@Witness My Fury:
Eggnog, care to "explain" Daniel 2:1 then? Also where do you get 35 years for Nabonidus and belshazzar from exactly?
After Jehoiachin's rather short vassalage to Babylon ended, both he, along with his wives, his mother, his court officials and other "foremost men," were taken captive to Babylon, and Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, whose names Nebuchadnezzar changed to Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, respectively, who more likely than not were teenagers at the time, became Babylonian captives as well. (2 Kings 24:15; Daniel 1:7) Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar's father, began to rule as king of Babylon in 646 BC, died in 625 BC, which year became his son's accession year.
In previous posts, I pointed out that when Jehoiakim's three-year vassalage for Babylon ended in 617 BC, this occurred during his 11th year as king of Judah, after which he was succeeded by his son, Jehoiachin, as vassal king for Babylon, but also in 617 BC, after "three months and ten days" (2 Chronicles 36:9), Jehoiachin's vassalage ended "in the eighth year" of Nebuchadnezzar's kingship, so Jehoiachin was taken into exile at Babylon. (2 Kings 24:12).
Nebuchadnezzar then made Jehoichin's uncle Mattaniah his vassal king, changing his name to Zedekiah. During the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign in 609 BC, Nebuchadnezzar's 16th regnal year, Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon and attempted to ally Judah with Egypt against Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar was about to besiege Judah at that time, but withdrew over the report regarding Egypt. (Jeremiah 37:5). Two years later, however, in 607 BC, during Zedekiah's 11th year, Nebuchadnezzar's 18th regnal year, Jerusalem was besieged by Babylon for the third time, Jerusalem's wall was successfully breached, and Zedekiah's sons were all slaughtered as Zedekiah watched, after which he himself was blinded, bound and led prisoner to Babylon where he died. (2 Kings 25:1, 2, 8-10)
Following Zedekiah's being taken into exile at Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar went on to appoint Gedaliah as governor in Judah in the fifth lunar month of Ab, who was assassinated two months later by Judean military chiefs in the seventh lunar month of Tishri, causing the inhabitants of Judah to flee to Egypt along with Jeremiah and his secretary. It is then in this year -- 607 BC -- that Nebuzaradan, Nebuchadnezzar's chief of the bodyguard, went on to destroy Jerusalem and its temple.
While this occurred during the eighteenth year of the kingship of Nebuchadnezzar over Babylon, this was the first year of his exercise of world domination as a world power without interference from the kingdom of God, I feel it important to note here, @Witness My Fury, that dating the events mentioned in the Bible is only possible based on extant writings that reveal the drop dead dates when certain events occurred (e.g., 70 AD as the year when Jerusalem and its temple was destroyed has been well-documented).
Now Daniel 2:1 states that it was "in the second year of the kingship of Nebuchadnezzar," that is, in 606 BC, Nebuchadnezzar's 19th regnal year, the second year after Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem in 607 BC, that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream about a huge image of gold, silver, copper and iron mixed with clay that was pulverized by a stone, that perplexed him so much that he had been unable to sleep. Daniel's interpretation of this dream gave Nebuchadnezzar to understand that what it foretold was the march of world powers until they were overtaken by an indefinitely lasting kingdom set up by the God of heaven that would crush all of these kingdoms.
It would be unreasonable for anyone to think that Daniel didn't know that Nebuchadnezzar had been king of Babylon when he was a boy and he had to have known that Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar's father, had been king of Babylon before Daniel was born. It would be just as unreasonable for anyone to think that when he wrote at Daniel 2:1 that it was "in the second year of the kingship of Nebuchadnezzar" that the king had a dream, that he had forgotten that Nebuchadnezzar had been king of Babylon for most of Daniel's life. So it is reasonable to conclude that Daniel had to have written as to the "second year" of Nebuchadnezzar's kingship from a certain perspective.
At Daniel 7:1, Daniel refers to another dream had in 556 BC "in the first year of Belshazzar the king of Babylon," who came to rule in Babylon along with his father Nabonidus, who had ruled as king in Babylon in 574 BC until appointing his son as coregent, and, at Daniel 8:1, he refers to yet another dream had by Belshazzar in 554 BC "in the third year of the kingship of Belshazzar the king."
