[626] The special allusion, whatever it may precisely mean, is found under three different designations: (i) In viii. 13 it is called _happeshang shomeem_; Gk., ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐρημώσεως; Vulg., _peccatum desolationis_. (ii) In ix. 27 (comp. ix. 31) it is _shiqqootsîm m'shomeem_; Gk., βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως; Vulg., _abominatio desolationis_. (iii) In xii. 11 it is _shiqqoots shomeem_; Gk., τὸ βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως; Vulg., _abominatio in desolationem_. Some traditional fact must (as Dr. Joël says) have underlain the rendering "_of desolation_" for "_of the desolator_." In xi. 31 Theodotion has ἠφανισμένων, "of things done away with," for ἐρημωσέων. The expression with which the New Testament has made us so familiar is found also in 1 Macc. i. 51 (comp. 1 Macc. vi. 7): "they built _the abomination of desolation_ upon the altar." There "the abomination" seems clearly to mean a smaller altar for heathen sacrifice to Zeus, built on the great altar of burnt offering. Perhaps the writer of Daniel took the word _shomeem_, "desolation," as a further definition of _shiqqoots_, "abomination," from popular speech; and it may have involved a reference to Lev. xxvi. 15-31: "If ye shall despise My statutes ... I will even appoint over you terror ... and I will make your cities waste, _and appoint your sanctuaries unto desolation_." The old Jewish exegetes referred the prophecy to Antiochus Epiphanes; Josephus and later writers applied it to the Romans. Old Christian expositors regarded it as Messianic; but even Jerome records _nine_ different views of commentators, many of them involving the grossest historic errors and absurdities. Of Post-Reformation expositors down to the present century scarcely two agree in their interpretations. At the present day modern critics of any weight almost unanimously regard these chapters, in their primary significance, as _vaticinia ex eventu_, as some older Jewish and Christian exegetes had already done. Hitzig sarcastically says that the exegetes have here fallen into all sorts of _shiqqootsîm_ themselves. [627] Comp. πτερύγιον (Matt. iv. 5). [628] Kuenen, _Hist. Crit. Onderzook._, ii. 472. [629] Any one who thinks the inquiry likely to lead to any better results than those here indicated has only to wade through Zöckler's comment in Lange's _Bibelwerk_ ("Ezekiel and Daniel," i. 186-221). It is hard to conceive any reading more intolerably wearisome; and at the close it leaves the reader in a state of more hopeless confusion than before. The discussion also occupies many pages of Pusey (pp. 162-231); but neither in his hypothesis nor any other are the dates exact. He can only say, "It were not of any account if we could not interpret these minor details. _De minimis non curat lex._" On the view that the seventy weeks were to end with the advent of Christ we ask: (1) Why do no two Christian interpreters agree about the interpretation? (2) Why did not the Apostles and Evangelists refer to so decisive an evidence?