The seventy weeks
Years reckoned to the Maccabean crisis, to the coming of the Messiah, or through the Christian chronological schemes — among the most reworked prophecies.
Daniel 9:24-27
24“Seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your holy city, to finish disobedience, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.
25“Know therefore and discern that from the going out of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem to the Anointed One, the prince, will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be built again, with street and moat, even in troubled times.
26After the sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off, and will have nothing. The people of the prince who come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end will be with a flood, and war will be even to the end. Desolations are determined.
27He will make a firm covenant with many for one week. In the middle of the week he will cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease. On the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate; and even to the full end, and that determined, wrath will be poured out on the desolate.”
What each tradition says
Rabbinic / Midrashic
Hirsch and König identify the little horn of Daniel viii with the little horn of Daniel vii as the same ruler. Daniel ix.23-27 also points to that same period. They say interpretation must begin the seventy times seven units with the first period of seven in ix.25, and let the sixty-two times seven units follow.
Emil G. Hirsch (1851-1923) and Eduard König (1846-1936), The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 4, s.v. 'Daniel, Book of' (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901-1906) — section 'Critical View' (on Dan. ix. 23-27)
Patristic
Julius Africanus reckons the seventy weeks from Artaxerxes to the time of Christ according to Jewish numeration. From Nehemiah’s despatch by Artaxerxes to build Jerusalem, in Artaxerxes’ twentieth year, to the second year of the 202d Olympiad and Tiberius Caesar’s sixteenth year, he counts 475 years, which make 490 by Hebrew reckoning.
Julius Africanus (c. 160-c. 240), The Extant Fragments of the Five Books of the Chronography, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6 (ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886) — fragment XVI, 'On the Seventy Weeks of Daniel', §3
Catholic
Gigot identifies the ancient, traditional view. It maintains that the prophecy of the seventy weeks refers directly to Christ's appearance in the flesh, His death, His establishment of the New Covenant, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
Francis E. Gigot (1859-1920), The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. 'Daniel, Book of' (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908) — section 'Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks'
Orthodox
Hippolytus interprets the sixty-two weeks after the first seven as 434 years. He reckons those years from the return from Babylon under Jesus son of Josedech, Ezra, and Zerubbabel until the coming of Christ.
Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170-c. 235), The Extant Works and Fragments of Hippolytus, Exegetical (trans. S. D. F. Salmond), in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886) — 'The interpretation by Hippolytus, (bishop) of Rome, of the visions of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar', §15 (on Daniel 9)
Reformed / Protestant
Calvin says the Prophet compares God's grace with his judgment: after the people’s seventy-year exile, their time of grace arrived and redemption dawned. That redemption shone with continual splendor, though shaded by a few clouds, for 490 years until the advent of Christ.
John Calvin (1509-1564), Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Daniel, vol. 2 (trans. Thomas Meyers; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1852-1853) — commentary on Daniel 9:24
Evangelical
Wesley reads the seventy weeks as weeks of days, with each day standing for a year. He says the angel first names the disease in three words, covering every kind of sin, and that the Messiah would free us from it by his full redemption.
John Wesley (1703-1791), Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), in Wesley's Notes on the Bible (CCEL) — note on Daniel 9:24