The Watchtower's 20-year adjustment to the standard Neo-Babylonian chronology

[Pudgy]

Georgie, it is clear you are confusing this collective audience with people somewhere else that may (and I am being generous here …) care about your irrational delusions.

They are entertaining.

They are sadly funny, in a cringeworthy sort of way.

You are stuck in your Agenda like a prehistoric bug in amber. Forever frozen in time.

I hope that before you die, you are able to break free.

[George88]

That is precisely why I continue to stay connected to Pudgy. I am genuinely fascinated by witnessing your irrational and delusional thoughts, as well as those of Srecko, your puppet. I sincerely hope that, before you pass away, you will have a moment of enlightenment that will bring meaning to your otherwise pitiable existence.

[George88]

"Since you seem unwilling to accept being proven wrong again, let's see where you stand on this."

So, are you suggesting that it is incorrect for me to possess these books in my "digital" LIBRARY? If that's the case, I would be compelled to eliminate approximately 6 terabytes of valuable knowledge. Frankly, I fail to see the rationality behind such a notion.

Mesopotamian planetary astronomy-astrology -- Brown, David, 1968

"Most of the texts herein studied were discovered in what are loosely referred to as “the Royal Archives and Libraries**”’ of Nineveh, (Ninua) capital to the Assyrian kings Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. This vast assemblage of material included literary and divinatory texts, reference works and those associated with scribal education as well as a great deal of royal correspondence. One major collection was associated with the so-called North Palace completed in 645 BC,™ another with the earlier South West Palace." page 17

"Similarly, the rapid diminution in the number of Scholars’ Letters and Reports datable to the years after 650 BC suggests that those written after Assurbanipal had built the North Palace in 645 BC were stored elsewhere.® The legal texts show that the archive in which the Letters and Reports were found in the SW Palace, known as the “Chamber of Records”, was used until the destruction of Nineveh in 612 BC. Thus, the attested collection of Scholars’ Letters and Reports include only those that were written during Esarhaddon’s and Assurbanipal’s residence in that Palace," page 19

Now, I also have several books written by Dr. Grant Frame who is an Assyriologist and professor. I deal with academia every day. Are you suggesting that I should be uneducated as well, like you?

 

 

[Pudgy]

No, Georgie, you are making up false premises entirely from your own imagination.

… as you habitually do multiple times in almost every one of your posts. 

Read over your last six or eight posts.

Or better still … “get out of the basement more”. 

As with everyone, too soon you will be DEAD, and none of this will matter …. or even be remembered.

It does not matter.

[Pudgy]

When I helped design the Pittsburgh, PA Light Rail down Liberty Avenue in 1977, “The T”, there was a Phd. Registered Civil Engineer who used to hang out at my desk to chat, a much more highly educated man than me, named George.

He would carry an armload of papers around with him, and often left them on my desk. I figured they were important so I set them aside, thinking he would miss them and return for them. He never did. He invited me to a Peter, Paul, and Mary Concert.

He’s probably dead now, but the last I heard he was arguing religion with a vending machine in the hallway.

I never knew if it was a snack or drink machine.

It does not matter.

 

[Pudgy]

If in fact you actually deal with academia every day, you have my sympathies.

[Pudgy]

…

“ CAMBRIDGE, MA — The President of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, announced today that the university has installed Jew detectors at all entrances.

"This is a step in the right direction," President Gay told reporters. "It might not be the last step. We are always looking for a final solution to the Jewish problem on campus."

The move to install Jew detectors at all entrances comes amidst a wave of anti-semitic attacks on campus. The hope in using the detector system is that, once detected, Jewish students can be safely concentrated away in a location or camp where they will be free to be Jewish away from the other students.

The detectors, which claim to be capable of detecting a Jew with 99.99% accuracy, are designed to pick up the most blatant Zionism, basic ethnic markers, and even the slightest trace of disgust over the targeted murder and kidnapping of children for the noble cause of freeing Palestine.

