Pre-Flood ages based upon different calendar?

by Inquisitor 86 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    A Christian,

    Yes, I am skeptical but not close-minded about the matter, I am in fact a reluctant disbeliever.

    I am aware of Theile's work regarding the Hebrew Royal chronology and some of the leaps of faith he takes to support his chronology. I actually have a vast collection of books relating to Biblical chronology, including Theile. As you say, the subject is huge and probably better suited to book publication and subsequent reviews.

    I think I have probably just written more than anyone here has read or cares to read. So I'll stop now. But I will again strongly disagree with your contention that the Bible can not be considered to be the unimpeachable word of God because it is flawed when it comes to matters of history and chronological detail.

    Yes, I appreciate that the Bible and its infallibility seem to be essential to your faith. I think that you walk on this ice in this regard

    I could ask many questions: When did Baasha die? How many offspring did Jacob have? How long did Terah live? How long did the Hebrews live in Eygpt? Where was Jacob buried? Who taught Joab how to count? ;) How many horseman did David take? How many stalls did Solomon possess? Where did Uzzah die? How many children did Jesse have? etc. etc. These questions, among numerous others, all require leaps of faith to rationalize away the contradictions contained therein.

    I do not discount the unimpeachable nature of the Bible lightly, as I too have researched its numerous errors regarding science, history and chronology extensively.

    That having been said, I look forward to adding your book to my collection when it is published, please let me know when it is available.

    HS

  • a Christian
    a Christian

    Starting over,

    You wrote: Believers want me to accept that there is a being who created everything ... and the best way he could come up with to inform mankind of his wishes was through an instrument such as the bible.

    No, the fact is only about a third of the world even has the Bible, and that has been true only in modern times. A few hundred years ago almost no one had it. And for most of mankind's history it did not even exist. The way God chose to inform mankind of his wishes for us ( to 'love one another' and to 'do onto others as we would have them do onto us' ) was to put his instructions to us into all of our hearts.

    Romans 2:14,15 tell us that, "

    Even the nations who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right."

    Those of us who are now fortunate enough to have both the ability to read and access to a Bible can now learn more about God and his plan for our salvation. But we do not need the Bible to know how God desires us to live our lives. For he has put those instructions into all of our hearts and has given us all consciences to constantly remind us of them.

    That being said, I think it would be unwise for any of us who now possess the Bible to dismiss its value, feeling that so long as we live a relatively good life God will judge us kindly. For Jesus said that, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Matt. 12:48)

  • belbab
    belbab

    A Christian,

    The subject matter of one of the longest threads on this board was about the “pivotal date” of 607 BCE as the date of the destruction of Jerusalem. Much of it hinged on a two/three letter preposition, at versus for. Six million people on earth have been led to believe that the date 607 BCE has great significance that governs their existence today.

    Carl Olaf Jonson, wrote the book Gentile Times Reconsidered. It started off as small research project and the information he found changed the lives of thousands as well as his own. I do not think of him as a crackpot.

    Your above post, whether you realize it or not, has unlocked a door for me and I am sure for many others also, to scrutinize your discoveries “and to see if it is so”. Your post gives enough details for anyone to pursue the chronology further. You do not have to do anything, neither can you shut the door again. For the man said, I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

    I’m running like hell to the libraries. I am going for the gold.

    belbab

  • a Christian
    a Christian

    HS,

    You wrote: I could ask many questions: When did Baasha die? ...

    Coincidentally much of the answer to this question is actually contained in my last post. I indirectly discussed this concern in explaining how I date the division of the kingdom five years earlier than does Thiele. But since it was an indirect discussion of your concern I'll now try to answer your question more directly.

    The Bible tells us that Baasha died in the 26th year of king Asa of Judah (1 Kings 16:6-8). But it seems to also say that Baasha was still alive in Asa's 36th year (2 Chronicles 16:1). So, when did he die? Baasha died in the 26th year of king Asa's reign (890 BC, according to my calculations), just as the writer of 1 Kings tells us he did.

