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It is assumed that you have read the first two articles in this series before you begin reading this third article as the background information previously presented is mandatory to your continued proper understanding of the texts to which we now turn our attention.
Let us look at the text under consideration as found in the 20th century King James Bible: Daniel 9:25-27
Dan 9:25-27 25 Know 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 [69 weeks or 483 years]: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. 26 And after threescore and two weeks [62 weeks or 434 years] 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. 27 And 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. (KJV)
So we see that after 483yrs after a command to build Jerusalem and the Temple the Messiah will be cut off or killed.
What we just read is one of the most exotic reconstructions of the Jewish Scriptures that exist today in our Christian Bibles. Yet millions read this text and have not one clue of the purposeful corruption of the Hebrew Scriptures that they just read.
We need to focus our attention first on the reference to "Messiah" as found in verse 25 and as found in verse 26. I will present only verse 25 as we can learn what we need to from the first presentation of the word "Messiah."
"... unto the Messiah the Prince ..." (v.25) The Hebrew word mashiach means "anointed."
We need to look at this word "mashiach" as translated from the Hebrew:
First we will look at the Strong's Concordance:
4899 mashiyach (maw-shee'-akh); from 4886; anointed; usually a consecrated person (as a king, priest, or saint); specifically, the Messiah: KJV-- anointed, Messiah.
Next let us look at Thayer's Greek Lexicon:
4899 mashiyach- the anointed, the anointed one
Answer for yourself: When reading the Bible done by Jewish transltors do you know how many times does the word "Messiah" [capitalized mashiach] appears in the Jewish Bible? ZERO
Answer for yourself: When reading the Bible done by Christian transltors do you know how many times does the word "Messiah" [capitalized mashiach] appears in the Christian Bible? TWICE....IN DANIEL 9:25 AND 9:26 ONLY!
The word "Messiah" is really a Latin word. Christos is a Greek word for "Messiah." The Hebrew word is "mashiach" and it is always uncapitalized.
Answer for yourself: How many times do we find the Hebrew word "mashiach" used in the Hebrew Scriptures? You only need to get out your Strong's Concordance and look up the word and the Strong's number [4899] and count the times. We find the Hebrew word "mashiach" used a total of 39 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the above definition we find the word "mashiach" is used for the kings of Israel, the high priests of Israel, and of course the hoped for "messiah" of Israel. But notice also something rather strange. We find a Persian King named Cyrus that is responsible for allowing the Jewish people to return to their land following their victory over Babylon where the Jewish people had been exiled as punishment for failing to observe "shemittah" and letting the land lay fallow for 490 years.
Of the 39 times mashiach is used in the Hebrew Scriptures, the KJV translates it correctly as "anointed" 37 times correctly and does not capitalize it. In each of these 37 instances these same KJV translators translate this Hebrew word correctly as "anointed." Let us look at some of the examples.
In the references given above the word used for "anointed" is the same Strong's number [4886] that we find in Daniel 9 used twice. The KJV translators demonstrate that they know how to correctly translate the word "mashiach" and do so correctly 37 times in the KJV but as stated above they deviate from accepted laws of hermeneutics and interpretation twice in Daniel 9 by forcing a capitaliztion of the word only in these two instances!
Answer for yourself: Why?
Let us remember that the Hebrew Scriptures do not capitalize words but yet we find the Hebrew word "mashiach" translated as "Messiah" [CAPITALIZED] in the Christian translation of Daniel in verses 25 and 26 and strangely we find it capitalized only twice in the whole of the KJV and we find that it is here in these verses in Daniel but these same traslators choose not to capitalize it in the other 37 uses.
Answer for yourself: Don't you think it rather strange that the uncapitalized words in the Hebrew Scriptures are capitalized in these "key" places in Daniel dealing with the Messianic age but the same translators did not choose to capitalize the same word in 37 other places?
Answer for yourself: Could we be deceived into falling into a certain theological agenda of the translators of the KJV and read into these verses certain concepts concerning "mashiach" that Daniel never intended?
We sure are because of this forced capitalization of uncapitalized works in the Hebrew manuscripts and we are led due to the theological agenda of the Christian Scriptures and the Gentile Church into reading the concept of the ultimate "Messiah" into these verses when this was never the intention of Daniel. Daniel made no distinction whatsoever in singling out the "anointed one" of which he wrote concerning in his letter. For Daniel this "anointed one" was no different from other "anointed ones." Daniel took no special pains as found in the Hebrew manuscripts to say "Look now...this is the long awaited Messiah of which we have yearned." Not only that but because of the christology surrounding Jesus who was made God at the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. then we are brainwashed into connecting the capitalized "Messiah" with the prior teachings we have heard most of our lives that Jesus is God and that Jesus is "the" Messiah. So instead of exegesis where we draw out of the Biblical texts what it says we are led by the KJV translators to read into the passage concepts that simply don't exist in the passage in the original Hebrew. We end up with false religious beliefs about Daniel's Seventy Weeks let alone about the true Messiah of Israel and Jesus as well.
