Trying to nail down 612 BCE as the date of Nineveh's destruction

[Pudgy]

 

[BTK59]

@George88

Paired with biblical accounts, the secular evidence offers a compelling visual depiction of the period in question, as demonstrated by the Babylonian Chronicles even though it has a 37-year gap.

Providing the alignment between the bible account and the secular account solidifies the identity of the Nebuchadnezzar being referenced.

 

History and Bible: 1. 607 BC, the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar ll / 2 Kings 24

Bible: 2. The Lord sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against him to destroy Judah.

Bible: Jeremiah 25 Seventy Years of Desolation begins.

Bible: 2. 604 BC First deportation / Daniel 1:1

History and Bible: 2. 598/7 BC, Nebuchadnezzar orders second deportation, and there is a change of Jerusalem Kings, between Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah.

Application: Several tablets can be applied under the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign in 605 BC. Some notable examples include the Astronomical tablets VAT 4956, BM 33006, MB 41222, and HSM 1899.2.112. Additionally, any other tablet that references the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar can be considered if we take into account the stipulated 19/8 years if those tablets were created in 568 BC.

History and Bible: 3. 587/6 BC Nebuchadnezzar orders third deportation. Battles recorded in this year by King Cyaxares against the Lydians and Nebuchadnezzae's general battling the king of Mitsir.

Bible: 2 Kings 25:27 King Jehoiachin is released from prison. Solomon's Temple burned, the siege wall was taken down, King Zedekiah was taken prisoner to Reblah, and his sons were killed. Last of Judah Kings.

History: Reference back from 568 BC using a 19-year cycle for King Jehoiachins release.

605-37=568 / 568+19=587

Bible: 4. 586 BC Nebuchadnezzar, ll, leaves Gedaliah as governor over the remaining Judeans.

Does this look like a good time frame?
 

[Pudgy]

“A billion words” will not change reality, but for 95% of the human race, they can be hypnotized into thinking they are a chicken. 

Real chickens are made of real matter

You can eat a REAL chicken. ( 9 billion in the USA annually).

…. don’t get ‘em mixed up.

 

[Pudgy]

And now to help scrub the glaze off of your eyes …. something completely different! 

Guess which ancient Catholic world leader read this….

John 3:16 - "For God so loved... you know, the thing, that He gave His only... well, anyway."

• Revelation 13:18 - "Let he who hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred... six hundred million billion... six hundred sixty hundred ...sixty billion... hundred million... and... and... six."
• John 1:1 - "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was trunalimunumaprzure"
• Philippians 4:13 - "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. End of quote, repeat the line."
• Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Believe me, I was there. I used to drive an 18-wheeler through the Garden of Eden."
• Matthew 23:23 - "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you dog-faced pony soldiers!"
• Judges 3:21 - "Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. And then he said, 'Listen, fat!'"
• Exodus 3:10 - "So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Mexico."
• Matthew 6:15 - "But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, then you ain't black."
• Matthew 19:14 - "Let the little children come unto me, because, well, I got hairy legs that turned blonde in the sun. And the kids used to come up and reach into the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight and watch the hair come back up again."

Hint: adapted from the Babylon Bee.

[JW Insider]

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Does this look like a good time frame?

It's a mixed bag. 

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

History and Bible: 1. 607 BC, the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar ll / 2 Kings 24

There is absolutely ZERO evidence in the Bible for a 607 BC/BCE date for the destruction of Jerusalem. The Bible refers to exiles taken from Judea and Jerusalem in Nebuchadnezzar's 1st year, 7th year, 18th year and 23rd year. There are no BC/BCE dates in the Bible. There is EXCELLENT evidence from multiple independent sources that tell us that Nebuchadnezzar was NOT even a king until his father died 2 years after 607 BCE, which would be 605 BCE. That was what the Babylonians marked as an "accession year" and it was not counted in their calendar because an accession year had already been named for the king who was still alive on Nisanu 1 of that same year. Therefore we have EXCELLENT evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year was 587 BCE. 

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Bible: 2. The Lord sent Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against him to destroy Judah.

Yes.

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Bible: Jeremiah 25 Seventy Years of Desolation begins.

