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

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, BTK59 said:

However, I am still eagerly anticipating the evidence, which directly states the occurrence of the Jerusalem destruction in 587 BC, found in any of those tablets. Inform me when you are prepared, despite your continuous effort to avoid and bypass the question.

No one saw that coming!! LOL.

[Pudgy]

….

[JW Insider]

@xero, So to review so far:

 

1. It's pretty clear that the 1st of the 13 lunar readings is an excellent fit for 568 and does not fit 588 at all. 

2. The 2nd of the 13 readings does not fit either 568 or 588 and has long been considered to be a copyist's error: a 9 for an 8.

2A. This one was near perfect for 568 and totally impossible for 588, even if you allow the Furuli date manipulations. Furuli skipped this one for reasons that might be pretty obvious.  [Nisanu 14:  On the 14th. one god was seen with the other  Sunrise to moonset 4°]  

So where were we? Line 8:

3. Line 8: Ayyaru 1 = June 1, 588 BCE / May 22, 568 BCE Moon crescent ‘thick,’ visible ‘while the sun stood there’ … 

It's another first of the month test. It appears to address the very issue that the Babylonians had at the first of every month because a new moon is nearly impossible to see on it's first "existing" day [the beginning of the waxing crescent] because it isn't thick enough yet, and it is invariably too close to the sun, and therefore only visible, if at all, just a few minutes after sundown, when the moon also sets right next to the sun. The very fact that it is written this way implies, of course, that the moon was thick enough on this day to see just before the sun went down. That indicates a far enough distance (angle) from the sun and just enough "thickness" referring to the percentage of the crescent. 

To me -- and this is not important at all to the reading -- it implies something additional. It's a comment defending why the first of the month was started today and not yesterday. Perhaps there was cloud cover yesterday and someone had already argued that it might have actually been visible behind the clouds yesterday and maybe one astronomer even claimed to have detected it. It basically says that we couldn't confirm it yesterday, but today it was thick enough to see even while the sun was still visible. 

In hindsight, we now have the calculations to show that it was nigh near impossible to see that previous day, and that they got it right. Astronomers have also conducted numerous experiments to find the least possible crescent thickness and smallest angle from the sun to determine what was possible. And there are enough dated eclipses to verify exactly when the first of the month was counted just by counting backward from the eclipse date. If the eclipse happened on the 14th we know the exact conditions they saw on the 1st and the day before when the crescent couldn't be seen. If the eclipse happened on the 15th we know the exact conditions that first allowed them to see the new moon crescent, etc.  

So now let's compare the two. 

Furuli still claims of course that the start of the second month, Ayyaru 1, is on June 1st, using his unprecedented, if not impossible calendar shift. In reality Ayyaru 1 started a month earlier. But even giving Furuli the benefit of the doubt, he still fails to find a better reading in 588 than in 568. Here's why:

The first short video is Furuli's reading on June 1st. The moon (with the red blinking cursor) is at about the thinnest possible to be able to detect, but also much too close to the sun for Babylonians astronomers. Maybe they set a record with this one and were able to see it for those few seconds after the sun set. But the tablet says the sun was still visible too.

The second video is for 568. Note that here, the angle to the sun creates enough distance to match other known verified readings and the moon is a day older and therefore thick enough. Slightly thicker than some known, first new moon readings. 

Even if one tried to argue exceptional conditions and eyesight, and perhaps some additional viewing instruments we don't know about that were unable to detect the moon under similar conditions at other times, we still have a much better reading in 568, and we have the very fact that the tablet makes special note of the thickness of the crescent, not the unusual thinness that Furuli would effectively be arguing for here. 

O'maly used software that allowed for "pictures" of the difference in the moon's magnitude at the different times:

Here is the "thick"crescent on Furuli's date:

 

Here is the thick crescent in 568, almost exactly 3 times thicker in 568 than in 588:

 

6-1-588sundown.mp4 5-22-568sundown.mp4

[JW Insider]

There was another piece to the observation for Ayyaru 1 of Year 37, that doesn't really favor either year, where the moon is said to have traversed 4 cubits below β Geminorum .

… 4 cubits below β Geminorum

However, instead of 4 cubits, this was 4.48 cubits in 588 BCE and 3.41 cubits in 568 BCE. Both off by about half a cubit out of 4. I suspect that's because they tried to estimate about where it had been after the sun set, because you can't really see stars while the sun is still there in the sky. 

In both cases (both year readings) they are about the same angle away on either side of the 4 cubit measure, so both of these have been considered "borderline" in terms of accuracy. I have taken a picture with the sun setting in 568 with the "cursor" around beta-Geminorum (the brightest star in the Gemini [Twins] constellation). Of the two main stars in that constellation it's the one on the left. You can see the proximity to the moon in the picture too. While the sun is in the sky, no stars are seen, not even for a couple of minutes after sunset if you are looking  to that part of the sky. However. it could still refer to the visibility right after sunset. In that case recall that the moon is already out of the picture completely in 588 as seen in the video in my last post. So it would have been a difficult if not impossible observation in 488. But in 568, you can see there is actually the possibility of seeing the moon and Gemini together. Even though this makes it better for 568, I don't make too much of this particular fact because it's also possible that the Babylonians already knew where that constellation was, having just seen how the moon set with it from the night before, and it would have been easily confirmed anyway a minute or so after the moon also set. 

