Tag Archives: Biblical Chronology

Demystifying Daniel’s Prophecies

In the Torah portion of Ha’azinu, we read about the importance of “remembering the days of the world” and “understanding the years of past generations” (Deuteronomy 32:7). It is absolutely vital for each person to have a solid grasp of history. It is only when one knows history that they will be able to properly understand the Scriptures. Reading the Tanakh without its historical context is futile, and will lead to false faith.

Case in point is the Book of Daniel, perhaps the most misunderstood and abused book of Tanakh. Christians often use it to “prove” that Jesus was the Messiah. The reality is that Daniel’s prophecies undoubtedly point to someone else as the “anointed one”, and have nothing at all to do with Jesus, or Christianity, or even the destruction of the Second Temple or the Roman Empire. Once a person understands the historical context of Daniel, everything becomes abundantly clear.

Daniel’s “Vision of the Four Beasts” by Gustave Doré

The critical part of Daniel to understand is the three central prophetic chapters, 7 to 9. Chapter 7 starts with the famous Vision of the Four Beasts. Daniel beholds four great creatures emerge from the sea. The first is a lion with eagle wings and human features (7:4). The second is a bear with three fangs (7:5). Then a leopard with four wings and four heads (7:6). Then the most terrible beast of all, different than the others, with iron teeth and ten horns (7:7). Another little horn emerges from the head of this beast, and it was like a human that spoke arrogantly (7:8). Continue reading →

Seventeen Tamuz and the Ten Plagues

Next Tuesday is the seventeenth of Tamuz, commemorating a handful of tragedies in Jewish history starting with the shattering of the Tablets following the sin of the Golden Calf. A careful examination of Torah chronology reveals that there may be one more major event that took place at this time, and it involves the Ten Plagues in Egypt. While the Torah describes in great detail how the Ten Plagues came about, it says very little about their timing. All we know is that the final plague upon the firstborn was on the fifteenth of Nisan. Can we work backwards from this point and create an exact timeline of when the Ten Plagues occurred? Continue reading →

A Kabbalistic History of the World

Does the first chapter of Genesis secretly allude to the major events in the history of mankind? How do the Six Days of Creation parallel the past six thousand years of human civilization? Find out in this class where we review the key developments of history through the lens of Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah, and take a peek into what’s to come in the long-awaited seventh millennium. Also: does AI have anything to do with the forthcoming Messianic Age?

For more on the Sefirot and ‘Fundamentals of Kabbalah’, see here.
For the specific colours associated with the Sefirot, see here.
For ‘Astrology and Astronomy in Judaism’, see here.