The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

26 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
Abraham bar Hiyya Hanasi (c. 1065–1136) speculated that the
2,300-, the 1,290- and the 1,335-year periods would terminate on
different dates in the fifteenth century. The end of the 2,300 yeardays,
for instance, was set at 1468 C.E . 5
Even up into the nineteenth century, many other Jewish
scholars were continuing to use the year-day principle to fix dates
for the coming of the Messiah.
The methods the rabbinical scholars used in applying the yearday
principle during those ten centuries were varied and the dates
they arrived at differed. Whatever method employed, however, one
thing was true: all the end-dates eventually proved empty of
fulfillment.
Since the use of the year-day principle was relatively common
among Jewish sources from early centuries, was this also the case
among Christian Bible expositors?
Of greater interest, does the history of its use within the
Christian community—and the results obtained—demonstrate a
contrast, or does it follow a similar pattern? What has been its
fruitage?
The “year-day principle” among Christian expositors
As we have seen, rabbi Akibah ben Joseph had presented the yearday
method as a principle back in the first century C.E. We find no
application of it—in that way, as a principle—among Christian
scholars, however, for the following one thousand years.
True, several expositors from the fourth century onward
suggested a mystical or symbolic meaning for the 1,260 days of
Revelation, yet before the twelfth century they never applied the
year-day rule to those days, nor to any other time period, with the
sole exception of the 3 1/2 days of Revelation 11:9. That period
was interpreted to be 3 1/2 years by a number of expositors, the
first of whom was Victorinus in the fourth century. 6 This, of course,
was far from holding to a year-day rule or principle.
Joachim of Floris (c. 1130–1202), abbot of the Cistercian
monastery in Corace, Italy, was most probably the first Christian
expositor to apply the year-day principle to the different time
periods of Daniel and Revelation. This was pointed out during the
19th century by Charles Maitland, a leading opponent of the idea, in
a number of works and articles. For example, in refuting those
holding that
5 Ibid., pp. 201, 210, 211.
6 E. B. Elliott, Honae Apocalypticae, 3rd ed. (London, 1847), Vol. III, pp. 233–240.
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