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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.

Spoiler alert, @xero: Most of the readings are a much better fit for 568, and only a few can be said to be OK for 588. Except for the single well-documented, copyist's error, that was recognized 100 years ago, most of the other supposed "matches" for 588 require that we also believe the Babylonians had made a mistake in starting their new year more than a month later than it should have been started. Not only is there no evidence that this EVER happened, the Babylonians were much more careful and meticulous about which lunar month started the New Year than the Hebrew calendar. The Hebrews never added the leap month except just after the 12th month. The Babylonians to make sure the New Year always started even closer to the Spring Equinox, would often add the leap month just after the 12th month but sometimes calibrated to add it just after the 6th month when necessary. (This is done because the lunar months only provide about 354 days in the year, so that loss of 11 days from the solar year requires a leap month every 3 years or so.) But we already have excellent evidence for the exact method the Babylonians were already using for their leap months, because the thousands of business tablets identified whether there had just been a month 6 or month 12 leap month. (aka intercalary month) That means that even most of the "coincidental" readings are bogus, even though Ann O'maly generously allowed the 588 readings themselves to be compared against 568, anyway, in spite of the fact that they weren't real readings because the month was impossible.

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.

I really do agree with that whole-heartedly. That's why I wanted to create a topic that skipped all the usual diversions about various events and ONLY focus on the strength of the evidence for the BCE dates in the Neo-Babylonian chronology. I had hoped to avoid the usual mess we get into by trying to decide between 586 and 587, or exactly when the 70 years started or ended, or exactly how long it took Cyrus to make the decree in his first year. We can always have other discussions that get into those things. But then when someone comes on to talk about some of those other topics, I always give in. Perhaps you wanted to shift the paradigm in another way. If so, I'm all ears. (And not enough in between.)

I'm not the one saying it is significant. I'm only saying that all evidence so far consistently points to 587 BCE as the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar. It's up to you to decide whether that fact has any significance: (Jeremiah 32:1, 2) . . .The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah in the 10th year of King Zed·e·kiʹah of Judah, that is, the 18th year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar. At that time the armies of the king of Babylon were besieging Jerusalem, . . .

Makes you wonder why the only definitive way they determine Cambyses 7th year, then, is through eclipses, doesn't it. The fact that a two hundred years later, Greeks trusted the same Babylonian chronology which was based heavily on astronomy, and began attaching Babylonian chronology to their own calendar systems, is also revealing. (Archonships and Olympiads). Read what you quoted carefully and you will see that it is really saying that the ONLY real information that ties to BCE dates is Ptolemy, and contemporary cuneiform [business] tablets. With Ptolemy it was the eclipse and the King List (Ptolemy's "Royal" Canon). Diodorus, Africans, and Eusebius, who come onto the picture MUCH LATER, are indirectly relying on the same Babylonian records. The later attempts to tie dates from Babylonian records back into the Olympiads had variable results. Here are some of them, that refer to the Olympiad era of dating: ------------------- [evidence says 562 not 572] [That last highlighted one seems perfectly in accord with current astronomical evidence, that Josiah died in 609 BCE and Cyrus first year was 70 years later, in 539 BCE.] The idea was apparently that 70 years for Babylonian domination was 609 to 539 and the 70 years of desolation on the city and temple would have been about 590 to 520 -- see Zechariah 1 :12 & 7:4, [This is accurately counted from the first year of Nebuchadnezzar as stated in Daniel 1:1] [off only by about 4 years, since Nineveh evidently fell in 612 BCE] [645 - 32 = 612?] Note that if the 55th Olympiad is 560 (which it is) then the 47th is as little as 28/29 years earlier, or 588-589 BCE. Right about the time when Nebuchadnezzar would have begun the siege ending in 587 BCE. ------------------ It's curious, isn't it, that many of the same ones who were using the Olympiad method of dating put the destruction of the Temple around -590. 590 is only a couple of years from 587 BCE, and not so far off from the siege of the city which would have begun closer to 589 BCE. This must be why so many early "historians" and "chronographers" trying to place the end of the 70 years of Judea's servitude ended it closer to 520: -------------- Josephus first went with the common-sense idea that the 70 years began with the destruction of Jerusalem and ended with the conquering of Babylon by Cyrus. But his final work after a couple more decades of quoting from sources made him change that chronology to say that there were only 50 years between those two events. That would mean one of two things; that the 70 years started with the fall of Assyria when Babylon became a world power and ended when Persia became the world power. Or it was a separate 70 years (Zechariah) that started with the destruction of the Temple and ended with the rebuilding of it in Zerubbabel's time. Sorry for the messy formatting. Trying to work from an iPhone. My laptop is back home.