Below is also 568, but after the sun has set. A much more likely reading than June 1 588 BCE.

And on the actual month of Ayyar 1, thirty days earlier, which Furuli didn't use, the numbers for 588 would have been so far off they'd be off the charts. Even if Furuli had used the correct day (June 2 instead of June 1) for this particular wrong month, the angled distance would would be MUCH further away than those 4 cubits. I included a picture of the difference below, where it appears that the moon is several times further away from Gemini (Great Twins) on June 2 588 BCE: [Stellarium puts a tree on the horizon in just the wrong spot or I would move forward another 10 minutes or so to let the sky get darker for a more visible reading .]

, 

[Pudgy]

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[JW Insider]

@xero, You probably noticed by clicking on the Stellarium date/time settings that you can quickly change the view one hour at a time, or one day, or one month, or even one year at a time. In doing this you can quickly see that the moon traverses over nearly the same path from month to month, and therefore readings from one year will seem to recur a few months later and you can often find pretty much the same positions of stars and moon every few years. So it's not surprising that some readings for 588 will also be found in 584 and 580 and 578 and 562 etc., etc. That problem cuts both ways.

That's why lunar readings are not the best test for the kind of comparison being done here. They will not likely appear all that definitive even when the readings fit 568 so much better than 588. 

But some of the planetary observations do not repeat for hundreds of years at a time. That makes them much more reliable for this type of comparison between two proposed years.

So it occurred to me that I don't have the same reason Furuli did to skip the more reliable planetary observations just so that he could focus on the more flexible lunar observations. 

The Watchtower followed Furuli's trick by summarily dismissing the more reliable planetary positions like this:  

*** w11 11/1 p. 25 When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part Two ***
In addition to the aforementioned eclipse, there are 13 sets of lunar observations on the tablet and 15 planetary observations. . . . Because of the superior reliability of the lunar positions, researchers have carefully analyzed these 13 sets of lunar positions on VAT 4956.

It is actually very obvious why Furuli chose to dismiss the more reliable observations, and call them less reliable. But I won't cherry-pick observations and will go back and include ones that Furuli (and therefore the Watchtower) skipped.

So the next one for me will actually go back to Line 2 that was skipped:

2. Saturn was in front of the Swallow. The 2^nd, in the morning, a rainbow stretched in the west. Night of the 3^rd, the moon was 2 cubits in front of [….]

[JW Insider]

2. Saturn was in front of the Swallow. The 2^nd, in the morning, a rainbow stretched in the west. Night of the 3^rd, the moon was 2 cubits in front of [….]

So, this is (according to Furuli) May 2, 588 BCE, for the 1st of the month, and therefore May 3rd, 588 for the 2nd of the month. Saturn is in the same position on both days so it won't matter which. Here is the Swallow which is only visible just before sunrise, and isn't above the horizon to see in the evening.

Looking East at just before sunrise there are two planets around the Swallow, but one is Venus and the other is Mercury. Saturn is not in the sky, and won't be visible until long after the Swallow is gone.

Then we check 568 and see the picture in the second image below. This time both Saturn and the Swallow are in the picture. And Saturn is in front of it, rising above the horizon before the Swallow. A clear win for 568. A clear loss for 588.

This position repeats about every 30 years. -626/-625, -596/-595, -567/-566, -538/-537, etc. 

[JW Insider]

I just figured out why i was getting nearly the same reading every 30 years for Saturn. I just asked Google how long it takes Saturn to orbit the sun:

 

Saturn takes 29.4 Earth years to orbit the sun. This is equivalent to 10,759 Earth days or an average orbital speed of 9.68 kilometers per second. 

Isn't astronomy fun???

[Pudgy]

…

[Pudgy]

On 3/9/2024 at 11:16 AM, Pudgy said:

 

….. If there was a “UNIVERSAL WAR FOR THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNIVERSE” …. which hasn’t happened yet, we would have seen some sparks …. or at the very least a 24 foot long golden arrow stuck deep into  a burning Abrams or Russian  T-1 Tank.

….. not so much as a surprised mouse, pissing on cotton.

 

ANYONE ….

…. can look out their window and see … 360°, that God’s Kingdom by Christ - using the defining criteria in the Bible, does not yet exist.

ANYONE.

[Pudgy]

It has so far been 34 pages of posts about this topic. I hope everyone is as refreshed as I wish I was…..

[xero]

@JW Insider"17. Babylonian Eclipse Observations From 750 BC to 1 BC, by Peter J. Huber and Salvo De Meis, published 2004, page 186. According to VAT 4956, this eclipse occurred on the 15th of the third Babylonian month, which suggests that the month of Simanu began 15 days earlier. If the eclipse fell on July 15, 588 B.C.E. according to our Julian calendar, then the first day of Simanu would be June 30/July 1, 588 B.C.E. Therefore, the first Babylonian month (Nisanu) would have started the new year two months earlier, on May 2/3. While normally the year of this eclipse would have begun on April 3/4, VAT 4956 states on line 6 that an extra month (intercalary) was added after the twelfth (last) month (Addaru) of the preceding year. (The tablet reads: “8th of month XII₂.”) Therefore, this made the new year actually not start until May 2/3. Thus, the date of this eclipse in 588 B.C.E. well fits the data on the tablet."

So are we saying this isn't true?