JW Insider

For anyone interested in the entire Neo-Babylonian chronology and the support from tablets, the following site looks to be fairly comprehensive. Just looking at one page here might help demolish the misconception that VAT 4956 is somehow important, and that somehow finding errors on it hurts the accepted chronology: Here's the primary page I am referring to: https://www.jhalsey.com/jerusalem-book/standard/timeline.html available as a pdf, too: For those afraid to look, I will provide some snippets:

Of course they do provide such evidence that discredits the Watchtower's claims concerning these dates. Why do you think the Watchtower Society is the biggest opposer of all Neo-Babylonian tablets? Why do you think every article about them is written to sow seeds of doubt? You can interpret it however you like. Or you can throw the whole thing out. It changes nothing. It's just another line of independent evidence that helps people put a BCE date on all the years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign. But it's hardly the only one. In another post I'll provide the list that "J Halsey" added to the Internet. I don't know who he is and I never saw this until today. It seems fairly complete. I have never heard anyone use 18 year cycles or 19 year cycles to validate any related conjectures. But if you are saying that if we follow that pattern it intersects with 607/6, then it sounds like you might be saying that you are the example of the lengths some people are eager to go to since you are the one claiming that these patterns intersect with 607/6 BC. I do agree that it's a stretch though, because NONE of these patterns have anything to do with 607/6 BC or 587/6 or 568/7 or 588/7.

True. As long as you believe in 1914, it doesn't matter whether you know how it was calculated. *** w86 4/1 p. 31 Questions From Readers *** Obviously, a basis for approved fellowship with Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot rest merely on a belief in God, in the Bible, in Jesus Christ, and so forth. . . . Approved association with Jehovah’s Witnesses requires accepting the entire range of the true teachings of the Bible, including those Scriptural beliefs that are unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses. What do such beliefs include? . . . That 1914 marked the end of the Gentile Times and the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the heavens, as well as the time for Christ’s foretold presence. (Luke 21:7-24; Revelation 11:15–12:10) Technically, I have no problem with the approved association requirement, because it says it only includes "those Scriptural beliefs that are unique to Jehovah's Witnesses." The list included more than just the 1914 doctrine, and one of those other items in the list is already partly obsolete; it included a phrase that is no longer considered Scriptural. I highlighted Revelation 11 because this is the very chapter that associates only 1260, not 2520, with the Gentile Times.

I expect that this is true of 99% of all Witnesses. Certainly any that I speak with in the congregation would advocate for 607 BC, but the topic hardly comes up any more, and I'm certainly not going to bring it up. It's barely been mentioned in the publications since 2018, although it's been added to the extra material in the new NWT (simplified). The Witnesses who no longer believe the Barbour/Russell version of 607 (606) are the ones who discuss the evidence in private email groups and closed forums. Not much danger of anyone changing their mind on a forum like this one. Yes. I think that's about right. I think a lot of Witnesses believe that it's simply a matter of trusting the old Barbour/Russell 2,520, and they don't even give a thought to the fact that our doctrines have completely divorced it from the 1,260. Yet, several years ago, the very last mention of the 1,260 in the Watchtower was with the very verse in Revelation 11 that ties the 1,260 directly to the Gentile Times of Luke 21:24, and yet the Watchtower doesn't even mention that fact, only that the 1,260 "Gentile Times' number, should be measured in "days" (from December 1914 to early 1919) as opposed to the 2,520 which gets measured in years from 607 BCE to 1914 CE. I think it's a shame that so many of us actually believe it's a "Bible calculation." That's the power of indoctrination and tradition.