    Why then does the Bible tell us that Baasha fought against Judah in the 36th year of Asa? I don't believe it does.

    As I wrote earlier, when 2 Chron. 16:1 appears to say that Baasha fought against Judah in Asa's "36th year" I do not believe it is referring to "The 36th year OF Asa's reign." I believe, as did Thiele (check page 84 in TMNOTHK if you have the 1983 edition), that it is referring to "The 36th year [since the division of the kingdom] IN Asa's reign."

    Solomon died. The kingdom was divided. Then Rehoboam reigned 17 years. Then Abijah reigned 3 years. Then Asa became king. Then, after Asa reigned 16 years, in what would have been "the 36th year [since the division of the kingdom] IN Asa's reign" Baasha fought against Judah. Then, 10 years later, "in the 26th year OF king Asa's reign" Baasha died, just as the Bible tells us he did.

    So far as the rest of your list of questions, I noticed you added "etc. etc." at the end of them, implying your list of such questions is nearly endless. Since my time is not, I'll simply say that I have never run across such a question that I have not been able to find a reasonable answer to, such as the one I just provided to your "Baasha" question.

    Thanks for your interest in my writing project. I'll let you know when it is ready for publication.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia
    Interesting thought, though I get the idea that in offering this suggestion you are only playing "devil's advocate" and that you ascribe to neither school of thought.

    At the risk of detracting attention from the arguments and evidence to my own faith or lack thereof, I am agnostic with a "spiritual side", who is sincerely interested in the history of the Bible and understand it (or rather, its constituent writings) in its cultural and religious context. Thus, I am equally critical of apologetic claims that I personally believe to be inaccurate or historically incorrect as "atheist" claims that are fallacious or inaccurate (such as my recent postings against the Jesus/Horus/Osiris meme).

    But I wasn't merely presenting that option as a "devil's advocate"; it really is a logical option and one that has a place in Christian history, whether it is the belief of copyists engaged in altering the text who view themselves as fixing an already corrupted text, or the Roman Catholic view in the continuing revelation and authority in the church, or even the fundamentaist ideas in the KJV-only movement who regard the English translators as producing a perfected text. And the fundamentalist view that predicates acceptance of Christian belief on inerrancy of the Bible is hardly the only option that Christians have expressed. Some are quite comfortable with their faith in Christ while acknowledging an errant Bible because their faith does not depend on written revelation alone, or they trust the revelation is reliable regardless of whether it is 100% accurate or not. Isn't that what faith is about, after all? It is believing without full assurance where real faith comes into play, as it was in the case of Abraham. It seems to me that there is a weakness of faith in the insistance that the Bible must be 100% accurate (at least in its original form, which unfortunately does not exist for anyone today) or else it cannot be trusted. I'm sure you have seen the view expressed that because God gave his revelation to man, and because man has mediated that revelation, it will always be limited by what man can comprehend and express. The very nature of the text itself limits the revelation. As soon as a person reads anything, the process of (re)-interpretation begins, let alone the pliable nature of the form itself. I think it is best viewed as a witness to God or Christ -- and no witness is infallible. As some have expressed it, the Bible is more like John the Baptist. It points to Christ and tells you all you need to know to find him. But John was imperfect and had his faults and he should not be confused with the one he witnessed about. One does not assume that John had to be infallible and perfect in order to function as a witness. But that is what the notion of inerrancy assumes.

    You wrote: Jubilees was not dependent on the LXX per se, as it utilized the Hebrew text directly. The witness to Cainan in Jubilees is evidence that this name was already in the Hebrew prior to its rendering in the Greek LXX. Hmmm. This is not a convincing argument. We have no way of knowing what was and what was not in the Hebrew text that was in front of the author of Jubilees. He may have simply added his "Cainan" material as if he were consulting a Hebrew text after being influenced by the LXX. Or, probably a more likely scenario, he may have then been reading a corrupted Hebrew text containing this second "Cainan" - the same text which was also improperly relied upon by the translators of the LXX.

