Srecko Sostar

I'm not intimately familiar with AlanF's participation here. But it's contrary to my experience that AlanF would attack things a person said for no reason. On the other hand, if he felt a person's intelligence was anywhere north of idiocy, he would become increasingly aggressive in his presentation of information and responses if the individual refused to learn. For AlanF, that reaction was somewhat of a compliment. It meant he saw intelligence in the person he was engaging. How what he said might make them feel was not something he'd spend much time considering, let alone worrying about.
A weakness AlanF had, in my opinion, was that he tended to discount the extent of influence emotion can have on a person's ability to comprehend. Academically he'd yield that latter point, but in discussion not so much. Some individuals have such an emotional need that there are things they just can't allow themselves to learn of because it would wreck the world they depend on. A person on a ledge we should not push. I'm not suggesting that's the case with the other names you mention. One I've had some decent amount of interaction with and find them pleasant enough and not tide down emotionally. But with AlanF seeing anything through another person's lens of emotion was something he had trained himself to refrain from as a matter of learning, and learning was what he thrived on and lived for.
AlanF and I have both been downrange of one another's conclusions and arguments, so I know that experience. Some of those discussions were more than robust! Thankfully we both gave one another full liberty to speak freely in our exchanges without thought of feelings. But I only know how I experienced it, not how the same would be experienced by another person. Another person could easily find it offensive, or even as an attack. Whether I agreed or disagreed with AlanF (or anyone else!) I always looked for whatever I can learn from each interaction, and there is always something to learn. That said, later in my life I have determined not to spend time suffering fools.

That's what I'd expect to see emphasized in video produced by the society. But my comment alluded to PEW research which found nearly 70% of persons raised as JW do not identify with the religion as adults, which is not something I would expect the society to produce a video of.

That was an instance of a person who, as an adult, returned to what he had been raised in. The situation with JWs is to the contrary. Children raised in the religion, as adults, cease identifying with it and don't return.

It's pretty simple.
Ptolemy said that the Babylonians reported an eclipse that was only PARTIAL in the 5th year of Nabopolassar.  Today, that exactly described PARTIAL eclipse can be calculated to 621 BCE.  That makes perfect consistent sense because it meshes perfectly with 100 other astronomical observations that would also indicate that 621 BCE is the 5th year of Nabopolassar. But the Watchtower claims that 621 BCE is the 4th year of Nebuchadnezzar, so the WTS needs this eclipse to have happened in 641 BCE, otherwise 1914 doesn't work. So a Watchtower contributor or writer looks at the eclipse log for 641 BCE, and lo and behold there was a total eclipse that year.  So the Watchtower writer/editor says: Look Ptolemy and Babylon say that a partial eclipse happened in 621, but we found an eclipse that doesn't match that description in 641. Even though it doesn't match, we'll go with it, and say it's even BETTER than the right one that matches, because the 641 eclipse is TOTAL not partial. It's the same as if this happened, not that it ever would:
BTK59 says, I found a report with a map of a burial mound of Cherokee Native Americans in Dahlonega, Georgia, USA containing tiny "Indian arrowheads" of the exact shape that the Cherokees made. I wondered if the map was accurate and if I could find one of those tiny arrowheads. And look, it worked, I just found this Cherokee-style arrowhead exactly where the map pointed.  JWI says, Wait, No. I just found a large flint spearhead in burial mound of Osage Native Americans in Joplin Missouri. This must be what you were really looking for, because it was found in a burial mound just like you said. Now BTK59 has two options here. He could say: BTK59 says: JWI, you are a despicable fool. The map said the tiny arrowheads were in Georgia, and that's where I found an arrowhead exactly matching the description. And now you bring me a large spearhead from hundreds of miles off the map. And you say it's the same just because they were both in burial mounds. Or, BTK59 could say: "I see no conflict with this observation, JWI." 

There is no real estate tax in Croatia, yet. They have been putting it off for decades. So the owner of the property does not pay any taxes to the state because of reason he own something, house or any other real estate.
In the case of inheritance of real estate from parents to children, no tax is paid (spouse, descendants and ancestors who form an upright line and adopted children and adoptive parents who are in that relationship with the deceased or donor). In other cases, 3% of the market value is paid.