Thank you for mentioning the MUL.APIN. This is what I was referring to when I said the following to @xero, and highlighted "the Babylonian's own explanation in their own documents." It's interesting, too, how many constellations have kept similar star groupings and even similar names. I had wondered early on especially, if we really had all the star names mapped correctly between the Babylonian system and our current identification of those same stars. This document provides the support. I never knew much of anything about Egyptian astronomy, but just noticed last night that the Egyptians, too, have writings and inscriptions that document their "mapping" of the stars, constellations, etc. Steele has been involved in several projects related to mapping the Babylonian "fixed" stars, and related papers. I have not looked at this first one, but I was suprised to read in the "blurb" that astronomy texts may go as far back as the Old Babylonian Empire (Hammurapi), not just Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian. JOURNAL ARTICLE Babylonian Astronomy. II. The Thirty-Six Stars B. L. van der Waerden Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1949), pp. 6-26 ...BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMY . II. THE THIRTY-SIX STARS B. L. VAN DER WAERDEN OUR knowledge of Old Babylonian astronomy is rather scanty. The only text which can with certainty be dated as far back as the Hammurapi Dynasty is represented by the Venus tablets of Ammisaduqa, discussed else... And it's more than just the MUL.APIN texts, too, of course: The Cuneiform Uranology Texts: Drawing the Constellations JOURNAL ARTICLE The Cuneiform Uranology Texts: Drawing the Constellations Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Eckart Frahm, Wayne Horowitz, John Steele Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 107, No. 2, The Cuneiform Uranology Texts: Drawing the Constellations (2017), pp. i-iii, v, vii, ix, 1-33, 35-65, 67-69, 71-83, 85-115, 117-119, 121 .../ Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Eckart Frahm, Wayne Horowitz, John Steele. Description: Philadelphia : the American Philosophical Society, [2018] | Series: Transactions series, ISSN 0065-9746 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018015145 | ISBN 9781606180723 Subjects: LCSH: Astronomy , Assyro- Babylonian . | Astronomy...

It's a point I find disconcerting too. Every Witness or ex-Witness that I know of who has ever reported their findings after looking into the actual observations on the Babylonian tablets, is now in one of the following categories: Is still a Witness, but no longer believes that Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year was anywhere close to 607 BCE Or, they are disfellowshipped. Or, potentially both. There seems to have been two exceptions still out there, but one has been equivocating. And the other has had their theory embarrassingly demolished (not by me), and hasn't responded since then that I know about. No one I know who has reported their findings still believes in the 607 doctrine. That might be scary, even for @xero. So, I can think of only a couple solutions: The WTS can forbid anyone from trying to confirm the observations on the tablets themselves. Or, the WTS can address the problem openly and without obfuscation and conjecture. Naturally, I prefer the latter, because I think the first method won't work, and will ultimately backfire. @xero will likely delay his own findings as long as possible and overemphasize the potential for error and the "just don't know for sure" factor.

I haven't read this book, only the preview pages on Google Books, and a review on an academic site, and the very similar information in some of his other works that I downloaded (and only partly read), including: A LATE BABYLONIAN COMPENDIUM OF CALENDRICAL AND STELLAR ASTROLOGY J. M. Steele Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 67 (2015), pp. 187-215 ...LATE BABYLONIAN COMPENDIUM OF CALENDRICAL AND STELLAR ASTROLOGY J. M. Steele (Brown University) Abstract BM 36303+36326, BM 36628+36786+36817+37178+37197, and BM 36988 are three fragments of what was once a large, almost square tablet containing a compendium of astrological texts. The compendium, which dates to some- time after the invention of the... Download Save Studies on Babylonian goal-year astronomy I: a comparison between planetary data in Goal-Year Texts, Almanacs and Normal Star Almanacs J. M. K. Gray, J. M. Steele Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 62, No. 5 (September 2008), pp. 553-600 ...62:553-600 DOI 10.1007/S00407-008-0027-9 Studies on Babylonian goal-year astronomy I: a comparison between planetary data in Goal-Year Texts, Almanacs and Normal Star Almanacs J. M. K. Gray • J. M. Steele Received: 20 May 2008 / Published online: 1 July 2008 © Springer- Verlag 2008 1 Introduction A large body of astronomical... Download Save A Late Babylonian Normal and Ziqpu Star Text N. A. Roughton, J. M. Steele, C. B. F. Walker Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 58, No. 6 (September 2004), pp. 537-572 ...A Late Babylonian Normal and Ziqpu Star Text N. A. Roughton, J. M. Steele , C. B. F. Walker Communicated by A. JONES Introduction The Late Babylonian tablet BM 36609+ is a substantial rejoined fragment of an important and previously unknown compendium of short texts dealing with the use of stars... Download Save ---------------- I find it amazing how it's now becoming more and more possible to understand the Babylonian math and its influence on Greek math including Ptolemy and Hypsicles. This is something I just said above to @xero this morning. At first, a couple years ago, when I read Ann O'maly's paper stating that the Babylonians were actually calculating ecliptic, I thought it was an exaggeration, and figured that the Babylonians were probably were just approximating differences from the same amateur "horizon-based" methods that I personally find to be exact enough for my purposes. The book, unfortunately for your claims, does NOT revise any Neo-Babylonian dates. If anything it makes scholars put even more confidence in Babylonian records because it showed that the Babylonians had been able to manage some of these calculations even though they had to "calculate around" the 23 degree tilt of the earth, and the early use of the Metonic cycle hadn't been standardized yet. Their "manual" use of the 19-year Metonic cycle, didn't likely become standardized for them before 400 BCE. Here is that point I made to xero earlier, that I find just amazing, because we usually give most of the credit to Ptolemy for putting the formulas on top of Babylonian estimations:

