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What Are the 1,260, 1,290 and 1,335 Days?
They are Daniel and Revelation's measures of the last time of trial. The 1,260 days are three and a half years, a short season of persecution that God himself cuts off. The Church reads them as a promise that the trial is measured, and she sets no dates.
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Where the numbers appear
The figures begin in Daniel and Revelation takes them up (NABRE).
| Passage | The words | The span |
|---|---|---|
| Daniel 7:25 | “They shall be handed over to him for a time, two times, and half a time.” | Three and a half years |
| Daniel 8:14 | “For two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be set right.” | Often read as 1,150 days |
| Daniel 9:27 | “For one week he shall make a firm covenant with the many”; “Half the week he shall abolish sacrifice and offering” | Half a “week” of years |
| Daniel 12:7 | “that it should be for a time, two times, and half a time” | Three and a half years |
| Daniel 12:11 | “there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days” | 1,290 days |
| Daniel 12:12 | “Blessed are they who have patience and persevere for the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.” | 1,335 days |
| Revelation 11:2–3 | The Gentiles “will trample the holy city for forty-two months”; the two witnesses “prophesy for those twelve hundred and sixty days, wearing sackcloth.” | 42 months; 1,260 days |
| Revelation 12:6 | “that there she might be taken care of for twelve hundred and sixty days” | 1,260 days |
| Revelation 12:14 | “she was taken care of for a year, two years, and a half-year” | Three and a half years |
| Revelation 13:5 | The beast “was given authority to act for forty-two months.” | 42 months |
See Daniel 12:4–13, the seventy weeks and Revelation 12.
The arithmetic
Forty-two months of thirty days are 1,260 days. The 1,290 days of Daniel 12:11 are 1,260 plus thirty, one month more; the 1,335 days of 12:12 are 1,290 plus forty-five, or 1,260 plus seventy-five.
Three and a half is half of seven, the number of fullness. A common interpretation, which the NABRE notes share, is that it is a broken number: the time of evil is real, but never complete. The note on Daniel 7:25 says, “As seven is the Jewish ‘perfect’ number, half of it signifies great imperfection.” The note on Revelation 11:2 calls the persecution under Antiochus IV “this persecution of three and a half years (half of seven, counted as 1260 days in Rev 11:3; 12:6),” which “became the prototype of periods of trial for God's people” (NABRE, Revelation 11).
What the NABRE notes say
The note on Daniel 12:11–12 is frank: “The specific numbers of days given in vv. 11–12 represent attempts to calculate the precise duration of the three and a half years. Most probably, when the first date (1,290 days) passed, the author attempted another calculation. Another, earlier calculation is preserved in 8:14. It is noteworthy, however, that the contradictory numbers were allowed to stand in the text; this is a reminder that it is not possible to calculate a precise date for God's judgment; cf. Mk 13:32” (NABRE, Daniel 12).
On Daniel 7:25 the note calls “a time, two times, and half a time” “an indefinite, evil period of time,” and adds: “Probably here, three and a half years, which becomes the standard period of tribulation in apocalyptic literature” (NABRE, Daniel 7). On the half-week of 9:27: “Half the week: three and a half years; the Temple was desecrated by Antiochus from 167 to 164 B.C.” (NABRE, Daniel 9).
What the Fathers said
The Fathers commonly read the three and a half years as the Antichrist's short reign. St. Irenaeus joined Daniel 7:25 to the last week of Daniel 9:27: “Now three years and six months constitute the half-week” (Against Heresies 5.25.4). St. Hippolytus saw the Church fleeing into the desert for the 1,260 days, “(the half of the week) during which the tyrant is to reign and persecute the Church” (On Christ and Antichrist 61). St. Augustine took Daniel's phrase to mean “a year, and two years, and half a year, that is to say, three years and a half,” and concluded that “the kingdom of Antichrist shall fiercely, though for a short time, assail the Church before the last judgment of God shall introduce the eternal reign of the saints” (City of God 20.23).
St. Jerome held that the Antichrist “is going to persecute the saints for three and a half years,” and against Porphyry he noted that under the Antichrist the desolation will last “for three years and a half, that is, one thousand two hundred and ninety days.” The extra forty-five days of verse 12 he read as a blessing: “He means that he is blessed who waits for forty-five days beyond the predetermined number.” Why the Lord waits “rests in the knowledge of God,” though perhaps “the rule of the saints is delayed in order that their patience may be tested” (Commentary on Daniel, trans. Archer).
How others read the numbers
The historical reading. Most modern scholars, and the NABRE notes, read Daniel's numbers first of the persecution under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (c. 167–164 B.C.). With the Fathers, Catholic readers see Antiochus as a first, partial fulfillment.
The historicist reading. From the Reformation onward many Protestant writers read each prophetic day as a year, appealing to Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6, so that the 1,260 days become 1,260 years of the little horn's power, which they identified with the papacy. The Seventh-day Adventist tradition still holds this reading and commonly places the period from A.D. 538 to 1798 (Biblical Research Institute). Those who hold it are sincere Christians who take prophecy seriously. The Catholic reply is that nothing in the text tells the reader to turn these days into years, and that the point of the numbers is brevity. St. Robert Bellarmine argued exactly this: “the Antichrist will reign only three years and a half,” while the popes had sat in Rome for some fifteen hundred years, so the papacy cannot be the Antichrist.
The futurist reading. Dispensational premillennialism, held by many Evangelicals, takes Daniel's seventieth week (Daniel 9:27) as a future seven-year tribulation, separated from the first sixty-nine weeks by the whole Church age, with the 1,260 days of Revelation as its second, worse half. But the gap and the seven-year timetable are not part of Catholic tradition, and the Church expects to pass through the last trial, not to be taken out of it first (see Is There a Rapture?).
The symbolic reading. Many Catholic readers also see in the woman's 1,260 days in the desert the life of the Church in every age, pursued yet sheltered and fed by God. Hippolytus read the vision as the Church always in labor and always protected, and the NABRE note on Revelation 12:6 says, “God protects the persecuted church in the desert, the traditional Old Testament place of refuge for the afflicted” (NABRE, Revelation 12). This stands alongside the expectation of a final trial.
Why the Church sets no dates
The Catechism teaches: “Since the Ascension Christ's coming in glory has been imminent, even though ‘it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.’ This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are ‘delayed’” (CCC 673). Jesus said, “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36), and to the apostles, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).
Many have added these numbers to a chosen year and announced the end; every such date has passed. Jerome stopped where Scripture stops. Daniel's beatitude falls not on those who calculate the days but on those who “have patience and persevere.”
That is good news: God has measured the trial, and it is short. “And if those days had not been shortened, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect they will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22). The woman is “taken care of” for all the 1,260 days. Our task is not to count, but to keep faith, pray and love.
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