Ann O'Maly

I find your words to be dishonest and manipulative. You pretend that there are "respective chronologies" represented here. There is only one chronology represented here. All the referenced sources, dozens of them, give mostly consistent opinions about a single chronology. It's a single chronology that all of them consider definitive enough to pinpoint the various deportation, destruction, and construction events. They understand the meaning of a "definitive" or "Absolute NB Chronology" or else there would be no structure for all of them to agree upon the dates of those events, within a year or two.
Opinions about which of those fixed dates should be interpreted as important to the 70 years prophecy doesn't change the archaeological evidence for a fixed chronology, that all of them accept.
If after all these years, you do not yet understand why scholars might consider either or both of these two dates, then you are being dishonest in associating yourself with the word scholar. I note that several persons have explained it to you over the years, but you still claim to be vexed and troubled over why this 12 month difference is possible. And it's such a simple explanation, too. The scholars who state a preference for either 586 or 587 are not confused, why are you?
Making such a ludicrous statement is just evidence that you are hoping to play to a stupid audience. Is there a margin of error in the archaeological evidence over which year was Nebuchadnezzar's 18th regnal year? You are trying to fool people. Personally, I couldn't care less if the NB Chronology is "absolute" or not, but you still need to go back to your books if you still don't know what the term "absolute" means with respect to a chronological timeline. I'm sure that the reason you will never give the historian's definition or archaeologist's definition is because you know that the term can be used to manipulate prejudice among those who won't look it up for themselves. But this has already been looked up for you in this very topic, and the last time you brought it up under a different topic, and another time before that. So it's hard for me to believe that this is merely incompetence. What else could it be, but another example of dishonesty and manipulation?
Again, you are playing to the prejudices of people you must think are too stupid to look up information for themselves. You admit the 20 year gap between the archaeological evidence and an interpretation, and call that twenty year gap "no 'margin of error.'" Yet the Watchtower admits this gap in evidence and claims that such evidence might still show up someday in the future.
*** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
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.
After admitting that the evidence is strong, and consistent, the only hope is that it's being misinterpreted or that "yet undiscovered material" could drastically alter the chronology. And yet, there are thousands of pieces of material that consistently fix the NB chronology, and new material has been published since the time that statement was made. Unfortunately, it just keeps supporting and bolstering the exact same timeline -- no exceptions. After 10,000 pieces of evidence, is there really any hope that new material will produce the drastic changes the WTS needs?
Even the WTS interpretation of the 70 years is not set in stone. The same book says:
*** kc p. 189 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
It seems evident that the easiest and most direct understanding of the various Biblical statements is that the 70 years began with the complete desolation of Judah after Jerusalem was destroyed.
And, of course, if you really study the various Bible statements, most people (according to your sources) see that this is NOT the most direct understanding of the various Bible statements. And even if it were, that last quoted statement is meaningless unless the WTS wanted to use the 70 year reference of Zechariah which most likely refers to about 586 to 516, plus or minus a couple years.
There was a common thread among those last 8, the ones who differed from the usual 609/605 start and a 539 end. It was a rejection of the authority of the Bible. They often interpreted the 70 years as a prophecy that might not have even come from Jeremiah or the Chronicler, but which was supposedly imposed on the text from a much later date. Funny how those few exceptions you count on the most to promote uncertainty and doubt, actually got to those interpretations by rejecting the originality and authority of the Biblical text.
 

Here's an excellent video, just for you. It's got cartoons, so even you ought to understand it:
 

A pure article of faith.
Did he force them to publish the interview, too, which plainly shows what he believes?
The only sound that's left after the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up on Evolution Row
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show He's going to the carnival tonight on Evolution Row
And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking into Evolution Row
You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago For playing the electric violin on Evolution Row
They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow If you lean your head out far enough from Evolution Row
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know" Casanova is just being punished for going to Evolution Row"
Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow And nobody has to think too much about Evolution Row
Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no, Not unless you mail them from Evolution Row

As physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said: "It's not even wrong!"

