Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?

by Little Bo Peep 763 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  Jonsson is simply using Young's article to confirm 587. that is fine but I am more interested in the broader methodological issues that now for the first time by Young are now being debated.

  I see. If you are so interested in these methodological issues, why do you not discuss the strengths or weaknesses of Young's methodology? If it is because you have not yet studied Young's approach to make such a judgment, why do you say this---

  Methodology is what confirms 607 and what will destroy support for 586 or 587.

  This can only mean that you believe that Young's methodology is wrong, since it supports 587, not 607. Explain what makes Young's methodology flawed.
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  Alleymom

  Next, I introduced you to the more recent study of the same event as Young and the controversy about 586/587 in the journal article by Avioz in Biblica.

  Neil --

  As I pointed out to you a few days ago, the article by Avioz has nothing to do with 586 vs. 587. It is about whether the Temple was destroyed on the tenth day of Ab or the seventh day of Ab.

  http://www.bsw.org/project/biblica/bibli84.html

  Marjorie
• 

  Alleymom

  Response to Alan's message #4106

  Alan --

  Often the Society does not directly lie (for even Watchtower writers have a semblance of conscience about flat-out lies) but phrases its claims in a way that is difficult to show contains a direct lie, but is clearly designed to lead a reader to a wrong conclusion (scholar pretendus' comments on the Biblica article are a good example of this).
  
  Such dishonesty is well recognized in the legal arena.
  
  A legal treatise called "Prosser and Keeton on Torts" (Robert F. Keeton et. al., Section 106, 5th ed. 1984) explains that the majority of courts hold that "misrepresentation" occurs when the following situations apply:
  
  1) Ambiguous statements are made with the intent that the listener reach a false conclusion.
  
  2) Literally true statements are made that create a false impression.

  Here is another perfect example. Consider the Society's misleading statement:

  "So, too, for Neriglissar, said to be the successor of Evil-merodach, only one strictly historical tablet has come to light, and it is dated in his third year as king."

  The word "strictly" signals that something fishy is going on. I thoroughly debunked this claim two years ago in the following messages:
  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/55372/810707/post.ashx#810707

  16-Jul-03 04:24

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/55372/811858/post.ashx#811858

  17-Jul-03 04:34

  Here are a few excerpts:

  Take the assertion that only one "strictly historical" tablet has come to light. What does the WT mean by that? The average reader would assume they are saying only one tablet, period , has been found for Neriglissar, right?
  
  In fact, that is NOT the case, as can be proven very easily by simply going to a large university library and reading some of the dated tablets which were written during Neriglissar's reign.
  
  The WT is apparently excluding all the tablets which are DATED to Neriglissar's reign, but which refer to other, mundane matters and thus are not strictly "histories". They are, however, most definitely "historical," and it is precisely the thousands of everyday tablets which establish the reigns of the kings beyond doubt. They know that no JW is ever going to browse in a university library in the PJ 3700's - PJ 3800's and read through some of the fascinating cuneiform texts and find this out.

  Would any honest person have stated there is "only one strictly historical tablet" for Neriglissar without explaining that there are also numerous dated tablets of other genres, and that these do indeed cover the other years of Neriglissar's reign?

  This kind of deceit in scholarship is simply appalling.

  Marjorie
• 

  AlanF

  Alleymom said:

  : Do you know how they have handled the English hybrid "Jehovah" in the modern Greek NT? Have they put it back to "kyrios," since "kyrios" is what the NT manuscripts actually say? Or have they transliterated the artificial word "Jehovah" (which doesn't occur in any of the Greek manuscripts)?

  Never having seen a modern Greek NWT, I don't know. But given the Society's penchant for keeping the NWT consistent among languages, I can't conceive that they didn't use "Jehovah" in the Greek NWT every place they used it in the English. And of course, Fred Franz and the other members of the NWT Committee really seem to have thought that their "Jehovah" was actively directing the translation work. With that kind of lunatic mentality, they were capable of anything.

  : If so, it seems more than passing odd that the Modern Greek NWT would then differ so radically from the thousands of extant Koine Greek manuscripts.

  Sure, but why not, when you're "spirit-directed"?

  As for your examples of appalling deceit in Watchtower "scholarship", you're absolutely right. But this is a drop in the bucket. I have personally documented more than 100 examples of such deceit in Watchtower publications dealing with creation and evolution. Others have documented many dozens of examples in their publications on the Trinity and blood transfusions, their own history, Bible history -- you name anything of real importance, the Society has probably misrepresented it.