Very true. LOL. Besides, I already know the explanation of why you do what you do. You have inadvertently admitted it several times over the last 10+ years. It hasn't changed. I don't need to read COJ's book. I read Furuli's book to draw my own conclusions. I wrote my own critique after checking my own Sky5 screenshots but didn't put it anywhere but in my own notebooks. (Small parts made it to another topic on this forum.) Later I also read COJ's critique, and the critiques from a few others. The order wasn't so important, but I just didn't want to be dependent on COJ. Truth is I don't need VAT 4956. No one does in order to put accurate BCE dates on the Neo-Babylonian chronology or Nebuchadnezzar's reign. All it does is point to the exact same years that a couple dozen other astronomical observations on other tablets already point to. If you threw out or rejected VAT 4956 you'd get the same answer from several other tablets. And for my own purposes I have no reason to worry about what secular BCE date gets applied to any of these Neo-Babylonian reigns, or the Biblical dates in BCE either, for that matter. If the Bible didn't see fit to provide information about the BCE dates, it's clearly not part of what's necessary to keep us fully equipped for every good work. Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's all that important. I've read most of COJ's GTR4 book by now, and don't see much of anything important or new. It's all been done by people before him and after him. It's impressive for an amateur to have been so careful and put it all into words that the rest of us amateurs can easily understand. I like Steele though. He is not so easy to understand, but I am impressed with his math skills and his carefulness, and that he admits clearly what we know and what we don't know. And Steele, like all the others, agrees with COJ, and indicates that Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year must be 568, not 588 BCE. No. Of course not. I only questioned what I deliberately questioned. Not everything you said was wrong. It was the misinformation I specified that was wrong, and a couple other points too trivial to bother with. If this is what you're going to falsely manipulate @JW Insider Twisting my words is a way to manipulate it, but it's a false equivalency when taken out of its proper context. Nope. That's why I would never falsely manipulate it or take it out of context. All I asked you is where he criticized Furuli's assertion on the earth's rotation. [I said: "What was that criticism? Where is it found?"] I suspect you might even be right, that perhaps Furuli tried to make a big deal out of Delta-T and COJ might have recognized that this is pretty meaningless if Furuli needs the same Delta-T calculations for his own theories about 588. If Furuli needed Delta-T to be so far off not to work for 568, then he would need to throw away EVERYTHING in his whole book. You don't need scholarly expertise to address minor errors that those with scholarly expertise already addressed. Besides, he made them easy to understand so that you could see why they were minor when you consider the overall set of points. There may easily be 3 or 4 easily recognized errors on VAT 4956. The WTS Insight book claims that another tablet is helpful and reliable for Cambyses' 7th year, when that tablet apparently has many more known errors on it that scholars have corrected. I'm sure that's true. That was also Stephenson's intention. Steele's intention. Sachs' and Hunger's intention. To make it unreliable you'd have to find more than just a couple of copyist's errors. The various manuscripts of the Bible show us that there have been THOUSANDS of copyists' errors just in the first early centuries in the Bible manuscripts. That doesn't make the Bible unreliable. Most of those errors are minor. Now you're talking!! Steele, of course, agrees exactly with the dates COJ presents for the entire Neo-Babylonian period, including Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year, and Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year, and Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year.

Now looking at -587 (588 BCE) for the other possible choice people have claimed for VAT 4956: I get nothing close in January, or February, but March has a slim possiblity for a Nisannu on March 5 which is no where near the Bull, though. At least it's a new moon. April is still in front of the Bull at the new moon, so that's not the one in the tablet, although April 3rd or especially the 4th looks like a good start for Nisannu. It matches the closest to the spring equinox, too. May 2, has a possibility, but not likely visible until May 3rd, at which point it's actually nearly in the next constellation so calling it "behind the Bull" might be a possibility but doesn't seem likely. May is outside the range for any known start of Nisan, just as the March possibility was also outside the range making April the most likely candidate. April is indeed the candidate shown by P&D. The rest of the months in 588 BCE are too far off and out of the question. So the upshot here is that Nisan 1 started in April 3rd or 4th in 588 BCE, but that doesn't match the tablet. We can still keep checking both dates though, because it's only one reading. We should compare all of them.

