Jesus refers to the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24:15: “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel. Jesus does not refer to the statue that Antiochus IV Epiphanes set to the temple in 167 BC but to an event that is yet to come in Jesus’ time. Abomination of desolation that Daniel spoke of is a statue of an alien god in the temple of Jerusalem. The latest date when such a statue could have been set to the temple is 70 AD, as the temple was destroyed in that year. Josephus Flavius, nor any other source, tells that any statue was set to the temple between 28 AD and 70 AD, but there was one attempt: Caligula tried to put his statue to the temple sometime around 41 AD. Since Octavianus had deified Julius Caesar, Roman emperors were worshipped, especially in eastern provinces. Caligula was not deified by the senate, but nevertheless he demanded being worshipped as a god. Thus, his statue in the temple would very well have qualified as the abomination of desolation.
The Book of Daniel gives the following times (Daniel 12:11-12) “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days.”
The book does not say what will happen when these times are filled, only that all will be fulfilled. It is logical to assume that the King Messiah arrives at that time.
Caligula did not get his statue to the temple. Josephus Flavius tells in the Jewish War that Caligula sent Petronius with a host of soldiers, but after argueing for 50 days with Jewish people who opposed to the statue, Petronius decided to apply to Caligula to cancel the plan. He travelled from Ptolemaios to Antiokia with his solders and there wrote a letter to Caligula, who wrote back an angry letter as his empirial plan was delayed. This letter from Caligula travelled 3 months due to winter storms. Caligula was assassinated and Petronius received the information that Caligula is not alive 27 days before Caligula’s letter came. Caligula was assassinated 24. January 41 AD. We can calculate an approximate time when Petronius was expected to set the statue to the temple. Caligula was assassinated soon after he wrote a letter to Petronius. The letter from Petronius to Caligula travelles about 2 months. Marching the soldiers to Antiochia took maybe 3 days. Petronius discussed with Jews for 50 days. Together this makes 113 days. Thus, the statue was to be in the temple some 113 days before 24. January 41 AD.
Herod Agrippa died 5 days after the Passover of 44 AD. The Passover Sunday of 44 AD was 5. April 44 AD. Assuming that Herod Agrippa died 10. April 44 AD, he died 1172 days after Caligula died. The statue was to be set to the temple some 113+1172=1285 days before Herod Agrippa died.
Both Josephus and Acts tell of the death of Herod Agrippa. Apparently he intended to declare himself divine and he got poisoned in the games in honor of Claudius. As Herod Agrippa was Orthodox Jewish, declaring himself divine can only mean declaring that he is the King Messiah. We can notice that about 1285 days fits very well to the 1290 days of the prophecy of Daniel. The difference between 1290 days and 1335 days in Daniel is 45 days. As Herod Agrippa died, we cannot know what was planned to happen, but probably some event was to happen 45 days after the declaration that Herod Agrippa is the Messiah. Indeed, Herod Agrippa was building walls around Jerusalem, which Claudius tried to stop, but Josephus states that only the death of Herod Agrippa stopped this work. We may assume that the walls were built for defence purposes and Herod Agrippa intended to proclaim Judea independent from Rome.
Herod Agrippa clearly had Messianic intentions shown by the events before his death, and also by building the walls. He was a good fried on Caligula, he was just 1-2 years younger and both spent their youth in the emperor’s court in Rome. Caligula gave Herod Agrippa the former reign of Philip the Tetrad, though Herod Agripps did not actually have a good claim on it. Caligula even added a piece of land to it. When Caligula was assassinated, Herod Agrippa helped Claudius to be elected as the caesar and as a payment, Claudius added Judea and Samaria to Herod Agrippa’s kingdom. Thus, from the reign of Herod Agrippa one can say that the dispersion (by the civil war and later by the division of the land to tetrarchs) of the power of one part of the Holy People had finished as all Israel was under King Agrippa.
Daniel 12:7 gives the following prophecy: “And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was over the water of the river, and he lifted up his right hand and his left hand to heaven, and sware by him that lives for ever, that it should be for a time of times and half a time: when the dispersion is ended they shall know all these things.” This is Brenton Septuagint translation. Septuagint was the Bible of that time. Today many English translations totally inverse to meaning, like “when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people”, but other translations agree that what ends is the dispersion of the power of the Holy People.
Here we have the third time statement from the Book of Daniel. The end of the prophecy is when the dispersion of the power of the Holy People has ended, i.e., there is Israel, as in the time of Herod Agrippa, and under a Jewish king, not under an Edomite like Herod the Great. The time for everything written here to happen should be three and a half times, i.e., 1260 days. What should happen in this time is described in Daniel 12:1-3: there is the time of persecution (starting from the abomination of desolation or soon after that), then there is salvation (requiring that the king Messiah arrives), and raising some of the dead (the first resurrection). We can conclude that this time of 1260 days does not say more than the 1290 days. All days in Daniel 12 fit to a plan of Herod Agrippa to declare himself as the king Messiah.
