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

[JW Insider]

On 2/10/2024 at 10:00 AM, George88 said:

It's disappointing that you're resorting to gimmicks to revisit the topic of 607 BC

I you were directing that statement at me, I am not resorting to gimmicks to revisit the topic of 607 BC.

It's a fact that the Watchtower changed the "evidenced" date for the fall of Nineveh by 20 years from 612 to 632 for only ONE purpose: in order to support the change for the fall of Jerusalem by 20 years from 587 to 607.

*** it-1 p. 205 Assyria ***
The Babylonian Chronicle B.M. (British Museum) 21901 recounts the fall of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, following a siege carried out by the combined forces of Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon, and of Cyaxares the Mede during the 14th year of Nabopolassar (632 B.C.E.): “The city [they turned] into ruin-hills and hea[ps (of debris)].” (Ancient Near Eastern Texts, edited by J. B. Pritchard, 1974, p. 305; brackets and parentheses theirs.) Thus the fierce Assyrian Empire came to an ignominious end. . . .
According to the same chronicle, in the 14th year of Nabopolassar (632 B.C.E.), Ashur-uballit II attempted to continue Assyrian rule from Haran as his capital city. This chronicle states, under the 17th year of Nabopolassar (629 B.C.E.): “In the month Duʼuzu, Ashur-uballit, king of Assyria, (and) a large [army of] E[gy]pt [who had come to his aid] crossed the river (Euphrates) and [marched on] to conquer Harran.” (Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 305; brackets and parentheses theirs.) 
 

I could be wrong, but so far, every time a Witness brings up the difference between Watchtower chronology and the standard accepted chronology, they are invariably referring to the 20-year gap that the Watchtower chronology creates for itself.  @xero can correct me if this is a misconception on my part. 

Put simply, the Watchtower chronology takes every Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian-era date for which there is archaeological or historical evidence prior to 539 BCE and simply adds 20 years to it. This is only done in order to try to resolve (or even "cover up") the fact that there is excellent evidence for Jerusalem being destroyed in 587 BCE but the Watchtower needs it to be 607 BCE. Otherwise they would have to dismiss the idea that the Bible "predicted" 1914. I think the GB will not be able to extricate themselves very easily from this tradition. Even though the Watchtower has claimed that OTHER dates they promoted were even more sure than 1914, they have dropped those dates. Russell indicated that 1874 was more sure and anchored date than 1914 but that date was finally dropped. Rutherford claimed that there was more proof and evidence for 1925 than for 1914, but that date was also dropped. Therefore, the only "sure" date left, then, is 1914 and it would likely be too much of a disappointment for most Witnesses to have to admit we were wrong all along about this supposed "prophecy" -- the only "sure" dated prophecy we have left. 

Those with good access to that evidence often have trouble knowing what to do with it. So when the topic comes up they try to "run interference" by brining up people instead of evidence. (One person, R.Furuli, as a last resort against the evidence published by COJ, did try to run interference against the evidence itself.) But normally, from those who have tried to understand the evidence, you instantly start seeing phrases about people JWI, xero, COJ (Carl O Jonsson), apostates, rather than any real attempt to present evidence.

22 hours ago, George88 said:

you want to falsely argue 607 BC for the benefit of your apostate friends . . . if you can by solely using DJ Wiseman's chronicles.

14 hours ago, George88 said:

how he can prove 587 BC since an irrational conclusion is of no value. It's been that way since COJ introduced that nonsense.

16 hours ago, George88 said:

This is why JWI and Xero cannot in all conscience prove 587 BC using the modern heavily relied on by apostates the Babylonian Chronicles.

Did you really think people would fall for the idea that it was Carl Jonsson who "introduced" this nonsense when it was already known by the preponderance of existing evidence since the early 1800's. And now that even more consistent and corroborating evidence has been found, the chronology is now agreed upon by the scholars who have looked into that evidence for over 100 years already. The Watchtower was already commenting on people who wrote to Russell and Rutherford about this same evidence long before COJ was born.  

So it's not about people and their flaws or even scholars and experts who agree with one another. It's about the evidence. 

That said, you did make a point or two in this thread about evidence and since some of those points were directed at me personally, so I will respond. 

[Pudgy]

That last sentence reminds me of a sympathetic person of younger age with a poor memory who doesn’t think about what is actually being stated.

29 minutes ago, George88 said:

There should be no excuse for conducting thorough research that is of interest to individuals, absolutely none.

[Pudgy]

4 hours ago, George88 said:

You seem to thrive on confrontation and insults, believing that you and everyone here, including apostates like Srecko have the exclusive privilege to do so because of your safety net. I'll leave you to argue with your invisible man in your mirror, lol!

Meantime, I agree with you, you should take a cognitive test

You see things so clearly, which do not exist.

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, George88 said:

Funny how you only mention me, when Xero, JWI, Srecko, and especially Pudgy thrive for confrontation and insult me for stating the truth. So, include yourself before criticizing me and defending your sad friends.

