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


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JW Insider said:

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5 hours ago, AlanF said:
The Watchtower allows that Cyrus' proclamation could have been as late as early 537 BCE, by which it allows as little as the same six months for a journey in 537 compared to one in 538. Thus, the Watchtower Society itself allows for BOTH "short" time frames.

I'm not sure you noticed, but I saw your question to @Arauna about the festival of Akitu.  @Arauna has repeatedly berated me for not accepting the idea that Cyrus must have made his proclamation at the festival of Akitu in Nisan 538. I believe she has thought that this is a similar argument to the one "scholar JW" is making that somehow proves that the Jews must have arrived back on Tishri 537.

 

Arauna doesn't know what she's talking about, so I've paid little attention to that, but your point made me realize why the Watchtower's "early 537" speculation for Cyrus' proclamation pretty well destroys ScholarJW's arguments.

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I'm not sure most Witnesses realize that it's is a year and half, between those two points,

Surely Arauna doesn't.

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and yet the WTS is quite happy with the possibility that the proclamation could have happened a full year later leaving six months or less.

Yes, the Watchtower doesn't really know what it's doing either.

More on the Akitu festival so we're on the same page: This was held in early Nisan and was essentially a festival going back to the Sumerians celebrating the spring barley planting. So far as I can gather from my readings, this was also a time that various Middle Eastern rulers inaugurated their 1st regnal year. If this happened with Cyrus, then since his generally accepted accession was some time around October, 539, his 1st year would have begun Nisan 1, 538 and would therefore have corresponded with the Akitu festival, which would have been celebrated anyway. Such a big event would certainly have been accompanied by the grand gesture of Cyrus issuing his proclamation of release, along with many other significant events. According to this reasoning, that proclamation is unlikely to have been issued in late 538 -- what would occasion it? -- or early 537 but before Nisan 1 -- again what would occasion it? But as you imply, a Nisan 537 date is simply unreasonable if Arauna's point about the Akitu festival holds water.

So from Nisan to Tishri of 537 or 538 would be six months (although Parker and Dubberstein assign the intercalary month Ululu II between Elul and Tishri in 537, making it seven months). Either way, six months is plenty of time for a journey from Babylon to Judah, especially if, as seems extremely likely, the Jews knew very well that Cyrus was in the habit of releasing captives soon after he conquered some city, and therefore would have begun preparations for their return to Judah soon after Babylon's fall, giving them 5-6 months of preparation time even before the proclamation.

So in terms of preparation time plus journey time, a journey in 538 or 537 is equally possible. The deciding factor, if any, between the two must be something else. Which I have shown, with strong likelihood, is Josephus' statement about laying the foundation of the temple in the 2nd year of Cyrus, which Ezra also pegs as the 2nd month of the 2nd year of the Jews' return, i.e., Iyyar 537 BCE. This works whether Josephus used Nisan or Tishri dating.

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Let me try to lay this out for you (although this is more for any interested readers' benefit than for yours). The stars, planets, and Moon are components in a giant sky-clock that keeps perfect time.

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Most of what CC says is just bluster he finds randomly, evidently by Googling key words. And if it he doesn't quite understand it, he must think others won't understand it either, and therefore he thi

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4 hours ago, JW Insider said:

yet the WTS is quite happy with the possibility that the proclamation could have happened a full year later leaving six months or less.

The culture of the Babylonians were so set in its traditions that to deviate from it would create unrest with the people.  Nabonides was hated by the people because he did not attend the festival of Akitu. He was shirking his duty with the God  of the city and could bring great misfortune to the people - such was the superstition. 

The festival of Akitu was centered around the King as representing the deity if the city - Marduk.... and a great king (if he was smart) would definitely attend this and allow himself to be crowned. it was a time of great festivity and the people participated... so if it did not take place they would feel bereft of its significance. It is similar to Alexander the Great being crowned in Egypt according to Egyptian customs.... not his own customs.  This brought him much respect in Egypt. He was later buried there.

Akitu was held for 14 days and started in the first day of NISSAN. The cultural history of the period tells me that Cyrus would have had himself crowned as 'king of the four corners of the earth' at this festival.  Assyrian kings also had themselves crowned there. it was the most important festival on the pagan calendar.

 

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3 hours ago, Arauna said:

The culture of the Babylonians were so set in its traditions that to deviate from it would create unrest with the people.  Nabonides was hated by the people because he did not attend the festival of Akitu. He was shirking his duty with the God  of the city and could bring great misfortune to the people - such was the superstition. 

