Persians. Nevertheless this became the basis for Jewish calculations of the prophecy, though Jewish commentators differed on the details.12 Early Christian writers often used the seventy-weeks prophecy for polemical purposes against Jewish unbelief in Jesus as the promised Messiah. For that reason it is strange that Justin Martyr made no reference to Daniel 9 in his apologetic work Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (ca. A.D. 153–165), though he made fourteen other references