"The Jew detector systems we have installed show our resolve in tackling bigotry and keeping everybody safe while maintaining our commitment to free expression and tolerance," Gay said in her announcement.”

The Babylon Bee

[JW Insider]

Thanks @scholar JW for a succinct and clear summary of your position on the 20-year gap (several pages back).

MY SUMMARY below adds 4 or 5 items that I didn't spell out in posts yet, but the rest are a subset of the points from posts already in this thread.

The Watchtower publications depend on SECULAR chronology to be able to attach a BCE date to any Bible event. There are no BCE or CE (AD) dates in the Bible anywhere. Per the current Watchtower Library going back to 1950 for the Watchtower and the 1970's for other publications: there are 11,857 separate references to BCE dates in the current "Watchtower Library" and the MAJORITY of them are for the three dates: 539, 537 and 607.  Every time we ever read in a WTS publication the term "B.C.E." it means the WTS has depended on SECULAR chronology.

• The WTS fully accepts the SECULAR chronology indicating Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BCE.
• The exact same SECULAR chronology indicates that the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar was 586 BCE.
• The exact same SECULAR Chronology indicates that the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar was 587 BCE.
• The Bible associates Jerusalem's destruction with the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar
• The Bible also associates Jerusalem's destruction with the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar
• The Bible associates both years with this event, so SECULAR scholars must choose between 587 and 586
• The Bible's ambiguity here is "cleverly" reassigned from the Bible to SECULAR scholars so that it can repeatedly be used as a means to discredit scholars -- so that both dates can be dismissed
• Discrediting scholars feeds into the repeated idea that 539 is now part of Bible chronology but 587/586 is only SECULAR chronology
• This allows the WTS to keep the original theory promoted by Barbour and Russell that all one has to do is go back 70 years from 536 (now 539*/538/537) to get the destruction of Jerusalem in 606 (now 607) and both of these dates can be promoted as BIBLE chronology.
• Any attempt to show the fallacy of the argument, or the evidence against the interpretation, can now be associated with choosing SECULAR experts over the BIBLE, and not recognizing that the SECULAR "wisdom of the world is foolishness with God"
• This tradition/theory/interpretation that we now call "BIBLE chronology" now requires that ALL the evidence for the SECULAR chronology that we accept for 539 must otherwise be rejected in order to support 607.
• Therefore the WTS must add 20 years to ALL the chronology evidence BEFORE 539 and not touch any dates from the same evidence AFTER 539.
• Unfortunately for the WTS theory, the Bible locks in the length of the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar to 43 years, and in support of external evidence for 539, the WTS is partially reliant on SECULAR inscriptions referring to the length of the reign of the last king conquered by Cyrus in 539 (the 17 years of Nabonidus)
• That would mean that the 20-year gap must be theorized to fit within a period known to be only 6 years long according to ALL the existing chronological evidence of the period (from the exact same set of evidence accepted for 539)
• The need to turn that 6-year period into a 24-year period becomes an awkward quest because of the inscriptions, kings lists, and astronomy tablets that give consistent evidence that there is not even a one-year gap anywhere in the period.
• NOT PRESENTED YET: The evidence from the TENS of THOUSANDS of mundane business documents is just as damaging to the WTS theory. These small clay tablets are spread throughout EACH and EVERY year of the entire documented period from Nebuchadnezzar's father, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, Nabonidus, Cyrus, etc. They even exist for EACH and EVERY year for the short reign of the two kings in those 6 years where the WTS needs to place the 20-year gap.