  AlanF
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  AlanF

  scholar pretendus wrote:

  : Sometimes Alan you appear to me very bright and at other times you simply plain dumb and ornery.

  Ornery I'll admit to. As for dumb, you said it yourself: "I am rather a bit slow" and "I am not the smartest fellow around and you characters in comparison to me are geniuses".

  : I drew your attention to Young's article not because of its support for 587 of which fact I already knew but to the simple truth that Young's arrticles and notice I refer to articles, plural not 'a article'.

  My attention was and is focused only on the article to which I posted a link. That article is sufficient to establish that Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 B.C.

  : is

  "Are". No wonder you failed your Master's program.

  : not just about a date

  But earlier you claimed it wasn't about a date at all. Your lies are so often and easy that you can't keep track of them.

  : but about 'methodology'

  "Methodology" is just a fancy way of saying "systematic way of doing things". What Young describes -- and you've admitted to having no understanding -- is a simple and systematic way of accounting for all pertinent data bearing on the subject of his article -- the year of Jerusalem's destruction. That's all it amounts to.

  You seem to think that all "methodologies" are equally good. They are not.

  For example, good scholars use methods that include:

  O Describing all relevant data
  O Collating all relevant data
  O Discussing the merits and deficiencies of the various data
  O Forming working hypotheses based on the best collated data
  O Systematically elmininating hypotheses that contradict known facts or result in internal inconsistencies
  O Discussing points of view of critics who form differing conclusions

  Bad scholars use methods that include:

  O Forming a hypothesis based on a pre-existing agenda
  O Selecting only data that supports said hypothesis
  O Failing to discuss data that does not support said hypothesis
  O Misrepresenting data
  O Failing to fairly discuss other hypotheses
  O Dismissing the arguments of critics unfairly
  O Ignoring the arguments of critics altogether

  Guess which methods characterize your methods and those of the Watchtower Society?

  I can provide dozens of examples of your and the Society's atrocious methodology. In fact, your "methods" really are systematic only in the sense of being consistently dishonest.

  : and this gets to the crux of the problem of the Jonsson hypothesis.

  As a claimed Christian, you ought to quit lying and claiming that there is such a thing as a "Jonsson hypothesis". This exists nowhere but in your self-admitted deficient mind.

  : Now Young is fully aware unlike Jonsson and poztates that it is methodology that creates the confusion over the 586/587 debate.

  What utter nonsense. You're simply too stupid to understand Young's methodology and see that Jonsson constantly uses its basics. Having admitted you don't understand it, you have no business even commenting on it.

  : Next, I introduced you to the more recent study of the same event as Young and the controversy about 586/587 in the journal article by Avioz in Biblica.

  This is a blatant lie. As Alleymom pointed out several times, and I emphasized in a post earlier today, the Biblica article has nothing whatsoever to do with "the controversy about 586/587". It has only to do with the extremely minor matter of whether Jerusalem was destroyed on the 10th of Ab, or the 7th of Ab. Again it's obvious that your desire to win a discussion at all costs causes you to tell a blatant lie. I'm sure that your professors saw this sort of gross scholastic dishonesty in your course work, and that's why you failed.

  : Now I could have listed many other recent studies pertaining to calendrical problems associated with 586/587 now recently by Young and Avioz.

  You go right ahead and do that. But judging by your penchant for blatant misrepresentation of source references -- something you've been consistent with in your years on this discussion board -- most of them will be shown to be irrelevant to the issue of the year of Jerusalem's destruction.

  And of course, not one of your references supports a date other than 587/6. Which is really the important thing in establishing that Watchtower chronology is dead wrong.

  : Jonsson is simply using Young's article to confirm 587.

  Duh.

  : that is fine but I am more interested in the broader methodological issues that now for the first time by Young are now being debated.

  What utter nonsense. No one on this board is debating "methodological issues". People are debating about evidence and its interpretation -- i.e., they're using proper scholarly methodology to come to valid conclusions. You, on the other hand, aren't using a real methodology at all -- unless you can call systematic lying a methodology.

  : Methodology is what confirms 607 and what will destroy support for 586 or 587.

  LOL! You really are living a dream world.

  By the way, when are you going to aplogize for lying about Carl Jonsson's relationship with that "whacky catastrophism journal"?

