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

[George88]

I guess according to some here, it's a waste of time to relate to scripture. This reminds me of that commercial of a frying pan and egg, with the saying this is the brain on drugs, lol!

ESV Mark 13:33 Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. (Mk. 13:33 ESV)

ESV Luke 21:36 But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man." (Lk. 21:36 ESV)

ESV Revelation 16:15 ("Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!") (Rev. 16:15 ESV)

Give it a minute, the rebuttal will amaze us, lol!

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, Pudgy said:

So …. what’s important about one or two or 20 or 70 years …2600 or so years ago, on the other side of the planet, by peoples and nations … whole civilizations that don’t exist anymore?

Thanks again for the soapbox setup regarding 1914. LOL.

Scripture says no one knows the day and the hour or the times and the seasons of Jesus' return. "For you do not know when the time will come." Also, scripture says that it wasn't for us to know and that we would need to stay on the watch for his return, by being always ready even for a completely unexpected visitation, like a thief in the night, not waiting for signs. Thieves in the night do not put up signs announcing their visit.

So the only proper way to keep on the watch is to always be prepared, watch our conduct, have faith. Thinking there might be an advance sign keeps people from being fully prepared until they see the sign. Christians need to be prepared BEFORE the sign appear. As Jesus said, when it is too late to even go back into your house to grab something, "THEN the sign will appear --IN HEAVEN!!"

But first a defense for anyone who might be interested in the topic just for the sake of knowledge.

Some people like puzzles. Some people like history. Most of the heavy lifting and most of the very detailed and tedious work has been done by hundreds, even thousands of people who had never heard of 1914. Many of the Greek historians who wanted to make a history of say, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Troy, Peloponnesia, or Alexander the Great also wanted to see just how exactly they could puzzle together the number of years between certain events, exactly how long ago something happened.

Just saying "Year 10 of King so-and-so" wasn't good enough if that king was so far back in time that you weren't sure if your "Kings List" or "archon list" was complete or accurate enough. If there was even one inaccurate listing or missing king from the list then the chain of accuracy was broken. Longer eras were tried. Attaching events to a certain numbered 4-year Olympiad was tried. Ptolemy and others realized that you could go back into Babylonian and Assyrian times and double-check their Kings Lists against actual astronomical readings that he could double-check against repeating cycles of eclipses and even repeated planetary motion against certain constellations. It was fortunate that the Babylonians had astrologers who took such meticulous note of such things. After double-checking, it turned out he could trust the Babylonian Kings Lists, just like today where the Watchtower trusts the same Kings List that Ptolemy quoted, in order to say that Cyrus in 539 is a trusted, anchored, pivotal date.

Full disclosure, the WTS only trusts the list from Cyrus on, NOT BEFORE. And there's also one place where the WTs doesn't like it again AFTER Cyrus, during the reign of Artaxerxes:

*** it-1 p. 182 Artaxerxes ***
Artaxerxes Longimanus, the son of Xerxes I, is the king referred to at Ezra 7:1-28 and Nehemiah 2:1-18; 13:6. Whereas most reference works give his accession year as 465 B.C.E., there is sound reason for placing it in 475 B.C.E.

The "sound reason" is again (just like for 607 from 587 BCE) a prophetic interpretation that we would like to have work a certain way, and the Watchtower interpretation doesn't work with the evidenced chronology.
 

But even today, many people will get angry if you say that the Civil War started in 1841 or that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1756, or that, nearly half-way around the world, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand happened in 1894 or that Lenin's Revolution in Russia was in 1897. Or that Jesus was born around 22 BC. Some people are sticklers for accuracy and don't like false claims even when it really doesn't matter all that much to our own family and pets. 

And for that matter, saying that something happened in 1914 when no one at the time actually noticed whatever it was that happened at the time, also has no real effect on us today. If the Watchtower had claimed that whatever happened invisibly then, had actually happened in 1934, or if we still claimed that it had happened in 1874, there would be no material difference to anything else we believe in. Changing the starting dates, and then adding an undefinable and fairly flexible "overlapping generation" to it, means we don't really even have an expectation that is specifically tied to that year any more.