The festival of Akitu was centered around the King as representing the deity if the city - Marduk.... and a great king (if he was smart) would definitely attend this and allow himself to be crowned. it was a time of great festivity and the people participated... so if it did not take place they would feel bereft of its significance. It is similar to Alexander the Great being crowned in Egypt according to Egyptian customs.... not his own customs.  This brought him much respect in Egypt. He was later buried there.

Akitu was held for 14 days and started in the first day of NISSAN. The cultural history of the period tells me that Cyrus would have had himself crowned as 'king of the four corners of the earth' at this festival.  Assyrian kings also had themselves crowned there. it was the most important festival on the pagan calendar.

What does any of this have to do with the issue at hand -- whether the Jews returned to Judah in 538 or 537 BCE?

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TAKING A RELATIVE TIMELINE AND MATCHING IT TO OUR OWN ERA (BCE/CE)

Pieces of this topic are already under discussion elsewhere in this thread, so it's time I got caught up. There are a lot of questions and claims (and accusations and insults) flying around which might be better answered after presenting more data.

But, as some of the dust-ups settle, it's also a good time to review just how far we have gotten with the relative chronology, before jumping into a discussion of the astronomical diaries/tablets. Clearly this information is of highest interest to other Witnesses, so I will review how the relative data is being presented in terms of what the WTS has said about the secular evidence for the relative data.

REVIEW

Back on page 5 of this topic, I quoted from a WTS publication, "Let Your Kingdom Come" (1981) that can be found on jw.org here: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101981019

Concerning the king list that's associated with Ptolemy, jw.org said: "Most modern historians accept Ptolemy’s information about the Neo-Babylonian kings and the length of their reigns..." Therefore, we used it as a tentative baseline to see if this "witness" holds up under the "scrutiny" of further evidence. We tested it against Berossus. jw.org (at the link above) admits that "Ptolemy's figures agree with those of Berossus." So Berossus provided a second "witness" that agreed with the first. The publication at jw.org didn't mention the Uruk king list, but we also tested against that king list, and this provided a third witness that exactly agreed with the first two. Then the Nabonidus Harran Stele (NABON H 1, B) is mentioned and the jw.org publication admits: "The figures given for these three [Neb,E-M,Neriglissar] agree with those from Ptolemy’s Canon."  Therefore this becomes a fourth witness agreeing with the first three, and even agreeing not just on three kings mentioned but also the entire length of Nabopolassar and first of Nabonidus. The jw.org publication does not mention that the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8 ) also confirms the period from Nabopolassar 16th to Nabonidus' accession year, touching, again, on all the N-B kings. This becomes a fifth witness all in perfect agreement with the other four. Then the jw.org publication refers to the Business/Contract tablets admitting: "Thousands of contemporary Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found that record simple business transactions, stating the year of the Babylonian king when the transaction occurred. Tablets of this sort have been found for all the years of reign for the known Neo-Babylonian kings in the accepted chronology of the period." So these tablets provide a sixth witness agreeing with the previous five. In effect, they are actually providing a great crowd of additional witnesses, up to 10,000 more witnesses, so far, to the entire N-B timeline.

So, now that we have all these witnesses to the Neo-Babylonian timeline before us, we can present what the Babylonians would have used as their own timeline. So far, again, I have only put relative dates at the top for the 96 different years of data from the first year of Nabopolassar to the last year of Cyrus. (Wel'll fix that shortly.)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96
N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of two "witnesses" Royal King List and Berossus
Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of 3rd witness: the Uruk King List
N-B period confirmed by agreement with 4th witness: the Adad-Guppi' stele (Nabon H 1, B) thru Nabonidus 9th                                  
                              N-B period confirmed with 5th witness: the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8.)                                                    
Entire N-B period confirmed by 1000's of business tablets incl lengths & order of reigns, & all transitions between all kings.

So in Babylon, If a person wanted to calculate someone's age, or the length of time from the beginning to the end of a specific business deal, or the length of time from a specific event that would have happened in the timeline, then all they needed was a chart like the above. All they needed was a king list that gave the order and lengths of reigns.

If it were currently the 4th year of Nabonidus and I had was explaining how I know I just turned 60 years old, I would say, for example, "I was born in the 14th year of Nabopolassar, so I lived 7 years under Nabopolassar, 43 years under Nebuchadnezzar, 2 years under Evil-Merodach, 4 years under Neriglissar, and these last 4 years under Nabonidus." (7+43+2+4+4=60.) 

