Hi andrew,

This is a very clever approach.  However, I find no warrant to understand Jesus’ interpretation of this parable in Matthew 13 so strictly in terms of Daniel’s apocalyptic propheices in chapter 7, 9, and 12.  Moreover, I would differ from you on a number places concerning the interpretation of Daniel.  In your interpretation, the vision of God’s Kingdom in Daniel 7 has apparently been fulfilled in toto at the close of AD 70, whereas I would lean more toward a now/not yet understanding of an inaugurated eschatology, leaving room for a yet future fulfillment or consummation in terms of the coming kingdom in Daniel’s vision.  E.g., I do not see Jesus’ oft-repeated reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds of glory from Daniel’s vision to have been fulfilled (i.e., exhausted) in the ascension recorded in Acts 1. Neither, apparently, did John (cf. Rev.1:7)

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of your take is reducing Daniel’s reference to the resurrection of the (righteous) dead in chapter 12, referred to by Jesus here and elsewhere (e.g., Lk.14:14) to the survival of a ‘remnant’ from AD 70.  Or so this is how I understand your comment, "Daniel has in mind something like the Maccabean crisis in the second century BC; Jesus takes the vision over and applies it to the analogous crisis that Israel faced in the first century AD."  Apart from Christ, the frist-fruits, were the dead "in Christ" raised in the first century?  This seems quite fantastic, historically speaking.

Perhaps it could be argued that such a crises as occured in the first century adumbrates and anticipates the great eschatological crises, the ‘great tribulation’ Jesus refers to in Matthew 24 (as most commentators throughout the years have understood it).  But certainly Jesus here means more than Titus’ destruction of the Temple in the first century.  Jesus clearly saw a future resurrection, to which he here refers in the parable, as a terminus to the present age (13:39), as did the apostle Paul (1Co.15:23-24).  The whole point of this parable, as I read it, is that the kingdom-age will co-exist with the prsent evil age, until the end, when Christ will have "abolished all rule, authority and power" (1Co.15:24; cf. Dan.2:34-36, 24-25; 7:13, 22, 27), the last of which is death (1Co.15:26; realized in the resurrection of the saints, 1Co.15:54-55; cf. Dan.12:2-3).   

And correspondingly weak, in my view, is understanding the judgment involving the angels harvesting the sons of the kingdom to the fleeing of the ‘righteous’ Jews from Jerusalem (cf. Lk.21:20-22) and the destruction of the ‘sons of the evil one’ within the walls of first century Jerusalem.  This simply does not cohere with the similar reference in the Olivet Discourse in Mt.24:30-31, in which the coming of the Son of Man is a public event witnessed by "all the tribes of the earth" (unlike the ascension recorded by Luke), flashing like lightening from one end of heaven to the other (24:27), such that His coming would be undeniable (contrary to the claims of false christs, 24:24-26).   

The world, represented by the field, is best understood, not as the sphere of the fourth beast’s operation and domain, as much as the sphere of the gospel’s operation.  That is to say, it is better understood in the immediate context of chapter 13, as opposed to (the vision of the four beasts in) Daniel 7.  The first parable, the sower, as most commentators agree, frames the entire series of kingdom-parables to come.  The seed is the gospel or word of the kingdom (the mystery revealed in Christ’s present coming and ministry, Mt.13:11-17, 52).  The seed finds various responses (in ‘four soils’).  Similarly, the sower (the Son of Man) sows seed in the field, which is the world, wherein it produces a good crop (those responsive to the gospel, cf. Mk.4:26-29).  During the planting season, an enemy (the devil) adds tares (‘sons of the evil one’).  Yet the response is not to pull up the tares prior to the harvest (otherwise the sons of the kingdom would be damaged if not destroyed together with the weeding out of the evil ones, v.29).  Such a separation (judgment) awaits the end of the age, when the sons of the kingdom will be ‘harvested’ at the resurrection (the full fruition of the harvest, of which Christ is the ‘first fruits’) and the tares gathered for the furnace. 

The focus then is the response to the gospel-seed and the inauguaration of the new age, signified in the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom (cf. Mt.11:12-13; Lk.16:16). To delimit this to the first century judgment against Jerusalem (as though this demarcated ‘the end of the age’) seems both unwarranted from the Gospels and from the writings of the apostles.

Would you likewise delimit the eschatological table of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the survival of a remnant from Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem?  Have we received the kingdom in full, shining as the sun?  I’m sure the original audience of the Apocalypse (suffering persecution and even martyrdom) would very much disagree with this assessment.