SECULAR EVIDENCE and NEO-BABYLONIAN CHRONOLOGY (Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, etc.)

[scholar JW]

Alan F

10 minutes ago, AlanF said:

No evidence presented -- no further evidence needed to dismiss.

the evidence is  there but it is in the interpretation of that evidence and the fact of the 70 years disproves your nonsense.

scholar JW

[scholar JW]

Alan F

2 minutes ago, AlanF said:

No evidence presented -- no further evidence needed to dismiss

 

1 minute ago, scholar JW said:

The evidence is  there but it is in the interpretation of that evidence and the fact of the 70 years disproves your nonsense.

scholar JW

[scholar JW]

Alan F

17 hours ago, AlanF said:

Of course we do. I certainly have the professional capacity, demonstrated by a degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT, a Masters Degree in the same from Oregon State University, by straight A's in a pile of graduate courses in mathematical physics, classical physics, quantum mechanics, etc. Plus a highly successful 33-year career designing all manner of microchips for prominent electronics companies, which also entailed a good deal of scientific computer programming. And I have thousands of pages of often highly technical written material available on my website https://critiquesonthewatchtower.org/ . And again, of course, Ann O'Maly's excellent papers speak for themselves, as does pretty much everything written here by JW Insider. And then we have the many excellent websites that thoroughly debunk all of Watchtower chronology, such as https://jeffro77.wordpress.com/ , https://ad1914.com/ , https://ad1914.com/biblical-evidence-against-watchtower-society-chronology/ , https://jwfacts.com/ and a host of others.

But you have no training in Semitic languages, or being able to translate the Akkadian language of the cuneiform clay tablets. Further, with all of your brilliance you have been unable to debunk or refute WT chronology and nome of the material posted on such websites fails to properly account for the 70 years.

17 hours ago, AlanF said:

Correction: Woe is you! You're demonstrably not competent to comment on anything in this thread, since you're incapable of reading, understanding and analyzing the Bible, or quoting it, or properly understanding or summarizing academic papers or any other scholarly material.

Is it so sad that the said scholar is such a dummy yet for the last 20 years or so you have continued to dialoque with me which perhaps proves that scholar is a burr in your saddle.

scholar JW

[scholar JW]

Alan F

Seeing that you have boasted how smart you are and have written a contrived paper on the 538/537 BCE debate could you answer the following question:

Would you give the precise date for the beginning and ending of Cyrus' first full regnal year expressed in terms of the Babylonian/Jewish Calendar and in both the Julian, Gregorian calendars?

scholar JW

[JW Insider]

There are several more evidences that the above timeline is correct, although they cover shorter segments of the timeline. I have read scholarly papers concerning nearly 20 additional "smaller" pieces of evidence that would also help to establish that the relative positioning of each king in the timeline is exactly as shown above. The main point is that there are no pieces of evidence that would force any adjustments to the timeline. Every new piece of evidence discovered helps to "cement" this timeline. No new secular evidence, so far, would give us reason to doubt the accuracy.

So we should be ready to look for "witnesses" that could help us connect this relative timeline to our own BCE/CE era. By now, most everyone agrees that this can be accomplished due to the exactness and regularity of cycles and intervals with respect to the sun, moon, planets and stars. This is alluded to in Genesis:

(Genesis 1:14-16) . . .Then God said: “Let there be luminaries [lights] in the expanse of the heavens to make a division between the day and the night, and they will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. 15 . . .  the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars.

If we can find any one witness to any one year on the timeline, then it should be clear that this is the same as putting a date on all the other years in the timeline. Identifying the 9th year of Nabonidus, for example, is exactly the same as identifying his 8th year, his 7th year, etc.

So here's the first potential witness to synchronize the BCE/CE era to the timeline:

There are more than a dozen texts in this era that list eclipses, and a few of these list the types of eclipses that are predicted to repeat every 223 lunar months (18-plus years, saros cycles). The only way this predictability could ever be discovered is if someone in Babylon was keeping and passing down an accurate calendar. And the king list was the simplest form of this year-by-year calendar. Some of these "saros" cycle texts tracked such 18-year repetitions over a few centuries at a time.

Let's start with the tablet that A.J.Sachs numbered LBAT 1419.

It covers about 162 years worth of eclipses at 18 year intervals. They start even before the N-B period. By the way, if there are 10 "saros" cycle eclipses on a tablet, you know it means it is covering about a 162 year period, even if you haven't yet figured out which BCE dates the eclipses belong to. [2 eclipses = 1*18=18 years, 3 = 2*18=36 years, 4 = 3*18 =42 years, ... 10 = 9*18=162].

The first two clearly legible eclipses recorded on the tablet are, as expected, 18 years and 11 days apart. 

• 14th [year] Nebuchadrezzar, month 6, [eclipse] which was passed by [=would not be observable] at sunrise
• 32nd [year] Nebuchadrezzar, month 6, [eclipse] which was passed by [=would not be observable]. At 35° [2 hrs, 20 min] before sunset.

