ON THE EXPIRATION OF THE "TIMES OF THE GENTILES," A. D. 1847.

To the Rev. Joseph Wolff, D.D., &c.

MY DEAR DR. Wolff,

Those who have any beneficent or literary object in view have reason to think themselves fortunate indeed if they have been able to enlist your extraordinarily active and benevolent exertions in their cause. The Friends of Conolly and Stoddart are not the only persons who should congratulate themselves in this respect: I have myself to thank you for having aided me materially in my endeavour to open to the Church important truths hitherto unreceived, which I believe nevertheless to be clearly deducible from the prophetic scriptures: I allude to your kindness in having ascertained for me on your former visit to Bokhara, in the year 1832, that the reading of Daniel viii. 14, in the two oldest Hebrew manuscripts, there extant, is not, as in our copies, 2300, but 2400 years; as I had previously inferred must be the case in any ancient copy of the Scriptures, from the internal evidence of prophecy alone, leading to the direct inference, that the approaching year 1847 will be an epoch of the utmost prophetic importance: and though I regret that, on your second perilous expedition to that place, you were so circumstanced as to be precluded from further examining these manuscripts, which would have been desirable on many

accounts, yet as far as my particular object is concerned I have little to regret, as your having formerly ascertained that they contain that reading, and the confirmation of it by five ancient manuscripts, also found by you at various times in Chaldea, at Ispahan, Adrianople, Meshed, and Ulsh-Kelesia, leaves me, I think, nothing more reasonably to desire in the way of evidence.*

You mentioned in a letter you were so kind as to write to me dated 14th May, 1835, stating some further particulars relating to these manuscripts, that the Jews of Bokhara on being informed by you that such a result of the examination of Dan. viii. 14, in their most ancient copies of the Scriptures had been anticipated in England, "on the ground of simple calculations," replied, that we "Gentiles in Europe must be a very wise people."

Now we are, doubtless, a very wise people, capable of any investigation, and of making any discovery or advance in science; but we are also, at least in England, a very busy people, and where every one is occupied in his own pursuits, and probably also by his own prepossessions, it is often difficult to gain attention to any truth, or to any discovery however important in its results, so that it may be long before it makes its way and be

* Dr. Wolff, in the narrative of his recent mission to Bokhara in the years 1843-1845, says, vol. ii. p. 2, The Jews in Bokhara have in their synagogue 'an ancient manuscript of Daniel, and in chap. viii. is the number two thousand four hundred instead of two thousand three hundred." Again, p. 240, he says of the Armenian convent of Ulsh-Kelesia, "In that convent I found an ancient manuscript of the Bible in the Armenian tongue; and my friend, J. H. Frere, will be glad to learn that on his account, I looked particularly at Dan. viii. 14, in which the number 2400 is found. Thus the Hebrew MSS. at Bokhara, at Adrianople, and Ulsh-Kelesia, confirm his hypothesis."

To these three manuscripts are to be added a second mentioned by Dr. Wolff, as found by him at Bokhara, one in Chaldea, one at Meshed, and another, (mentioned in his letter of 14th May, 1835, as esteemed to be of the fifth century,) found by him at Ispahan, "seven copies in the whole," containing the same reading of " 2400."

comes generally admitted, if it be not, peradventure, lost for ever. It becomes therefore desirable for any one in possession of such truth, to take every opportunity of inculcating it. I am therefore willing to take advantage of the occasion of your return to England to address to you, and through you to the Public at large, a few observations illustrative of a truth which you have by your former and later researches assisted me to prove, namely the probable importance of the coming epoch A.D. 1847, than which it is impossible that any subject can at this time be more universally interesting; and I shall endeavour to explain upon what grounds, two and thirty years ago, this its importance was first inferred by me. Again, what confirmations I have subsequently obtained of it, independently of that very satisfactory one which your researches have produced. And lastly what is the character, as testified by prophecy, of this now rapidly approaching epoch: and as two and thirty years of the intermediate space have now already passed away since it was first given by me to the Public, and little more than two years remain unexpired before it arrives, it will be very interesting to me under these circumstances to state the grounds of my past and present belief; and the public, or some portion of it, may be more willing now than formerly to examine these grounds, seeing that their judgment upon them, whether favourable or adverse to mine, will in so short a time be refuted or confirmed by the event: nor can my observations on this subject be with more propriety addressed to any one than to yourself, not only as relating to the East which has been the chief scene of your labours, but more particularly, because I have to appeal to you for the result of your researches, which afford the strongest evidence of the importance of the coming epoch alluded to; which you have indeed yourself made known, both at Jerusalem, and in various other places in your travels throughout the East.