It's not that Jehovah doesn't "watch" errors, but he is all-knowing and all-understanding and has provided the ransom as a means for forgiveness. So he doesn't watch for errors to slap us down like a human boss might, and he doesn't judge by the number of errors.
But there is one exception for humans. We are to watch for errors in "teaching." And since ours is a teaching ministry, even for the youngest among us, we MUST watch for errors when it comes to teaching wrong doctrine and the possibility of misleading others:
(Matthew 16:12) . . .Then they grasped that he said to watch out, not for the leaven of bread, but for the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (1 Timothy 4:16) Pay constant attention to yourself and to your teaching.. . . (James 3:1) . . .Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment.  (Galatians 6:1) . . .Brothers, even if a man takes a false step before he is aware of it, you who have spiritual qualifications try to readjust such a man in a spirit of mildness. . . . (Ephesians 4:14, 15) . . .So we should no longer be children, tossed about as by waves and carried here and there by every wind of teaching by means of the trickery of men, by means of cunning in deceptive schemes. But speaking the truth. . . (Matthew 23:15) . . .Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you travel over sea and dry land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him a subject for Ge·henʹna twice as much so as yourselves. (Hebrews 13:17) . . .Be obedient to those who are taking the lead among you and be submissive, for they are keeping watch over you as those who will render an account, so that they may do this with joy and not with sighing, for this would be damaging to you. (Matthew 18:6) But whoever stumbles one of these little ones who have faith in me, it would be better for him to have hung around his neck a millstone that is turned by a donkey and to be sunk in the open sea.
 

Another ‘tortured soul,’ methinks, for whom I must have compassion.
The best way to heal and not to further inflict torture upon oneself is to forgive.
“If errors were what you watch, O Jah, Then who, O Jehovah, could stand?” (Psalms 130:3)
Errors are all people watch today, inside or outside of religion. Nobody stands in the face of such treatment.
 
What is that saying about resentment—that it is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die?

Yes. It's one of the first sets of items I ever checked against the astronomy applications. It's a summary of Rolf Furuli's book. And this is an even bigger embarrassment to the WTS than the Nabopolassar 5th year eclipse that I mentioned in my previous post. 
The article was smart not to use Furuli's name, because his previous book on chronology had also been full of some amateur errors. (And in order to hide the fact that he was merely trying to create "scholarly-looking" support for the WT chronology he said he was developing the "Oslo Chronology." That's where he's from.) And using his name would have led people to the Internet, where his book and his theory had already been thoroughly debunked. And, in the worst-case scenario, it would have potentially driven more Witnesses to do what you are doing, obtaining software to look it up for themselves.
But unfortunately, while removing Furuli's name, the article tends to imply a kind of "editorial 'we'" which implicates the WTS itself, and the article therefore implies that the WTS knows others who have validated Furuli, or has itself tried to verify these readings. Obviously, they didn't or they would discover exactly what you will discover when you check it out for yourself.
The problem starts with the fact that there is a well known copyist's error on the tablet. (Most all the astronomy tablets we have are copies, or even copies of copies.) There is actually more than one error, but none of the others are significant. This copyists error is considered to be off by one day, although some experts say that it may actually be that it was the name of the star that is off, and it is still the correct day. (When I use the term "experts" I mean many of the same people that the WTS quotes as experts in "Insight" etc.)
I wrote up my own findings, but they are not as well-documented and well-presented as has been done by others. The person who presented it best in my opinion has been on this forum. Her name is Ann O'maly, although I expect that's a "screen name" meant to be a pun on the word "anomaly." Her write-up on it is on academia.com, and we also discussed it here on the forum. I'll point you to both in the next couple of posts, and we can discuss it again from there.

The real estate industry pushed this through to give an extra incentive for people to sell their homes. With low taxes, you keep the home. With high taxes, you are more likely to sell.
Kevin Mullins authored... democrat

The ads promoting 19 didn't mention that it would put elderly heirs on the pavement because of massive tax increases nor did they say the funding came from real estate agents.
repealthedeathtax.com
 