  Your lie about that is a perfect example of your "methodology" for debate.

  AlanF
• 

  Jeffro

  When I first started researching the 607 issue, I manually worked out a timeline with the placement of all the Kings of Israel and Judah using the books of Kings and Chronicles and worked out where all of their years lay using both 607 and 587 for the date of Jerusalem's destruction.
  
  
  I then separately sourced years used by secular historians for regnal years of the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians, as well as points in their history that refer to Jewish kings.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have considered the books of Kings and Chronicles in depth and manually mapped the reigns of all of the kings and determined where these kingships lay if the year 587 is assumed for the temple destruction. I then sourced contiguous extracts of the historically accepted reigns of kings for Assyria (884-609), Egypt (993-486), and the Neo-Babylonian (667-539) period. To avoid any bias, I did not have the Israelite king lists visible when I mapped the other reigns to their accepted years. When I checked the completed lists together, I found that the chronologies correctly line up with a number of events: Jehoash paying tribute to Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad V in about 823 (as recorded on an Assyrian inscription); Menahem paying tribute to Pul (renamed Tiglath-pileser III when he ascended the Assyrian throne) in about 760 (2 Kings 15:19-20); exiles being taken by Tiglath-pileser III in the reign of Pekah in about 739 (2 Kings 15:29); Ahaz paying tribute to Tiglath-pileser III in about 731 (2 Kings 15:29); Hoshea conspiring with Pharaoh So (agreed by most historians to be Osorkon IV) and being imprisoned by Shalmaneser in about 726 (2 Kings 17:3,4); Assyrian king Sargon II stating "I besieged and conquered Samaria" (as recorded on an Assyrian inscription) in about 718; Manasseh paying tribute to Assyrian king Esar-Haddon (as recorded on an Assyrian inscription); Esar-Haddon invading Egypt in about 671 (Assyrian history); Manasseh paying tribute to Ashurbanipal (as recorded on an Assyrian inscription); Josiah killed by Pharaoh Necho in about 609 (2 Kings 23:29); Necho defeated by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish in 605 (Jeremiah 46:2). (Where I say 'about' I mean to within a year or two.) There were only two reigns that did not fit perfectly. Assyrian king Sennacherib, whose reign appeared to begin 5 years later than the events depicted in Hezekiah's 14th year at 2 Kings 18:13, though it is possible that the events occurred while Sennacherib was prince (as was the case with Tiglath-pileser III at 2 Kings 15:19, 20) The other discrepancy was Pharaoh Shishak's attack on Jerusalem (suggested to be Sheshonq by historians), which was out by some 24 years, but 20 years closer than the Society's reckoning."
  
  
  When you use 607, it gets very very messy. This cannot be a co-incidence.
  
  
  I would like to see how 'scholar' defends this.
• 

  AlanF

  Judah Was Not Completely Desolated During the Exile

  The Watchtower Society claims that Judea and Jerusalem were completely desolated, absolutely without any inhabitants at all during the time of the exile of the Jews in Babylon. Following the Society, scholar pretendus makes the same claim. This notion is fundamental to the Society's teaching that the 70 years of Jeremiah ran from 607 to 537 B.C.

  Jerusalem may well have been completely uninhabited during the exile, but the Bible itself gives a good indication that Judea was not completely without inhabitants during that time of captivity of the Jews. The land may have been devoid of Jews, but not necessarily of other people, in particular, the people who came to be called Samaritans. The evidence is found in Ezra 4:1-5:

  When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the sons of the Exile were building a temple to Jehovah the God of Israel, 2 they immediately approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the paternal houses and said to them: "Let us build along with YOU; for, just like YOU, we search for YOUR God and to him we are sacrificing since the days of Esarhaddon the king of Assyria, who brought us up here." . . . 4 At that the people of the land were continually weakening the hands of the people of Judah and disheartening them from building, 5 and hiring counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus the king of Persia down till the reign of Darius the king of Persia.

  The term "Judah and Benjamin" obviously refers to "the sons of the Exile", i.e., the Jews who returned from Babylonian captivity, who were mostly from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin because those were the people who were taken captive originally from Judea. "The people of the land", the "adversaries of Judah and Benjamin", were the people who largely lived in the territory immediately north of Judea. These people lived extremely close to Jerusalem, since the city of Bethel, once a center of calf worship in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, was only about 11 miles north of Jerusalem.