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.

A high academic standard, yes. He graduated from MIT. But he left a trail of insults on this forum that would make a sailor blush. And that was mostly in response to foolish goading from @scholar JWand back and forth escalations of insults between him and [username="César Chávez"], it's not like people were generally cursing at him and he was just responding in kind. "César Chávez" is still with us here by the way, under different user names. (For those who care, that apparently also includes the JW Closed Club, so far just as an auditor, not a participant.)

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.

@xero, I think in your checking of eclipse lists for the time, you are aware that Ptolemy's Almagest also recorded this one which exactly matches 21/22 April 621 BC: As you are aware, the 5th year of Nabopolassar in 621 BCE puts the 14th year of Nabopolassar in 612 BCE. In the 5th year of Nabopolassar (127th year from Nabonassar, 27/28 Athyr of the Egyptian calendar a lunar eclipse began at the end of the 11th hour in Babylon. The maximum obscuration was 1/4 of the diameter from the south (Almagest V 14). Here is the translated text from the Almagest itself. He runs an era going all the way back to Nabonassar, and with some of his readings he also includes the time from the death of Alexander the Great AND Nabonassar AND the parallel Egyptian calendar AND to the archonship era in Athens. Below I also included the first portion of the next eclipse he records regarding Cyrus' son Cambyses, it's one of the two that the "Insight" book uses to date Cyrus. Of course the WTS publications don't tell you that it is also found in Ptolemy, for obvious reasons. Ptolemy lists 10 Babylonian eclipses and 4 of them have already been found duplicated in cuneiform tablets from Babylon: https://classicalliberalarts.com/resources/PTOLEMY_ALMAGEST_ENGLISH.pdf page 253:

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.

AlanF commented quite often on this forum when he was alive. He and @scholar JW had a history going back for many years —decades—according to scholar JW. Same with Ann O’maly whom scholar JW also appeared to have communicated with for many past years. I hated AlanF’s position on evolution and complete dismissal of much of Genesis but I appreciated that both he and Ann O’maly were much more knowledgeable about neo-Babylonian chronology that I am. By a long shot. They both corrected me publicly with good evidence on several mistakes I made here while learning the topic. I always appreciate corrections by anyone, even a "public reproof."