Clueless. 🙄
Influenza A/H1N1 (Spanish 'flu was a strain of this) still exists. The Spanish 'flu virus just evolved and diversified into other strains of H1N1, most notably that which caused the 'Swine 'Flu' pandemic of 2009. A lot of us are even vaccinated against this 2009 distant descendant of the 1918 strain every year. (Source.)
And many mutations are beneficial or harmless to the organism (look at the success of viruses, for example!). 

That may be, but when I drive my car into a tree, it hardly matters that I have solved the rattle behind the glovebox. Nor does the solved rattle somehow stop the car from being wrecked.

Of course he did. That's why so many of his debate opponents call him a fake, a charlatan and a liar.
What ScholarJW Pretendus does is as Mommy Watchtower does -- use references to real scholars dishonestly to pretend that they support the Writer's claims.

Arauna, as usual, is clueless, but from time to time, like a stopped clock, accidentally gets something right.

Thank you. Yes it was, and this is what I, AlanF, and JW Insider have been trying to get into Neil's stubborn skull. 

Nonsense. You are twisting Jeremiah's words. The Babylonian king was not 'called to account' two years after the 70 years ended.
No, this is what I encouraged you to do, Neil - to read Jer. 51:37 in context. You're swinging this around again, lol.
Thus, you cannot tell me when in Babylon's history certain key elements of Jeremiah 51 were fulfilled, i.e. when,
Media and its allies reduced Babylon to rubble, There was a bloody battle with said invaders, resulting in the Babylonian army being slain, God's people had to run for their lives from the city. So no, Jer. 51:37 was not fulfilled with the city's gradual, centuries'-long decline culminating in its final abandonment in the 4th c. CE. To use this as support for your back-to-front argument about Jer. 25:12 is a prime example of cherry-picking! 🙄

I do not believe scholars have any acceptance of the bible...... it is about being credible to peers who do not accept the bible.

OK. It's 2021 now, I will move on to the second part of your answer, which is even more incorrect.
I asked:
Outside of the Watchtower publications, JWs or Adventists who defend an inherited chronology, can you give me a reference for any "Exilic scholar" who thinks it was more than 50 years between Jerusalem's destruction and Babylon's downfall by Cyrus? Can you show any "exilic scholar" who thinks that Jerusalem was destroyed within 2 years of 607? Can you show any "exilic scholar" who thinks that Jerusalem was NOT destroyed within 2 years of 587?
You answered:
JSTOR gives me a couple of references that show you are wrong. The first is : https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.15699/jbl.1371.2018.222705
The End of Exile: The Reception of Jeremiah's Prediction of a Seventy-Year Exile Author(s): Steven M. Bryan Source: Journal of Biblical Literature , Vol. 137, No. 1 (Spring 2018), pp. 107-126
I quote from page 108, where Bryan shows no problem with the following date for the destruction of Jerusalem:
". . . the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/86" (p.108)
He is also aware that some scholars have made a point about the 70 year period from the (second exile and) destruction of the temple by Babylon (587/6) to the reconstruction in 516/515 since this also is a 70-year period (which he does not accept as the period referenced by Jeremiah, which he says had already been recognized as fulfilled.) [Note that C.F.Whitley, another example from Niles' "Appendix C" is a proponent of 586 BCE to 516 BCE, with full knowledge that 586 BCE refers to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and 516 to the reconstruction under Haggai/Zerubbabel.]
So your reference to Steven M Bryan is a failure.
Now to Rainer Albertz. Without looking, I have already come to trust that this was also just an empty claim.
So, here it is. Not surprisingly, you failed at this one too. Here is his chronology from the book:
Israel in Exile --The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E. by Rainer Albertz · 2003

Note: "conquest of Jerusalem, 2d deportation (July / August 587)." He sees that the Bible chronology fits the standard archaeological foundation for the chronology. These dates are also 20 years off from the ones promoted by the Watchtower publications.
Of course, I'm sure you already knew both of these attempts were failures before you even provided them.

