The Covenant Wisdom of Daniel

When Christians today read Daniel, we often fall into one of two traps: either trying to turn it into a countdown calendar (futurism), or confining it to the first century (preterism). But long before these categories existed, Saadia Gaon (882–942 CE) was already wrestling with Daniel. His approach offers us something richer: not speculation, but covenant faithfulness in exile.

Saadia Gaon, also known as Saadia ben Yosef al‑Fayyumi, was a pioneering Jewish philosopher, poet, biblical commentator, and the head (Gaon) of the prestigious Sura Academy in Babylonia. Born around 882 CE in Fayyum, Egypt, he relocated to Babylonia and became one of the most influential Jewish scholars of the early medieval period, shaping Jewish thought through his rationalist approach and translations into Judeo‑Arabic

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Saadia’s Messianic Computation
In his Book of Beliefs and Opinions (Emunot ve-Deot ), Saadia turned to Daniel 12:12:

“Happy is he that waits and comes to the 1,335 days.”

He interpreted these “days” as years, stretching Daniel’s vision into a symbolic messianic timetable. Saadia calculated Israel’s independence as 890 years (480 years before the First Temple + 410 years during it). He then applied Daniel’s number:

“One and one-half times this total [445 + 890] equals 1,335 years.” (Malter, Saadia Gaon’s Messianic Computation, 1919).

The result was a symbolic timeline for redemption. Yet—and this is crucial—Saadia refused to assign an exact starting date. He left the horizon of redemption open-ended, pointing Israel not to a date, but to God’s faithfulness.
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Tribulation as a Covenant Cycle
For Saadia, Daniel’s “tribulation” (Daniel 12:1) was not a one-time event but a recurring reality. Israel’s history under Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Christendom, even Abbasid Islam and beyond already embodied Daniel’s words. Malter notes that Saadia’s aim was not speculation but harmonization:

“His goal was to affirm the certainty of redemption while leaving the exact timing ambiguous.” (Malter, p. 43).

In other words, Daniel’s sealed book was not meant to crack a code, but to sustain covenantal endurance. Tribulation was the purifying fire of exile, not a seven-year charted event.
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The Millennium and the Messianic Age
Emerging Jewish tradition envisioned history as six thousand years followed by a sabbatical millennium of rest (Sanhedrin 97a). Saadia wove Daniel’s numbers into this pattern, but never equated the millennium with the final appearance of Messiah ben David. For him, the Millennium was a covenantal phase within God’s broader redemptive design. Here we as Christian Believers should perhaps lean in a bit.

This raises a question still debated today: Is the Millennium simply a stage within the Messianic Age, or something distinct? Here is a provocation:

“The idea of a 1,000-year ‘Messiah ben Joseph Millennium’ could be connected to Saadia’s eschatological framework, though it was never explicitly framed that way.” (The Ben Joseph Millennium is Over, Gog…). Perhaps this affirms the Book of Revelation in ways Christianity has not engaged with even if my speculation goes beyond provocation. Judaism as mission is the only religion revealed in scripture but that does mean its present forms are correct, notwithstanding Christendom (Christian Nationalism) and Islam. There is nothing wrong with the Christian Faith! 

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Why Saadia Still Matters
For Christians, Saadia Gaon’s approach is a reminder:

Daniel belongs in the Ketuvim (Writings), as wisdom-history—not a prophecy chart nor the distinct Major and Minor Prophets.

Tribulation is cyclical, not a one-time countdown.

The Millennium is not a system to map, perhaps symbolic aspects to read better.

Above all, Daniel calls for faithful waiting: “Happy is he that waits…” (Daniel 12:12).

Saadia refused to hand his people a date. Instead, he gave them a covenantal guide: 

God’s redemption is sure, even if the seal on Daniel’s visions means the timing is hidden.
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Reflection Question
How might your faith change if you stopped reading Daniel as a puzzle to solve, and instead received it as Saadia did—as covenant wisdom calling us to endure exile with faith and hope?

Daniel’s Four Kingdoms, Many Readings?

One of the most familiar charts in Christian prophecy teaching is the “four kingdoms” of Daniel. The pattern seems so clear: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. This has been taught for centuries as if it were the only possible interpretation.