  The Keil-Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament (Vol. 3, "The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther", p. 57) confirms these facts:

  Vers. 1-5. The adversaries of the Jews prevent the building of the temple till the reign of Darius (vers. 1, 2). When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the community which had returned from captivity were beginning to reuild the temple, they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chiefs of the people, and desired to take part in this work, because they also sacrificed to the God of Israel. These adversaries were, according to ver. 2, the people whom Esarhaddon king of Assyria had settled in the neighborhood of Benjamin and Judah. If we compare with this verse the information (2 Kings xvii. 24) that the kings of Assyria brought men from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria, and that they took possession of the depopulated kingdom of the ten tribes, and dwelt therein; then these adversaries of Judah and Benjamin are the inhabitants of the former kingdom of Israel, who were called Samaritans after the central-point of their settlement. [The] sons of the captivity (vi. 19, etc., viii. 35, x. 7, 16) . . . are the Israelites returned from the Babylonian captivity, who composed the new community in Judah and Jerusalem. Those who returned with Zerubbabel, and took possession of the dwelling-places of their ancestors, being, exclusive of priests and Levites, chiefly members of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, are called, especially when named in distinction from the other inhabitants of the land, Judah and Benjamin.

  Now, with the Samaritan lands adjacent to the good farmlands of Judea, it is inconceivable that for the period between Jerusalem's destruction in 587 B.C. and the return of the Jews ca. 538/7 B.C. the Samaritans did not occupy Judea. After all, it was literally only a step over the border. There is no evidence whatsoever in the Bible or in secular history that this did not occur, and there is good secular evidence that Judea was at least sparsely occupied during the entire period of the Exile. A number of Bible commentators have long recognized this. For example, John N. Darby, in his Synopsis of the Books of the Bible (Vol. 2 -- Ezra to Malachi, ca. 1870, p. 15), wrote:

  But besides this, in such a state of things the power of the world having gained so much ground already in the land of promise, even among the people to whom the promise belonged, difficulties arose from the fact that persons who, in consequence of the intervention of the civil powers, were within the borders of the promised land, desired to participate with the Jews in constructing the temple. They alleged, in support of their claim, that they called upon God as the Jews did, and had sacrificed unto Him since Esarhaddon had brought them into the land.

  In summary then, there is no evidence that the area of Judea was absolutely without inhabitants during the Exile, and good evidence that it was inhabited.

  To my knowledge, the Watchtower Society has never presented any decent arguments about this, but like scholar pretendus in this thread, 'establishes' its claim by simple declaration.

  AlanF
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  Leolaia

  AlanF....Don't forget that that there is archaeological evidence too. In a recent article "The Babylonian Gap: The Archaeological Reality" (JSOT 2004:273-277), Ephraim Stern makes the following claims which he says are fairly secure:

  • Even before the Babylonian campaigns of 605 BC onward, Judah had experienced ongoing devastations by the Assyrian and Egyptian armies and there were also regional conflicts between Judah and Edom and Judah and Philistia which led to devastation at sites.
  • Before the Babylonian campaigns in the Levant there were a total of ten kingdoms in the land: Two were controlled by Assyria (Samaria and Megiddo), and the rest were independent (Judah, Ammon, Edom, Moab, and the four kingdoms of the Philistines). All these kingdoms had ceased to exist by the Persian period, as indicated by discontinuities in material culture.
  • In Judah, Philistia and Edom, most Iron Age II sites end at destruction levels of the Babylonian conquest (e.g. Babylonian arrowheads embedded at destruction levels in Tel Malhata in Edom, Jerusalem in Judah, and En-Gedi) and are immediately followed with Persian levels. Some cities that had been devastated in the seventh century BC in Assyrian campaigns, such as Megiddo III, Dothan, Beth-shean, Tel Rehov, etc. were resettled and rebuilt in the Assyrian period (and thus have Assyrian pottery), but these levels are similarly followed by dramatically different Persian levels. The Assyrians appeared to have tried to rebuild and resettle cities in conquered territories, while the Babylonian military strategy was the destroy them and not rebuild.
  • In the Persian levels, there is evidence that Phoenicians had moved into the previous Philistine cities and Edomites had moved into previous Judean cities. In the Babylonian conquest, "the land was not 'emptied' but its great harbor cities in the north and south were totally destroyed, and the population, some of which was killed and some deported by the Babylonians was sharply reduced" (p. 274). Substantial resettlement did not occur until the Persian period, and then largely by non-Judeans.
  • There is however a notable exception: the land of Benjamin in Judah, which shows evidence of continuity throughout the Babylonian period to the Persian period, and Rabat Ammon and central Samaria (p. 276). These are areas where Judean and Samaritan/Israelite culture continued.