Niles, himself gives an overview of many past scholars, and he is not confused at all by the scholarship. First, of course, here are the dates he accepts, as seen in Appendix C. This applies to the second question, of course, as he is also an "Exilic" scholar, too. He apparently understands exactly how the standard dates align with the Bible chronology.

Now you mentioned Appendix A, where Nles gives an idea of the broad range of views from scholars and Bible commentators, past and present. I don't see any of them confused about the chronology of those 70 years of Babylonian domination between about 609 to 539 (plus or minus a couple of years). Most of them chose that very chronology as the interpretation of Jeremiah's 70 years. Apparently every single one of them understood that chronology to be able to place the destruction of Jerusalem in 587-586 BCE, or the larger exile (e.g. Ezekiel, et al) from 598-597 BCE. Everyone has a right to their set of Biblical interpretations for the varying uses of the term "70 years" whether literal, close, symbolic, an approximation, or even believing (as Niles himself does) that various Bible writers may have used it to refer to multiple periods. But this does not imply any confusion about the chronology.
Every one of them understood the chronology of the time of Babylonian domination, or they could not have all consistently put dates like the ones pictured above, on all the Judean events. I will repeat again: Apparently 100% of them used the date 587 or 586 for the destruction of Jerusalem. No confusion about the chronology, just different interpretations of which start and end dates to use within that fixed chronology. For those who don't know, I'll reproduce the columns from the first 3 pages:



Did I mention this? Every one of the above accepts a chronology within a couple years of the standard chronology, and every one of the above accepts a chronology that is about 20 years different from the "special chronology" that the WTS promotes.
(I add that last part about the 20-years difference, because there are people who think that 605 BCE, above, is only 2 years different from the WTS chronology of 607. It's actually 18 years different. Because the WTS publications present the above 605 date as 625 BCE.)
The last 8 listed scholars from the final two pages (not included above) discuss variations of Biblical interpretation about the 70 years, but they are not at all confused about the chronology of the period of Babylonian years of domination in the region. I'll just pick any one of them to see what they say about the period of Babylonian domination:
The first one, Anneli Aejmelaeus, we don't have to look up, because Niles already tells us she understands the significance of 587 BCE (Jeremiah 25) and 597 BCE.
So I'll pick another and then look up whether Bryan and Albertz fit the criteria of dating the destruction of Jerusalem more than two years different than 587 BCE.
Maybe next year, though. This should be my last post of 2020.
 

Jeremiah is the source of the 70-years prophecies, though. Later interpretations and references to them need to harmonize with what Jeremiah actually said. The root of WT's divergence from mainstream understandings of the 70 years is its insistence that the 70-year period relates to the length of time the land would be 'desolate, without an inhabitant.' However, Jeremiah nowhere says this. He talks about a '70 years servitude' to Babylon and a '70 years for Babylon' but not that the land would be uninhabited for 70 years. It is this (mis)understanding that locks Watchtower into its chronological scheme. 
As far as I can see, WT nearly always ignores the problem of Jer. 25:12's sequence of events. One time it attempts to resolve it (w79 9/15 p. 23-24) by claiming the nations continued serving the king of Babylon after the city had been conquered and its king removed by Cyrus because Cyrus then became king of Babylon - the 70-year period was only up two years after the conquest and it was when Cyrus let the Jews go that the Babylonians were punished. Not only is this convoluted tripe not in keeping with the wording in Jer. 25:12, but it goes against Ezra's wording too at 2 Chron. 36:20:
"He [Neb] carried off captive to Babylon those who escaped the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia began to reign"
As for WT's solution to Jer. 29:10 - it doesn't offer one. It sticks with its translation 'at Babylon' and sidesteps the context by applying it to exiles taken 10 years later.
But we still have the wording of the texts to get past. The 70 years are fulfilled, then the Babylonian king is punished / then God will turn his attention to the exiles. It's not the other way around.

1. It's off topic,
2. Do some reading on Earth history, plate tectonics, and geological time. 🙄
@AlanF, may I suggest that, rather than have Anna's thread go off track, a new one might be started on human existence/development, etc.?