Those particular two events are simply Saros interpolations, which won't make as much sense as direct evidence until we are ready to re-build the entire king list and test it against the known ancient "spreadsheets" of Saros eclipses (LBAT 1415, 1417, 1418, 1419, 1420 & 1421) listing them for every "18 years" -- and then combined with evidence from another document. This was why I wanted to start with Nebuchadnezzar and then work backward and forward from there. However, I can do one better. It turns out that I was wrong when I said there were no observations/events associated with Nabopolassar's 14th year. I had stopped looking at further astronomical readings when I was satisfied I had seen enough to assure myself. But there may be a couple more, one of which should touch on Nabopolassar's 14th: https://www.jenseits-des-horizonts.de/download_pdf/bsa_044_04.pdf So it's those first two tablets, referenced in the footnotes 3 & 4. The first is Hunger, Sachs, and Steele, No 52. That tablet is reported elsewhere to show observations for: Nabopolassar 7 = 619 BCE Nabopolassar 12 = 614 BCE Nabopolassar 13 = 613 BCE Nabopolassar 14 = 612 BCE [edited to add: possibly stops at Nab 13=613BCE] Since the above PDF shows the readings stopping in 613 and doesn't include Nabopolassar 14 = 612 BCE, perhaps it is partly cut off or damaged at that point. Or the readings go past December of 613 still in the same regnal year 613, but technically 612. I haven't seen a picture of it, although I might have a photocopy of the correct pages of Hermann Hunger's "Astronomical Diaries and Texts V" in my files from a time I copied several pages from those volumes at the NYPL Reference Library. I kind of doubt I have it though, because I knew nothing about this one when I did my readings for the posts here: https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/88343-secular-evidence-and-neo-babylonian-chronology-nebuchadnezzar-cyrus-etc/?do=findComment&comment=152186 Another one, (Text Number 5) related to the above, is also in Hermann Hunger's Astronomical Diaries and Texts V, and it has the year of the king (16) but not the name of the king. It reports an eclipse that matches September 15, 610 BCE. That is of course the 16th year of Nabopolassar, as it lands right there in among the readings above in Text Number 52. I'm out of state right now, but will check these out for myself in a few days.

No. I don’t know what controversy you mean. Sorry. And I hope you will say something about how you are faring these days. Hadn’t heard from you in quite a while.

I already have, and I have never thought there was a problem with that date. After all it comes from copies of exactly the same CONTEMPORARY records that give us Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year as 587 BCE. And it comes from exactly the same records that put the reconstruction of the Temple in Zechariah's time nearly 70 years later. (Closer to 517 BCE). That makes more sense of the Bible record that says a lot of the people who saw the new temple being constructed cried out louder than the younger ones who raised their voice at the new construction. That didn't make sense to me if these people were about 90 and up (Psalm 90:10). But it made more sense if they were closer to 70 and up, like you and me. Also Zechariah said: (Zechariah 1:12) . . .So the angel of Jehovah said: “O Jehovah of armies, how long will you withhold your mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with whom you have been indignant these 70 years?” Zechariah would have written this a little closer to 520 BCE, a date that the WTS publications have agreed with. So 70 years earlier would have been the siege that started a year and an half earlier according to Jeremiah. That would put it about 589 according to the astronomical records.

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.

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."

I know what you are referring to, but you have never argued or even mentioned Champollion to me before. You were speaking with someone else. I have never previously weighed in on Egyptian chronology because I still know nothing about it. I suspect that the Egyptian astronomical observations and calculations will often coincide with the astronomical calculations of the Babylonians, at least through the period of the Neo-Babylonian time period related to Necho II, Nabopolassar , Nebuchadnezzar, Psammetichus, etc. If you had mentioned Champollion to me, and claimed that this early Egyptologist had somehow set in stone the Assyrian and Babylonian chronology, I would have merely shown you that the Watchtower shows that he probably wasn't even much good at the Egyptian chronology. The Watchtower strongly implies that his calculations were likely wrong by about THREE THOUSAND YEARS. *** w68 11/15 p. 681 The Bible and Egyptian History *** RECONSTRUCTING EGYPTIAN HISTORY Thus it has been necessary for Egyptologists to reconstruct and revise their views of Egyptian history, not once, but often, during the past hundred years or so. Note, now, how various authorities on Egyptology, generally contemporary, have arrived at widely different conclusions on the date of the first ruling dynasty, supposedly begun by the unification of Egypt under King Menes. According to 1st Dynasty Begins Champollion 5867 B.C.E. Mariette 5004 “ Lauth 4157 “ Lepsius 3892 “ Breasted 3400 “ Meyer 3180 “ Wilkinson 2320 “ Palmer 2224 “ . . . The Egyptians developed astronomy to some extent, and we have Egyptian texts dealing with lunar phases and the rising of the Dog Star (Sothis). These have been pressed into service, by combining these with other fragmentary data, to build up a chronological table giving approximate dates for the various dynasties as follows: . . . Dynasties I to VI c.2850-2200 “ Also, the astronomical data which helps to date not just one but several of the Egyptian dynasties, can be off by up to 120 years according to the same Watchtower article. And, in fact, the WTS chronology is only off by about 120 years when measured against the astronomical evidence, according to what is implied in the Watchtower article. So according to the Watchtower, Champollion's dates are on the order of THREE THOUSAND YEARS OFF. If an Egyptologist was so far off in Egyptian dating, how could he have set in stone the Assyrian and Babylonian dating?