But here’s the surprise: Jewish interpreters did not always agree. In fact, their readings often complicate, and sometimes overturn, the neat Christian lineup. And once we see that, Daniel looks less like a linear timeline and more like a set of covenantal patterns.
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The Standard Christian Lineup
The traditional Christian view—shared by many Church Fathers—runs like this:
1. Babylon: Nebuchadnezzar’s empire, under which Daniel lived.

2. Persia: The empire of Cyrus and Darius, which allowed Jews to return.

3. Greece: The empire of Alexander the Great, later broken into the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties.

4. Rome: The empire of the Caesars, setting the stage for Christ’s coming.

This “Babylon–Persia–Greece–Rome” model gave Christians a ready-made framework: Daniel was predicting Rome, and in Rome’s shadow Christ appeared. The story feels complete, almost too complete.
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Jewish Alternatives

Jewish voices did not always read the vision this way. Depending on the time and place, the “four kingdoms” looked different:

Babylon–Media–Persia–Greece: Some early Jewish interpreters counted Media and Persia separately, with Greece as the final empire. Rome didn’t even enter the picture.

Babylon–Persia–Greece–Seleucids: In the Maccabean period, many Jews saw the fourth kingdom not as Rome, but as the Seleucid oppressors who desecrated the Temple. That made sense in their lived history.

Babylon–Persia–Greece–Edom/Rome: Later rabbis equated Rome with Edom, the biblical brother of Jacob. Rome wasn’t just another empire—it was Esau’s line, the covenantal rival to Israel. This interpretation shaped Jewish memory for centuries: Rome was Edom, the destroyer of the Temple, the power that would always oppose God’s covenant.

Babylon–Persia–Greece–Ishmael: Some medieval Jewish interpreters (like Saadia Gaon and later commentators) even suggested Islam was the “fourth kingdom.” History had moved, and new empires now filled the role of Israel’s oppressor.

The point is: the “four kingdoms” were never a fixed code. They shifted with history, because Daniel was read as covenantal wisdom, not a frozen chart.
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Why This Matters
If we only read Daniel through the Christian “Babylon–Persia–Greece–Rome” grid, we miss the richness of the Jewish tradition. We also risk turning Daniel into a proof-text for our theology, rather than a mirror for how God works in history.

Jewish readings remind us:

Daniel isn’t about one linear story—it’s about recurring covenantal empires that rise and fall.

“Rome” in Jewish thought is not just a political empire; it is Edom, the covenantal adversary. That changes how we think about Christendom itself.

Every age has its “fourth kingdom,” the power that tries to swallow God’s people. The names change, but the covenantal pattern remains.
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Covenantal Realism and the Four Kingdoms
This is where Covenantal Realism helps. Instead of arguing whether the fourth kingdom was Rome, or Greece, or Islam, Covenantal Realism sees Daniel pointing to a cycle:

• Empire rises.
• God’s people are pressured in exile.
• Faithfulness is tested.
• God vindicates His covenant.

The four kingdoms aren’t a code to be cracked. They are a pattern that repeats. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Edom, Ishmael—all of them take their turn. But God’s covenant faithfulness does not change.
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Reflection Question
When you think of “the four kingdoms,” are you locked into the neat Christian chart—or can you see how Daniel’s vision may be describing the recurring empires of every age? What might our “fourth kingdom” look like today?

Daniel’s Prince Who Was Cut Off

In Daniel 9:26 we read these puzzling words:
“After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.”

Who is this “anointed one” or “prince” who is cut off? Christians and Jews have answered this question very differently through the centuries. Let’s look at the main options before exploring a forgotten figure who may open the door for a fresh reading.
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Jewish Readings
Many Jewish interpreters, especially in the Second Temple and medieval periods, saw the “anointed one” not as the Messiah, but as a priest or ruler in Israel’s history. Onias III, the high priest murdered in 171 BCE, is a common candidate. Others saw it as the collapse of priestly leadership just before the Temple’s destruction.

For Jews, Daniel was a book of covenantal suffering and restoration, not a countdown to a Christian savior. This reading made sense in their own cycles of exile and persecution.