Dad had a "rebellious-lost son" who left and came back. But dad also had a "faithful JW-son" who showed that dad made a mistake somewhere in his upbringing. Not only with the "lost son" but also with the one who "stayed at home".
Now, did the father make a mistake in upbringing, so he created a "broken household"? And where was the mother? Or was he a "single father"? Or was the older JW son actually the "goat", because he showed all the accumulated negativity when his younger brother returned?
SO, MM made a good point. JWs have no solution even for their own social deviations. They have the same sufferings as the rest of the religious world, who are in "the safe place of their own religion".
I think the population of "nominal JWs" is increasing, regardless of whether they were "born into the religion" or accepted it by coming "from outside". 
My impression of this view increases when I see "mute" JWs standing by the carts and carrying on their private conversations with each other a few meters away from the "source of spiritual food".
Jesus was active in reaching people with the "good news". What is "active" about standing 10-15 feet from the cart?
On the other hand, JWs want to "fix the world", because they want to "fix people" so that they turn to God. So what exactly is the WTJWorg mission? "Going/flee out of the world" and not returning to it?
So why are they fighting for tax breaks and state money?  It is a form of returning to the world from which you supposedly escaped.
Or for "freedom of speech and belief"?  Within their church they have complete freedom to believe their own speech.

 
 

The sole reason I cited that same authority you did was to point out JWs haven't built a social panacea. If that were the case then those raised in the religion would tend to be more compelled to remain compared to other religions. But that's not what we find, even in westernized societies where people are freer to do so.
 

I dare say for certainty that I've known AlanF for probably decades before you encountered him here. Anyone acting as you described is screaming torture they've experienced.
Sometimes it's not enough to walk in another man's shoes. Sometimes you have to feel their feet walking in their shoes, a thing most of us are untrained to do. But fellow feeling would have us recognize a tortured soul when it's screaming at us. Bullies aren't born; they're made, and typically they didn't ask to be made. Rather, it was done to them. That's not to say AlanF was a bully, but in a text only format it could come across that way. In real life the man would stand up for the downtrodden every time. Every single time. Particularly if he saw someone being intellectually manipulated. He'd jump into that like a dog on a snake!

The gods must be crazy. I thought that movie was great!
The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980 film) The tribal people in a remote African desert live a happy life, but it is all torn to pieces when a Coca-Cola bottle falls from a plane. With the villagers fighting over the strange foreign object, tribal leader Xi (N!xau) decides to take the bottle back to the gods to restore peace.
I saw the Broadway play 'The Book of Mormon" and was reminded of the same movie.

Thanks @George88 for the details from Britton: "An Early Observation Text for Mars:"

I don't know how many people have tried this, but you can create a kind of time-lapse "movie" with several of these astronomy applications (software) by simply pointing in a fixed, specific direction (il.e. due West) but zooming out to get a picture of the entire night sky and setting the time to give you a picture of what it looked like at say 9pm Babylon time (or Baghdad, Iraq or thereabouts). Then you quickly click through days going either forward or backward to watch the movements of the planets and the changing path and phases of the moon. On some apps you can just hold down the arrow key and run through about 20 days per second, creating a kind of movie showing the new position for 9pm every day.
What is most interesting is the path of planets like Mars when they move at a steady pace across the sky from night to night, but then will slow down to almost no movement and smoothly changes direction. (Mars in retrograde.) It makes you wonder just how closely the ancient astronomer/astrologers were able to figure out exactly when it turned retrograde because it slows down so much. It's like the date for the Roman Sol Invictus being around December 25 when accurate measurements show that the Winter Solstice was actually on December 21/22. (The idea, of course, is that the hours of sunlight in a day got shorter and shorter, but by December 25 they were sure the days were getting longer again.) 
You might expect a similar 3-day delay in determining Mars in retrograde. And this is pretty much what happens with the earliest Mars readings:

 
What I am talking about is in the second paragraph above where you would expect the observation to be "late by several days" which is exactly what happened for the ancient measurement of when "Mars stood still."
I included the paragraph above just to show that if you are using the software, and yours doesn't have "Babylon" you will be off by no more than a day if you pick a modern city closer to Baghdad or a different city 100 miles away.  