How did Caligula get the idea of putting his statue to the temple of Jerusalem? We can assume that Caligula did not deeply know Jewish religion. He had a good friend, Herod Agrippa, who had deep knowledge on the topic. I would assume that the idea of putting the statue to the temple was suggested to Caligula by Herod Agrippa. Herod Agrippa was a political schemer who would have very well understood that such an act by a Roman empire would raise Jewish people against Rome and Herod Agrippa could step in as the saviour.
Daniel 8:14 gives the number 2300: “And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” This is in the context of Antiochus IV Epiphanus. The presecution started about 171 BC and Judas Maccabeus ended it in 165 BC. Thus, the time is about 6 years. The number 2300 days (morning evening) is 6 years 140 days and can well be the actual time of this persecution. This prophecy was fulfilled already before the Book of Daniel was written, but it explains how we should see the 1260, 1290, 1335 days in Daniel 12. The persecution gradually ends on those times.
In the Book of Daniel there is also the 70 year week prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27). Christian interpreters have long ago correctly decoded this prophecy and it does give the time of Jesus. The order to rebuild Jerusalem (with trenches) is mentioned in Ezra 7:12-26, the letter of Artaxerxes in the year 458 or 457 BC. From that time 70 year weeks (490 years) gives the year 26-28 AD, the beginning of the mission of Jesus. The prophecy states:
“After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.[a] The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.” Thus, the Messiah will die, there will be war, the city and the temple will be destroyed. Jesus could foretell the destruction of the temple simply based on this prophecy, but that is actually happened may have needed some conspiracy. There are no more specific dates in the Book of Daniel. All of these dates fit very well to a plan by Herod Agrippa. Jesus must have been in some way connected with this plan (though not necessarily knowing it) because Jesus mentions the abonination of desolation as an event yet to come. Surely Jews of that time knew that the term referred to an event in the past. This implies that there was a plan to put again a statue to the temple. Such a plan can only have been concocted by a Jewish friend of Caligula, who did try to put his statue to the temple. There hardly is any other Jewish friend that can be considered than Herod Agrippa. Consequently, Herod Agrippa was the planned king Messiah. As the genealogy of Jesus in Luke does suggest a Hasmonean prince and it fits quite nicely to Herod Agrippa, and Halley’s comet preceded Agrippa’s birth (the star of Bethlehem), and Herod the Great killed Hasmonean princes (the sons of Bethlehem, a minor family of Israel in Mica’s prophecy), we can conclude that Jesus was the planned prophet Messiah, who would redeem sins and die on the cross, while Herod Agrippa was the planned king Messiah, who would start a war against Rome. But the plan failed, Herod Agrippa was poisoned, probably by Romans.
Herod Agrippa persecuted Jesus’ disciples, as there was to be the time of tribulation. Saul, a relative of Herodians, was one of the persecutors. But as Herod Agrippa died, Saul become Paul. As Paul he tried to convince Herod II Agrippa to be the king Messiah, but he did not want to do it. I think Josephus Flavius, one of the last Hasmoneans, was originally the king Messiah of the war of 66 AD. But Jews lost and Josephus declared Vespasian as the king Messiah. But before that time there had to be the abomination of desolation, as Jesus had predicted it. Early Church fathers understood the murder of James the Just on the roof of the temple as this abomination. It closely parallels the murder of a high priest in the temple in 171 BC, told in Maccebeans. James the Just died either in 62 AD or 69 AD. These dates are most probably determined by prophecies: Daniel’s 1290 days from 62 AD takes us to the signs in the sky that Josephus tells of, in 66 AD, just before the war, there was seen a comet (Halley’s) and a planet conjunction in the shape of a sword or cross. This would then be the Coming of the Christ in the skies. The other date, 69 AD fits to Vespasian being the Messiah: there is about 1290 days from that time to the end of the war.
As for a divine plan, divine prophecies do not fail, but Jesus said that there would be abomination of desolation as in Daniel. In Daniel is means the statue. It does not mean killing of the Anointed one, so it is not the death of James the Just. Such a statue was not placed to the temple, there only was a plan to place it there. Human plans fail, divine plans do not fail. The plan was human. It was Herod Agrippa’s plan to become the king of independent Israel, and for sure there was also an effort to take over Rome. The Messiah was to be the king of all nations. But this plan failed that time, and it will fail this time also.