So the only real point for most Witnesses then, is to be able to brag that the WTS was able to predict that SOMETHING big would happen in 1914. And even though it wasn't anything like what the WTS predicted, no one can deny that SOMETHING big did happen that year. 

So the real point, pretty much the only remaining point, must be for some kind of gnostic bragging rights. Boasting about how our own esoteric and convoluted method of interpreting "hidden knowledge" proves we are about the closest thing to "prophets" that one might expect these days.

This is what Russell apparently had in mind in the first thing he ever published back before he started the Watchtower magazine. In 1876 he said regarding 1914:

We believe that God has given the key. We believe He doeth nothing but he revealeth it unto His servants. . . . But, some one will say, “If the Lord intended that we should know, He would have told us plainly and distinctly how long.” But, no, brethren, He never does so. The Bible is to be a light to God’s children;–to the world, foolishness. Many of its writings are solely for our edification upon whom the ends of the world are come. As well say that God should have put the gold on top instead of in the bowels of the earth it would be too common; it would lose much of its value. So with truth; but, “to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom."

In fact, look what was added to the Aid book and Insight book which were supposed to be all-purpose, general-use Bible Dictionaries. Even though the predictions about 1914 turned out not to be true, and even though a sensationalist newspaper at the time made a story that falsely misrepresented those predictions, the Insight book provides the following bit of boasting:

*** it-1 p. 135 Appointed Times of the Nations ***
“Seven times,” according to this count, would equal 2,520 days. That a specific number of days may be used in the Bible record to represent prophetically an equivalent number of years can be seen by reading the accounts at Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6. Only by applying the formula there expressed of “a day for a year” to the “seven times” of this prophecy can the vision of Daniel chapter 4 have significant fulfillment beyond the day of now extinct Nebuchadnezzar, as the evidence thus far presented gives reason to expect. They therefore represent 2,520 years.
It is a historical fact worth noting that, on the basis of the points and evidence above presented, the March 1880 edition of the Watch Tower magazine identified the year 1914 as the time for the close of “the appointed times of the nations” (and the end of the lease of power granted the Gentile rulers). This was some 34 years before the arrival of that year and the momentous events it initiated. In the August 30, 1914, edition of The World, a leading New York newspaper at that time, a feature article in the paper’s Sunday magazine section commented on this as follows: “The terrific war outbreak in Europe has fulfilled an extraordinary prophecy. For a quarter of a century past, through preachers and through press, the ‘International Bible Students’ . . . have been proclaiming to the world that the Day of Wrath prophesied in the Bible would dawn in 1914.”
 

So it has really just become a roundabout way of bragging and hinting at least subliminally that the WTS is a kind of "prophet:"

(Amos 3:7) . . .For the Sovereign Lord Jehovah will not do a thing Unless he has revealed his confidential matter to his servants the prophets.

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, George88 said:

The mention of Nebuchadnezzar I is irrelevant to this period. So, you shouldn't cloud the issue.

I was referring to what Wiseman said about Nebuchadnezzar I in the same context where he mentioned the brother of the governor. It had to do with other people named Nebuchadnezzar. I didn't think he was clouding the issue. I thought he was making a good point.

[George88]

32 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I was referring to what Wiseman said about Nebuchadnezzar I in the same context where he mentioned the brother of the governor. It had to do with other people named Nebuchadnezzar. I didn't think he was clouding the issue. I thought he was making a good point.

Then this means you lack understanding in language and are using something that is not there as an excuse, as usual. However, I agree, that Dr. Wiseman isn't clouding the issue; you are.

 

[George88]

JWI, Pudgy, and comfortmypeople, I have a straightforward challenge for you. Why don't you try to disprove scripture without adding your biased interpretations?

ESV  Luke 21:24 They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (Lk. 21:24 ESV)

If you doubt that the "times of the Gentiles" concluded in 1914 when non-Jews (Gentiles) liberated the Jews from Palestine, then challenge the course of history itself.

That sounds fascinating, haha! So far, we have World War 1 occurring unexpectedly, even though it was mentioned approximately 40 years prior as a sign of the end of the "gentile times." Perhaps not by name, but by event. I would be intrigued to witness someone solve that enigma. Is this the type of scenario that unfolds within the closed club?

It's quite embarrassing to witness such rhetoric coming from people who claim to be Jehovah's Witnesses, don't you think?