Because of the need for the WTS publications to sow seeds of doubt about Ptolemy, the Watchtower made the following statement about that same 621 BCE eclipse. The mistake they made is pretty obvious once you have seen Ptolemy's writing.
*** w69 3/15 pp. 185-186 Astronomical Calculations and the Count of Time ***
LUNAR ECLIPSES
Lunar eclipses, as found in Ptolemy’s canon and presumably drawn from data in the cuneiform records, have been used in efforts to substantiate the dates usually given for particular years of the Neo-Babylonian kings. But even though Ptolemy may have been able to calculate accurately the dates of certain eclipses in the past, this does not prove that his transmission of historical data is correct. His relating of eclipses to the reigns of certain kings may not always be based on the facts. Additionally, the frequency of lunar eclipses certainly does not add great strength to this type of confirmation.
For example, a lunar eclipse in 621 B.C.E. (April 22) is used as proof of the correctness of the Ptolemaic date for Nabopolassar’s fifth year. However, another eclipse could be cited twenty years earlier in 641 B.C.E. (June 1) to correspond with the date that Bible chronology would indicate for Nabopolassar’s fifth year. Besides, this latter eclipse was total, whereas the one in 621 B.C.E. was partial.
To me, that's just embarrassing. I don't think it was 'deviant scholarship' as @Arauna would have called it had I made a similar mistake. I think it was just grasping at any straws possible to sow seeds of doubt in Ptolemy's work. The problem, of course, is that Ptolemy said it was partial, and it shows up as partial in my software exactly as Ptolemy reported. But the Watchtower claimed that a better one 20 years earlier would be a TOTAL eclipse. In other words, someone in the Writing Dept found a reference, or went to the trouble themselves to find an eclipse exactly 20 years earlier (necessary to feed the 1914 theory) and somehow overlooked the fact that they were choosing a NON-matching eclipse over the matching eclipse. Rolf Furuli made the exact same attempt with lunar information from Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year, and made some of the same "wishful-thinking" errors over and over again.  
 

*** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
Evidently realizing such facts, Professor Edward F. Campbell, Jr., introduced a chart, which included Neo-Babylonian chronology, with the caution: “It goes without saying that these lists are provisional. The more one studies the intricacies of the chronological problems in the ancient Near East, the less he is inclined to think of any presentation as final. For this reason, the term circa [about] could be used even more liberally than it is.”—The Bible and the Ancient Near East (1965 ed.), p. 281.
That statement also got my attention back in 1981. My first thought to myself was, then we cannot depend on our own conclusions as "final" because they are equally based on secular chronology.

Actually, they kept lists of winners for each games, which had started much earlier than 776 BCE, but in the mid 200's BCE when it was clear that the Greeks and Egyptians and Assyrians and Babylonians had been keeping fairly accurate chronologies going back to the 700's, they decided to start attaching some of those important historical events to specific Olympiads, deciding to start the first one in 776 BCE. For the most part, it seems they did a good job. But they cared more for Greek events, especially related to Alexander the Great in the 300's, than to prior Assyrian and Babylonian and Egyptian and Persian events.  But here and there they at least tied the reigns of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, etc., to specific Olympiads that fit the existing Babylonian and Persian records. 
Unfortunately, the Watchtower REJECTS the Olympiad date they picked for Artaxerxes, which was apparently correct, and they ACCEPT the date for Cyrus, which was also apparently correct. Of course, the Greeks got that data about Cyrus and Artaxerxes from the same Babylonian and Persian records that also give us the rest of the Neo-Babylonian period. We know this from the fact that Greek astronomers like Claudius Ptolemy also still had access to the same astronomically verified chronology handed down and copied and recopied from the Babylonian data.  

I recall the first time I read that in the Kingdom Come book. My first thought was to say to myself, everything said in that statement could be equally applied to our own chronology, its source material and interpretations. That was only my first thought!

For purposes of this discussion I will go ahead and learn something about Egyptian chronology. My goal was to focus on what the evidence shows for Neo-Babylonian chronology. 
My experience has been that there is one question that most of us are deathly afraid to answer as Witnesses, the same question I put to @scholar JW:
What BCE date does the astronomical evidence point to for the 14th year of Nebuchadnezzar?
[You can pick any particular year you like in his reign]
If you are like almost all other Witnesses in my personal experience, most will say they don't know. But for those who have some idea what the actual answer will be, they will invariably start obfuscating and talking about tiny disagreements among scholars, or Delta-T, or claim that only dates after Cyrus accession are accurate, or start talking about some other chronology issues, or put the onus back on me to solve some unrelated issues that they pretend are related. It's an amazing experiment, I've seen played out here a dozen times. 
I think that anyone here can easily learn how to use the astronomy software and use it to check eclipses and other solar and planetary phenomenon back to yesterday, to last year, and then scroll back through the last century, and the last millennium -- or use it to discover the next eclipse or the next planetary configurations. (I have a nice telescope and I also use the same software to set up viewings of planets up to a year in advance.)
In spite of the ease of use, try to get another Witness to check out a reading from Nebuchadnezzar's time, and let the deflections and diversions and excuses begin. 