    It is the most probable assessment of the evidence. The textual evidence of Jubilees shows that the author wrote in Hebrew and was dependent on a Hebrew text, not the Greek LXX or even the Egyptian text tradition that it represents. The underlying text had strong affinities with not only the LXX but with the Samaritan Pentateuch (in many cases against the LXX, and never with the MT against both LXX and Sam.), such that the text is of a Palestinian type closely related to Sam. and the Qumran MSS. It has parallels with the LXX against the MT because the Vorlage of the former was derived from the Palestinian text (according to Frank Moore Cross, the Egyptian version of the Hebrew text branched off from the Palestinian text in the fifth-fourth centuries B.C., the Palestinian text arose earlier in the fifth century BC, and the proto-Masoretic Babylonian text which developed independently in the interim was introduced into Palestine in the first century BC, when Masoretic readings began to appear against the Palestinian text type). Compare, for instance, with the findings of James VanderKam on the use of Genesis in the Qumran Genesis Apocryphon (Textual and Critical Studies, pp. 278-279; JBL, 1978); he finds that it attests the same Palestinian text type as Jubilees and where they overlap, they agree with each other 85% of the time. In other words, both texts make very similar decisions in whether to follow the LXX against Sam. or Sam. against the LXX, indicating that they had similar Hebrew versions of Genesis at their disposal. It is a more parsimonious explanation to conclude that the author of Jubilees (which we know from internal evidence probably had a Palestinian provenance) followed a Palestinian Hebrew text of Genesis that resembled the LXX in some places, the Sam. Pentateuch in other places, and both (against the MT) much of the time, and that the author of the Genesis Apocryphon had a similar text at his disposal.

    So far as your contention that "the structure of the genealogy itself supports the view that 'Cainan' is original to the genealogy" due to the fact that without this second "Cainan" there are only 76 generations from Adam to Jesus, counting Adam as #1 and Jesus as #76. First of all, who ever said that there had to have been 77 generations from Adam to Jesus? Maybe if the number was 70 (as in the "70 weeks" prophecy) the argument would be a bit more persuasive.

    I agree that it is not proof of the originality of "Cainan" in Luke, but it is imho relevant evidence, on account of its internal features and kinship with earlier schematizations of the generations of world history to the eschaton found in the Apocalypse of Weeks (which presume ten weeks of 70 generations, with Enoch at the conclusion of the first week and Abraham at the conclusion of the third week, cf. 1 Enoch 93:3, 5) and the Book of Watchers (which presume 77 generations from Adam). There is a neat pattern in the Lukan genealogy that corresponds to the phases of Israel's history and highlights the coming of Jesus with the names placed at the conclusion of multiples of 7 generations (in a similar fashion to the way that the Apocalypse of Weeks uses the conclusion of weeks to highlight important events in Israel's history). Perhaps the resemblance is coincidental, but I think it more probably indicates that the author of Luke utilized a similar approach toward the descent of Jesus, grouping generations into weeks (with groups of weeks corresponding to phases of Israel's history) and using the sabbaths of a number of the weeks to foreshadow the coming of Jesus.

  • a Christian
    a Christian

    Belbab,

    You wrote: The subject matter of one of the longest threads on this board was about the “ pivotal date ” of 607 BCE as the date of the destruction of Jerusalem.

    The subject of when exactly Jerusalem was destroyed is one of great interest to JWs and ex-JWs. For if it was not in 607 BC as the Watchtower Society says then all of the Society's claims for itself fall apart. If Jerusalem was not destroyed in 607 then, according to the Society's Daniel chapter 4 "Seven Times" interpretation, Christ did not return in 1914. And if he did not then he could not have very shortly thereafter appointed the Society as his "Faithful Slave" - as they claim he did. But other than discussing the timing of this one event in Bible history JWs and ex-JWs have very little interest in the subject of Bible chronology.