@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

Wow!! Aruana. Great to hear from you again. How are you doing in your new place? The Watchtower publications show that what you are saying is incorrect. Here's the ACTUAL way that the Insight book admits the date is determined. First of all, we should notice that there is a dependence on clay tablets, astronomical tablets, king lists matching the one Ptolemy used, and the fact that these were indeed Babylonian sources. Cyrus moved his capital to Babylon where the same scholars and astronomers/astrologers continued to work. Note that "Insight" below even refers to it as evidence from Babylon. In fact, many clay tablets under Cyrus continue to refer to events and people that were there in Babylon going back continuously through the Neo-Babylonian kings as if nothing changed - business as usual. *** it-1 p. 453 Chronology *** A Babylonian clay tablet is helpful for connecting Babylonian chronology with Biblical chronology. This tablet contains the following astronomical information for the seventh year of Cambyses II son of Cyrus II: “Year 7, Tammuz, night of the 14th, 1 2⁄3 double hours [three hours and twenty minutes] after night came, a lunar eclipse; visible in its full course; it reached over the northern half disc [of the moon]. Tebet, night of the 14th, two and a half double hours [five hours] at night before morning [in the latter part of the night], the disc of the moon was eclipsed; the whole course visible; over the southern and northern part the eclipse reached.” (Inschriften von Cambyses, König von Babylon, by J. N. Strassmaier, Leipzig, 1890, No. 400, lines 45-48; Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, by F. X. Kugler, Münster, 1907, Vol. I, pp. 70, 71) These two lunar eclipses can evidently be identified with the lunar eclipses that were visible at Babylon on July 16, 523 B.C.E., and on January 10, 522 B.C.E. (Oppolzer’s Canon of Eclipses, translated by O. Gingerich, 1962, p. 335) Thus, this tablet points to the spring of 523 B.C.E. as the beginning of the seventh year of Cambyses II. Since the seventh year of Cambyses II began in spring of 523 B.C.E., his first year of rule was 529 B.C.E. and his accession year, and the last year of Cyrus II as king of Babylon, was 530 B.C.E. The latest tablet dated in the reign of Cyrus II is from the 5th month, 23rd day of his 9th year. (Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C.–A.D. 75, by R. Parker and W. Dubberstein, 1971, p. 14) As the ninth year of Cyrus II as king of Babylon was 530 B.C.E., his first year according to that reckoning was 538 B.C.E. and his accession year was 539 B.C.E. What is not mentioned here is how the WTS has determined that Cyrus' son, Cambyses began reigning immediately upon the death of Cyrus. How do we know there was not one or more kings between them, older brothers who were first in line, usurpers, a sickness that delayed Cambyses reign, overlapping regnal years, etc. It's because they also rely on the equivalent of a "King List" to tell them that Cambyses immediately followed Cyrus. That King List is the equivalent of what Ptolemy used, often called Ptolemy's Canon. Note the quote from Parker and Dubberstein 1971. Parker and Dubberstein were able to find complete support for Ptolemy's Canon, not just for every single year but even more accurately to the month and sometimes the day when one king transferred rulership to the next. They were able to validate "Ptolemy's Canon" going back to Nebuchadnezzar and even before to Nabopolassar and even before that. And they had enough tablets to even determine the methods used for adding the "leap" months to the calendar, to get a much more accurate picture of the Babylonian calendar. One might try to claim that because a few centuries later (in the 200's BCE) the Greeks began tying some of these older historical dates to a longer Olympiad period. This is true, but there is ZERO evidence that Olympiad dating was used until SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS after Cyrus. Besides, the Watchtower publications REJECT the Olympiad dating as inaccurate even for Artaxerxes, who is even more recent than Cyrus in the Persian period. It should be clear that none of this evidence helps the WTS calculate 607. Claiming to rely on later Greek historians like Herodotus or Xenophon or others is also problematic. What they got, they copied from Babylonian and Persian sources. Note what the Insight book says: *** it-1 p. 457 Chronology *** Included among ancient Greek historians are: Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.E.); Thucydides (c. 471-401 B.C.E.); Xenophon (c. 431-352 B.C.E.); Ctesias (fifth-fourth century B.C.E.); . . . *** it-1 p. 457 Chronology *** All of these lived after the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian period and only the first four mentioned lived during the period of the Persian Empire. For the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, then, none of these writers present information based on personal knowledge, but they record, rather, the traditional views they heard or, in some cases, may have read and copied. The accuracy of their data obviously depends on the accuracy of the sources used. Not only this, but what we know of their writings is today dependent upon copies of copies, the oldest copy often dating no farther back than the medieval period of the Common Era. We have already seen how the chronologies of Manetho and Berossus were mutilated by copyists. As to the qualifications and reliability of the other ancient historians of the classical period, the following is noteworthy: . . Herodotus’ approach to history—asking a question, looking for relevant information, and then drawing a conclusion—is spoken of highly. But it is also said that at times “his data were unsatisfactory” and that “he offers a rational explanation side by side with the irrational.” It has also been said that he belongs “distinctly to the romantic school” and so was as much a storyteller as a historian. (The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 1985 edition, Vol. 5, pp. 881, 882; 1910 edition, Vol. XIII, p. 383) As to Xenophon, it is said that “objectivity, thoroughness, and research were not for him” and that he adorned his narratives with “fictitious speeches.” (The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 1987, Vol. 12, p. 796) George Rawlinson accuses Ctesias of deliberately extending the period of the Median monarchy “by the conscious use of a system of duplication.” He further states: “Each king, or period, in Herodotus occurs in the list of Ctesias twice—a transparent device, clumsily cloaked by the cheap expedient of a liberal invention of names.”—The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, 1885, Vol. II, p. 85. Concerning Roman history of the kingly period (preceding the establishment of the Republic), we read that it “stretches back into the regions of pure mythology. It is little more than a collection of fables told with scarcely any attempt at criticism, and with no more regard to chronological sequence than was necessary to make the tale run smoothly or to fill up such gaps . . .