This is another form of poisoning the well. The Watchtower relies on the world of archaeology to get the dates for Cyrus from flawed material. But the "ten-times-better" archaeological material is dismissed. The Watchtower does nothing but try to sow seed of doubt about the "ten-times-better" material. Note:
*** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
From a secular viewpoint, such lines of evidence might seem to establish the Neo-Babylonian chronology with Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year (and the destruction of Jerusalem) in 587/6 B.C.E. However, no historian can deny the possibility that the present picture of Babylonian history might be misleading or in error. It is known, for example, that ancient priests and kings sometimes altered records for their own purposes. Or, even if the discovered evidence is accurate, it might be misinterpreted by modern scholars or be incomplete so that yet undiscovered material could drastically alter the chronology of the period.
Back in the 1870's when Barbour and Russell considered Ptolemy to be the only source of Cyrus 1st year as 586 BCE [sic], they praised Ptolemy as the astronomer with whom ALL reputable scholars agreed with. After it was discovered that it was the same data from Ptolemy that demolished 606 BCE, the WTS has done nothing but try to sow seeds of doubt about him. 
*** g72 5/8 p. 28 When Did Babylon Desolate Jerusalem? ***
As Ptolemy used the reigns of ancient kings (as he understood them) simply as a framework in which to place astronomical data, . . . Hence both Ptolemy’s Canon and “VAT 4956” might even have been derived from the same basic source. They could share mutual errors.
 
*** w77 12/15 p. 747 Insight on the News ***
How certain can we be of the presently accepted chronology of the ancient Babylonian Empire? For many years, chronologists have put heavy reliance on the king list of Claudius Ptolemy, a second-century Greek scholar often considered the greatest astronomer of antiquity.
However, in his new book “The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy,” the noted physicist Robert R. Newton of Johns Hopkins University offers proof that many of Ptolemy’s astronomical observations were “deliberately fabricated” to agree with his preconceived theories “so that he could claim that the observations prove the validity of his theories.”
In its comments on Newton’s book, “Scientific American” magazine notes: “Ptolemy’s forgery may have extended to inventing the length of reigns of Babylonian kings. Since much modern reconstruction of Babylonian chronology has been based on a list of kings that Ptolemy used to pinpoint the dates of alleged Babylonian observations, according to Newton ‘all relevant chronology must now be reviewed and all dependence upon Ptolemy’s [king] list must be removed.’”—October 1977, p. 80.
 
Not only have the accusations been thoroughly debunked, the WTS publications have been so anxious to present information that sows seeds of doubt, that they have been caught quoting authors and experts out of context to make it seem they were saying something that the author didn't say. One example is one that you allude to when you speak of the old Assyrian mythological king list where kings reigned for thousands of years instead of reasonable lengths of time. Quotations from books referring to those pseudo-chronologies have been used (even in the 1981 "kc" Appendix I quoted above) to make it look like they referred to the Neo-Babylonian chronology. Sometimes the "trick" has been to speak of ancient pre-astronomy Babylonian chronology (Nimrod/Hammurabi/etc) and make it seem like Neo-Babylonian chronology is being referred to. If this was done on purpose I guess that would be an example of what you called "deviant scholarship." At least I think you would have called it that if I had used such a "trick."
 

There's the tale of A.K. Dewdney, who wrote about a fictional character named Dr. Matrix, an eccentric mathematician.
In one story, Dr. Matrix spends years calculating the optimal way to peel a banana, determining the exact number of slits needed and their precise angles.
The idea of focusing on minutiae without practical purpose.
But then again, I binge watch TV with six seasons of 27 episodes each, which is worse.

