SECULAR EVIDENCE and NEO-BABYLONIAN CHRONOLOGY (Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, etc.)

[Arauna]

18 hours ago, JW Insider said:

course this is impossible without at least one astronomical reading.

So even if there is historical (olympiads) evidence we MUST have astronomical evidence according to you.......because this is the only evidence that will be conclusive...... even though there is proof that one must not put too much store on incomplete descriptions of "heavenly events" which could be misleading and often were copied from events written down by other writers. Please read the section in the insight book about eclipses.

Ptolemy wrote about the stars 600 years after events in Babylon  and cannot be verified as historically accurate because there is no other documents to verify it..... and its chronology creates great confusion with Asurbanipals reign. .....who claimed his father's campaigns for himself.   It does not add up.   Therefore, the bible is our best source of chronology ..... not the stars. 

Interestingly the Cyrus cylinder was found in Babylon - not in any capital of Persia.  It is written in Akkadian - which is the ancient diplomatic language of the King of Kings in chaldea and assyria - a title which originated in Babylon in Akkadian.  (Nimrod was the first to conquer other city-states in Assyria and chaldea - the original tradition comes from there!) It was a title given to kings who conquered both chaldea and Assyria in the numerous wars between the 2 regions. Nebuchanezzar is called the king of Akkad. 

In this Cyrus cylinder,  Cyrus claimed that the God of Babylon, Marduk, gave him his crown to bring peace to the realm and send displaced peoples back.  An indication that he received his crown as king of kings at this location.

He was the first king to appoint Satraps. He had done this when he conquered Croesus (minted gold coins) and many other territories before appointing Darius the Mede as Satrap at Babylin.  He did leave Babylon to go back to Ecbatana where he had a summer palace. 

The decree to rebuild Jerusalem was later found at Ecbatana (Ezra 6).   But interestingly the cyrus cylinder has an event on it which happened after he brought order to the city - some time after 539 bce: 

"It extols Cyrus as a benefactor of the citizens of Babylonia who improved their lives, repatriated displaced people and restored temples and cult sanctuaries across Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the region. It concludes with a description of how Cyrus repaired the city wall of Babylon and found a similar inscription placed there by an earlier king." 

 

[JW Insider]

27 minutes ago, Arauna said:

So even if there is historical (olympiads) evidence we MUST have astronomical evidence according to you.......because this is the only evidence that will be conclusive.

When you brought up the "olympiads" before, I mentioned that the WTS rejects the accuracy of the olympiads, because the WTS disagrees with them through the period of Artaxerxes, for example. Besides, the use of the olympiad was started many years after the NeoBabylonian period, well after Cyrus, and then the dating system was extended backwards from the 200's BC back to the 700's BCE. This doesn't mean they must be inaccurate, but if they are accurate for 539, then Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year must be 587 BCE, which the WTS also rejects.

Besides that, how do you think someone ever added a BCE date to the Olympiad era without checking against the astronomical readings associated with that era?

Perhaps this is the reason that INSIGHT states that it has relied on an astronomical tablet to get to the 539 BCE date, and didn't mention relying on the olympiad dating scheme.

[Arauna]

2 hours ago, AlanF said:

Great African Queen Arauna.

I do not need your ' compliments.' ....or attention.

2 hours ago, AlanF said:

Dunning-Kruger

Satan was always accusing jehovah of the very acts that he was perpetrating. Do you understand that phenomena?

[Arauna]

8 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:

still can't understand something so basic as the astronomical dating convention for BCE dates, what are you doing here? 

He is a bible student not a star gazer. He should accept bible chronological dates before he accepts the dates of people who were not historians...... but had other pagan occupations. People  who by chance wrote hundreds of years later about events and quoted others in their work......... full lunar eclipses for example are not half eclipses......  it could be mistaken for the other, especially when copied from another's writings.

[Arauna]

14 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

WTS rejects the accuracy of the olympiads,

Was that in 1930 too?

[JW Insider]

30 minutes ago, Arauna said:

even though there is proof that one must not put too much store on incomplete descriptions of "heavenly events" which could be misleading and often were copied from events written down by other writers.

Yes, there is plenty of evidence that we must be careful about not putting too much stock in incomplete descriptions. Some of these probably can be misleading, and several of them were copied from earlier originals. This is one of the reasons that I have decided to look at more than a dozen of these readings, and only the complete ones, to see if the standard chronology is dependable enough.

And the WTS still relies on such inscriptions, and contract tablets and a couple of these astronomical heavenly events to get the Babylonian calendar. And the WTS, according to INSIGHT, picks one or two of these eclipse descriptions to rely on for the reign of Cambyses, by which they get the reign of Cyrus as King of Babylon.

[JW Insider]

1 minute ago, Arauna said:

Was that in 1930 too?

No. The latest version of INSIGHT ON THE SCRIPTURES.

[Arauna]

16 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Perhaps this is the reason that INSIGHT states that it has relied on an astronomical tablet to get to the 539 BCE date, and

It is an additional proof - not the only proof for the date. 

[JW Insider]

9 minutes ago, Arauna said:

It is an additional proof - not the only proof for the date. 

No. They rely on it as the ONLY direct evidence for the BCE date. Even though they admit that they also needed to rely on some assumptions about the Babylonian contract tablets, and some historical information (Babylonian Chronicles and later), and some sources that also rely on additional astronomical evidence and king lists.

[Arauna]

6 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

The latest version of INSIGHT ON THE SCRIPTURES.

I was reading it this afternoon.  I think you read I to it what you want to. 

[JW Insider]

12 minutes ago, Arauna said:

It is an additional proof - not the only proof for the date. 

This is why cannot find the publications speaking about any other evidence for the BCE date except by including astronomical evidence. You keep claiming it's there, but you will never find it. As some point you will have to take the INSIGHT book at its word, and not keep trying to claim that INSIGHT isn't telling the whole truth.

5 minutes ago, Arauna said:

I was reading it this afternoon.  I think you read [in]to it what you want to. 

That's good. If you find something then I take it all back.

[Arauna]

9 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

The latest version of INSIGHT ON THE SCRIPTURES.

I was reading it this afternoon.  I think you read into it what you want to. 

Since olympiads were like clockwork "major"  events every four years - they are pretty reliable as a secondary source after the bible. Moon eclipses is a third resource.

You throw things together that one must work out separately to get to the correct number...... you just threw in the lump nebuchadnezzar 18 year reign - sloppy...... sloppy.