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, George88 said:

What is the reason for Dr. Wiseman's confusion between the Nebuchadnezzar he refers to and the one located in Uruk?

I don't know what you mean. Dr. Wiseman didn't say he was confused did he?

2 hours ago, George88 said:

Are you insinuating that the mistakes pointed out in past claims by scholars should discredit their credibility?

Yes. Of course it's true that mistakes pointed out in "past claims by scholars" should discredit the credibility of those scholars who made those past claims. That's always true that mistakes can discredit credibility, but not always.

Your question is more likely asking about when current scholars point out mistakes from the past. In that case, does it discredit the credibility of those current scholars when pointing out those past mistakes by others (such as scribes from 2,500 years ago, or even other scholars from 10 to 1,000 years ago). And if that's the question then it does not necessarily discredit their own credibility, unless of course, they are pointing out irrelevant mistakes needlessly, or especially if they are merely replacing those past mistakes with their own current mistakes.

But I don't see Dr Wiseman doing anything wrong here, and he does not claim there were any scribal mistakes in this context. He does mention some mistakes made by some past scholars but nothing substantial to this discussion. 

So my take on this is: Always question, always be skeptical and verify as best we can. Never trust our own understanding either. All of us can be wrong. All of us fall short. The purpose of discussion is to look for ways in which I might be wrong so that I can correct my wrong opinions.

3 hours ago, George88 said:

Are you suggesting that only illogical non-scholars should be deemed trustworthy? This seems like quite a demand.

Yes. Of course, see how that works out for you!! LOL. Only trust illogical unstrustworthy non-scholars, if you wish. LOL. 

In reality, you should not put TOO much trust in either non-scholars or scholars either. Evidence that you can see for yourself should be looked at and validated yourself as much as possible. A lot of evidence that people think is too difficult to check out for themselves is extremely simple and we have nothing to be afraid of. As Watchtower publications have long suggested for other contexts:

*** tr chap. 2 p. 13 par. 5 ***
We need to examine, not only what we personally believe, but also what is taught by any . . .  are they based on the traditions of men? If we are lovers of the truth, there is nothing to fear from such an examination. 
 

[JW Insider]

22 minutes ago, George88 said:

Then this means you lack understanding in language and are using something that is not there as an excuse, as usual. However, I agree, that Dr. Wiseman isn't clouding the issue; you are.

I can only assume that these vague, unspecified accusations are some kind of response to the fact that you had misread Wiseman to say that this other Nebuchadnezzar was also Nabopolassar's son and therefore Nebuchadnezzar's brother. If so, I apologize for pointing out the mistake. We can move on, I hope. 

[George88]

3 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I don't know what you mean. Dr. Wiseman didn't say he was confused did he?

No, you are

4 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Yes. Of course it's true that mistakes pointed out in "past claims by scholars" should discredit the credibility of those scholars who made those past claims. That's always true that mistakes can discredit credibility, but not always.

So, what you're suggesting is that we should question the works of Dr. Wiseman, AK Grayson, Furuli, and all modern scholars. I'm glad you're in agreement.

7 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Yes. Of course, see how that works out for you!! LOL. Only trust illogical unstrustworthy non-scholars, if you wish. LOL. 

I would also find it hilarious to take the word of a non-scholar with an agenda.

This is precisely why I refuse to tolerate the misuse of scripture, history, and language to serve personal agendas.

[George88]

I am curious about your alternative proposal concerning 1914. As I mentioned before, the matter is straightforward, so there should be no confusion. Your task is simply to refute historical facts, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[JW Insider]

14 minutes ago, George88 said:

If you doubt that the "times of the Gentiles" concluded in 1914 when non-Jews (Gentiles) liberated the Jews from Palestine, then challenge the course of history itself.

I'll gladly take the challenge. See if you (or anyone you know) can prove that the Jews were liberated from Palestine in 1914. Done.

For good measure, also see if you (or anyone you know) can prove that no Jew "fell by the edge of the sword" at the behest of any nation after 1914. 

19 minutes ago, George88 said:

So far, we have World War 1 occurring unexpectedly, even though it was mentioned approximately 40 years prior as a sign of the end of the "gentile times."