Jeremiah 25 speaks of Seventy Years for Babylon to bring all the nations around them into servitude. It wouldn't happen all at once for each nation, but over the course of those 70 years, all the nations around them would come into servitude, and suffer destruction if they refused. That 70 years for Babylon would therefore be associated with the desolation and destruction Judea and Jerusalem, too, if they did not fully submit to Babylon's yoke over the course of Babylon's 70 years of greatest power. Jehovah was therefore using those 70 years that he was giving to Babylon's as a means by which Judea and Jerusalem would be punished along with those other nations. It appears that the earliest effect on Judea and Jerusalem itself would be around 605 BCE, about two years AFTER 607 BCE. And their exile would be complete when the king of Persia began to reign over Babylon. That would be 539 BCE. So Judea and Jerusalem ended up suffering desolations, exiles, servitude, and vassalage at the hand of Babylon over a course of MOST of Babylon's 70 years of power.  About 66 of Babylon's 70 years of power, (605 to 539). The first major disaster upon Judea due to the rise and involvement of Babylon was the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 609, with the death of Josiah on the battlefield of Megiddo. Counting from that point gives you EXACTLY 70 years for Babylon's Empire. The Temple itself was desolated for a period of 70 years which were also a direct result of Babylon's 70 years of power. The Temple grounds lay desolate from about 587 to 517. 

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Bible: 2. 604 BC First deportation / Daniel 1:1

Yes. The Bible says that some exiles were taken in the first year of Nebuchadnezzar.

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

History and Bible: 2. 598/7 BC, Nebuchadnezzar orders second deportation, and there is a change of Jerusalem Kings, between Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah.

Yes. This would be Nebuchadnezzar's "7th year" by the way the Babylonians measured, and the way Bible writers often measured, too.

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Application: Several tablets can be applied under the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign in 605 BC. Some notable examples include the Astronomical tablets VAT 4956, BM 33006, MB 41222, and HSM 1899.2.112. Additionally, any other tablet that references the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar can be considered if we take into account the stipulated 19/8 years if those tablets were created in 568 BC.

I can't tell what you are saying. The several tablets that can be applied to his 37th year do not show his 37th year in 605, so I assume you meant that if his 37th year is 568, then you can just go back 37 years to show that his accession year is 605 BCE. The last sentence makes no sense about any stipulated "19/8 years" (?!?) but it is agreed that any tablets created in his 37th year were therefore created in 568 BCE. 

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

History and Bible: 3. 587/6 BC Nebuchadnezzar orders third deportation. Battles recorded in this year by King Cyaxares against the Lydians and Nebuchadnezzae's general battling the king of Mitsir.

No exact evidence for this, but it appears that the source (mostly Herodotus) places the set of conflicts between the Scythians and the Medes leading up to the war between the Medes and Lydians which ended due to "Thales" solar eclipse usually identified as 585 BCE. Cyaxares is said to have died in that battle, therefore in 585 BCE.

There is absolutely NO evidence that Nebuchadnezzar or his general were battling the king of Mitsir (Egypt) during this time. As early as 1879, Thomas Thayer's "Universalist Quarterly" included the fact that Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year was more than TWENTY YEARS LATER. In 568, therefore his 33rd year was 572, and therefore his 18th year was 587. Not his 37th year. 

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Bible: 2 Kings 25:27 King Jehoiachin is released from prison. Solomon's Temple burned, the siege wall was taken down, King Zedekiah was taken prisoner to Reblah, and his sons were killed. Last of Judah Kings.

Yes.

6 hours ago, BTK59 said:

History: Reference back from 568 BC using a 19-year cycle for King Jehoiachins release.

605-37=568 / 568+19=587

There is no such thing as a 19-year cycle here.

The only 19-year cycle remotely connected to ancient history was the discovery that there were almost exactly 235 full or new moons in every period of 19 years and therefore if you were adding just enough "leap" months every two or three years to a typical 12 lunar month year (228 +7=235) you could be almost exactly back on schedule with the solar year of 365 days if you added 7 leap months. 

Since there is no such thing as a 19-year cycle related to this, so it has NOTHING to do with finding the date for Jehoiachin's release. 

The Bible indicates that it would be at the end of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (his death in his 43rd year of reign, 562 BCE) and therefore at the beginning of Evil-Merodach's reign (561 BCE). That would be about the 37th year of Jehoiachin's exile (per Jeremiah 52/2 Kings 25). NOT related in any way to the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar. The math you attempted above is not fuzzy. It is clearly wrong. 

Jehoiachin's exile started in about 598/7 as you say above, so the Bible's mention of his 37th year of exile brings us to about 598-37=561. Perfect alignment with the secular chronology that says Nebuchadnezzar reigned 43 years and was then succeeded by Evil-Merodach. 