I think everyone here is now convinced that this is no more than a big game of obfuscation with you. You responded to absolutely zero of the issues I brought up about the misinformation you provided. Just a lot of false claims from you and then you dodging wildly when they are pointed out. It's almost as if you just made it all up, then took some screenshots of some books to make it look there was some legitimacy to what you claim. It seems like you are willing to make up falsehoods about COJ, in the hopes that someone I defend him against your misinformation so that you can then say, "See, JWI just defended COJ, so now we don't have to look at any of the evidence from Stellarium, or Steele, or Sachs, or Dubberstein that JWI looked at. We're off the hook!!!"

Not to get into this again with you, but VAT 4956 refers to about 30 very specific events. They are astronomical events which the same tablet itself says are tied to the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar. No critics link it to "the Saros cycle of 19 years" because there is no such thing as a Saros cycle of 19 years. If you ever are able to locate such a reference I'd love to see it. The WTS doesn't propose an 18-year-cycle. Nor did they ever mention an intention to propose one. Nor do the publications ever mention "saros" or 18 years in any context about lunar or solar or planetary or astronomical events. Trying to tie overwhelming evidence from person's who have no interest in the Watchtower (Steele, Sachs, Hunger, Ptolemy, Stephenson, Parker, Dubberstein, etc.) to persons who are critics of the Watchtower is just an old trick sometimes called "poisoning the well." It's just another logical fallacy people still fall for to avoid looking at the evidence for themselves. In this case it is the Watchtower that is the opposer of the tablets, plain and simple. But it has become necessary to grasp at almost anything to sow doubt about the tablets What was that criticism? Where is it found? Are you able to explain why scholars praised him for being so thorough? There you go!! Something we can agree on.

I agree. You can easily collect about 5 different translations all from various sites, but they all say the same thing. The sheer number of tablets with the same terms used over and over again, and then translated into Greek, and Latin over the years, and now German and English, etc., and backed up by similar readings in Egyptian documents, and the Babylonian's own explanations in their own documents allows for a pretty good understanding. The snapshots of the skies are the most fun part of this, I hope you will be adding a few. I don't want to just push mine on here in case people think I'm biased, LOL. (Although if you have seen past topics I put here, you will see I have already posted dozens of "Babylonian" screen shots.)