Some readers assume Daniel is prophecy projecting into a distant future, but the book itself often works as history told in a prophetic key. Its visions rehearse Israel’s story of empires, exile, desecration, and restoration. In this sense, Daniel 9:26 may not be predicting a Messiah centuries ahead, but interpreting events already unfolding—the assassination of leaders, the unraveling of priesthood, the looming destruction of Jerusalem. The language of “sevens” and “anointed one” functions as a theological lens on history, not a coded timetable. This helps explain why Jewish interpreters saw Onias III or the collapse of the priesthood in view, and why the text continues to resonate with covenantal crises across ages.
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Christian Readings
The Church Fathers were quick to identify the “anointed one” with Christ. His crucifixion, they said, fulfilled the prophecy of being “cut off,” and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE sealed the judgment.

But here we must be careful. Christian interpretation often skipped over Jewish memory and went straight to Christological fulfillment. And by the time of Marcion and other heretics, the pendulum swung further: the Old Testament itself was rejected as “too Jewish.” What began as fulfillment turned into detachment.
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Modern Dispensational Reading
Dispensationalism divides the seventy weeks into 69 fulfilled at Christ’s death, with a “gap,” and a final week postponed until the future. For them, the “prince” is Antichrist, who will desecrate a rebuilt Temple.

This view is popular in prophecy conferences, but it is a modern construct. Neither Jews nor early Christians read Daniel this way.
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A Forgotten Option: Herod Agrippa II
Now consider a figure most Christians overlook: Herod Agrippa II. Acts 26 shows him listening to Paul’s testimony. Paul pleads with him: “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.” Agrippa’s famous reply: “Almost you persuade me to be a Christian.”

Here was a Jewish prince, the heir of Herodian rule, standing at a decisive moment. Had he embraced Paul’s message, Agrippa could have been a bridge for Israel and the nations. Instead, he deferred, and with that deferral came a kind of “cutting off.”

This was not just personal hesitation. In Agrippa we see a covenantal transfer: the last flicker of Jewish princely authority before Rome took over completely. Here Edom, already absorbed into Herodian lines, now folds into Rome. In Jewish tradition, Edom had long symbolized the empire that opposed covenant faithfulness. By Agrippa’s refusal, Jewish royal authority slipped into the hands of Rome/Edom once and for all.
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Why This Matters for Christian–Jewish Relations
This interpretation doesn’t mean the Jewish reading was “wrong” or that the Christian reading was “right.” Both caught glimpses of truth. The Jews saw covenantal leadership collapse. The Christians saw fulfillment in Christ. But both missed how figures like Agrippa embodied the actual hinge of covenant history.

And this is important: Jewish interpretations of Daniel were often reactionary—shaped by centuries of persecution, and by rejection from the Jesus movement. Christian interpretations were also reactionary—often defined in opposition to Judaism, sometimes sliding into Marcionite distortions that cut the gospel away from Israel’s story.

By recovering a covenantal realism in Daniel 9—where Agrippa’s near-conversion and refusal mark a transfer from Israel’s prince to Rome/Edom—we can see how Jewish and Christian stories intertwine. This is not about triumphalism or blame. It’s about honesty: God’s covenant purposes continued, even through tragic human refusals.
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Reflection Question
When Agrippa told Paul, “Almost you persuade me,” he stood at the edge of covenant destiny. What might it look like for us today not to be “almost persuaded,” but to fully embrace God’s call to faithfulness in our own time?

Daniel’s Seventy Weeks: Where Did “Preterism” and “Futurism” Come From?

When we open Daniel 9 and read about the “seventy weeks,” most of us already bring categories in our heads. We’ve been told there are only two options: either these prophecies were fulfilled in the past (preterism) or they point to events still in the future (futurism).

But here’s the truth: these words—preterism and futurism—don’t come from the Bible. They don’t come from the apostles, or even the early church. They are later inventions, created to defend theological systems. And once we start using them, we are already trapped inside someone else’s paradigm.
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The Rise of Futurism
In the 1800s, teachers like John Nelson Darby and later the Scofield Reference Bible popularized a new way of reading Daniel and Revelation. They argued that most of these visions were not about the past but about a coming end-times countdown. This view came to be known as futurism.

