JW Insider

54 minutes ago, BTK59 said:

What software are you using to make your observations as opposed to the ones used by Hunger, Steele, Etc.?

Over time, I have used 4 different ones that calculate ancient readings. Some are on old broken laptops and I didn't bother to update because it looked like I would have to buy new versions for my current laptop. The only ones I used for Babylonian and Persian readings that I posted here were from Stellarium and The Sky 5 (maybe 6, too). I never paid attention to the ones Hunger and Steele were using. Apparently, they all give the same results within seconds or maybe a minute of each other. But it takes 4 full minutes for the "night sky" to turn even one degree, so they are all giving the same reading.

18 hours ago, Many Miles said:

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

I'm trying to see your perspective here, and it made me go back and look through the threads that I remembered him in pretty well. I was surprised to notice that in the worst-case posts I had recalled, that he wasn't the one who started it. Others were being nasty, and calling him a "fool" before he responded in kind, but he was less apt to watch his vocabulary even if others were escalating. I also noticed that he was adamant that someone should try to respond to his point rather than constantly dodging and weaving and diverting. 

But I recall once seeing him refer to Arauna as foolish in a chronology topic, and either Tom or I let him know he was picking on "sweet old lady." (Sorry if that offends, Arauna.) He responded that it didn't matter how old anyone is, if they is going to spout nonsense with such conviction, then age is no excuse; she is going to hear where she is wrong. 

It's true that it's easier to ignore empathy and emotion in an online discussion if you are just here to defend your [strong] opinions against the [strong] opinions of others. I know a couple of people who are brilliant intellectually, but who are "on the [autism] spectrum" and have that exact trouble in real life, and they are always getting in trouble with others. I counseled one who has problems at work because he does OK with others in a meeting format, and one-on-one, but he writes scathing emails, and raises his voice with co-workers on the phone. I had also noticed that at meetings he did better when he looked at people's faces when disagreeing with them. I told him about this, as a way to help, but he said he grew up with "Asperger's" and would never look at a person's face when he talked to them. 

As a moderator I remember having to warn Alan a couple of times and sent that warning up the flagpole to the admins:

But who's counting? LOL

Unlike others who got warnings (who would dig in their heels and get suspended), AlanF would respond humbly and contritely and explain himself without making excuses.

FYI, I have moved some of the posts about AlanF and the ensuing discussion about errors, behavior, forgiveness, prodigality, etc., over to a new topic: https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/90947-forum-participants-we-have-known/

I believe that, so far, this move only affected some posts by @BTK59, @Many Miles, @TrueTomHarley, and @Srecko Sostar

4 hours ago, BTK59 said:

There seems to be an error trying to access this link. Can you download the PDF?

It's fairly small (164k) so I'll just post it here:

text-observation-mars-steele.pdf

13 minutes ago, BTK59 said:

Who can determine, based on this observation, who utilized an ascension year as opposed to a regnal year? Do you think you are making too many assumptions? 

That would mean that they counted Nabopolassar's years differently from all the other Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian and Persian kings in Ptolemy's writings and in the original Babylonian inscriptions. Anything's possible. But you appear to be more concerned with whether this Nabopolassar was co-reigning with a different Nebuchadnezzar than the one who claimed he was Nabopolassar's son.

I'm only talking about the mistake the writer made in 1969 in presenting the idea that a non-matching eclipse was a better match than a matching eclipse. 

22 hours ago, BTK59 said:

I see no conflict with this observation,

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." 

Sometime today or tomorrow, I will likely move some of the very off-topic posts over to here that are currently in a topic about Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, because they are about people and other unrelated topics.

@xero,

It might have been an innocent set of mistakes after mistakes after mistakes by Furuli, who may have been a bit myopic and started out with extreme confirmation bias, believing that the 588 date MUST be right at all costs for the 37th year. After all, this was the same method the Watchtower (above) had suggested in 1969, so it MUST be true. But it still comes across as a "pious fraud." 

But even more serious, I think, than the potential "pious fraud" unquestionably accepted from Furuli, is the method the Watchtower itself used to hide a very important fact. The hidden fact is directly related to the admission that the tablet contains more PLANETARY observations than LUNAR observations. Why are they just barely mentioned and overlooked?

*** w11 11/1 p. 25 When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part Two ***
In addition to the aforementioned eclipse, there are 13 sets of lunar observations on the tablet and 15 planetary observations. These describe the position of the moon or planets in relation to certain stars or constellations. There are also eight time intervals between the risings and settings of the sun and the moon.
Because of the superior reliability of the lunar positions, researchers have carefully analyzed these 13 sets of lunar positions on VAT 4956.

Really? This last sentence was completely misworded. It should have said the very opposite:

Because lunar positions are more flexible, and more likely to repeat, even coincidentally and sometimes PREDICTABLY from one year to the next and planetary positions often never repeat again for hundreds of years, this would mean that close matches for the planetary observations would therefore be much more important for determining the BCE dates of Nebuchadnezzar's reign.

Instead we see some sleight of hand here about supposedly superior reliability. When it should have said "inferior reliability" or "superior flexibility." 

But here's the kicker. Rolf Furuli ADMITS in his book that the planetary positions can ONLY be a match to 568 BCE. (Not his goal of promoting 588.) In other words, it was always a worthless exercise to try to overcome the lunar data when he already had to admit that the greater number of readings were for the far superior and more reliable planetary data that he could not even attempt to dismiss in any reasonable way.

@xero, here is the comparison done by Ann O'maly. I got almost exactly the same results running the tests on "Stellarium" and "The Sky." Keep in mind, that the moon pretty much travels across the same path from night to night, so there will ALWAYS be other years when very similar lunar/stellar configurations are seen by coincidence alone. In fact, every 18 years 11 days 8 hours the moon will repeat an eclipse, very often with an additional eclipse usually visible 5 or 6 months from that 18 year cycle.