If you want to have a serious conversation (and not a "talk show" as a certain V.Putin might call it) then I am quite willing. As long as we continue to discuss evidence rather than personalities and faults and supposed expertise and supposed authority. I don't claim expertise or authority on this topic, but I have long been amazed now at the availability of so much consistent evidence when I used to have the impression that it was all a mess and so much of it contradicted other evidence, and was therefore useless to study. 

In response to what you say above, I did NOT intend to only mention you. In fact I said: "

4 hours ago, JW Insider said:

. . . due to the inevitable and constant distractions by those with a different agenda: those who are anxious to make it clear they aren't interested in the topic and/or they aren't interested in relevant facts or evidence . . . 

Pudgy was the one who joined the conversation only to say he wasn't interested in it, and that would therefore include not being interested in facts or evidence about it, one way or another. I usually expect Pudgy to join a conversation like this mostly to make some points about the Democratic Party, and throw in a few memes or cartoons, some of which are his own making and, yes, also to trade insults with you. I have no problem with such additions to topics I have started, but it probably isn't fair to @xero to ask a question and then see most of the responses filled up with unrelated insults.

I admit I had you in mind for some of my other observations, based on some of your statements above, but I'm quite willing to start fresh if you wish.

And I don't think I am any paragon of virtue in this regard. Look at some of the old "back-and-forth"  between me and scholar_jw, or posts referring to Furuli when it comes to this particular topic. I don't control myself very well when I believe I'm seeing academic dishonesty and possibly purposeful diversions and fallacies. In this regard, I understand where you might also be coming from.

[JW Insider]

10 minutes ago, George88 said:

nothing of interest would appeal to me

No problem. I have found that to be true of most fellow Witnesses when it comes to this topic. It's not comfortable to engage when you know where the evidence is heading. 

But for others, I will still go ahead and try to respond to your comments about the evidence and questions you have already asked of me.

[Pudgy]

All of the above discussions, and every detail of the above discussions by all sides are totally irrelevant. 

World War One and Two, remember?

Anytime you can incinerate 90,000 people in an instant by making a star over their city makes all other previous human combat irrelevant.

The fact that it was about 2600 years ago and the only evidence is a siege ramp of hand thrown stones up to the inner walls of Ninevah, or Massda, or one wall in Jerusalem makes the whole thing ONLY, and I repeat ONLY … an intellectual exercise.

Armageddon didn’t happen in 1914. WWI was a COINCIDENCE.

Nothing argued here will change that.

Nothing!

[Pudgy]

1 hour ago, Pudgy said:

All of the above discussions, and every detail of the above discussions by all sides are totally irrelevant. 

World War One and Two, remember?

Anytime you can incinerate 90,000 people in an instant by making a star over their city makes all other previous human combat irrelevant.

The fact that it was about 2600 years ago and the only evidence is a siege ramp of hand thrown stones up to the inner walls of Ninevah, or Massda, or one wall in Jerusalem makes the whole thing ONLY, and I repeat ONLY … an intellectual exercise.

Armageddon didn’t happen in 1914. WWI was a COINCIDENCE.

Nothing argued here will change that.

Nothing!

Armageddon did not happen in 1914.

No possible way to ignore that.

THAT makes WWI ONLY A COINCIDENCE.

[JW Insider]

9 minutes ago, George88 said:

Why not simply express your distorted views in the closed club, as you originally suggested to Xero?

As soon as he answers, or if he decides to ask his question again in the closed club, I'll be happy to participate there. In the meantime, you might want to show exactly which view was distorted. I'm always happy to correct any of my distorted views. But I'll need to know what they are first.

[JW Insider]

George88: You told me I was sharing distorted views, and I asked you what they were. You answered with . . . 

1 hour ago, George88 said:

The most significant distortion in this game is the gap between Babylon and the Persian empire, which reflects the gap shown in the Babylonian Chronicles from 594 BC-557 BC. Many seek to fill this gap with the commonly accepted year of 587 BC, without considering alternative views that place 606 BC in a better position.

Since I have never said anything about that particular gap between the Babylonian and the Persian empire, who is making the distortion? If it's not me, who were you talking about when you said I was sharing distorted views? Are you saying you have NO examples of views I have distorted, but that you made the claim anyway? 

1 hour ago, George88 said:

There is no need for me to highlight the specifics, as you are already well aware of your argument and its intended direction.

This is in full agreement with what I said very early on in the discussion. That when most Witnesses are aware of the direction the evidence leads to, they no longer wish to consider the specifics, and prefer to divert to other types of evidence. It seems like a kind of fear. I don't see a need to fear it. For me, the tradition about chronology that we have latched onto here is not the core of what we stand for as Jehovah's Witnesses. It's fine for any of us to believe it if we wish, but we shouldn't get too attached to it, because it's not the core of our worship, our love for God and neighbor, the ransom, nor does it change anything about the last days or the good news of the Kingdom.