Futurism split history into “dispensations,” added a secret rapture, and turned Daniel’s seventy weeks into a detailed calendar leading to the rise of Antichrist and a rebuilt Temple. Millions of Christians were taught to read the Bible through this lens.
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The Counter-Reaction: Preterism
But others pushed back. They said: “No, Daniel’s seventy weeks and much of Revelation were already fulfilled in the first century—especially in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.” This came to be called preterism (from the Latin praeter, meaning “past”).

Preterism argued that Daniel’s prophecies were not about today’s headlines, but about Rome, the Caesars, and the fall of the Temple. In many ways, it was a correction to the runaway speculation of futurism.
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The Semi-Preterist Middle Ground
Traditional covenant theologians, especially in the Reformed tradition, didn’t want to go all the way with preterism, because they still held to a future resurrection and final judgment. So they developed what is often called semi-preterism—some things fulfilled in the first century, some things still to come.

But notice: whether futurist, preterist, or semi-preterist, everyone is still playing inside the same past vs. future game.
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What About the “Sealed Book”?
One of the most misunderstood lines in Daniel comes at the very end: “Seal up the words until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:9).

For futurists, this becomes a license: “We are the generation smart enough to finally crack the code!”

For preterists, it’s brushed aside: “The seal was broken in the first century, so it’s all finished.”

But sealing a scroll in the ancient world didn’t mean locking it away forever. It meant the vision was kept secure until God chose to disclose it in His way and His time. In other words, Daniel’s words weren’t given so that every generation could make charts, but so that God could unfold them in His covenant cycles of history.
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Enter Covenantal Realism
This is where I want to introduce the approach I call Covenantal Realism. Instead of flattening Daniel into past-only or future-only categories, Covenantal Realism reads Daniel as real covenant history playing out in cycles.

• Like Israel’s sabbath years and jubilees (Leviticus 25), Daniel’s “weeks” are patterns that repeat: exile, repentance, restoration.

• These cycles are not abstract; they are lived realities that shape the way God deals with His people in every age.

• The “seal” on Daniel’s vision means that we don’t master the timetable, but we participate in the unfolding. Each generation is called to discern its place in the covenant story.

For Christians, this frees us from two traps:

1. The futurist trap of endlessly speculating about Antichrist and rapture charts
2. The preterist trap of treating Daniel as a closed book of ancient history.

Covenantal Realism says: Daniel is still speaking, because God’s covenant cycles are still real.
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Why This Matters for Christians
This means Daniel is not a puzzle to solve but a wisdom-text to live by. The “sealed book” reminds us that only God knows the times, but He has revealed enough for us to live faithfully: to endure exile, to resist ungodliness, and to hope for restoration.

When we read Daniel this way, we stop arguing about labels and start helping one another walk faithfully. We glean wisdom from Israel’s history, we see echoes in our own time, and we look forward with confidence—not because we cracked the code, but because the covenant-keeping God holds the future.
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Reflection Question
What would change if you read Daniel not as a riddle to solve, but as covenant wisdom meant to guide you through exile and restoration?

The Trinity in Judaism?

What Rublev painted (and why it’s Israel-rooted)

Andrei Rublev’s Trinity is a visual meditation on Genesis 18 (“the three” who visit Abraham at Mamre). Key detail: Rublev omits Abraham and Sarah so the viewer contemplates the three angelic figures themselves. 

The icon’s classical home is the State Tretyakov Gallery; their notes and Russian Orthodox sources consistently call it the “Old Testament Trinity / Hospitality of Abraham.” A Soviet Era filmmaker Andre Tarkovsky made a famous film about the icon painting monk.

 
Exegetical roots inside Israel’s own tradition
Jewish reading of Gen 18: Rashi: the “three men” are three angels, each with a mission (heal Abraham, announce Isaac, destroy Sodom). That is, Israel’s tradition already treats the scene as a multi-personal divine visitation mediated by angels.

  
Mamre / hospitality is itself a mitzvah lens (hachnasat orchim), showing how the narrative is framed within covenantal ethics—not later metaphysics.

Targumic “Memra” (the Word) gives a Jewish matrix for speaking of God’s self-manifestation: see Boyarin on the Memra and early binitarian currents in Judaism. These are native Jewish categories later echoed in Christian usage.