As you probably already know, the WTS publications are correct when they state: *** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 *** Business tablets: 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. Literate Babylonians from various cities all over the empire could write "17th year of Nabopolassar" [with the month and day] or "18th year of Nebuchadnezzar" [with the month and day] just as readily as we would write 2/25/2024. And there is apparently an average of about 1,000 of these contracts per year covering EVERY year of EVERY Neo-Babylonidan king. This means that if you could just put them in the right order, you would have the entire string of dates covered from Nabopolassar, to Nebuchadnezzar, to Amel-Marduk, to Neriglissar, to Labashi-Marduk, to Nabonidus, to Cyrus, to Cambyses, etc. At that point you would only need to identify the BCE year for any ONE of those years and you would know the entire Neo-Babylonian chronology of every king. Evidence for any one year, serves as evidence for every other year. All of them interlock with no exceptions and no contradictions. In other words, if you had evidence somehow that the first year of Cyrus was 538 BCE, that would also serve as evidence that the 14th year of Nabopolassar was 612 BCE. If you had evidence that the last year of Nabopolassar was 604, that would serve as the same evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's accession year was 605, and his first year was 604, and his 18th was 587 and his 43rd was 562. This is why a discussion of the actual 'solid' evidence for the Neo-Babylonian chronology is the best foundation for discovering the date of Nineveh's destruction, or the fall of Jerusalem, or the fall of Babylon, or the start of Evil-Merodach's reign. I think you can tell, @xero, that a discussion that focuses on just the secular evidence would be useful to more easily reach exactly the same goal. And that goal could not only be more easily reached, but also more easily verified and double-checked and triple-checked, and quadruple-checked from various independent sources. I say this because there is no astronomical event recorded for the 14th year of Nabopolassar which is the evidenced date for the Fall of Nineveh. But there is an astronomical event dated to the accession year of Nabopolassar in 626 BCE. That fact alone can tell us that Nineveh fell in 612 BCE. There is a separate astronomical event dated to the 18th year of Nabopolassar in 616. That fact alone can tell us that Nineveh fell in 612 BCE. And putting those two independent pieces of evidence together we have double-checked the date. But when the entire string of Neo-Babylonian kings is put in the right order, we also have astronomical observations reported for Neb 14 = 591, Neb 16 = 589, Neb 18 = 587, Neb 25 = 580, Neb 26 = 579, Neb 27 =578, Neb 28 = 577, etc. Each one of those pieces of evidence is ALSO therefore evidence that Nabopolassar 14 = 612, so that even an observation under Nebuchadnezzar becomes evidence that Nineveh fell in 612 BCE. Of course, this also means that, when you put the entire string of Neo-Babylonian kings in order, any evidence that 539 is the correct date for Cyrus conquering Babylon is the same evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's 18th is 587. There is no such thing as choosing one without the other, UNLESS you are willing to discard the evidence from literally THOUSANDS of business documents, and also discard the double-checked, triple-checked, . . . octuple-checked astronomical data. And it would be highly hypocritical, because whatever reason you tried to give for discarding THOUSANDS of piecies of excellent evidence would apply moreso against the much weaker and less attested evidence for Cyrus in 539. The reason for moving that kind of a discussion to another thread is because there will invariably be someone who is so fearful of the actual evidence that they will quickly say that first you have to prove exactly when the 70 years started and ended. Or, first you have to tell me why secular scholars haven't decided on whether it was Nebuchadnezzar's 18th or 19th year when Jerusalem was destroyed. Or, first you have to prove that Russell was really wrong in promoting Zionism. Those types of new goal posts and moving of goal posts can be distracting to someone who is more interested in the strength of the evidence for attaching BCE dates to the Neo-Babylonian chronology.