You are always going to get SOME very similar readings in ANY two years that are compared.

The paper is much longer but it is well summarized with the chart I copied there and here:

37 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Errors are all people watch today, inside or outside of religion. Nobody stands in the face of such treatment.

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. 

2 hours ago, xero said:

@JW InsiderHave you fact-checked this remark?
"While not all of these sets of lunar positions match the year 568/567 B.C.E., all 13 sets match calculated positions for 20 years earlier, for the year 588/587 B.C.E."

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.

4 minutes ago, BTK59 said:

We find ourselves trapped in a repetitive loop, discussing the same information without making any progress. It's time to shift the paradigm. Ten years of misinformation is more than sufficient.

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.) 

6 minutes ago, BTK59 said:

Hence, the current representation of 587 BC continues to lack significance.

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, . . .
 

On 2/26/2024 at 10:17 AM, Arauna said:

The Insight book also claims that the eclipses are NOT a good way to determine dates and goes on to demonstrate the flaws

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).

On 2/26/2024 at 10:17 AM, Arauna said:

Insight book quote: "The date of 539 B.C.E. for the fall of Babylon can be arrived at not only by Ptolemy’s canon but by other sources as well. The historian Diodorus, as well as Africanus and Eusebius, shows that Cyrus’ first year as king of Persia corresponded to Olympiad 55, year 1 (560/559 B.C.E.), while Cyrus’ last year is placed at Olympiad 62, year 2 (531/530 B.C.E.). Cuneiform tablets give Cyrus a rule of nine years over Babylon, which would therefore substantiate the year 539 as the date of his conquest of Babylon.—Handbook of Biblical Chronology, by Jack Finegan, 1964, pp. 112, 168-170; Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C.–A.D. 75, p. 14; see comments above under “Babylonian Chronology,” 

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:

-------------------

Quote

From <https://topostext.org/work/530#B549>

§ B572  52nd Olympiad; After Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, had died, Evilmerodach received power, to whom succeeded his brother Belshazzar, in whose reign Daniel interpreted the writing that had appeared on the wall, signifying that the power of the Chaldaeans would pass to the Medes and Persians. [572 BCE]

Event Date: -572 LA

[evidence says 562 not 572]

Quote

B549  The whole period of the captivity of the Jews is reckoned as 70 years, which according to some are counted from the third year of Joachim to the 20th year of Cyrus king of the Persians.

Further, according to others, (this number of years is counted) from year 13 of Josiah king of the Judaeans, in whose reign Jeremiah began to prophesy, until the first year of the aforementioned king Cyrus. In fact the 70 years of the desolation of the temple are completed in the time of Darius the king.

From <https://topostext.org/people/179>

[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,

Quote

B586  An eclipse of the sun happened, as Thales had said beforehand would happen. [586 BCE] From <https://topostext.org/work/530#B549>

Quote

§ B590  The first year of the captivity of Jerusalem.

The people of Judah are captured.

Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Chaldeans, after Jerusalem had been captured, burned down the temple, which from the start of its construction had stood for 442 years.

Indeed, Clement agrees with our opinion in the first book of the Stromateis, asserting that the Captivity of the Jews took place in the 47th Olympiad, while Vaphres was reigning in Egypt, and Phenippus in Athens; and by calculation, 70 years from the destruction of the Temple until the second year of Darius.

When Jerusalem had been captured, the remnant of the Jews fled from the Assyrians over to Vaphres, the king of Egypt. Even the Prophet Jeremiah makes mention of this Vaphres.

Of the captivity of the Hebrews and the destruction of the Temple that was in Jerusalem, 70 years. [590 BCE]

Event Date: -590 LA

Quote

§ B605  In Babylon Daniel, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael are considered important. [605 BCE]

Event Date: -605 LA

From <https://topostext.org/work/530#B549>

[This is accurately counted from the first year of Nebuchadnezzar as stated in Daniel 1:1]

Quote

§ B608  43rd Olympiad After whom Psammuthes the second, also called Psammetichus, for 12 years.

Cyaxares the Mede overthrew the city of Nineveh. [608 BCE]

[off only by about 4 years, since Nineveh evidently fell in 612 BCE]

Quote

§ B608  43rd Olympiad After whom Psammuthes the second, also called Psammetichus, for 12 years.

§ B645  After whom, 18th, Josiah the Just for 32 years. [645 BCE]

Event Date: -645 LA

[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:

Quote

 

St. Jerome, Chronicon	§B523  the 70th. However the end of the captivity of the Jews, and the permission to rebuild the temple began under	-523
Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities	§11.3.1  this time Zorobabel, who had been made governor of the Jews that had been in captivity, came to Darius, from Jerusalem;	-522

 

--------------

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.

9 hours ago, Pudgy said:

I often wonder about that scarred, empty contoured glass Coca~Cola bottle

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.

25 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

He held himself to that standard too. In his mind if you taught but failed to stand up and defend what you taught, you were a coward and he'd say so in just that many words.

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.)

43 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

@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.

1. 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).

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.

1. 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.  

On 2/26/2024 at 5:57 AM, xero said:

What are these two?

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.

Just now, Arauna said:

That is the controversy. Don't you see it? 

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. 

3 hours ago, Arauna said:

I challenge you all to go and read any historical book about Cyrus the Great.  You will find that the year of his death is without a doubt set at 530BCE.... 

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. 

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

The Greeks figured time by means of four-year periods called Olympiads, starting from the first Olympiad, calculated as beginning in 776 B.C.E.

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.