 

[JW Insider]

4 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Bible: 4. 586 BC Nebuchadnezzar, ll, leaves Gedaliah as governor over the remaining Judeans.

Sounds about right.

[JW Insider]

10 hours ago, George88 said:

The Watchtower has incorporated numerous scholarly insights, all contradicting the idea of the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, as you are suggesting with those same experts. Your actions continue to perpetuate deception.

So far, the Watchtower has not been able to present even one scholarly insight contradicting the evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year was 587 BCE. And yes, I am suggesting that the experts the Watchtower has quoted from as authorities are ALL correct. If it's "my deception" then it is also the deception of ALL the experts the Watchtower has depended on for scholarly insights. 

10 hours ago, George88 said:

As an advocate for that authority, you are in fact supporting it. So, there's no need to play mind games anymore.

 Your projection about "mind games" is unnecessary. I have never denied that I agree with the experts and authorities the Watchtower has quoted from and referenced for scholarly insights. 

10 hours ago, George88 said:

13 hours ago, JW Insider said:

You cannot determine Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year of reign using the 18-year cycle from 568 BCE. The tablet indicates that his 37th year is 568 BCE. This has nothing to do with any 18-year cycles. If you are referring to records about "Saros cycles" they only help confirm that his 37th year was 568 BCE. Any confirmation that his 37th year is 568 is also confirmation that his 18th year is 587 BCE.

You are the one consistently mentioning the 18 years and 587 BC, not me. This seems to be another intentional attempt to contradict me. Are you not weary of distorting other people's statements?

As you can see above I said you cannot determine Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year using the 18-year cycle from 568 BCE, whatever that means. There is no 18-year cycle involved here. The fact that Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year was 587 BCE is not based on any 18-year cycles, nor is there any 18-year cycle that would take you from his 37th year to his 18th year. 

10 hours ago, George88 said:

Can you please explain why you are deliberately manipulating other people's words by contradicting their statements? Do you see what you are writing?

JWI: You cannot determine Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year of reign using the 18-year cycle

JWI: all three of these scholars believe there is more than sufficient evidence confirming that Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year was 587 BCE.

605-37=568 / 568+18=586 / 568+19=587

Please be consistent in your statements and avoid creating confusion with the data.

You are evidently confusing any mention of Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year with something you are calling an "18-year cycle." When I turned 18 year's old it wasn't based on an 18-year cycle. When I turned 19, it wasn't based on a 19-year cycle. It was simply my 18th year, then my 19th year. No cycles involved. From what I can tell, you like the word "cycles" only because you seem to think it can help you manipulate the simple match I gave you to find a year that's 18 or 19 (or 20) years off from what the simple math actually tells you -- by throwing in an undefined "cycle."

[Srecko Sostar]

A little break for a joke.

A Trump supporter was seated next to an older woman on an airplane and he turned to her and said, “Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”

The old woman, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger: “What would you want to talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the man. “How about how they stole the election in 2020 and Donald Trump should be president.”

“Okay,” she said. “Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?”

The man, visibly surprised by the old woman’s, thinks about it and says, “Hmmm, I have no idea.”

To which the old woman replies, “Do you really feel qualified to discuss politics, when you don’t know shit?”

[JW Insider]

8 hours ago, George88 said:

11 hours ago, JW Insider said:

With the correction that the Babylonian Chronicles do not mention the year 597

Dr. Wiseman's works on the Babylonian Chronicles are fabricated, is that what you're suggesting?

I have harbored that suspicion for a while.

This is a very odd question. It's such a well-known fact that the Babylonian Chronicles do not mention the year 597 BCE. How could they, unless they were prophetic that a new "Christian" era would begin 590-some years later?  They do mention what went on in the accession year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, the first year, the second year, etc,. . . on up to the 11th year when they are broken off and missing from that point through the rest of his reign. This is exactly what I quoted to you from Dr Wiseman. Dr. Wiseman agrees that there are many methods to determine the BCE equivalent of those years, but naturally he would agree with me and everyone else, that the Chronicles themselves on their own do not contain BC/BCE year markings.

8 hours ago, George88 said:

I'm not completely certain, but in the upper left-hand corner you can see B.C., doesn't that indicate BCE?

I can't believe that you might have thought those dates were actually on the Babylonian Chronicles. Those dates are determined from dozens of archaeological references to astronomical events during the Neo-Babylonian empire. They even coincide with Egyptian records, Assyrian records, Persian records, and Greek records.