Similarly, if I were a Jewish person exiled in Babylon and knew that a trustworthy prophet had claimed that nations would be under the yoke of Babylon for 70 years, and that this time period would end when Persia conquered Babylon, then I might use the same timeline or king list to measure back from the first year of Cyrus to get an idea of when these 70 years must have begun. If I started counting from the 2nd regnal year of Cyrus, I might come up with, for example, 1 year under Cyrus, 17 under Nabonidus, 4 under Neriglissar, 2 under Evil-Merodach, 43 under Nebuchadnezzar, and therefore the last 3 years under Nabopolassar -- which would gets me to about the 19th year of Nabopolassar. (1+17+4+2+43+3=70.) Living in those times, I would never think of dates like 605, 607, 609 etc. I would just have an idea that it was around the 19th year of Nabopolassar.

We now see that, according to all the evidence that has been available so far --including all the secular evidence presented at the jw.org link above-- the 19th year of Nabopolassar was about 607 BCE. (This is why I don't have a problem with 607 BCE as the start of the 70 years of Jeremiah, by the way. It's about right, or at least within a couple of years depending on when exactly you end the period, and how accurately you wish to count backwards.)

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JW Insider

5 hours ago, JW Insider said:

So, now that we have all these witnesses to the Neo-Babylonian timeline before us, we can present what the Babylonians would have used as their own timeline. So far, again, I have only put relative dates at the top for the 96 different years of data from the first year of Nabopolassar to the last year of Cyrus. (Wel'll fix that shortly.)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96
N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of two "witnesses" Royal King List and Berossus
Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of 3rd witness: the Uruk King List
N-B period confirmed by agreement with 4th witness: the Adad-Guppi' stele (Nabon H 1, B) thru Nabonidus 9th                                  
                              N-B period confirmed with 5th witness: the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8.)                                                    
Entire N-B period confirmed by 1000's of business tablets incl lengths & order of reigns, & all transitions between all kings

Absolute rubbish and complete nonsense. Talk about circular reasoning for you maintain that there are five witnesses and thousands upon thousands to prove your timeline but how do these facts account for the insertion of the biblical 70 years and the missing seven years of Neb's kingship for starters notwithstanding the problematic 586/587 BCE debate?

When one examine each and every one of these so-called 'lines of evidence' such easily fall over as each one of these witnesses proves unreliable, lacking precise chronological data. This scheme that you have presented nicely coloured is similar to Alan F's contrivance on the 538/537 BCE debate which amounts to gibberish.

The simple fact of the matter is this, that the 70 years falsifies NB Chronology no matter how well it is presented and how pretty you make it. Historically, the NB Period has nothing to say about its domination over Judah which lasted for 70 years which by all accounts is a significant period of the history of the ANE.

scholar JW 

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JW Insider said:

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. . . the jw.org publication refers to the Business/Contract tablets admitting: "Thousands of contemporary Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found that record simple business transactions, stating the year of the Babylonian king when the transaction occurred. Tablets of this sort have been found for all the years of reign for the known Neo-Babylonian kings in the accepted chronology of the period." So these tablets provide a sixth witness agreeing with the previous five. In effect, they are actually providing a great crowd of additional witnesses, up to 10,000 more witnesses, so far, to the entire N-B timeline.

I will argue that particular series of such tablets provide more than just one sixth witness, because some of them are independent of the others. A series of some 1,700+ tablets known as the archive of the House of Egibi ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Egibi ) contains thousands of dated tablets pertaining to business transactions during the entire Neo-Babylonian period and beyond (ca. 606-484 BCE). All by itself, it establishes the length of that period.
 
The Wikipedia link provides good information, but there are others:

http://persiababylonia.org/archives/fieldnotesandarchivalstories/the-egibi-nur-sin-archive/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/470226

In the first edition (1983) of The Gentile Times Reconsidered Carl Olof Jonsson described the significance of the Egibi tablets. The material below is adapted from Jonsson's website ( http://kristenfrihet.se/english/epage.htm ), The Gentile Times Reconsidered, 4th ed., pp. 122-125. Footnotes are shown inline due to limitations of this forum's formatting.

