Various Rabbis and Jewish Scholars:
Rabbi Maimonides,
“This, O our brethren, is one of the greatest pillars of the Israelite faith: that there will surely rise a [messianic] leader [qa’im]…from all that Daniel and Isaiah say and from all that the sages mentioned…Daniel followed up [what Isaiah stated] with the appearance of the Messiah.”1
Again Rabbi Maimonides,
“But Daniel has elucidated to us the profundities of the knowledge of the End Times. However, since they are secret, the Wise, may their memory be blessed, have barred the calculation of the days of the Messiah’s coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah.
For this reason the Wise, may their memory be blessed, have decreed: cursed be he who calculates the End Times…But we cannot assert that Daniel was wrong in his reckoning. Igeret Teiman, chap. 3 p24.”
Again Maimonides,
“Daniel also mentions this Resurrection of the Dead—it being the return of the soul to the body after death—in a way that similarly is not open to interpretation, saying: Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and to everlasting abhorrence, and so on [Dan. 12:2]. And the statement of the angel to him was: But go thou thy way till the end be; and thou shalt rest, and shalt stand up to thy lot, at the end of days [Dan. 12:13].”2
And again Maimonides,
“Daniel has elucidated to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise [rabbis] have barred the calculation of the days of the Messiah’s coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah.”
He concludes, “It is a fundamental dogma to believe in the coming of the Messiah, even if he delays. But no one should attempt to guess or fix the time.”3
Note the point made by Isadore Twersky,
“In the Iggeret Teman Maimonides shows much greater enthusiasm and a heightened sense of expectation for the Messianic era than is discernible in the Mishne Torah. He even reveals a family tradition concerning the imminent date of the Messianic era, thereby placing himself in the condemned camp of ‘calculators of the Messianic era.’”4
Rabbi Moses Abraham Levi,
“I have examined and searched all the Holy Scriptures and have not found the time of the coming of Messiah clearly fixed, except in the words of Gabriel to the prophet Daniel, which are written in the 9th chapter of the prophecy of Daniel.”5
Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver; Prominent religious leader and renowned Hebrew scholar,
“Saadia Gaon [882-942 C.E.], who was probably the first among the Gaonim to attempt to sift the vast Rabbinic opinion on the subject of the Messiah, and whose formulation remained, with slight modification, the accredited and accepted view, devotes the eighth chapter of his Emunot we-De’ot to the Final Redemption and wells at length upon the Messianic predictions in the Book of Daniel. He also treats this subject in his commentary on Daniel, and in his Sefer ha-Galui.”6
Again Rabbi Silver,
“Moses Nahmanides (1194-1268), in his Book of Redemption (Sefer ha-Ge’ula or Sefer ha-kez, pp. 21-22)…He sets about to prove…that the Messianic passages of Daniel refer to the final Redemption.”
Ibn Ezra on Balaam’s blessing-Numbers 24:13,
“and the unlearned think that if the star is interpreted to mean David, then the coming of the Messiah will be denied. But away with the thought, because it is clearly said of the Messiah in the prophecy of Daniel, as I have explained, that he prophesied the rise of the Greek kings, the dominion of the Hasmonaeans, the building, siege, and destruction of the second Temple, and the subsequent salvation…”
Raphael Patai; Noted anthropologist and Biblical scholar who taught Hebrew at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
“A prophecy of Daniel, written about 164 B.C.E., is the earliest source speaking of the death of a Mashiah (‘Anointed’) sixty-two (prophetic) weeks after his coming and after the return and the rebuilding of Jerusalem (Dan. 9:24-26). While it appears that Daniel had a temporal ruler in mind, whom he calls Mashiah Nagid (‘Anointed Prince’).” 7
Geoffrey Wigoder,
“Both Jewish and Christians have interpreted the Book of Daniel’s apocalyptic vision of the four evil beasts as a reference to a messianic era that would be ushered in by the rise and fall of four successive empires.”8
Abraham Ezra Millgram,
“The approach of the ‘calculated end,’ the time of the great change, imagined from hints in the Book of Daniel or other works, was viewed—with both fear and hope—as proof that the Messianic woes were about to be initiated.”9