[JW Insider]

16 hours ago, George88 said:

Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon -- Wiseman, D. J. (Donald John) -- 1985

For anyone else who is interested, two of Wiseman's books that have been quoted here by George are very relevant to some of these issues.

• Chronicles of Chaldaean kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum by Wiseman, D. J. (Donald John)
• Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon by Wiseman, D. J. (Donald John)

Both books can be found at archive.org where you only need a free account and can usually check out the books for an hour at a time with no issues. 

• https://archive.org/details/chroniclesofchal0000unse/page/44/mode/2up
• https://archive.org/details/nebuchadrezzarba0000wise/page/n9/mode/2up

You can also find free PDFs of each although I doubt this is a legal way of accessing them. Here's one:

• https://etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/20337.pdf

The actual Babylonian Chronicles in translation are available at livius.org such as the example below:

• https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/abc-3-fall-of-nineveh-chronicle/

There are literally hundreds of fairly relevant documents that show up on JSTOR or specific Biblical/Archaeology/History Journals. I think it's still possible to get a free limited access which gets to many of them, but not all. (It's something they started during COVID.) If anyone finds an article they want from JSTOR, those with access are not supposed to share those articles. But if anyone here needs a specific page copied from one of those articles, I have full access to all JSTOR documents through an alumni account. That account also gets me full access to other academic journals, too, but I won't break the rules by copying more than one page at a time, and only for discussion purposes. This should keep it within "fair use" limits. 

Examples are:

Chronology of the Medes, from the Reign of Deioces to the Reign of Darius, the Son of Hystaspes, or Darius the Mede

I. W. Bosanquet

 

In fact, if you can get to the search bar, but can't get to the actual document, that's where I can probably help out. Here's an example showing just the first of 1,399 results for a search on "Chronology of the Fall of Nineveh:"

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, George88 said:

However, if you look at my post, you'll see that it's not a clear-cut case, not even for Dr. Wiseman.

Should be easy to check. Let's see if Dr Wiseman believes that the 18th and 19th years of King Nebuchadnezzar landed in 587 and 586 BCE. 

I see that he puts Neb's 1st year in 605. So his 18th year would be 605-18=587. So 587 BCE. That would make his 19th year 586 BCE. (605-19=586). So far, Wiseman agrees with the evidenced chronology of Neo-Babylon. Just as I would expect.

Also the Bible says that in Nebuchadnezzar's 7th year he took exiles from Jerusalem.

(Jeremiah 52:28-30) . . .These are the people whom Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar took into exile:

• in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews. 
• In the 18th year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, 832 people were taken from Jerusalem.
•  In the 23rd year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, Neb·uʹzar·adʹan the chief of the guard took Jews into exile, 745 people.
• In all, 4,600 people were taken into exile.

The 7th year is not missing from the Chronicles. So let's see what year Wiseman thinks that is:

So WIseman identifies the 7th year with 598/7 BCE. That would make the 19th year only 12 years later. 598-12=586.

So again, Wiseman agrees that the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar was 586. The Bible identifies the 19th year with the fall and destruction of Jerusalem. 

When Wiseman has trouble pinning it down to either Nebuchadnezzar's 18th or 19th year, that's not because of the Neo-Babylonian Chronology. It's because of the fact that the Bible presents both of those years: the 18th and the 19th. As you can see from the scriptures from Jeremiah 32 and 2 Kings 25 that I referenced in previous posts.

-----

While we're at it, I think you've already noted that he also agrees with 612 BCE for the fall of Nineveh

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, George88 said:

If you choose not to acknowledge the irrefutable evidence presented by scholars, or if you believe that your non-scholar status grants you superiority over them, that is your prerogative. I have no need to convince anyone here of anything.   If you believe that Dr. Wiseman is not a scholarly authority, consider the extensive works of reputable historians and Bible scholars.

2 hours ago, George88 said:

I won't be deceived by your manipulative language. Let's have a mature conversation like adults, or none at all. 

I have to point out that your continued insults about me using manipulative language appear to still be empty claims where you make the claim but won't point to any actually manipulative language. Unless of course you just mean that any statements or evidence you don't with to deal with are "manipulating" you towards accepting statements or evidence you don't want to deal with. I've mentioned before that some of your insults that that don't make sense at face value actually do make perfect sense if I consider them to be psychological "projections" of concerns about yourself onto others.

There are hundreds of previous examples shown on the forum, but in this case, you've given a couple more. Hopefully you can explain them in a way that doesn't infer your own projections onto others of whatever you feel is more true of yourself. 

For example: I have often been insulted here for acknowledging [so-called] irrefutable evidence presented by scholars, yet here you say I am choosing NOT to do so. You indicate that I believe Dr. Wiseman is NOT a scholarly authority, even though I am the one who is FULLY accepting what he is saying and yet you are the one REJECTING his chronology.

Do you think these insults of yours really make for a mature conversation?