The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

V. Ptolemy’s Unwitting Testimony to the Prophetic Outline

It may be well to turn aside here to notice another second century writer—a pagan astronomer, who assuredly had no interest in Jewish or Christian prophecy, but who, nevertheless, tabulates a sequence of four world powers which is strangely reminiscent of the current understanding of Daniel’s outline of four great empires from the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire onward. The most famous astronomical work coming down to us from antiquity, written in Greek after Hadrian’s destruction of Jerusalem, and later translated into Arabic and other languages, lists the rulers of four empires: Babylonian (he calls it Assyrian), Persian, Macedonian, and Roman, the last and greatest of which was then at the height of its power. PFF1 235.3

PTOLEMY (Claudius Ptolemaeus) of Alexandria, mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, flourished about the second quarter of the second century. He is noted not only for his own contributions to science, but also as the systematizer and expositor of the greatest discoveries of his predecessors in Greece and Babylonia. The consummation of Greek astronomy was his monumental Mathematike Syntaxis (Mathematical Composition), better known as the Almagest from its Arabic name. PFF1 235.4

The numerous observations of eclipses and other phenomena recorded in the Almagest were dated generally in the regnal years of various kings; therefore a list, or canon, of the reigns was needed as a chronological scale for reckoning the intervals between the observations. This king list, incorporated into the Almagest, is well known as Ptolemy’s Canon, which tabulates the length of each reign and the total number of Egyptian calendar years from the starting point, the first year of Nabonassar. ³⁶ PFF1 236.1

Although Ptolemy did not know that the earth revolved around `the sun, his record of observations, including nineteen lunar eclipses, in connection with the reigns of ancient kings, is as scientifically accurate as could be expected without modern instruments. His errors are only a matter of minutes and hours, and his dates check with the calculations of modern astronomers. ³⁷ PFF1 236.2

The starting point of Ptolemy’s Canon, and of the Nabonassar Era, has been generally accepted by astronomers and chronologists as noon, February 26, 747 B.C., the equivalent of the first of Thoth, the Egyptian New Year’s Day. ³⁸ In addition to this primary Egyptian date, Ptolemy’s records fix with certainty the Egyptian reckoning of the reigns of the Babylonian monarch Nabopolassar, the Persian kings Cambyses and Darius I, the Macedonian-Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Philometor, and the Roman emperor Hadrian, whose dates, along with others, are PFF1 236.3

established by well-authenticated lunar eclipses; further, the canon is corroborated by ancient astronomical documents preserved to this day on Babylonian clay tablets containing records from the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar and the seventh of Cambyses. PFF1 240.1

Picture 4: COMPREHENSIVE CHARTING OF PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERPRETATION - THROUGH THE CENTURIES FROM FOURTH CENTURY B.C. TO NINETEENTH CENTURY A.D.
Enlargrment of first portion covered by volume 1 of Prophetic faith, from 500 b.c. To a.d 500.
Fuller statement appears on page 237 (concluding section appears on pages 370, 371)

Ptolemy’s total king list ³⁹ involves a series of fifty-five successive reigns extending over a period of 907 Egyptian years 424 years from Nabonassar through Alexander, and 483 years from Philip Aridaeus through Antoninus Pius. PFF1 240.1

Ptolemy’s Canon, fixed by ancient eclipses—in the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman periods—is thus an astronomical witness which, like the numismatic testimony of the coins and medals through the centuries, is an adjunct to the study of prophecy; for it has been used increasingly for several centuries in calculating the beginning date of the seventy prophetic weeks—and also of the 2300 years. ⁴⁰ And the agreement between its historical and chronological outline with the four-nationed image of Daniel 2 is a striking coincidence. PFF1 240.2