8 hours ago, George88 said:

Do you perceive a distinction between the terms "Before Christ" and "Before the Common Era"? If so, kindly clarify how these two expressions differ from their literal interpretations.

  They refer to just almost exactly the same thing. In practice they mean the same. I prefer BCE over BC for the same reasons that the Watchtower does.

8 hours ago, George88 said:

You continuously demonstrate your reliance on deceptive tactics. While the answer "NOWHERE" is accurate for 587 BC, it is NOT accurate for the year 598/7 BC. However, until you can provide evidence from those "astronomical tablets" that clearly state how the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar, along with the 18 years you constantly emphasize, establishes the standard for 587 BC, your argument lacks credibility. It is important to consider other factors that could potentially yield the same interpretation using the same data for 587 BC.

It's pretty obvious that you aren't understanding the evidence provided by all the authorities and experts that the Watchtower magazine quotes from. I have already explained how the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar can be associated with his 18th year through simple math. 

The 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar is associated with 568 BCE. There is a tablet for his 37th year with many astronomy observations that can ONLY refer to celestial events in 568 BCE. 

If you can't see that this also associates the prior year, his 36th year with 569 BCE, and his 35th year with 570 BCE, and his 25th year with 580, and his 15th year with 590, and his 18th year with 587 BCE, then I'm pretty sure there is no further use discussing this with you. 

Perhaps one more question for you to try to answer would clear it up.

If you can answer it, then great. We can go on. If you can't or won't answer it, then I see no reason for continuing to discuss the topic with you:

If Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year is 568 BCE, then what BCE year would be his 18th year?

[BTK59]

2 hours ago, George88 said:

If you'd like, I can share some tweaks with you regarding your presentation through instant messaging.

Does this imply that there might be something faulty in my presentation? Sure, let's use IM then. I comprehend the abundance of tomfoolery and the dearth of education occurring here. Won't these owners still see it, even if they call themselves moderators?

Maybe we should consider a different approach since we are in the lions' den, haha!

[Pudgy]

5 hours ago, BTK59 said:

Does this imply that there might be something faulty in my presentation? Sure, let's use IM then. I comprehend the abundance of tomfoolery and the dearth of education occurring here. Won't these owners still see it, even if they call themselves moderators?

Maybe we should consider a different approach since we are in the lions' den, haha!

If you find yourself in a “Lion’s Den”, and you are able to do so, the simplest solution is to go somewhere else.

Like Winston Churchill, I like a man who grins when he fights.

…. don’t much care for whiners.

[JW Insider]

If you're still around @xero, and you reach this post, I think by now you will have seen how "607 vs 587" is played as if it's a game for 607 supporters. Supporters of 607 as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th (or 19th) year must play it as a game of extreme obfuscation. 

I doubt that anyone will attempt to answer any of the questions and challenges that make the outcome appear too simple. Those must be dodged at all costs because they don't lend themselves to obfuscation. 

With that in mind, I'm ready to summarize. But I also wanted to clarify my own position on this whole chronology question. 

My real concern is not the way @George88 or @scholar JW or Rolf Furuli or others defend the 607 doctrine.

I don't even have a big problem with the 607 doctrine itself. I have no trouble explaining that, as Witnesses, we believe the 70 years must have ended shortly after 539/8, therefore the 70 year period must have started around 607, and that even if Jerusalem didn't fall precisely in that year, this was still the time period when Babylon brought about an interruption of the Davidic Messianic Kingdom in Jerusalem, but that Jehovah's purpose was to bring back righteous government with a his own Davidic Messianic King's government that would never be brought to ruin. (Daniel 2:44, Ezekiel 21:27) The lesson, even from Daniel 4, still points to Jehovah's sovereignty and purpose and therefore highlights the most common OT reference in the NT: that Jesus was resurrected to rule at God's right hand, until all enemies are brought under his feet, including the last enemy death through the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21 & 22). 

So it's not difficult to teach the same lesson from all the major verses we currently use, even talking about the generation since the first world war now living at a time when we are all sighing and groaning over the system of things, crying out in these last days for the hope of a new one. 

It's not important to me to claim that 587/586 is the most probable match for the specific year the Temple was destroyed, or the exact date when the last king at Jerusalem was removed, or that there is really no evidence whatsoever for 607. We have every right to believe something, whether there is evidence of it or not. 