If we went back into Temple times and walked the streets of Jerusalem and approached a Jewish man or woman as asked: "Where is the "mashiach" they would ask us in return "Which 'mashiach' are you talking about?" The word "mashaich" only meant "anointed" ones and as shown above could have meant a reference to a Jewish King, a Sadducee Priest, or even a Gentile King like King Cyrus. We even find that the whole of Israel is called the "anointed" of God as seen in Hab. 3:13
13 Thou art come forth for the deliverance of Thy people, for the deliverance of Thine anointed; Thou woundest the head out of the house of the wicked, uncovering the foundation even unto the neck. Selah.
As we are so distant from the language of Scripture living in America today that we honetly don't have a chance of interpreting our Christian Scriptures properly when only read in the English.
The word "mashaich" is NEVER used in the Hebrew Bible about who you and me refer to as the "Messiah" who is to come at the end of days!
The very first time we find the word "mashaich" used for the person that we expect to come at the end of days is the first century BCE! The 54 translators of the KJV Bible knew that the concepts surrounding the Jewish Messiah were much different in their day than in the first century and they took full advantage of this by choosing to capitalize "mashaich" and introduce concepts and meanings into Daniel 9 that Daniel never intended. Understand when our Christian Bibles were translated by the KJV translators theology had been evolving concerning Jesus and the Jewish "Messiah" and these concepts were easily introduced into the KJV translation of Daniel 9 by the capitalization of "mashaich" when as shown above the Hebrew Scriptures never translated word let alone "mashaich." These KJV traslators Hey knew the word "Messiah" meant more in their day than before; that the word in their day referred to the one coming from the House of David that would usher in a utopian society and bring peace to the whole world.
So we find that in reading Daniel 9 in our Christain Bibles is that we are let to believe that we are speaking of the anointed one who is to come at the end of days and usher in the Messianic Kingdom when the original ideas of Daniel 9 as taken from the Hebrew words does not carry that idea whatsoever. We as Christians are led to believe we are reading about an eschatalogical anointed one who is to come as God's Messianic representative and die when this idea is totally foreign to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Bible Jesus used. We have to wait for the forged Christian Bibles to get this idea and having inherited such corrupted translations then we rehearse error over and over again our whole lives.
Answer for yourself: Who is responsible for corrupting our Bibles? Why has not our Christian Pastors and teachers found this out in their study of God's Word? Do they even study..and if so are they really studying the texts in the original languages? If they are not qualified in Biblical languages and cannot deal with the Biblical texs in their original languages are they qualified to teach you?
In closing I have a few more things to bring to your attention. The Hebrew word "mashaich" does not mean "THE" Messiah. The word "ha mashaich" means "the mashaich" or "the messiah." But there is no "ha" in the texts in the original Hebrew. Yet in the KJV in verse 25 of Daniel 9 we see "the Messiah" with a capital "M."
Answer for yourself: Do you understand what is being done with the mind and souls of the readers by the traslators of the KJV? They are being lied to about Gods' Word!
Because Christians cannot read Hebrew or are familiar with Jewish works expounding these Hebrew nuiances in the texts we are totally ignorant to what is going on behind the words of our Bibles. We grow up buying KJV Bibles and are brainwashed to think since childhood that the KJV is the "only" Bible from God. The debates about the primancy of the KVJ rage today. We are told since childhood that our Christian Bibles are inspired, infallible, and inerrant but when one gets serious about Bible study we find such problems as these and the countless others dealt with on this and other websites by Bet Emet Ministries.
You and I are guilty of only one thing. We want the truth but don't have it. And with the reinforement of antisemtic religious beliefs over and over in our Gentile Churches we are taught by bogus documents written after 180 A.D. that the Jews are blinded.
Rom 11:7 7 What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (KJV)
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that Romans 9-11 was not in the first collection of Romans in 150 A.D. but only surfaced after 180 A.D. in reaction to Marcion's first New Testament? Documents like this that label the Jewish nation and scholars as "blinded" have achieve it's intended purpose. The Jewish people and their scholars and their Bible are not sought by Gentiles who need to know the truth about God.
Answer for yourself: What can you learn about God or should you even try from supposedly "blinded" Jews? Surely they don't have any "truth" do they since being "blinded" for not accepting this dying "Messiah" of Daniel 9 which just so happens to not be in the text at all..or do they?
Answer for yourself: Could it be that it is we Christians who are "blinded" by the antisemtic KJV translators who purposefully manipulated & corrupted the Biblical Hebrew texts to suit their pagan religious agendas which are grounded in dying solar Godmen that all said "eat my body" and "drink my blood?"
Answer for yourself: Has this dying solar Godman from Sun worship been written into Daniel chapter 9 in the Gentile's Christian Bibles through the purposeful mistranslation of the Hebrew word "mashaich"and it's forced capitalization and through the insertion of the definite article "the" before it?
Answer for yourself: Do you see the irony and the seriousness of this? I hope so.
bennoah1@airmail.net