    However, my chronological reconstruction as a whole certainly does add some weight in proving that JWs are wrong about their 607 BC date. Because the only way all of the divided kingdom's chronological puzzle pieces fit together is when 587 BC is recognized as the date of Jerusalem's destruction. The Watchtower Society's chronological reconstruction of the divided kingdom is a joke. Its creators make absolutely no attempt to synchronize it with any of several well established dates when the historical records of Israel's and Judah's neighboring nations tell us that their kings came into contact with the kings of Israel and Judah.

    You wrote: Carl Olaf Jonson, wrote the book Gentile Times Reconsidered . It started off as small research project and the information he found changed the lives of thousands as well as his own. I do not think of him as a crackpot.

    Carl's work simply establishes the date of one historical event, Babylon's destruction of Jerusalem. I claimed to have fully harmonized all apparently conflicting biblical and extra-biblical chronological information (including nearly all of that which is found in many "variant" Bible manuscripts) pertaining to the reigns of the Hebrew kings. A very big claim that will sound unbelievable to some. That being the case, I won't make my claim again until I am ready to fully present my case.

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Yeah, it's simply amazing what you can do with a pair of brackets...

    Provided of course you ignore the syntax (exact same structure as in 2 Chronicles 16,1, bi-shenath N le-malkuth X, in 1 Chronicles 26:31; 2 Chronicles 3:2; 16:12).

  • a Christian
    a Christian

    Nark,

    No brackets are necessary if we simply understand that in the early years of the kingdom of Judah a kings reign was reckoned in more than one way.

    One of the ways, of course, was to count the years of his reign from the time he actually became king. But another way was to count them from the time the kingdom itself was founded. I can cite other instances where this form of reckoning was clearly employed if you like.

    And as any student of Bible chronology knows, one more way of reckoning was also often employed, where the years of a king's reign were counted from the time he became his father's co-regent, which was usually a position of very limited authority - a crown prince or "king in waiting" so to speak. None the less the Bible often clearly counts the years of a kings reign from the time he was actually only the official heir to the throne.

  • a Christian
    a Christian

    And, I will add, that the most difficult part of all of this for those who have tried to make sense of the Bible's chronological record of the reigns of the Jewish monarchs is that the Bible never tells us what system or systems of reckoning its writers were employing or even what calendar they were using. We have been left to figure it all out. The ancients used several different systems of reckoning. The Egyptians used one system. The Babylonians another. The Romans still another. And while the kings in the northern kingdom of Israel were using one system for counting their kings' years of reign, the kings in the southern kingdom of Judah were almost certainly using another system.

    You can criticize the Bible for containing such a hard to understand record if you wish. But I don't believe doing so would be fair. It was not the purpose of the writers of kings and Chronicles to provide us with a complete historical record of the Jewish monarchy. That job belonged to the writers of "the book of the annals of the kings of Israel" and the writers of "the book of the annals of the kings of Judah." (1 Kings 14:19,29) Two books which were most likely destroyed when the Jewish Temple and its library were burned to the ground in AD 70.

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos
    One of the ways, of course, was to count the years of his reign from the time he actually became king. But another way was to count them from the time the kingdom itself was founded. I can cite other instances where this form of reckoning was clearly employed if you like.

    Please do. But keep in mind that inasmuch as they are clear (in the text, that is) they will actually disprove your point, because in the case of the Baasha/Asa synchronism your suggestion runs against the obvious meaning of the text.

    Iow, I don't question that events can be dated in relation to other (and earlier) references than the reign (whether that means coregence, accession or regnal year) of the ruling king. I question that such an alternative datation can come disguised under the appearance of the standard reference to the reign of the ruling king. And I do so on a very basic communication principle, namely that no speaker/writer (and especially a chronicler) deliberately begs for misunderstanding.

    As a side note, don't forget that the chronological reference is to Asa's reign, i.e. to the Judean kingdom which claims to be David's dynasty and would never consider the so-called "schism" as its starting point... especially not in Chronicles which idealises David and its line even more than Samuel-Kings.

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