So they knew from even older accurate calendars that these two eclipses would be happening in this series, but they also could predict that they would not be observable as they happened (due to bright daytime sunlight). Can we find two eclipses using astronomy programs that would ONLY fit those two descriptions? We would have to find a predictable eclipse starting at sunrise on about the 14th day of Ulul (month 6: Aug/Sep), and then another one that started 2 hours and 20 minutes before sunset on the 14th day of Ulul (month 6: Aug/Sep), 18 years later. We could go looking for this particular pattern in an astronomy program. This is a new computer, so I'll download an astronomy program today and look. Notice that the eclipse before the first one would land about 4 years prior to Nebuchadnezzar's reign (Nabopolassar), and the next one would land well after. Even if we don't know the BCE dates yet, we should find this particular saros cycle to match the following highlighted years:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70	71	72	73	74	75	76	77	78	79	80	81	82	83	84	85	86	87	88	89	90	91	92	93	94	95	96
	N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years)																					N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years)																																											E-M		Nerig- lissar				N A B O N I D U S (17)																	C Y R U S
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	1	2	1	2	3	4	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

It's been a while since I had Sky6 I think it was on any recent laptop, but I'll see what's out there. Hopefully free. And report back when I get a chance.

 

[JW Insider]

It looks like CyberSky5 can calculate back into the past. So I just downloaded it.

• Found out about it here: http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-software.html
• Got it here: http://www.cybersky.com/index.htm

I've never used any version of it before today. It's a 30-day free trial and it says the free trial only has 10,000 sky objects instead of 30,000 in the full version. But the other functionality is supposed to be there, and the free version puts a watermark on any video or picture you create from the sky images.

So, here goes. It installed on first try but didn't create a desktop icon. To start it I had to search CyberSky in the Windows 10 search box (lower left of a Windows 10 screen).

First thing was to set the location to Baghdad, Iraq using Location on the menu bar. Since I'll be going back to this I also set it as my "Home" location and "Site 1" for good measure. It shows the latitude and longitude, so that I could correct this to Babylon, Iraq if I need to.

Here's what it looks like so far:

If you look at the time, you can see that I also set the date to 591 BC. On this one you don't have to subtract (add a negative one) to translate "negative" dates to BC. So that simplifies the dates.

Also, by default you can't see below the horizon, but on the Map menu, you can just select "Look Below Horizon." (The Babylonians could predict or calculate an assumed but unobservable event whether it be movement of stars and planets in the daytime, or an event that was invisible because it was below the horizon.) This gives us a way to check out if their calculations were really correct. 

The last thing to do for eclipses is to click a little button on the toolbar. There's a menu item for it too I'm sure, but this is easy. It's the little gray circle with a lighter gray circle around it. In the picture above, it's right there just above the X at the top left corner of the dark blue sky. It's the button that will show where the earth is casting a shadow. It will show where that shadow would be, even if the moon isn't there to "catch" it. So it's useful to test lunar eclipses, or see how closely the sun, earth and moon happened to align, even if they didn't quite make a visible eclipse.

So now the only thing to do is "drag" the sky and horizon around so that you can look in a certain direction along the horizon. Drag it until you are looking West and you can click the hours until the sun sets. Drag it up and down so that you are either looking straight up to stars above you, or left and right to find the moon. You can also play with the "Field of View" to see more or less of the sky at once. I'll drag mine to see if I can show a few sky objects at once.

I clipped just a small part of the sky picture, and I set this for September 15, 591 BC at 6:29 in the morning, just a couple "degrees" after sunrise. The Sun, as expected is just above the East point on the horizon. Venus must have been quite visible as the "morning star" an hour ago, because I see it just below the Sun, and it's just drifted below the horizon.

But as I look to the West, the Moon is just below the horizon, too. And that little "double image" gray circle above the moon is there because I set the "Earth Shadow" button to show it. And it is overlapping with the moon, therefore this shadow would be creating a eclipse, but not visible, unless you lived farther to the West (below the horizon), or if there had been a huge tall mountain to climb up on as an observatory, and therefore could see further over the horizon than others. An airplane at 35,000 feet over Baghdad might work too. (Babylon is about 55 mi South of Baghdad, but if it had been West of Baghdad, this would be a very good reason to reset our location more accurately.)

Just for fun, and to get used to the program, you can click the time button to move forward or backward one second at a time, or one minute, or one hour, or day, month, year etc. This gives you a time-lapse animation of the sky and as you go exactly one day at a time you can get a sense of how fast or slow each of the different planets move against the backdrop of the stars. If you move one month at a time, you'd see these planets appear to move much faster and notice some other phenomena about where certain objects rise/set along the horizon.

Since eclipses only happen at about the time of a full moon you can also just move from full moon to full moon, before searching if there is an eclipse that month. Do this 233 times and you have just gone through 233 lunar months (18 years) to get to the next position in that particular saros cycle. I haven't seen where this program allows a quick jump from one lunar eclipse to the next lunar eclipse, which was available in Sky6.  