For the broader scholarly backdrop, see studies on “Two Powers in Heaven,” which trace how some Second-Temple and early rabbinic discussions handled multiple divine manifestations without abandoning monotheism.

  

This is not a foreign import — it’s a native biblical and Jewish category, later read christologically by the Church. But if we want the apostles’ meaning, we have to hear it first in Israel’s language. That’s why thinkers like Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh are so valuable: he’s affirming without being polemical, reminding us that the Church’s truths are best understood when re-rooted in Israel’s categories.

For more on this Hebraic framing, see 

Sabellianism: Clarifying Heavenly Flesh — showing how early controversies look different when we start from the soil of the Tanakh and Oral Torah rather than only later metaphysics.

When the Framework Speaks Louder than the Text

How Inherited Grids Shape Our Reading

One of the subtle but pervasive influences on evangelical theology is the way inherited theological frameworks can become more determinative than the biblical text itself. This is not a matter of bad intentions—many of these frameworks arose as attempts to summarize Scripture faithfully. Yet once a structure is fixed in place, it can act as an interpretive filter, quietly shaping what we see and what we overlook.

A case in point is the Reformed covenant of works / covenant of grace schema. While often presented as the Bible’s own storyline, these two covenants are not explicitly named or defined in Scripture. They are theological constructs, developed post-biblically, which then become the default lens for reading Genesis, Romans, or Galatians. The danger here is methodological: exegesis becomes a search for proof texts to fit the grid, rather than a narrative encounter with the living God who speaks through the whole canon.

This propositionalism—the drive to secure doctrine through isolated verses—tends to fragment the text and disconnect it from its own covenantal flow. It also flattens the complex interplay of creation, fall, promise, exile, and restoration into a binary contrast: works versus grace. The richness of God’s redemptive trajectory, with its layers of calling, testing, and covenant fidelity, is reduced to a theological equation.

The same dynamic appears in ecclesial debates, including the question of women in ministry. When patriarchal frameworks are assumed at the outset, select passages (e.g., 1 Timothy 2:12–14) are elevated as universal and timeless, while counterexamples (Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla, the daughters of Philip) are either reinterpreted or minimized. The framework dictates the outcome before the exegetical work begins.

Covenantal Realism resists this reduction by insisting that the biblical narrative itself—not post-biblical categories—must set the terms of the discussion. The covenants of Scripture are not abstract contracts but lived relationships within God’s unfolding mission. They form a trajectory that moves from the creation mandate through the patriarchal promises, Sinai’s vocation, the prophetic call to justice, and the Messianic renewal of the Spirit-filled witnessing Edah. Within this trajectory, leadership is shaped by faithfulness to the covenant and the mission of God—not by fixed hierarchies tied to gender or primogeniture.

Applying this to the traditional family is not in view here. SoiIn this light, the real interpretive question is not, Does Scripture affirm male leadership?—it clearly does in many places—but rather, Does the gospel freeze that pattern, or does it free us into new arrangements where mission shapes structure? 

When the framework no longer speaks louder than the text, we can hear the Spirit’s summons to align our leadership patterns with the New Creation in Messiah, where authority is redefined by service, and the image-bearing vocation is restored to both male and female. This is precisely where complementarian apologists like Wayne Grudem and John Piper fail to listen. In Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, their defense of male headship is presented not as one possible reading shaped by context, but as an unalterable creation-order mandate. Granted, such a reading has a large consensus, yet its imposition may not serve the best ends. 

The framework—patriarchal hierarchy—becomes the fixed lens, and the text is marshaled to fit it. While they occasionally speak of servant leadership, they refuse to let the New Creation vision of Galatians 3:28 or the Spirit’s distribution of gifts in Acts 2:17 challenge their structure. In doing so, they reverse the biblical priority: instead of letting the gospel reshape leadership in light of Messiah’s servant authority, they guard a framework inherited from a particular reading of Genesis 1–3 and enforce it as universal. Their method is not one of yielding to the Spirit’s re-ordering work, but of preserving a pre-determined system for ecclesiology, ensuring that the framework speaks louder than the text and certainly not Jewish midrashim (interpretations) that subtly affirm the gospel beyond the Covenant of Works and Grace and much more fully than simply male-headship.