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a) The Egibi business house

By far the largest private archive of the Neo-Babylonian period is that of the Egibi business house. Of this enterprise Bruno Meissner says:

<< From the firm the Sons of Egibi we possess such an abundance of documents that we are able to follow nearly all business transactions and personal experiences of its heads from the time of Nebuchadnezzar up to the time of Darius I. >> 66

66 Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, Vol. II (Heidelberg, 1925), p. 331. The quotation is translated from the German.

The business documents from the Egibi house were discovered by Arabs during the wet season of the year 1875-76 in a mound in the neighbourhood of Hillah, a town about four miles southeast of the ruins of Babylon. Some three or four thousand tablets were discovered enclosed in a number of earthen jars, resembling common water jars, covered over at the top with a tile, and cemented with bitumen.

The discoverers brought the tablets to Baghdad and sold them to a dealer there. In that same year George Smith visited Baghdad and acquired about 2,500 of these important documents for the British Museum.

The tablets were examined during the following months by W. St. Chad Boscawen, and his report appeared in 1878 in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. 67 Boscawen states that the tablets “relate to the various monetary transactions of a Babylonian banking and financial agency, trading under the name of Egibi and Sons.” The tablets “relate to every possible commercial transaction; from the loan of a few shekels of silver, to the sale or mortgage of whole estates whose value is thousands of manas of silver.” 68

Boscawen soon realized the importance of following the sequence of the heads of the Egibi firm, and after a more careful analysis he ascertained the main lines of the succession to be as follows:

From the third year of Nebuchadnezzar a person named Shula acted as head of the Egibi firm, and continued in that capacity for a period of twenty years, up to the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar when he died and was succeeded by his son, Nabû-ahhê-iddina. 69

The son, Nabû-ahhê-iddina, continued as the head of affairs for a period of thirty-eight years, that is, from the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar to the twelfth year of Nabonidus when he was succeeded by his son Itti-Marduk-balatu. 70

67 W. St. Chad Boscawen, “Babylonian Dated Tablets, and the Canon of Ptolemy,” in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. VI (London, January 1878), pp. 1-78. As Boscawen points out (ibid., pp. 5, 6), George Smith himself, during his stay at Baghdad in 1876, had begun a systematic and careful examination of the tablets, a study that was interrupted by his untimely death in Aleppo in August that year. Boscawen’s study was evidently based on Smith’s notebooks.—Sheila M. Evers, “George Smith and the Egibi Tablets,” Iraq, Vol. LV, 1993, pp. 107-117.

68 Ibid., p. 6. A “mana” (mina) weighed about 0.5 kg.

69 Ibid., pp. 9, 10. Shula died between the dates VII/21/23 (month/day/year) and IV/15/24 of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (between October, 582 and July, 581 B.C.E.).—G. van Driel, “The Rise of the House of Egibi,” Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap, No. 29 (Leiden, 1987), p. 51.

70 Nabû-ahhê-iddina evidently died in the thirteenth year of Nabonidus, the year after his son had taken over the affairs. See Arthur Ungnad, “Das Haus Egibi,” Archiv für Orientforschung, Band XIV (Berlin, 1941), p. 60, and van Driel, op. cit., pp. 66, 67.

Itti-Marduk-balatu in his turn remained head of the firm until the first year of Darius I (521/20 B.C.E.), which was the twenty-third year of his headship of the firm.

Boscawen epitomizes these findings as follows:

<<

  Now, summing up these periods, we get the result that from the 3rd year of Nebuchadnezzar II to the 1st year of Darius Hystaspis was a period of eighty-one years:

    Sula at the head of the firm     20 years
    Nabu-ahi-idina                         38 years
    Itti-Marduk-balatu                   23 years
        Total                                     81 years

  This would give an interval of eighty-three years from the 1st year of Nebuchadnezzar to the 1st year of Darius Hystaspis. 71
>>

The significant fact is that this agrees exactly with Berossus, the Royal Canon, and the Neo-Babylonian historical records. Counting backwards eighty-three years from the first year of Darius I (521/20 B.C.E.) brings us to 604 B.C.E. as the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, which agrees completely with the other lines of evidence presented above.

The archive of the Egibi-house alone would suffice to establish the length of the Neo-Babylonian period. With this extensive set of dated commercial tablets from the archive of one of the “Rothschilds” of Babylon “there ought to be but little difficulty in establishing once and for ever the chronology of this important period of ancient history,” wrote Boscawen already back in 1878. 72

The evidence of these documents leaves no room for a gap in Neo-Babylonian history from Nebuchadnezzar onward, certainly not one of twenty years! The archive, containing tablets dated up to the forty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, the second year of Awel-Marduk, the fourth year of Neriglissar and the seventeenth year of Nabonidus, gives a complete confirmation of the chronology of Berossus and the Royal Canon.

