The “year‒day principle” among Christian expositors

As we have seen, rabbi Akibah ben Joseph had presented the year­‒day 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 interpreted to be 3 ¹/₂ years by a number of expositors, the first of whom was Victorinus in the fourth century.²⁸ 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 the 1,260 days of Revelation 11:3 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.”²⁹

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 Axe 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.”^{.30 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}

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 Brutefollowed.³¹

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.”³²

Joachim’s works initiated a new tradition of interpretation, a tradition in which the “year‒day principle” was the very basis of prophetic interpretations. During the following centuries innumerable dates were fixed for Christ’s second advent, most of them built upon the year‒day principle. At the time of the Reformation (in the sixteenth century), Martin Luther and most of the other reformers believed in that principle, and it was largely accepted among Protestant scholars far into the nineteenth century.

As we have seen, Joachim of Floris applied the year‒day principle to the 1,260 days of Revelation 11:3 verse converts this period into months, stating that “the nations . . . will trample the holy city underfoot for forty‒two months.” (Revelation 11:2 “holy city” closely parallels Jesus’ words at Luke 21:24 be trampled under foot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (NASB), some of Joachim’s followers soon began to associate the “times of the Gentiles” with this calculated period in which the 1,260 days became 1,260 years.

However, because they believed that Revelation 11:2 church, Jerusalem or the “holy city” usually was interpreted to mean the church of Rome.³³ The period of the “times of the Gentiles,” therefore, was thought to be the period of the affliction of the church, the end of which affliction was originally expected in 1260 C.E.

Others, however, believed the “holy city” to be the literal city of Jerusalem. The well‒known scholastic physician, Arnold of Villanova (c. 1235‒1313), identified the Gentile times with the 1,290 days of Daniel 12:11 from 1290 days to 1290 years. Counting these from the taking away of the Jewish sacrifices after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E., he expected the end of the Gentile times in the fourteenth century. The Crusades were still being waged in his day and Arnold linked them with the hoped‒for expiration of the Gentile times in the near future, arguing that, unless the end of the times of the Gentiles was near, how could the “faithful people” regain the Holy Land from the unbelievers?³⁴

At the end of the fourteenth century, Walter Brute, one of John Wycliffe’s followers in England offered yet another interpretation. According to him, the “times of the Gentiles” were the period when the Christian church was dominated by heathen rites and customs. This apostasy, he held, started after the death of the last apostle in about 100 C.E. and would continue for 1,260 years. This period, and also the 1,290 “year‒days,” which he reckoned from the destruction of Jerusalem 30 years earlier (in 70 C.E.), had already expired in his days. He wrote:

Now if any man will behold the Chronicles, he shall find, that after the destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished, and after the strong hand of the holy people was fully dispersed, and after the placing of the abomination; that is to say, the Idol of Desolation of Jerusalem, within the Holy place, where the Temple of God was before, there had passed 1290 days, taking a day for a year, as commonly it is taken in the Prophets. And the times of the Heathen people are fulfilled, after whose Rites and Customs God suffered the holy City to be trampled under foot for forty and two months.³⁵

Since the times of the Gentiles already had expired according to his calculations, Brute thought that the second coming of Christ must be right at hand.

Time passed and left the many apocalyptic fixed dates behind, the predictions tied to them remaining unfulfilled. By now, counting the 1,260 or 1,290 years from the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., or from the death of the apostles could no longer produce meaningful results. So, the starting point had to be moved forward to a later date.

Groups persecuted and branded as heretics by the Roman church soon began to identify the ‘trampling Gentiles’ with the papacy op Rome. These persecuted groups commonly viewed themselves as “the true church” – pictured in Revelation 12 as a woman who had to flee into “the wilderness” for “a thousand two hundred and sixty days,” the period of trampling spiritual Jerusalem. (Revelation 12:6 century, with its growth of authority on the part of the Roman church.

This “adjusted” view was very common among the Reformers. John Napier (1550‒1617), the distinguished Scottish mathematician and student of prophecy, began the period about 300 or 316 C.E., and came up with the end of the Gentile times in the latter half of the sixteenth century.³⁶

More time passed and the starting‒point was once again moved forward, this time into the sixth or seventh centuries, the period when the popes had reached a real position of power. George Bell, for example, writing in the London Evangelical Magazine of 1796, counted the 1260 years from either 537 or 553 C.E., and predicted the fall of Antichrist (the Pope) in “1797, or 1813.³⁷ says:

The holy city is to be trodden under foot by the Gentiles, or Papists, who, though they are Christians in name, are Gentiles in worship and practice; worshipping angels, saints, and images, and persecuting the followers of Christ. These Gentiles take away the daily sacrifice, and set up the abomination that maketh the visible church of Christ desolate for the space of 1260 years.³⁸

This was written in 1795 in the midst of the French Revolution. Shortly afterward the Pope was taken captive by French troops and forced into exile (in February, 1798). Very interestingly, these startling events in France and Italy had to some extent been “predicted” nearly a century in advance by several expositors, the best known of whom was the Scottish pastor, Robert Fleming, Jr. (c. 1660‒1716).³⁹ major historical events had confirmed the rightness of their predictions! Because of this, the year 1798 was very soon quite commonly held among biblical commentators to be the terminal date for the 1,260 years.