Bs"d
You put the word "messiah" between quotation marks, thereby indicating that Cyrus was not a real messiah.
However, as we can read in Isaiah 45:1, God Himself calls Cyrus "My messiah":
"Thus says the Lord to His anointed,
To Cyrus, whose right hand I have held"
The word "anointed" in the Hebrew is "meshiach", which, when Christianity can apply it to their messiah, is always translated as "messiah", and if not, when it obviously refers to a different messiah, is always translated with "anointed".
But God Himself calls Cyrus "His messiah".
He was a real messiah. This in contradistinction to that carpenter, who was never anointed to be king by a king or priest, and who was never a king, in short, who never was a messiah.
Let us first get out of the way what is a messiah, because you don't seem to understand:
From my Daniel 9 page,
HERE to be found:
"Who was the messiah? In order to understand this we first have to understand what is a messiah. Messiah comes from the Hebrew word 'meshiach' which means 'anointed one' It was the custom to anoint kings with oil before they came to power. There were already many anointed kings in Jewish history. Read for instance I Samuel 9:27 to10:1; Here Saul is anointed by Samuel the prophet. And thereby he became a messiah, an anointed one, See Samuel 11:13 up to 12:3: Here in verse 3 king Saul is called G.ds anointed, in the Hebrew 'meshiach'. So also king Saul was a messiah. Look in I Samuel 16:12-13, here the prophet Samuel anoints David, the Hebrew verb for anointing is 'mashach', and he becomes an anointed one, as we can read in II Samuel 23:1; "David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed (in the Hebrew 'meshiach') of the G.d of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said; …"
I Kings 1:39; "And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed (Hebrew verb 'mashach') Solomon. And they blew the trumpet, and all the people said; G.d save king Solomon." Also Solomon was an anointed one, or messiah: II Chronicles 6:42, here king Solomon prays: "O Lord turn not away the face of thine anointed, …" In the Hebrew: 'meshiach'.
So now we know what is a messiah: An anointed king."
would have appeared in your writings from Nehemiah, Ezra, or Daniel... but your "messiah" is totally absent.
Cyrus is mentioned 12 times in Ezra, and three times in Daniel. Should be enough I would say.
Unless you resurrected Cyrus, he was disqualified by the grave. :rotfl:
The same of course, would hold true for your messiah, he's dead for 2000 years, and he didn't fulfil the messianic prophecies, so he was not the messiah.
Of course also Cyrus didn't fulfil the messianic prophecies, therefore Cyrus was not
THE messiah, only
A messiah.
THE messiah hasn't come yet.
Now, using Artaxerxes Longamanus as the "starting point"
Why use that as a starting point? The first one who spoke about the Jews returning and rebuilding Jerusalem was Jeremiah, and it was his prophecies Daniel was studying when he got the prophecy about the 70 weeks, so that is a much more logical starting point.
And then there is Cyrus, the first one to give the command to the Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, also he is a much more logical starting point.
and going forward (70X7) 490 years, you have Messiah the Prince,
Your "messiah" was never a prince, never a king.
the Savior of Israel coming.
Your "messiah" never saved Israel. And he didn't fulfil the messianic prophecies, and he never was anointed, so he was a failed messiah.
A 5th grader could make an accurate guess, but sadly the retarded "religious leadership" :dunce: couldn't multiply and count. And as a "reward", they lost their Temple and were driven out of the land.
The destruction of the second Temple, just like the destruction of the first Temple, had nothing to do with the messiah, it had to do with the sins of the Jews.
And of course, it is impossible that that carpenter was the messiah, so even a blind person can see he had nothing to do with the destruction of the Temple.
The prophecy ends with: "And after threescore and two weeks (that is after 69 weeks, in the 70th week) shall a messiah be cut off, and have nothing. And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary and the end of thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. 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"
So in the 70th week, a messiah (not
THE messiah) will be cut of, in the middle the animal sacrifices will be stopped, and the Temple will be destroyed.
That of course all happened in the 7 year period, the last week, which is from 63 to 70. In 70 the Temple was destroyed. In 66 the Jews revolted against the Romans, who laid a siege around the city, because of which no sheep and bulls could be brought into the city any more for the sacrificial service, so in the middle of that week the sacrifices were stopped.
With the destruction of Jerusalem, the last Jewish king Agrippas was cut off, (a real messiah) and left with nothing.
It all fits like a glove.
Except of course for that carpenter, who was dead already 40 years when this prophecy ended.
"O Y-H-W-H, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come to You from the ends of the earth and say, 'Surely our fathers have inherited lies, worthlessness and unprofitable things.' Will a man make gods for himself, which are not gods?"
Jeremiah 16:19