Since the last century still other collections of tablets belonging to the Egibi family have been discovered. 73 A number of studies on the Egibi family have been produced, all of which confirm the general conclusions drawn by Boscawen. 74 Thanks to the enormous amount of texts from this family, scholars have been able to trace the history, not only of the heads of the firm, but also of many other members of the Egibi house, and even family trees have been worked out that extend through the whole Neo-Babylonian period and into the Persian era! 75

The pattern of intertwined family relations that has been established in this way for several generations would be grossly distorted if another twenty years were inserted into the Neo-Babylonian period.

71 Boscawen, op. cit., pp. 10, 24. This conclusion had also been arrived at previously by George Smith in his study of the tablets.—S. M. Evers, op. cit. (note 67 above), pp. 112-117.

72 Boscawen, op. cit., p. 11.

73 During excavations at Uruk in 1959-60, for example, an archive belonging to members of the Egibi family was unearthed, containing 205 tablets dating from the sixth year of Nabonidus to the thirty-third year of Darius I. Most of the tablets were dated as from the reign of Darius. See J. van Dijk, UVB 18 (cf. note 33 above), pp. 39-41. The earliest known text of the Egibi family is dated to 715 B.C.E. Business documents of the family then appear regularly between 690 and 480 B.C.E.—M. A. Dandamaev, op. cit. (1984; see note 60 above), p. 61.

 

Now of course, a record of at least 1,700 tablets that covers virtually every year of the Neo-Babylonian period cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nor can a "missing period" of 20 years be inserted anywhere. Since this record is completely consistent with the other records listed by JW Insider above, and is entirely consistent with the thousands of tablets of all sorts used by Parker and Dubberstein to compile their record of Babylonian chronology (Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C. - A.D. 75, Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Brown University Press, 1956; Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon), all honest people must admit that the evidence for standard Neo-Babylonian chronology is firmly established.

Of note is the fact that, so far as I can find, the Watchtower Society has never commented on the Egibi tablets. This shows that they have been unable to find any evidence to dismiss this amazing archive. The same goes for all Watchtower apologists.

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18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

Absolute rubbish and complete nonsense. Talk about circular reasoning

You obviously haven't a clue what that is.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

for you maintain that there are five witnesses and thousands upon thousands to prove your timeline but how do these facts account for the insertion of the biblical 70 years and the missing seven years of Neb's kingship for starters

Now that is circular reasoning. And of course, you're merely repeating what you've repeated dozens of time before and been shown to be wrong on every count.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

notwithstanding the problematic 586/587 BCE debate?

Not a bit problematic, as shown ad infinitum on this forum and elsewhere. And proved by the fact that you can not -- or will not -- provide a shred of evidence against the conclusions reached by Rodger Young and others. Even though you have been challenged to do so many, many times. Scholastic cowardice has no place in this thread.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

When one examine each and every one of these so-called 'lines of evidence' such easily fall over as each one of these witnesses proves unreliable, lacking precise chronological data.

Utter nonsense. And stated without evidence. As Christopher Hitchens used to say, "That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Of course, you've been given humongous quantities of evidence but dismiss it out of hand.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

This scheme that you have presented nicely coloured is similar to Alan F's contrivance on the 538/537 BCE debate which amounts to gibberish.

LOL! That's funny, coming from someone too incompetent to operate a simple computer display.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

The simple fact of the matter is this, that the 70 years falsifies NB Chronology no matter how well it is presented and how pretty you make it.

Nonsense again. The 70 year period, however one defines it, cannot be established outside a clear secular timeline.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

Historically, the NB Period has nothing to say about its domination over Judah

The secular timeline has nothing to do with the biblical timeline. The former stands on its own, independently of any claimed biblical timeline.

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

which lasted for 70 years

So now you admit to 70 years of Babylonian supremacy. Very good!

18 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

which by all accounts is a significant period of the history of the ANE.

Not hardly. It was a minor event in the affairs of a minor nation in the overall history of Babylon.

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Alan F

17 hours ago, AlanF said:

While these figures are problematic (which is neither here nor there for our dicussion), the point is again that about FOUR TIMES AS MANY were taken captive in 597 as in 587.

