Anti-Imperial Subtexts in Paul 323 All this has been carefully documented by Beckwith and others, so we will only review a few of the most salient examples of the illustrious Wirkungsgeschichte of Dan 9,24-27: a. 11Q13 (11QMelch) reveals the strong tendency toward the periodization of history into ten Jubilee periods and clearly alludes to Dan 9,24 in lines 6-7: “And liberty will be proclaimed for them…in the first week of the jubilee which follows the nine jubilees. And the Day of Atonement is the end of the tenth jubilee…” b. 4Q390 (4QpsMoses) describes the return from exile, lamenting that the returnees did evil in the Lord’s eyes, except for those who built the temple. The author then explains that “in the seventh jubilee of the devastation of the land they will forget the law, the festival, the Sabbath, and the covenant; and they will disobey everything and will do what is evil in my eyes…and there will come the dominion of Belial upon them to deliver them up to the sword for a week of years…” (4Q390 I,7-9; II,3-4). This obvious allusion to the period of Hellenization in the early second century B.C.E., and the tumultuous reign of Antiochus Epiphanes IV is assigned to the seventh Jubilee period. c. The Testament of Levi is even more detailed. In T. Levi 11 the author explicitly divides Daniel’s seventy weeks into ten Jubilee periods. As in 4Q390, the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes IV is assigned to the seventh Jubilee period. T. Levi 17,10 places the rededication of the temple in the fifth week of the seventh Jubilee period, and we know that that event took place in 164 B.C.E. Following this timetable, the author would have placed the end of the seventy weeks at approximately 4 B.C. d. After describing the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in great detail in Book 5 of his Bellum judaicum, Josephus tries to explain to his Roman audience why the Jews pursued their manifestly foolhardy strategy of war with Rome to the bitter end. What spurned them on the most, according to Josephus, was an “ambiguous oracle” (crhsmo;" ajmfivbolo") (61) in their holy writings that “at that time someone from their own country would rule the world” (J.W. 6:312: wJ" kata; to;n kairo;n ejkeivnwn ajpo; th'" cwvra" aujtw'n ti" ajrxei th'" oijkoumevnh"). The fact that the oracle (61) The oracle is ambiguous, as far as Josephus is concerned, because it really pointed to Vespasian, not some Jewish messiah (J.W. 6:313). It is doubtful that many Jews shared that view.