What's important to understand is that Daniel recorded events from a different perspective as is the case when he makes reference to Nebuchadnezzar's "second year of kingship," viewing Nebuchadnezzar's kingship not from the standpoint of his rulership alongside the typical kingdom of God, but from the standpoint of his having become a world power in 607 BC with no king sitting representatively on God's throne in Jerusalem. An inscription contained in the Nabonidus Chronicle reads: "Babylon fell VII/16/17," indicating that the date of Babylon's fall occurred on Tishri 16, 539 BC. ("VII/14/17" meaning : Tishri, the seventh Hebrew month, the 14th day, in the 17th year of Nabonidus' reign, wherein Belshazzar, as coregent, had ruled in Babylon since 556 BC.)
@djeggnog wrote:
Nebuchadnezzar, 625/624 BC for 43 years
Evil-Merodach, from 581 BC for two years
Neriglissar, from 579 BC for four years
Labashi-Marduk, from 575 BC for three months
Nabonidus and Belshazzar, coregents, from 575/574 BC for 35 years
[Belshazzar (557/556 BC) for 17 years]
End of Babylonian Dynasty, 539 BC
@AnnOMaly:
Really? I would LOVE to see how you've established that length of reign. Can you show me?
No.
Sure. I don't get how you can redefine '3rd year of kingship' to '11th year of kingship' or '3rd year of vassalage.
What concern of this is to me? I cannot concern myself with what things you cannot do. One thing I definitely see you have a problem with is being wrong, for you simply cannot accept it when you have been proven wrong. I cannot leap over tall buildings in a single bound and pigs cannot fly. You're neither a pig nor a dog, but I doubt that you are able to bound or fly either.
It's totally absurd to then extract the conclusion that 'actually Daniel counted Jehoiakim as being king of Judah ONLY from when he became vassal to Babylon'!
And who are you now? I'm the only one in this thread that speaks authoritatively about the Babylonian Dynasty, while you using conjecture, speculation and gobbledygook, the latter being a word that has gotten much use in this thread, have sought to confound through obfuscation that which can be explained using the Bible, with a bit of math and some common sense (e.g., giving due consideration to things, like the Nabonidus Chronicle, to shore up dates that would otherwise be unreliable).
You are the kind of person, @AnnOMaly, that would read Jeremiah 25:1 ("the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, that is, the first year of Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon") and Daniel 1:1 ("the third year of the kingship of Jehoiakim the king of Judah") and declare "Contradiction!" even though these two scriptures are not referring to the same time period at all, and then when it is shown to you that there is no contradiction, the desire on your part to be right drives you to soil yourself, so to speak, by declaring the explanation that you neither accept nor comprehend to be "Absurd."
I would have to watch my typos because you are both a faultfinder and petty, but as I'm quite comfortable in my skin with all of my shortcomings, should you find a typo in this post, I don't care. Not only have I found you to be disingenuous, @AnnOMaly, but I've found you to be dishonest, too. That comment you made in this thread regarding Nebuchadnezzar's not having any "nasty, bloody battle" with Egypt during his "4th year" that would correspond to Jehoiakim's "7th year after his 3 years of servitude," is an example of the kind of dishonesty of which you're capable for you didn't mind applying spin in this thread to prove or confuse @Witness My Fury, which I found to be reprehensible.
What you attempted to do here to @Witness My Fury in this thread is analogous to someone that agrees to breakdown a $100 bill (US) using 3-$20s, 1-$10, 1-$5 and 24-$1s for a stranger hoping the fact that you kept $1 would escape his notice. I'm looking forward to living in a world where the only real mistakes would be someone feasting on three or four sweet-tasting prunes and thinking that they're good to go for a three-hour trip only 20 minutes into the trip being forced by nature to make a pit stop, a world where some form of currency is in use, asking someone I'm meeting for the very first time at an amusement park in the new earth to breakdown a bill doesn't mean my having to count what is given in exchange before leaving the window.
Was J'kim's vassalage to Babylon the result of a friendly social visit on the part of Neb? ... Come on, eggie. Dazzle me with your spirit-guided insights.
I'm reminded of something that Jesus said to his detractors at Luke 16:31: If you aren't yet bedazzled by my "insights," neither will you be bedazzled were I to take the time to respond to this question either.
@Witness My Fury:
Yes I know this has been done to death, but there's lots of newbies here lately and I doubt many will trawl thru all the old threads on it so it's worth rehashing every now and again I think. Plus I happen to think this is the most fundamental point in disproving any authority the WTS claim once and for all.
I think it not a bad idea to write your posts in such as way as to inform the newbies, but I write my posts primarily to benefit the lurkers, who might be seeking a definitive answer to the question raised in controversy both here on JWM and elsewhere as to whether it is true that Jerusalem fell to Babylonian forces in the year 607 BC or, as some assert, in the year 587 BC.
@djeggnog