So, with that in mind, here I go checking the first line of the lunar positions from VAT 4956: We know that Nisan is the start of the new year for both Jews and Babylonians, and in fact they both used the same name for the month Nisan/Nisannu (used to be Datsun, lol). So the first question is looking for a start of a new month in a year that might be "NEB 37." People talk about the year 568 BCE [-567] and 588 BCE [-587] as possibilities, so rather than check every year, I'll see what I can see for those two years, first and then might start checking other years if these don't seem right. So, to an amateur like me, I might not know if Nissanu 1st is in January, February or any month all the way to December. I'll check them all, because all I have to do here is see in what month the new moon becomes visible behind the Bull constellation. I accept the idea (also found in WTS publications that it was a matter of checking for the first opportunity of the new day to see if the new moon was visible, and since the new day started at sunset, about 5:45 pm, that's the time I will start checking. As I scroll through the days on Stellarium, from near Babylon, Iraq starting -567/1/1 I set the time to sunset and scroll through the days. My first new moon is on 1/23 and the Bull constellation is high in the sky and no moon visible anywhere near it. My second new moon shows up on 2/22, I scroll through the minutes to watch the sun go down and the sky get dark, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm and I see that the new moon is so close to the sun that the moon sets when the sun sets and there's no way it would be visible anyway. Besides it is in the "Swallow" constellation, still not near the Bull. Even the next day 2/23 when the moon sliver is slightly more visible and far enough behind the sun to be seen around 6:30pm, it's still in the "Swallow" not near the "Bull". The 3rd new moon I check happens on 3/23, but it's right there with the sun and sets with the sun just after 6pm. But it is getting a bit closer the Bull of Heaven, although still in front of it not behind it. Perhaps it waxes big enough on the next day so that the new month would be considered to have started on 3/24. The moon is still fairly young, meaning only a sliver is showing, and it is still ready to disappear with the sun shining in those few minutes after the sun sets. I'm not sure if it was visible or not. Even if it were, this can't be the month on the tablet because it's still too far in front of the Bull, not behind it. Still on the potential reading for March 24 to be the correct month to start Nisannu the 1st. So I've checked out the same situation from my house when the moon is new and 2.7 days old and the moon is still visible for at least an hour after the sun sets. The new month has definitely started by now, and for all I know a good astronomer might have been able to see it yesterday when it was 1.7 days old, but it was still neither behind the Bull or in front of it. This time it was right there in the middle of the Bull constellation. see the "mp4" I attached below So on to the next month. The fourth new moon attempted is on 4/22. We must be close. Because this time, the moon almost sets with the sun meaning it was likely impossible to see the nearly non-existent sliver of the new moon, but it would have been behind the Bull, at least. So if there is good visibility "tomorrow" on 4/23, then I expect it to be the best day. Sure enough, the Bull sets with the sun, so no astronomer could see those stars in the light, but they still knew exactly where it was as the sliver of the moon appears just behind it between the Bull and the next constellation that it is still in front of. I choose 4/23 so far as the best candidate so far, so I decide to "cheat" and see if this is the perhaps the same date that the "experts" picked. https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc24.pdf On page 26, P&D picked the same date I picked for the Nisannu the 1st. 4/23. (His dates are in BCE. and that first date 4/23 is the first month of the new year. Just for fun I check the rest of the months, and they get farther and farther off. I also decide to check what day the experts say was the official day starting Addaru (in the previous month). I wasn't sure if it would have been a possible sighting on 3/23 or the definitely visible moon on 3/24. P&D says it was 3/24. Of course P&D has the advantage of knowing where the leap months are based on tablets, and whether any tablets were dated Addaru 30 or if they all ended on Addaru 29. And this tablet itself gives us a mention of Nissanu 1 being the same day as Addaru 30. After seeing the failures of the next months, I notice that P&D never has Nissanu starting before 3/11 or after 4/27, so we are already in a fairly "late" start of spring. I say this because on March 11th, in a few days, we will be in nearly the exact same situation where a new moon appears, but sets so close to the bright sun that we won't likely be able to see it until 3/11 or 3/12. If that's the first of Nisan, then Nisan 14 (and 1+13=14) should be on the 3/11+13 = 3/24. I think that in Judea they wouldn't have been able to detect it until the 12th, but we have more accurate measurements these days and know it was there even if we can't see it for all the sunlight interference. To see the movie (below) from 3/24 568 BCE, you have to make it full screen. The moon is selected so it has the little red rays coming out of it. Trying to show it as a sliver would make it impossible to locate here, so they show it as animating/oscillating from a dot to a white ball and back. moonset-567.mp4

@xero, When I did a comparison of the readings on VAT 4956, I just decided to jump in an accept whatever Rolf Furuli used as a translation, because he knows enough about Akkadian languages to either translate himself, or critique any questionable translations by others who translated it. Surprisingly he accepts the standard translation unquestioningly. So I expect that you are on safe ground if you just start out with the "official" translation that Furuli used. Sachs and Hunger have translated most of the major tablets themselves, and in so doing have also been able to find and correct some assumptions that are necessary when reading damaged and edge-worn tablets. There are plenty of translations of VAT 4956 out there, and found only one where someone with an agenda has tried to manipulate meanings of certain terms through inconsistent translations. It's not likely anyone would start with that one. (Although I tried it once here until someone pointed out some major problems with it.) This translation below is easily accessible and trusted by pretty much everybody: https://www.lavia.org/english/Archivo/VAT4956en.htm BTW, although the WTS is the only major opposer of the Babylonian documents. There are a couple other opposers I have seen over time. The other major agenda that I have seen interfere with sound reasoning comes from persons who desperately need the "decree by Cyrus" freeing the Jews from Babylon to be the beginning of the 70 weeks of years, i.e., about 490 BCE if ending in 1 CE, or about 457 BCE if ending around 33 CE. It's tough to make VAT 4956 point to a year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar that would make Cyrus' 1st year 457 BCE or thereabouts, but I have conversed with someone who has tried, and he uses the same kinds of adjustments and claims that Rolf Furuli attempted in his second book on the "Oslo Chronology." I think it's more fun to just jump in and start trying to figure it out. I hope it's not a waste of space on this topic, but I'd like to just start out with the first one today, and see if there is anything you find questionable about it.