I shall therefore now endeavour to state for the satisfaction of those interested in scriptural truth, and as simply and intelli

gibly as I can, the reasons upon which I first formed, and still maintain, my opinion.

In the year 1813 I was led in the good providence of God to examine the historical prophecies of Daniel and St. John, when they appeared to be so clearly opened to my mind that in several instances the ordinary course of prophetic interpretation was even reversed, and instead of learning the interpretation of the prophecy from history, I learnt the history first from the clear unaided language of the prophecy; indeed, the present may be considered as almost a case in point, for what I have first to explain is the manner in which I was led to infer from the clear language of the prophecy of Dan. viii. (joined to the consider. ation also that the number 2300 has none of the characteristics of a sacred number, which 2400 has,) the fact, since substantiated, that the period of the vision is erroneously given in our version, and that in any ancient Hebrew copy it would be found to be not 2300, but 2400 years; which reading is indeed already known as that of the Vatican manuscript of the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Bible, itself no mean authority.*

It will be found upon examination of Dan. viii. that the conquests of Cyrus over Lydia to the west, over Armenia to the north, and over Babylon to the south, are most accurately described in the following words of the prophecy, viz.: "I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward, so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great." The importance of these victories of Cyrus, especially of the last of them, the conquest of Babylon, by which he established the Medo-Persian as the second of the four great empires of the world, is so great, and the description here given is so entirely inapplicable to any other period in the

"The Vatican and Alexandrian MSS. are the two noblest remains of antiquity, and contest the palm of priority in age and estimation." "The Codex Vaticanus is supposed by Michaelis on the whole to be of higher antiquity than the Alexandrine." Elsley's Annotations, page xxii.

history of the Medo-Persian Empire, that it was utterly impossible for me to interpret the vision as commencing from any other date than the year B. c. 553, when these conquests of Cyrus were just about to take place; being the year also in which the vision

was seen.

The length of the vision, as terminating with the cleansing of the Eastern Sanctuary or Temple of Jerusalem from the Mahometan superstition, is however in our text of Dan. viii. 14, declared to be a period of 2300 years, which considered as commencing A. B. 553, would bring its termination to the past year A. D. 1747, when no such event took place. The only report then that I could make upon the examination of this prophecy, (as an honest interpreter who had full confidence in his subject, and was assured that if he was faithful to it, whatever difficulties might for a time appear, he should in the end be borne out harmless,) was this, that with our present text, stating the length of the vision as 2300 years, no interpretation of it could be given; accordingly I gave my interpretation only hypothetically, on the supposition that it would be found in some ancient Hebrew manuscript that our text was defective, and that the reading of the Vatican copy of the Greek Septuagint, viz. 2400 years, would be confirmed as the true reading; bringing the cleansing of the Eastern Sanctuary down to the future year 1847. This expectation was the ground of my request made to you previously to your first expedition to the East, that you would examine this text in the most ancient manuscripts you could meet with, and I need not say how satisfactory has been the result confirming it appears, by six most ancient Hebrew manuscripts, and by one in the Arminian tongue, the correctness of my anticipations relative to the future termination of this vision, a. d. 1847.

I have now to mention a second evidence, tending to establish the year 1847 as the epoch of the cleansing of the Eastern Sanctuary from the Mahometan superstition, of an equally unsuspicious character with the foregoing, inasmuch as the confirmatory

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