Endnote 5 – Why 2K?

There is a theological reason the rabbis collapse their history and lose 163 years during the Persian period. They insist that there were only 490 years between the fall of the First and Second Temples, based on how they interpreted the “70 weeks” prophecy of Daniel 9:25–27, a period they maintain ended with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E., and not with the coming of Jesus as Messiah, as Christians were interpreting it.