@Arauna, just to respond more comprehensively.
It is not "scholarly deviancy" to claim that the WTS only relies on Babylonian sources. The WTS rejects the accuracy of the later Greek sources as shown in the comments about those sources in "Insight." The WTS rejects the accuracy of Olympiad dates that later Greek sources began tying events to.  And Insight admits very explicitly that it was ONLY Babylonian sources which gives them the date 530 BCE. And the date 530 is for the beginning of Cambyses reign (not the death of Cyrus)  The 530 date itself is not attested in the evidence, only the date, 523 and 522 which are said to be in the 7th year of Cambyses, so it's a matter of counting back from 523. If the WTS is only using the source they claim to be using, then it is only an assumption that Cyrus also ended his reign in 530. That assumption is based on the business tablets, and the fact that there have only been tablets discovered for years 0 through 9 of Cyrus. The WTS rejects that these same business tablets tell us about the rest of the Neo-Babylonian chronology. The WTS indicates that evidence may someday be found that would adjust the chronology in favor of the WTS, so the mere fact that the last discovered tablets in Cyrus reign are for his 9th year is not very meaningful if a 10th or 11th year might show up in the future.   The WTS explains in the Insight's Chronology article why those Greek sources are not irrefutable. Those Greek sources might also assume (correctly) that Cyrus died in his 9th year, but they do NOT tell us that year was 530 BCE.  Therefore, the "impression given above" was actually correct, and not a "deviancy."  The tablet the WTS uses is actually a tablet of inferior quality, a much later copy of a copy, with multiple corrections, and places where the copyist admits he had to try to fill in gaps because it was damaged and needed to be restored.
So, if the relatively poor and indirect evidence pointing to 530 BCE is absolute, then it is most definitely NOT the only date that is secularly absolute. ALL of the dates of the Neo-Babylonian period can be discovered in exactly the same way, including the date for Nineveh's fall in 612 BCE, the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar's 18th regnal year in 587 BCE, and Cyrus' accession year in 539 BCE. But there are something on the order of 40,000* of these business tablets dated to Nebuchadnezzar's reign. 
The reign of Nebuchadnezzar is attested not only with about 40,000 tablets, averaging about 1,000 for every year, but several of the years of his reign are attested in the exact same manner astronomically as the 7th year of Cambyses, as explained in the Insight book. And although several of these are also through eclipses, there are also several more important planetary observations which Rolf Furuli himself admits (in his book) can ONLY be associated with a year of his reign that places his 18th year in 587 BCE.
*I got the 40,000 number when I attended a seminar when I visited the British Museum in 2018 and met a man named Dr. Gareth Brereton who works there as a curator of Assyrian and Babylonian artefacts. He was in charge of a lecture on Assyria and Ashurbanipal at the time. I was also able to contact him one additional time in 2020 for some related follow-up questions. 
If you are right, that 530 is an absolute date, then ALL of Nebuchadnezzar's years are at least ten-times-better absolute dates. 

Sometimes, just for fun, I sometimes try to predict the responses of the more easily predictable participants, and put it in white on white text to show my oldest son what I was guessing. You can just take your mouse and highlight the blank text after the last sentence. In this case, you had two responses. I missed the first one about needing to supply an event, but I hit the second one right on target. In case your mouse highlight thing doesn't work I'll show you what I had typed:

In this case, of course, m.o. means modus operandi. I just meant that the usual thing to do instead of answering a question is to try to "poison the well" of astronomical evidence by associating it with an apostate. In this case, an apostate who was disfellowshipped specifically for sharing his research with other Witnesses instead of keeping it to himself as he was told to do.
For the record, of course, no one has to produce a specific event to attach a BCE year to a specific year of a king's reign. If you know someone reigned for 43 years and you know the BCE date for year 7 is, then you know also know year 17, and 18, and 19, and 20. He could have been asleep the entire year, or insane and eating grass the entire year, or conquering Tyre for all we know. If you know that I'm 66, and you don't know any specific event in my life during 1968, it doesn't mean I didn't exist in 1968.
Still, I can always change the question but I think you will either say you don't know or you will be otherwise just as evasive as you were with this last one: 
What year does the astronomical evidence point to for Nebuchadnezzar's 17th year? (Or, you can use his 16th or his 14th or his 25th, 26th, 27th or 28th or 32nd, or his 42nd year.) Nothing this time, sorry.

It's almost like I paid you to say that. But I know you say that as your opening "salvo" in every single discussion of NB chronology I have ever seen you join. What's funny though is that I just said the following in the Nineveh thread:
And, of course, you did exactly that. In fact, this thread is not focused at all on when Jerusalem was destroyed. The focus is on whether anyone can attach a BCE date to the years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, and thus to any and all of the reigns of every Neo-Babylonian king. 
I keep finding that the question most Witnesses are afraid to answer and terrified to research is the question: What year does the astronomical evidence point to for Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year?
Once that question is asked the evasion becomes too obvious. Usual m.o.: poison well with COJ