The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The History of an Interpretation 27
the 1,260 days of Revelation 11:3 were 1,260 years, Maitland
concluded, after a thorough investigation, that the system of the
1260 years “was never heard of till dreamed into the world by a
wild Abbot in 1190.” 7
Though many nineteenth-century adherents of the year-day
principle tried to refute Maitland’s statement concerning the
novelty of the principle, all their attempts proved unsuccessful.
After a very thorough examination of all available sources, even the
most learned of his opponents, the Reverend E. B. Elliott, had to
admit that “for the first four centuries, the days mentioned in Daniel’s
and Apocalyptic prophecies respecting Antichrist were interpreted
literally as days, not as years, by the Fathers of the Christian
Church.” 8 He thus had to agree with Maitland that Joachim of
Floris was the first Christian writer to apply the year-day principle
to the 1,260 days of Revelation 11:3 stating:
At the close of the 12th century Joachim Abbas, as we have just
seen, made a first and rude attempt at it: and in the 14th, the
Wycliffite Walter Brute followed. 9
Joachim, who was probably influenced by Jewish rabbis,
counted the 1,260 “year-days” from the time of Christ and believed
that they would soon end in an “age of the Spirit.” Although he did
not fix a specific date for this, it seems that he looked forward to
the year 1260 C.E. After his death, that year came “to be
considered by Joachim’s followers as the fatal date that would
begin the new age, so much so that when it passed without any
notable event some ceased to believe any of his teachings.” 10
Joachim’s works initiated a new tradition of interpretation, a
tradition in which the “year-day principle” was the very basis of
7 Charles Maitland, The Apostles’ School of Prophetic Interpretation (London, 1849),
pp. 37, 38
8 E. B. Elliott, Horae Apocalypticae, 3rd ed. (London, 1847), Vol. HI, p. 233.
9 Ibid., p. 240. The late Dr. LeRoy Edwin Froom, who was a modern defender of the
year-day theory, arrived at a similar conclusion in his massive four-volume work,
The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers. In Volume I (1950) on page 700, he states:
“Heretofore, for thirteen centuries the seventy weeks had been recognized generally
as weeks of years. But the first thousand years of the Christian Era did not
produce any further applications of the principle, among Christian writers, save
one or two glimpses of the ‘ten days’ of Revelation 2:10 as ten years of persecution,
and the three and a half days of Revelation 11 as three and a half years. But now
Joachim for the first time applied the year-day principle to the 1260-day prophecy.’
10 Froom, Vol. I, p. 716.
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