True Tom Harley said:
Nonsense.
Of course they were. Any JW who dared to dispute these "never laws" would have been disfellowshipped. I know, because I was threatened with that when I brought up such things with elders. "Apostasy!" they said.
But it's still on the books. Therefore, it's still "present truth".
Ah, Behe. The Society used him as an authority until it figured out that Behe actually accepts evolution -- but a divinely guided sort.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Complete nonsense. The God-guided sort of evolution of Behe and many other Christians is anathema to Watchtower leaders. They've expressly rejected such ideas in several publications.
LOL! Bullying? What do you think disfellowshipping for simply disagreeing with WTS leaders is? Hypocrite!
By your 'logic' Jesus was a bully.

True Tom Harley said:
 
Nonsense. Tell us please: in what publication did the Society announce that it was abandoning Flood Geology? Or the ridiculous notion of a "vapor canopy"? Or admit that the "7,000-year creative days" were actually several hundred million years long (of course, the Genesis days are entirely out of sync with the fossil evidence, so the notion of a "creative day" is completely wrongheaded). Where did they openly explain why they changed "7,000 years" to "millennia" in some publications after 1985?
A total misapplication of Proverbs. The passage has nothing to do with increasing "spiritual light". I doubt you're even aware that it was the Adventist community that first began misapplying Proverbs to excuse the failed predictions of William Miller.
As for "tacking", it was GB member Karl Klein who originated the concept in a mid-1980s Watchtower article. Many Bethelites actually laughed at him.
Of course -- which proves that God has nothing to do with them. At least, no more than with the Pope.
Wrong. Critics like me are concerned with truth. We tend to get bent out of shape at anyone who falsely claims divine guidance, divine knowledge, and so forth. It's called "righteous anger", something that Jesus is said to have displayed toward similar charlatans two thousand years ago.

Someone named RR(?) was selling a book on eBay while making a claim it came from Tom Cabeen, implying it might have been printed on WT materials. I thought it was nearly impossible, having been there from 76 to 82. I got Cabeen's number through contact with his son (who went to college with my son). Cabeen was sure he had never seen the book before.
Anyway, I asked Cabeen if he knew how COJ was doing healthwise. Cabeen didn't know for sure, but told me how sad it was that COJ only tried to do the right thing when one of his Bible Study "RV's" asked him about why the WTS uses this special chronology. COJ was sure it could be defended and did his best, but, of course, discovered what anyone would discover if they were being honest and thorough. I told Cabeen that when I was tagging along with Brother Schroeder's "entourage" for an International Convention tour in 1978 that I had to stay in Athens for some extra time while Bert Schroeder went to Wiesbaden. When I was supposed to catch up with him in Wiesbaden, I was told he had alread gone to Hamburg/Copenhagen/Stockholm for some meetings (no conventions) and without any of his small entourage. The rumor was that this was about the COJ manuscript, although I couldn't know absolutely for sure. We caught up again when he came back to Hamburg then on back to London and Brooklyn. 
I told Cabeen this, and he already knew about part of it. I understand Cabeen might be biased, but he said that Schroeder had already determined to get COJ disfellowshiped several months before that convention trip. So I can believe that something like this happened with Gerard Gertoux. Gertoux seemed willing to discuss anything except 587 BCE, which made him suddenly clam up. 

Ann O'Maly said:
To a certain extent, yes, but before about 1965 most Watchtower comments tended to follow Isaac Newton Vail's so-called Annular Theory of the Flood, Velikovsky, Ivan Sanderson, George McCready Price, and a few other crackpots.
It was published in 1961 and to a large extent followed the ideas of George McCready Price, a Seventh-Day Adventist whose main purpose in life, since about 1900, was to defend the young-earth creationism of SDA founder Ellen White. Apparently the Watchtower (I'm guessing Fred Franz) got hold of the book and ran with it in terms of publishing defenses of the Flood. The Society even quoted from it as if it were a real science textbook. The main author, Henry Morris, went on to found the Institute for Creation Research, which published dozens of books and other materials advocating Morris' version of YECism, including Flood Geology and so-called "Scientific Creationism". Later, that spun off Answers in Genesis and other crackpot outfits such as Walter Brown's Center for Scientific Creation. Brown is so far out in left field that the other YECs will have nothing to do with him. These are Arauna's sources.
One critical author called him "the very model of a crank".