Reasons: It saw a picture of the cuneiform on the tablets and thought some of the symbols looked like swastikas. Doesn't think Babylonians were a diverse enough lot. And they were slaveholders, too. Confused [Nebu]....KO...[v] ID-19 with Covid-19. [The 19th year of the reign of KO-v-ID]. And that somehow implies that the vaccine might not have worked.

I see a lot of online claims about the Babylonian and Egyptian measurements using fingers, hand, four-fingers, four-fingers+thumb, double-hands, fist, double-fists, forearm, foot, etc., and not all of them are accurate. It looks like the Egyptians had a specific fist-measure, but I don't see anything in the Babylonian documents that define the fist as a measure. I have deferred to Steele, Neugebauer, Sachs/Hunger, Stephenson/Fatoohi, and a few other resources on the standards of measurement in use. If you have access to the full documents below, I found that these ones were useful: Pathways into the Study of Ancient Sciences Isabelle Pingree, John M. Steele, Charles Burnett, DAVID EDWIN PINGREE, Erica Reiner https://www-jstor-org.azp1.lib.harvard.edu/stable/24398230 Angular measurements in Babylonian astronomy L. J. Fatoohi, F. R. Stephenson Archiv für Orientforschung, Bd. 44/45 (1997/1998), pp. 210-214 The History of Ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods O. Neugebauer Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1945), pp. 1-38 https://www-jstor-org.azp1.lib.harvard.edu/stable/542323 Babylonian Mathematics Raymond Clare Archibald Isis, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Dec., 1936), pp. 63-81 A New Look at the Constellation Figures in the Celestial Diagram Author(s): Donald V. Etz Source: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 1997, Vol. 34 (1997), pp. 143-161 Published by: American Research Center in Egypt Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000803 Babylonian Horoscopes Author(s): Francesca Rochberg Source: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1998, New Series, Vol. 88, No. 1 (1998), pp. i-xi+1-164 Published by: American Philosophical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1006632 I thought that the Fatoohi/Stephenson method was the best to determine that a finger remained a consistent 0.092 degrees from 600 BCE to about 50 BCE. And that a cubit measure (as an angle) was consistently 2.2 degrees. Those can give some good working numbers for comparing the measurements on several tablets to Stellarium readings. I was surprised to learn that there are ancient measurement standards "set in stone" for lengths of a cubit, number of fingers in a cubit (24), 'how to draw a human body' templates with proportions (measured in fists, even). Although there were different cubits and measures in different countries, there were also some commonalities between "feet" measures between Egypt and Mesopotamia that could only have meant that one influenced the other for a trade standard. Most of the above papers discuss celestial measurements, and I include them because there is even some speculation that the Babylonians and Egyptians were sometimes measuring with various instruments, not just with hands. By the 500's BCE their influence on Pythagoras was already obvious and accurate enough for some mathematical formulas based on their ancient observations. And I had never actually looked at Ptolemy's writings before this year, and was amazed that his access to and reliance on ancient Babylonian astronomy documents allowed him to go into such accurate mathematical detail. (I linked to Ptolemy's Almagest in an earlier post.)

We can use the "new moon" -- the transition between waning and waxing -- to not only find the beginning of the new month, but also the beginning of the new year. The new year was the month starting the first day of Nisannu, just like the Hebrew "sacred" new year was started on the first day of Nisan. The new year started Nisannu the 1st, and the month Nisannu was the month that started closest to the spring equinox. Therefore the first full moon after the spring equinox should always be within a day of Nisan 14. That's because there are 29.5 days in a lunar month, so months typically alternated between 29 and 30 days for an average of 29.5. The middle of a 29-day month could land closer to the 14th, and the middle of a 30-day month could land closer to the 15th. Also, it depended on whether there was a delay in actually seeing the new moon sliver which could easily delay by a day. Note the Watchtower's comment on Nisan 14 here: *** w76 2/1 p. 73 “Keep Doing This in Remembrance of Me” *** According to our present method of calculation, the Memorial date approximates the nearest full moon after the spring equinox. For example, in 1975 the Memorial date, as calculated fourteen days from the new moon (nearest the spring equinox) visible in Jerusalem, was Thursday, March 27, after sundown. Appropriately, there was also a full moon on Thursday, March 27, 1975. The date for Memorial in 1976, calculated by our present method, falls on Wednesday, April 14, after sundown. The full moon also occurs on this same date. So if, in the future, any of Jehovah’s people should be out of touch with the governing body, they could determine the Memorial date with fair accuracy from local calendars that show the first full moon after the spring equinox. The celebration would then take place after sundown of the day on which the full moon occurs. So a fun experiment is to see if you can use just observation in the software program to find the date of the new year. You can probably find Nisannu just by looking for the exact time the phase changes from waning to waxing (the new sliver) and find the one closest to the Spring Equinox. That always puts the first full moon after the spring equinox in March or April, and very rarely, early in May. If you scroll through the dates, you find the first new moon is on January 23, -567. The next one is on February 22nd. Still too early. The next one is on March 23rd. A good candidate. And the next one is on April 23rd. Also a good candidate. And we have to know something about Babylonian observations to figure out which one of those last two is the best candidate. But we can take a good guess and see if it matches the scholars later. After guessing, we can check it against page 26 of Parker and Dubberstein: https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc24.pdf P & D had the advantage of checking hundreds of dated clay tablets to be able to know which years had the leap month, and that produced a much more sure version of the Babylonian calendar. What Stellarium will let you do is see how much the sun's glare might have interfered with the ability to see a new moon sliver. If it couldn't be seen, the month started the next day. Also, they new it was due if the previous month had 30 days. But some months would have only 29 which would pretty much mean the next month should have 30.