But I do have a problem when Witnesses go online and make us look stupid by publicly claiming that the best evidence is for 607 BCE, and it's therefore somehow more Biblical, and 587 is somehow "apostate." Claiming there is evidence for our take on 607 is not only untrue, it makes us look like we are trying to prove we are more intellectual and scholarly than the scholars and experts. Or to presumptuously claim that the times and seasons are not just in Jehovah's jurisdiction but also in ours. 

It's not a matter of having faith like little children, and that Jehovah has hidden something from the wise and intellectual and given it to children. It's the opposite! It's us bragging to the world that we are even more scholarly than the scholars, that we understand intellectual things better. That we are able to judge the evidence and tell you which secular evidence is useful and which secular evidence is not. 

This is highly presumptuous and haughty, and when the WTS tries to explain itself, we find ourselves backed into a corner where we must try to support some flimsy "pretend" evidence, or pseudo-chronology. We end up being academically dishonest and we end up using logical fallacies and obfuscation. But I don't mean blatantly lying. It's a matter of having previously been told and then accepting that this particular belief about 607 is an important part of our faith. To many of us that would mean that we are going against the faith by even looking at other evidence. So it skews our thinking, and we put blinders on. 

I think this goes for Watchtower writers, too. They grasp at straws to look for anything that might throw doubt about the existing reasonable evidence. And it makes us appear unreasonable. Every article in the Watchtower on chronology has done this. I quoted the 1969 article where we claimed that a non-matching eclipse was a better match than a matching eclipse.

Also in the 1969 Watchtower was a reference to the Adad-Guppi inscription, and a bit of academic dishonesty or at least scholastic sloppiness shows up there, too.

The article makes a big deal about how much chronological information was damaged and unreadable from the inscription and that we therefore can't use it to support the Neo-Babylonian chronology. However, at the time this was written there were TWO well-known and well-publicized copies of the same inscription, and the one discovered in 1956 had already been published for more than a decade with the years of reigns of kings from the last Assyrian king to Nabopolassar to Nebuchadnezzar to Evil-Merodach to Neriglissar up to the last king Nabonidus himself. All the numbers were readable and in good condition on that one. But that one is not mentioned here, or in any follow-up apology for having ignored it.

*** w69 2/1 p. 89 Babylonian Chronology—How Reliable? ***
What is thought to be a memorial tablet written either for the mother or the grandmother of Nabonidus, gives some chronological data for this period, but many portions of the text have been damaged, leaving much to the ingenuity and conjecture of historians. The reader can appreciate how fragmentary the text is by ignoring the bracketed material in the following translation of one section of this memorial—material that represents modern attempts at restoring the missing, damaged or illegible portions:.
“[During the time from Ashurbanipal], the king of Assyria, [in] whose [rule] I was born—(to wit): [21 years] under Ashurbanipal, [4 years under Ashur]etillu-ilani, his son, [21 years under Nabopola]ssar, 43 years under Nebuchadnezzar, [2 years under Ewil-Merodach], 4 years under Neriglissar, [in summa 95 yea]rs, [the god was away] till Sin, the king of the gods, [remembered the temple] . . . of his [great] godhead, his clouded face [shone up], [and he listened] to my prayers, [forgot] the angry command [which he had given, and decided to return t]o the temple é-hul-hul, the temple, [the mansion,] his heart’s delight. [With regard to his impending return to] the [temp]le, Sin, the king of [the gods, said (to me)]: ‘Nabonidus, the king of Babylon, the son [of my womb] [shall] make [me] en[ter/sit down (again)] in (to) the temple é-hul-hul!’ I care[fully] obeyed the orders which [Sin], the king of the gods, had pronounced (and therefore) I did see myself (how) Nabonidus, the king of Babylon, the offspring of my womb, reinstalled completely the forgotten rites of Sin, . . . ”
Farther along in the text Nabonidus’ mother (or grandmother) is represented as crediting Sin with granting her long life “from the time of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, to the 6th year of Nabonidus, king of Babylon, the son of my womb, (that is) for 104 happy years, . . . ”—Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts, pages 311, 312.
From this very incomplete inscription it can be seen that the only figures actually given are the 43 years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and 4 years of Neriglissar’s reign. As to this latter monarch, the text does not necessarily limit his reign to four years; rather it tells of something that happened in his fourth year.
 

This information was rolled out to sow doubt, no doubt. But why bring this one up at all if it hides the real story?