  Blenkinsopp in another article (JSOT, 2002) has engaged Stern on some of these issues and believes that there was more continuity than Stern admits; Stern however claims that Blenkinsopp is not an archaeologist and has misinterpreted the data. For specific details on the various sites, I believe a good source would be Stern's Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: Volume 2, The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods, 732-332 BCE (AB Reference Library; New York: Doubleday, 2001).
• 

  Narkissos

  Here's a review of an interesting collective publication:

  http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Reference_Links/JudahBabylon.htm
• 

  Leolaia

  Here is another recent article, "The Rural Settlement of Judah in the Sixth Century B.C.E." by Oded Lipschits (Palestine Exploration Journal, 2004:99-107). This article focuses on the evidence from the land of Benjamin. Here is a quote from the abstract:

  "The present paper claims that the major and most conspicuous archaeological phenomenon in Judah after the destruction of Jerusalem is the sharp decline in urban life, which is in contrast to the continuity of the rural settlements in the region of Benjamin and in the area between Bethlehem and Beth Zur. These archaeological investigations demonstrate that a new pattern of settlement was created in Judah, in which the core settlements were destroyed or abandoned while, at the same time, the surrounding region continued to exist almost unchanged. The differences between the various regions of this small kingdom should be understood as the outcome of a planned Babylonian policy of using some of the rural highland areas as a source for agricultural products. The settlement in those areas became a place of specialized wine and oil production, and was used both for paying the taxes and supplying the basic products for the Babylonian administration and forces stationed in the area. A similar situation is detectable in the area south of Rabbath-Ammon, around Tell el 'Unieiri and Tell Hesban, and perhaps also in the Baq'ah region, north of Rabbath-Ammon" (p. 99).

  Later in the article, Lipschits contrasted "regions known to have been destroyed at the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E. and that had had no settlement continuation in the Persian period (the Jordan valley, the Negev, the southern Shephelah, etc.)" with the region of Benjamin and "the northern Judean hills" were there was clear continuity throughout the period (p. 102). As far as depopulation is concerned, Lipschits estimates the following:

  "[D]uring the Babylonian period there was a demographic and settlement crisis -- a decline of approximately 70% in the size of the population (Lipschits 2003, 356), The sharpest decline occurred in Jerusalem and its environs (around 90%), which were the focus of the Babylonian activities (Lipschits 2001, 129-42). A similar rate of decline also took place in the Judean desert, Jordan valley, the western littoral of the Dead Sea, and in the Shephelah (Lipschits 2000, 31-42; 2003, 334-46), However, in the Benjamin region, there was a more moderate decrease (approximately 60%) in the size of the settled area between the end of the Iron Age and the Persian period. As will be discussed further, to judge from the results of the excavations of the main sites in this region, one may assume that this decrease took place gradually at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries B.C.E, (Lipschits 1997, 196-245; 1998, 8-32; 1999, 155-90; 2003, 346-51), Furthermore, throughout the region between Jerusalem and Beth-Zur, there is marked settlement continuity, with an impressive increase in the number of small sites, as can be concluded from comparison between settlement patterns of the end of the Iron Age and those from the Persian period (Lipschits 1997: 276-99; 2003: 351-55)" (p. 102-103).

  Regarding the fate of the cities in Benjamin:

  "In the region of Benjamin, there were four important, central cities that were not destroyed by the Babylonians and that even flourished during the sixth century B.C.E. (Lipschits 1999a, 155-178; 2003, 346-48; Carter 2003, 307-10): Mizpah (Tell en-Nasbeh), Gibeah (Tell el-Ful), Bethel (identified in the village of Beitin), and Gibeon (identified in the village of el-Jib). At the end ofthe sixth century B.C.E. and during the Persian period, there is a marked process of depopulation and settlement decline in those four sites (Zorn 1993, 184-85; Stern 2001, 321-22; Lipschits 2003, 348-49)" (p. 104).

  The decline in those sites may have been connected with the restoration of Jerusalem as an administrative and cultural center. However, the author also notes that even into the Hellenistic period, the overwhelming majority of the population continued to live in rural settlements.