Now note Ezekiel 1:1:

<< . . . while I was among the exiled people by the river Cheʹbar . . . >>

That's not talking about an exile of the Jews? THE most important one, since about four times as many were exiled in 597 as in 587?

You are completely wrong, Neil. You should display some honesty and admit it.

No I am not wrong, There were a number of deportations but only ONE Exile as recognized by historians and scholars such as Rainer Albertz who described the Exile as a 'catastrophe' and this was the Exile that began with Neb's destruction of Jerusalem in 607 BCE. The two accounts that you quoted nicely from 2 Kings 24 and 25 have at least one major difference and that is that the events of ch. 25 had a much longer seige, total destruction and the removal of the sacred items from the Temple. thus. the latter event with the last deportation of Jewry had a far greater effect on not just the Monarchy but also Worship, City, Temple and the Land.

17 hours ago, AlanF said:

Complete nonsense. ALL FOUR DEPORTATIONS resulted in four distinct exiles, all of which were eventually lumped together by blurred history into a vague "one exile" that ended when the Jews returned to Judah.

No, for there were no four exiles but deportations culminating with the Exile that ended with the Return in 537 BCE

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1 minute ago, scholar JW said:

Alan F

No I am not wrong, There were a number of deportations but only ONE Exile as recognized by historians and scholars such as Rainer Albertz who described the Exile as a 'catastrophe' and this was the Exile that began with Neb's destruction of Jerusalem in 607 BCE. The two accounts that you quoted nicely from 2 Kings 24 and 25 have at least one major difference and that is that the events of ch. 25 had a much longer seige, total destruction and the removal of the sacred items from the Temple. thus. the latter event with the last deportation of Jewry had a far greater effect on not just the Monarchy but also Worship, City, Temple and the Land.

No, for there were no four exiles but deportations culminating with the Exile that ended with the Return in 537 BCE

No evidence presented -- no further evidence needed to dismiss.

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Alan F

4 minutes ago, AlanF said:

You obviously haven't a clue what that is

So you say.

4 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Now that is circular reasoning. And of course, you're merely repeating what you've repeated dozens of time before and been shown to be wrong on every count.

And I will keep repeating it.

5 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Not a bit problematic, as shown ad infinitum on this forum and elsewhere. And proved by the fact that you can not -- or will not -- provide a shred of evidence against the conclusions reached by Rodger Young and others. Even though you have been challenged to do so many, many times. Scholastic cowardice has no place in this thread.

Yes it is and if it was not so problematic then why is it that Rodger Young has written so much about it?

7 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Utter nonsense. And stated without evidence. As Christopher Hitchens used to say, "That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Of course, you've been given humongous quantities of evidence but dismiss it out of hand.

Why not try it out and examine the evidence for yourself?

8 minutes ago, AlanF said:

LOL! That's funny, coming from someone too incompetent to operate a simple computer display.

At least I can appreciate the pretty colours.

9 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Nonsense again. The 70 year period, however one defines it, cannot be established outside a clear secular timeline.

So are you saying that NB Chronology can't be falsified?

10 minutes ago, AlanF said:

The secular timeline has nothing to do with the biblical timeline. The former stands on its own, independently of any claimed biblical timeline.

True, but when one compares the two schemes alongside each other then a gap of 20 years is manifest so something is wrong. Terribly wrong!!!

12 minutes ago, AlanF said:

So now you admit to 70 years of Babylonian supremacy. Very good!

Supremacy equals servitude equals Exile as on definite historical period of 70 years.

13 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Not hardly. It was a minor event in the affairs of a minor nation in the overall history of Babylon.

That is just a cop out to minimize such and important event in Jewish,OT history namely the Exile.

scholar JW

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1 minute ago, scholar JW said:

Alan F

So you say.

And I will keep repeating it.

Yes it is and if it was not so problematic then why is it that Rodger Young has written so much about it?

Why not try it out and examine the evidence for yourself?

At least I can appreciate the pretty colours.

So are you saying that NB Chronology can't be falsified?

True, but when one compares the two schemes alongside each other then a gap of 20 years is manifest so something is wrong. Terribly wrong!!!

Supremacy equals servitude equals Exile as on definite historical period of 70 years.

That is just a cop out to minimize such and important event in Jewish,OT history namely the Exile.

scholar JW

No evidence presented -- no further evidence needed to dismiss.

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