite as striking a table of divergencies might be drawn up of "orthodox" commentators.
[634] Thus Eusebius, without a shadow of any pretence at argument makes the _last week_ mean _seventy years_! (_Dem. Evan._, viii.).
[635] Jost (_Gesch. d. Judenthums_, i. 99) contents himself with speaking of "die Liebe zu prophetischer Auffassung der Vergangenheit, mit möglichst genauen Zahlenagaben, befriedigt, _die uns leider nicht mehr verständlich erscheinen_."
[636] In Clem. Alex., _Strom._, i. 21.
[637] Cornill, p. 14; Bevan, p. 54.
[638] Schürer, _Hist. of Jewish People_, iii. 53, 54 (E. Tr.). This is also the view of Graf, Nöldeke, Cornill, and many others. In any case we must not be misled into an impossible style of exegesis of which Bleck says that "bei ihr alles möglich ist und alles für erlaubt gilt."