And, as discussed previously about Gerard Gertoux on the forum, the above link you provided gets into some of those exact details that show how the Neo-Babylonian chronology is "set in stone:" In your link, Gertoux states: The fall of the Assyrian empire, which took place in October 609 BCE after the battle of Harran, is characterized by a quadruple synchronisms, since the year of Assur-uballit II corresponds to year 17 of Nabopolassar to Josiah's year 31 and year 1 of Necho II. According to the biography of Adad-Guppi12, mother of Nabonidus, Nabopolassar reigned 21 years, then Nebuchadnezzar 43 years, Amel-Marduk 2 years, Neriglissar 4 years just before Nabonidus. According to the Hillah's stele there were 54 years between the destruction of the temple of Sin, in Harran, and the beginning of the reign of Nabonidus. According to a Babylonian chronicle (BM 21901) and Adad-Guppi's stele, the temple of Harran was destroyed in the year 16 of Nabopolassar. Dated lunar eclipses are: year 1 and 2 of Merodachbaladan (March 19/20 721 BCE, March 8/9 and September 1/2 720 BCE); year 5 of Nabopolassar (April 21/22 621 BCE); year 2 of !ama#-#uma-ukîn (April 10/11 666 BCE); year 42 of Nebuchadnezzar (March 2/3 562 BCE). A diary (VAT 4956) contains numerous astronomical conjunctions in years 37 and 38 of Nebuchadnezzar dated from astronomy in 568 and 567 BCE. An astronomical journal (BM 38462)17 list some lunar eclipses in the years 1 to 27 of Nebuchadnezzar which are dated from 604 to 578 BCE. I think it was pretty brave of Gerard Gertoux to stand up against the WTS tradition publicly and show just why the accepted, evidenced chronology is so difficult to change and try to discredit.