One more important thing is to click on the Moon (also called SIN in this Sky Culture, because the Moon god was named SIN). You will be able to see one of the lines of information showing the phase of the moon which will be very important. At this time on January 1st, the phase is: "Moon Age: 8.1 days old (Waxing Gibbous)" That means that at 7pm, when I took this screenshot, it was now 8.1 days since the new moon sliver began, and the sliver was "waxing" or growing bigger (prior to the full moon). After the full moon the phase becomes "Waning Gibbous," getting smaller again until the moon disappears and starts a new sliver (new moon) for a new month.

@xero, i don't know how far along you are but Stellarium is a great tool for this, and I see you are using the Mul.Apin Sky Culture. It saves time from having to keep track of the Babylonian star names yourself. I suspect there will be some others here who might try the Stellarium software, too. If so, they should know that it's good to get more than use the online web version. It's great, but the desktop version gives you everything you need. It's free. Although you are allowed to donate. You can download and install the latest version 23.3 or 23.4 from here: https://stellarium.org/release/2023/09/25/stellarium-23.3.html Once installed, you will want to change the location to somewhere near Babylon. The city @xero picked is below: Once you install it, you can hover your mouse over the bottom left edge of the screen and select the icon just under the clock: "Sky and Viewing Options [F4]" Then select "Sky Culture" from the top of that newly opened window, and pick Babylonian -- MUL.APIN: Now when you close that window, pick the clock icon you saw earlier. Start with any BCE date you like, but I think most people will try either 588 BCE or 568 BCE if the first thing they want to check is VAT 4956: Along the bottom of the screen, if you hover the mouse over the bottom left edge of the screen you will see some other options: The first two highlighted ones will toggle the borders of the constellations on, which is helpful. The second one toggles the names on and off. But you will also probably want to experiment with the imagery and the horizon/landscape settings which you can make disappear or make almost transparent. You can also use the arrow keys and Page Up and Page Down to zoom in and out and turn the orientation so that you are facing due West which is my favorite place to start. The last thing to do after orienting your screen is to go back to that Clock icon and set the year, month, day, and time. If you want to check 568 BCE first, then type the following into the date and time boxes. For purposes of VAT 4956 I would start on January 1, 568 BCE. In astronomy dates 568 BCE is written as -567, due to the zero year issue. So that's actually written as -567:01:01 -- 00:00:01. You don't have to spin it all the way back; you can type numbers into the fields. Here I will set it for 4:45 in the afternoon. 16:45 (4:45pm) is pretty close to sundown on January 1, but you can "spin" the dial forward to just after sundown so that you can actually see the visible stars: If you make it even later after sundown, the glow of the sun is gone, and you can see more constellations fall below the horizon. Just for fun I have also toggled the ecliptic lines which might come in handy for later: That's pretty much the set-up although there's a ton of other things to play with.

