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

[JW Insider]

11 hours ago, George88 said:

Reading material correctly is crucial for proper understanding. While scholars may occasionally make mistakes, I do not have an issue with 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!!!" 

[JW Insider]

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.

[George88]

I don't owe any explanations to you or your self-proclaimed exclusive JW group. God will be the one to judge you, not me. Regarding the criticism of COJ of Fururli, instead of avoiding the topic, why don't you read his book and draw your own conclusions? Please refrain from distorting or misinterpreting my words, as that kind of manipulation is familiar to those who are acquainted with you.

Are you questioning COJ's mention of errors in reading VAT 4956 that were corrected by other scholars, or are you now going to deliberately misinterpret my words to suit your agenda, as you did the last time?

[George88]

1 hour ago, George88 said:

he also criticized Furuli's assertion on the earth's rotation.

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.

[George88]

If you imply that I lack understanding, it is imperative that you reevaluate your own comprehension skills.

He addresses the issue of minor errors despite lacking scholarly expertise. What are the significant errors among those 30 observations that could undermine the entire set? His intention is to convince others that the tablet is reliable, even though it is not. The goal is to minimize these errors. Now, let's reevaluate the previous schemes and enhance them as Steele suggested.

[George88]

The Babylonian Theory of the Planets -- N. M. Swerdlow -- 2014 -- PrincetonUP

[TrueTomHarley]

Go Rolf. I always liked the guy.

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, George88 said:

I don't owe any explanations to you

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.

2 hours ago, George88 said:

Regarding the criticism of COJ of Fururli, instead of avoiding the topic, why don't you read his book and draw your own conclusions?

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. 

2 hours ago, George88 said:

Are you questioning COJ's mention of errors in reading VAT 4956 that were corrected by other scholars

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.

2 hours ago, George88 said:

4 hours ago, George88 said:

he also criticized Furuli's assertion on the earth's rotation.

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. 

2 hours ago, George88 said:

He addresses the issue of minor errors despite lacking scholarly expertise.

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. 

2 hours ago, George88 said:

His intention is to convince others that the tablet is reliable, even though it is not.

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.

2 hours ago, George88 said:

Now, let's reevaluate the previous schemes and enhance them as Steele suggested.

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. 

[George88]

While it may not concern me personally, it is crucial for visitors to recognize the importance of your erroneous support for the date of 587 BC JWI, as well as the tenacious defense you have given to apostate perspectives regarding the Watchtower. I suggest you thoroughly investigate Steele's revision schemes to comprehend the impact they have on his past data.

Scholars are not infallible, as some may believe. They, too, make mistakes in their research and findings, as I have demonstrated in the case of Dr. Wiseman and Dr. Hunger, who are notably absent from your list.

For the past decade, your audience has consisted of uninformed spectators and individuals who have abandoned their faith. God knows the truth and who to judge as unrighteous.

[JW Insider]

7 hours ago, George88 said:

I suggest you thoroughly investigate Steele's revision schemes to comprehend the impact they have on his past data.

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:

1.  

   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...

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2.  

   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...

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3. 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...

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     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:

      

     

      

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, George88 said:

For the past decade, your audience has consisted of uninformed spectators and individuals who have abandoned their faith. God knows the truth and who to judge as unrighteous.

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:

1. Is still a Witness, but no longer believes that Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year was anywhere close to 607 BCE
2. Or, they are disfellowshipped.
3. 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:

1. The WTS can forbid anyone from trying to confirm the observations on the tablets themselves.
2. 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.

[George88]

The crucial distinction lies there. All the witnesses I have spoken to, excluding the one here, advocate, for the 607 BC destruction of Jerusalem. While some may not be concerned with the specifics of how that year was arrived at, they do place their trust in the Bible's calculations of 2520. Those who only back a single 1260 are in error. Ultimately, the Watchtower does not compel anyone to believe in 607 BC but to truly "comprehend" its significance. Those who identify as witnesses but make every effort to deny this significance are conducting themselves similarly to the Pharisees' treatment of the Jewish nation.

The positive aspect is that people are discerning enough not to be misled by unfounded assumptions, as all written records of the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC are still speculative, lacking the specific language associated with that event. Those avoiding the issue have failed to provide any proof. Although historical facts have corroborated other events from that time period, I am not the one to determine the manner in which evidence should be presented. It is worth noting that these sources contain clear details in their language, similar to the Babylonian Chronicles which mention a specific interaction between Babylon and Jerusalem in 598/7 BC. However, it is important to highlight that these sources do not provide evidence to discredit the Watchtower's claims concerning 587 BC.

Nowadays, individuals have turned their attention towards astronomical tablets that recount a vague tale of non-existence, merely because some tablets reference the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar as if it were a remarkable discovery, when in fact, it can be interpreted in various ways. Also, the use of the 18th-19th year cycles is merely a further example of the lengths some people are eager to go to validate their conjectures since if we follow that pattern it intersects with 607/6 BC.