🤣 Love it!

FYI: Your images haven't embedded, @JW Insider

I don't believe any true scholars are confused about the 70 years of Babylonian domination. The evidence is too clear and overwhelming to leave any room for such confusion by any true scholar. You apparently think they are confused but that's a reflection on you, not them. You make haughty claims without evidence, but you haven't been able to honestly deal with any of the evidence so far.
Outside of the Watchtower publications, JWs or Adventists who defend an inherited chronology, can you give me a reference for any "Exilic scholar" who thinks it was more than 50 years between Jerusalem's destruction and Babylon's downfall by Cyrus? Can you show any "exilic scholar" who thinks that Jerusalem was destroyed within 2 years of 607? Can you show any "exilic scholar" who thinks that Jerusalem was NOT destroyed within 2 years of 587?
If you can't, then this is just another empty claim.

I couldn't delete them either, so I redid them for another post.

Gerard Gertoux would love to side with the Watchtower's chronology wherever possible, and has looked at some of the potentially "weaker" evidence here and there and claimed that there might be room for agreement with the Watchtower's dates.
Although he is a WItness, he has studied the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian chronology and has realized that the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar cannot be placed in 607. As you can see here, he puts it in 587 BCE.
https://www.academia.edu/26080694/Absolute_Chronology_of_the_Ancient_World_from_1533_BCE_to_140_CE ...


(The only mistake he makes here is using the "astronomical dating" format to represent "BCE" format. But he acknowledges this. It makes the spreadsheet easier for most people to understand.)

CC, You keep dragging me (and @Arauna ) into this. Arauna is right. We should be able to explain complex things with simple words and simple sentences. So here goes:
Ann O'maly commented on a paper written by Gerard Gertoux. In her comments, O'maly happened to make mention of a mistake that might have just been a typo. Gertoux's "typo" indicated that 360/12=15, instead of 360/12=30. No big deal. Chavez (CC) sarys Gertoux is right about 15 degrees, and O'maly must be stupid. For evidence CC posts content saying that 360/12=30 and that 360/24=15 and that 30/2=15. CC apparently doesn't realize that all CC has done is prove that O'maly was right. That's the whole story: CC has tried to prove O'maly wrong, but all his evidence directly shows she was right. His evidence blew up in his face. That's the whole story, except that Arauna has sided with the idea that 360/12=15, without even knowing, probably, that this was the entire argument. It's EXACTLY as if:
O'maly said 2+2=4 CC told her she was stupid, because 2+2=5 CC "proves" it by loading up a lot of Googled sites that prove that 2+2=4 CC claims his superiority and O'maly's stupidity, by misreading his evidence that "proved" to him that 2+2=5 Arauna places her bets on the side of 2+2=5 and criticizes O'maly for believing that 2+2=4. But why go to so much trouble to defend a typo in the first place? Why the need to pretend O'maly is stupid and wrong and incompetent just because she caught a simple mistake? That was not even the point of O'maly's comments. 
I think it only goes to prove a more general point we have seen on this thread. Hatred of people interferes with good judgment. And conversely, if people think someone else (like a Furuli, a Gertoux) is on the side of 1914, then it doesn't matter if they are making ludicrous claims. 99.9% of Witnesses apparently aren't really going to test them anyway. It's easier to just say they must be right, and Witnesses should defend them. For people who do not wish to look into the facts, it becomes an 'us versus them' proposition.
But there's another way I can tell that it doesn't matter what the evidence shows, and this is only about assumptions, and not real study or research:
It's because Gerard Gertoux has agreed with  the same date that Carl Olof Jonsson gives for the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. I have even communicated with Gerard Gertoux to find out why.