And, by the way, there is a misconception implied by some already that the Saros cycles means you will see the exact same lunar configuration to match the one that was seen 18 years and 11 days earlier or later. This is not really possible. We can already see the two readings for Nebuchadnezzar has one of them beginning at sunrise and one of them closer to sunset. They continue to drift a bit from the previous positions 18 years earlier.

Just to get an idea of what I'll be doing, I'm moving the time along one lunar month at a time to see if I can find every possible lunar eclipse calculated around sunrise. When I find one I will jump 18 years and see if the next lunar eclipse is about 2 hours 20 minutes before sunset, plus or minus an hour or so just to be safe. This way we can reject some eclipses as not in this particular saros cycle. But we might also be able to identify the right years BCE, if there is only one set of years that fits.

Moving one lunar month forward (about 29.5 days, I will check the position 28, 29, 30 and 31 days later to be safe and give every chance for other years to become candidates. Just for fun, here is the one I checked for the next lunar month.

This is just a couple minutes after sunrise, and this is the day where the moon is closest to seeing earth's shadow, 29 days later, the days on either side of this show the shadow drifting even further.

So, who knows what I'll find? As easy as this is, everyone should get involved. It's free! And we can all help correct one another if we are making a mistake or wrong assumption!

 

 

[AlanF]

2 hours ago, scholar JW said:

Alan F

the evidence is  there but it is in the interpretation of that evidence and the fact of the 70 years disproves your nonsense.

scholar JW

No evidence presented -- no further evidence needed to dismiss.

[AlanF]

2 hours ago, scholar JW said:

Alan F

But you have no training in Semitic languages, or being able to translate the Akkadian language of the cuneiform clay tablets. Further, with all of your brilliance you have been unable to debunk or refute WT chronology and nome of the material posted on such websites fails to properly account for the 70 years.

Is it so sad that the said scholar is such a dummy yet for the last 20 years or so you have continued to dialoque with me which perhaps proves that scholar is a burr in your saddle.

scholar JW

No evidence presented -- no further evidence needed to dismiss.

[AlanF]

1 hour ago, scholar JW said:

Alan F

Seeing that you have boasted how smart you are and have written a contrived paper on the 538/537 BCE debate could you answer the following question:

Would you give the precise date for the beginning and ending of Cyrus' first full regnal year expressed in terms of the Babylonian/Jewish Calendar and in both the Julian, Gregorian calendars?

scholar JW

Already done in the Julian calendar. Conversion to the Gregorian calendar is easily found with a search engine.

[scholar JW]

Alan F

You cannot answer this question or you refuse to answer the question!

scholar JW

[scholar JW]

JW Insider

Now you will be able to check Furuli's use of the data for the years 588/587 and 568/567. Further, Furuli used the The Sky 6 and Sky Map Lite 2005 so Why not check those programs?

scholar JW

[JW Insider]

37 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

The Sky 6 and Sky Map Lite 2005 so Why not check those programs?

The differences in calculations on any two astro programs on older computers were already only very slight when I tried this again a few years ago. But there is so much good data now that I think all the programs that claim to calculate BC already use adjustments that give you the same results even if based on different mathematical adjustment methods to determine the positions. Accuracy is hardly an issue any more on any astro programs claiming to do BC dates, so I don't think you have to be so picky.

However, I already checked Furuli's calculations in Sky6 on another computer that still works (but with difficulty). In fact, that was the very purpose of getting Sky6.  That old Sky6 computer of mine overheats dangerously and many keys don't work. So to get in it I have to type various Alt+nnn codes just to type the password characters. That's to start it and every time it hibernates, too. But don't worry, I still have my notes. So I can check how close this CyberSky5 gets to Furuli's and/or Sky6 readings.

I had not done this exercise for lunar eclipses before, and it would be a little easier in Sky6 because it's better at jumping from celestial event to the next/same type of event. Not so important here though, because I'm looking at a range of dates  on each side of the lunar month to see if the configuration is drifting towards an eclipse or from. This way you have a sense of the possibility of an eclipse even if the software calculations might be slightly off. But I can see already that this is not a worry.

By the way, I have been testing dates where the possibility of an eclipse is completely impossible and have several years already marked off as impossible candidates. You probably already know that the best candidates are September 15, 591 BCE at sunrise, and the one below for September 25, 573 BCE at sunset. I was a bit confused for a few seconds because when I got to the correct "full moon" I first checked it with the time set to about 5 pm on that date. And I saw absolutely no eclipse even though it is a perfect saros cycle distant from the other one. I got this:

So I moved it another hour closer to sunset, and voila! there was the eclipse. Turned out that it was a perfect full eclipse, at 5pm, but invisible below the horizon, and the shadow symbol had overlapped so perfectly with the moon that they seemed like one circle.

So far, no other candidates to date come anywhere close, and this one happens to work exactly with the times given in the LBAT tablet. But I'll keep looking at ALL the other possibilities, even though I had to program a macro runner called tinytask.exe (also free) to repeat all the necessary keystrokes for me. Otherwise I'd be typing 100 keystrokes just to completely check each possibility.