Decades prior to WW 1, Russell said that 1914 would be bringing an END to the time of trouble not the beginning. It was printed in Studies in the Scriptures and in the Watchtower magazine.

*** "Can it be Delayed Until 1914?", Zion's Watch Tower, July 15, 1894. ***

We see no reason for changing the figures—nor could we change them if we would, They are, we believe, God's dates, not ours. But bear in mind that the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of the trouble.

So he predicted the OPPOSITE of World War! What kind of World War is the END of a time of trouble and not the BEGINNING of a time of trouble?

And that mistaken prediction was only 20 years prior to 1914, not 40. It wasn't until the big prophetic errors that Russell made around 1904, 10 years prior, that Russell also decided the entire harvest period would need to be a complete 40 years of relative peace from 1874 to 1914 to preach the gospel, and THEN the world's institutions and all kingdoms would collapse in October 1914 or within a few months afterwards. 

Of course, Rutherford moved that 40-year "harvest' that was once 1874 to 1914, and moved it to 1878 to 1918.

*** "The Concluding Work of the Harvest", The Watch Tower, October 1, 1917, pg 6148-6149. ***

"and the evidence is very conclusive that it is true, then we have only a few months in which to labor before the great night settles down when no man can work."

*** The Finished Mystery. Studies in the Scriptures. Vol. 7: International Bible Students Association. 1917 ***

In one short year, 1917–1918, the vast and complicated system of sectarianism reaches its zenith of power, only to be suddenly dashed into oblivion . . . . One large part of the adherents of ecclesiasticism will die from pestilence and famine.

[George88]

11 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I'll gladly take the challenge. See if you (or anyone you know) can prove that the Jews were liberated from Palestine in 1914. Done.

For good measure, also see if you (or anyone you know) can prove that no Jew "fell by the edge of the sword" at the behest of any nation after 1914. 

Uh!It's quite amusing that the real debate on AD1914 JWI has finally surfaced, haha! However, instead of misrepresenting my words to suit your argument, which is clearly designed for you to challenge me as the denier of 1914, I invite you to take on the responsibility of disproving historical facts.

Remember, you need to disprove ideology such as this.

"that only a small proportion of the Jews either of this country or of the world at large sympathise with the Jews in Palestine who have adopted methods of violence in their struggle against the British Government. I happen to be one of those Jews who sympathises with the Jews in Palestine who are fighting for their national liberation. . . . I believe that the Jews of Palestine are as right to fight as were all the other peoples in history, ancient and modern—including the British in 1914 and 1939—who have found themselves faced with the alternatives of fighting or
submitting to national subjugation and destruction. . . . page 163

Just keep in mind who you try not to include in your distorted views of who is a Gentile.

21 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Decades prior to WW 1, Russell said that 1914 would be bringing an END to the time of trouble not the beginning. It was printed in Studies in the Scriptures and in the Watchtower magazine.

This only means you subvert the pastor's language. I'm not going to argue with a Watchtower Denier.

So, stick to what you propose as a 1914 denier, and prove HISTORY wrong!

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, George88 said:

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I don't know what you mean. Dr. Wiseman didn't say he was confused did he?

No, you are

LOL. Of course, I was confused about why you asked:  . . . 

5 hours ago, George88 said:

What is the reason for Dr. Wiseman's confusion between the Nebuchadnezzar he refers to and the one located in Uruk?

If you didn't think he was confused, I wondered why did you ask about "the reason for Dr. Wiseman's confusion"?

At any rate, I'm not worried about it, and I'm no longer confused. LOL.

1 hour ago, George88 said:

So, what you're suggesting is that we should question the works of Dr. Wiseman, AK Grayson, Furuli, and all modern scholars. I'm glad you're in agreement.

Good. Absolutely. Question them all. Verify what you can directly from evidence or photos of the evidence. (I took hundreds of my own photos in London, Paris, and Berlin.) Get multiple translations. You can even go so far as to look up at least some of the cuneiform for yourself if it bears on some questionable or controversial difference of opinion in translation. And it's a lot easier than most people think to double-check the readings on some of the astronomical tablets if you work from trusted translations. And for the record, I have no problem with the translations that Furuli used, but then, he did not offer any of his own anyway, but copied the translations provided by others prior to his work.