It might be good to read at least the first page of this work: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41670130 You won't need a log-in to JSTOR for it, because it's all on the preview page. Basically, the point is that a "cubit" is indeed a unit of angular measure, but the paper uses a more stringent method of measuring it accurately by looking at the 200 or so planetary references in Babylonian documents, since planets move slower than the moon and some planets were only visible for a short period of time, and therefore we can know the time window of the observation more accurately. Basically, as you can see in the summary of the document, the cubit had been considered to be about 2 degrees, and a finger would be 1/24th of a cubit. The paper will more accurately offer evidence of 2.2 degrees per cubit, a difference of only 10%. Also, on the question of what is in front of or behind, the following will likely make the most sense to you after you have looked at enough observations and compared them with your Stellarium screen (or any other software that does this).a Even though it's easier to envision the horizon rather than the ecliptic, it still generally works out that words Babylonians used in their "astronomy" mapped as follows: North=Above, South=Below, East=Behind, West=In Front. For the parts of the sky closest to the horizon, especially towards the west, it therefore works out like the old "Western" movie cliche, where "the sun sinks slowly into the west." So it's easy to imagine that most of the heavenly objects are sinking in that direction therefore the sun was in front of all the stars that will also "sink" in that general direction. Therefore all the stars along MOST of the sky that are still farther east are behind, heading racing toward the horizon. And they will also be in the same "in front" or "behind" positions when they appear to come up on the eastern horizon the next morning.

-589 [astron.] -- "July 26," 590 B.C.E. 😉

My apologies. But I have removed some more of the "Vicar of Warwick" saga and other posts from xero's Nineveh topic over to here because it's just not close enough to the chronology topic that started there. These posts are not really about forum participants we have known either, but this has already become kind of a catch-all for unnecessary dialogues. @Pudgy @BTK59 @George88 @Srecko Sostar

Always on the attack, aren't you. Always divisive. Always causing contentions. I didn't add the scripture, you did. Turns out that everyone here quotes what people say, even snippets of scripture, or snippets of Watchtower or Insight references. Even you do this: Oh my!! Show me where I ever said these things above that you say I said. I never said them. Should I call you a fraudster because of what you did? Of course not! I hope you see how silly you are sounding. You did the exact same thing when you quoted "me" and showed that I said something I never did. I never said those things. The "Insight" book and "Watchtower" did. But you distorted what I supposedly said by removing the reference pages I gave to "Insight" and to the "Watchtower," and made it look like I said it. All I did is quote from the "Insight" book and all you did is quote from a scripture. However, I apologize for not reminding you that what I was re-quoting the verse from Timothy that you had just quoted. I don't really expect an apology from you for what you did, because I don't want one, it's not a big deal. I recognized what you had quoted from just as I expected you would recognize the scripture you had just quoted from. I will try to be more careful to not follow your own example, and be more careful when requoting scriptures that people might not recognize as scripture.

I think some desperate people are hoping you will get no farther on this. I hope you stick with it without distractions. So I think I will point out the potential distractions in the post above: False. No one in the entire world uses 569 with an 18-year cycle. And the word "opponents" sounds a bit out of place, here. The WTS is the only opponent of the tablets that I have ever heard of. The tablets are most definitely not organized according any 19-year Saros Cycle. First of all there is no such thing as a 19-year Saros Cycle. Obviously not. Although I have a feeling someone would just love to disrupt the observation. It seems you are getting a little too close for comfort, as they say. Maybe trying to figure out what that means is supposed to delay your progress by another week. LOL

As everyone can now see, I didn't make anything up. I simply quoted correctly from what you had just posted a minute or so earlier. I never expected you to admit a mistake. This is a tiny one, but the bigger the mistake the more you dig in your heels and try to project it onto the other person. You should be aware, however, that almost by definition, that a person who is known for projecting their faults and insecurities onto others, ends up revealing a lot more about themselves. No. It had everything to do with my remark. Jesus spoke of the resurrection at the last day, but persons in the first century were believing the times and seasons were in their own jurisdiction and claiming that the resurrection had already occurred, just as you posted. The exact same thing happens with the 1914 doctrine, because we tie that to the claim that the first resurrection has already occurred: *** w07 1/1 p. 28 par. 11 “The First Resurrection”—Now Under Way! *** That would indicate that the first resurrection began sometime between 1914 and 1935. Can we be more precise? I'm hearing an echolalia. You are repeating what I was saying above, except that you are projecting it back as if you have never been able to admit a mistake and must try to make your mistake stick to the person who pointed it out. Please keep in mind how others perceive a person who is bent on projecting their errors onto others. It's almost like confession. Note again that it was the Watchtower that linked the first resurrection to the 1914 chronology. (See above.) I think everyone is aware that subtext of every discussion of Neo-Babylonian chronology is always the 1914 doctrine.