• NOT PRESENTED YET: There are business tablets for EVERY year of the known reigns of EACH king, and sometimes thousands of tablets for some of those years, but still absolutely NONE to show evidence for any of the theorized gap of 20 years. (Out of say 50,000 existing tablets, we should therefore expect about 20,000 additional tablets to cover those years, yet not one of those "20,000" missing tablets has shown up. (The WTS has proposed that evidence may exist but has just not been discovered yet.) Therefore, while 100% of the tablet evidence supports the known chronology, there is still ZERO tablet evidence for any possible longer reigns or additional reigns for anyone during the period. Worse yet for the WTS theory, there are even connecting tablets that give us the transition between each king and the next king which makes the gap theory impossible, according to all the evidence.
• NOT PRESENTED YET: There is even a subset of these business documents all related to the same "banking institution" that provides a separate chronology of transitioning "bank presidents" throughout the same entire period. They provide the exact same connected, relative chronology as the Babylonian king lists, the astronomy tablets, the official Babylonian chronicles, and other inscriptions.
• NOT PRESENTED YET: The WTS admits that the Babylonians were able to predict eclipses based on various nearly-18-year lunar cycles. If they weren't using an extremely accurate calendar they couldn't have done this. Any currently undocumented gap in the chronology would have completely thrown off their ability to predict eclipses.
• To add "support" for the 20-year gap theory, the WTS quotes from experts about evidence from astronomy and inscriptions and often adds (with no explanation) the WTS chronology in parentheses or brackets in very close context to the quotations from experts and scholarly references and encyclopedias. Sometimes even adding the bracketed WTS chronology within the quotation marks from the expert sources, giving the impression that there is expert scholarly support for WTS chronology.
• To add further "support" for the 20-year gap, the ACTUAL evidence that has been consistently supported and presented for the last 150 plus years by HUNDREDS of other scholars, is often simply called to "Carl Olof Jonsson's evidence" or "COJ's evidence." Because COJ was disfellowshipped for presenting the evidence already supported by hundreds of others, it "cleverly" leads the average JW to believe that SECULAR evidence is apostate evidence. (Except when the WTS uses the same set of evidence for 539.) 
• To add further "support" for the 20-year gap theory, the WTS made use of Rolf Furuli's book in two articles in the Watchtower in 2011  (*** w11 11/1 p. 25) claiming that some of the lunar data on a tablet dated to a specific year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign is a better fit for a different year of his reign, 20 years earlier. (Same idea had been tried for a different reign in a 1969 Watchtower, *** w69 3/15 pp. 185-186)
• Furuli's ideas about this tablet and the WTS focus on it has tended to imply to that this tablet (VAT 4956) is somehow all-important to the secular chronology. But it is only one piece of many that consistently point EXACTLY to the 587 date for the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar and EXACTLY to the 586 date for the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar.
• NOT PRESENTED YET: Furuli's ideas about the tablet have been thoroughly debunked and shown to contain numerous amateurish errors. Furthermore the book inadvertently contains evidence against itself which indicates the real strength of the evidence against the WTS use of "607."
• Russell did not directly use the 7 times of Daniel 4 to prove 606 (now 607) and indicated that methods using the 7 times (based more on Leviticus, not Daniel) were inferior methods to the use of "God's dates" (meaning counting forward 40 years from 1874).
• The use of (and definition of) what happened in 1914 changed after 1914, and the predicted fulfillments were moved to 1915, then 1918, then 1925. The Watchtower even temporarily used the expression "End of the Gentile Times in 1915."
• After the slippage and failures of expectations, the only useful prediction that remained was that the "Gentile Times Ended in 1914." But this was not about Jesus' invisible parousia (still 1874) or Jesus' invisible enthronement as King (still 1878) but was an expression directly related to the visible Zionist movement in Palestine.
• After an adjusted emphasis on Zionism AFTER 1914, along with a new emphasis on on Jesus' coming/arriving/returning to his temple for judgment in 1918, Rutherford finally dropped the Zionist connection to the "End of the Gentile Times" around 1929, and 1874/1878 was also soon dropped so that both the parousia and the kingship both were now associated with 1914. And the Gentile nations merely lost their "lease" to rule, even though they were now ruling more powerfully than ever.