Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?

by Little Bo Peep 763 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Jeffro

  take 70 years off 539BC

  My calculator must be broken... won't give me 607 no matter how many times I punch it in. Keeps me giving me 609... Hey... isn't that when all the historians say Babylonian destroyed Assyria's capital, Harran and became world power?? What a co-incidence!! (No, I really didn't use a calculator.)
  
  According to Isaiah's Prophecy volume 1 page 234, when "Tyre must be forgotten seventy years," (Isaiah 23:15) the 70 years "Evidently" does not fully apply to Tyre. Why then should any reference to Jerusalem involving 70 years fully apply the entire 70 years to Jerusalem? The Isaiah's Prophecy book makes it clear that 1) the '70 years' of Jeremiah 25 indeed refers to a lot of nations (as is quite evident just by reading the bible anyway) and 2) the entirety of a 70-year period need not be fully applied to any one nation even when the nation is explicitly referred to with reference to that 70 year period.
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  AlanF

  Scholar pretendus has all sorts of mathematical difficulites.

  Zechariah mentions two approximately 70-year periods, starting and ending in different years, which he claims are both identical and both 70 and 90 years long. He has yet to explain how 70 = 90, or how periods with different start and end dates can be the same.

  Jeremiah and 2 Chronicles, backed up by the Watchtower, both clearly indicate that the 70 years prophesied by Jeremiah end in 539 B.C., and scholar pretendus -- given new input from Mommy's Isaiah book -- now admits that this is so. But he also claims that this same period ends in 537 B.C. He has yet to explain how the same period can end in two different years. He also has failed to explain why a period starting in 609 B.C. and ending in 539 B.C. cannot be THE 70 years of Jeremiah, especially when it meets every biblical criterion.

  It's no wonder this pretend scholar flunked out of a simple graduate program in religious studies. Note that "religious studies" is to a hard discipline like theology as "engineering science" is to engineering. They're dumbed-down versions of the real thing intended to give a survey rather than an in-depth education. Flunking out of such is like flunking out of basket-weaving.

  AlanF
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  scholar

  Jeffro

  I think you are a confused little boy! Indeed you will not obtain 607 by taking off 70 years from 539 but will simply arrive at the useless date of 609 which is a utterly meaningless date for both historical and chronological purposes. The Jonsson hypothesis tries but fails to ascribe anything relevant to 609, it would be be preferable to view the seventy years as a round number and begin the period from 605. Better still, throw the Jonsson garbage in the bin and use the more accurate WT chronology.

  The seventy yeras refered to in Isaiah 23: 15 are for Tyre alone as the text clearly states. The Isaiah commentary merely shows that the seventy yeras for Tyre and Judah were to run concurrently and applied to that sapect of Babylonish domination (servitude) as foretold by Jeremiah at 25:11 as 'these nations will serve'.

  scholar JW
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  scholar

  Alan F

  Nope! Zechariah refers to a period of seventy years twice as shown in the two chapters where these are mentioned. The seventy years have obviously finished otherwise these could not have reached the finite number 'seventy', this singular period was of mourning and applied to the time of exile from Judah as proved by the context for each chapter. This past period had a definite beginning and end from the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 to the Return in 537.

  Jeremiah and Chronicles definitely prove that the seventy years could not have ended in 539 because the land was stll desolate without an inhabitant and the Jews were stiil captive to Babylon. Thie Isaiah commentary merely expalins that the Jeremiah's prohecy of servitude by the nations was experienced specifically by Tyre in Isaiah 23: 15 and that the nations and Judah would serve Babylon for seventy years. For Judah it had to be a specific period as shown by specific texts but this is not the case for the nations because their experience with Babylon was historically different as respects their servitude.

  scholar JW
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  scholar

  City Fan

  Using all of my scholarly brain power I arrive at 609 which for intents and purposes is a useless date because nothing happened in that year which ammounts to any consensus within scholarship. The Jonsson hypothesis presents a case of special pleading about the Fall of Assyria but there this period between Bbabylon and Assyria is fraught with historical difficulties. Much better to use the methodoilogy of WT scholars which fixes the beginning and end of the seventy yeras on known, quantifiable events.

  scholar JW
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  AlanF

  LOL @ scholar pretendus!

  You really must apply for service in the Brooklyn Bethel Writing Department. Your BS is even better than Gene Smalley's. Keep it up long enough and you're liable to make it to Governing Body Helper (read: Official Liar) status.

  AlanF
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  jeanniebeanz

  These threads crack me up as they always go the same way:

  Someone asks a question that has to do with dates. Several people contribute at first, including "Scholar" who gets soundly smacked for his trouble. What does one expect from someone who takes dates that the Society gives seriously?

  At any rate, most people at this point bow out because they do not want to see the whipping that is to come; some of us hang around to watch and peek in from time to time, especially if the thread goes to 10 pages or so. It's hypnotic, kind of like a train wreck, and we cannot turn away completely.

  So, as the thread progresses different people take turns spanking "scholar" until his ego is bruised enough to either get nasty (rare), sarcastic (common) or silent (one can only hope). More often than not, he gets so turned around in his posts that they start conflicting each other and he hangs himself. Although I admire his ability to mentally block anything that does not support his conslusions it confuses me as to why he continues to try. Afterall, if his intent is to give a witness, it's a crappy one at best since he is here against the wishes of the society. At worst though, he makes witnesses look stupid.

  The only conclusion that I can come to is that he is actually an apostate who is here to intentionally make the witnesses look like fools. Seriously, that is the only reasonable conclusion I can come to save maybe one; he is a witness who is just 'not all there'. In that case, he needs help and I feel sorry for him.

  J
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  hillary_step

  Jeannie,

  The only conclusion that I can come to is that he is actually an apostate who is here to intentionally make the witnesses look like fools.

  Unfortunately the reality is far less interesting than your more imaginative viewpoint.

  The reality is that Scholar is a victim of cultic programming and will insist that the sky is the land and that oil is water until he is instructed to the contrary by the masters of his faith.

  During this process any tactic will be employed to wiggle and squirm from the acceptance of what is quite obviously an incorrect viewpoint. Intellectual dishonesty? No problem. Logical fallacy? Send it on! Blinkered vision? Here I am send me.

  I can do nothing better than to quote to Scholar a statement from his own masters who, discussing techniques of propaganda and the manipulation of information in the Awake! magazine wrote the following ironic gem :

  'The cunning propagandist loves such shortcuts - especially those that shortcut rational thought. Propaganda encourages this .........by capitalizing on the ambiguity of language and by bending rules of logic"

  I think we have seen this technique turned into an art form on this thread by Scholar and the Puppet Master who operates him from behind the scenes.

  HS
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  Narkissos

  While I agree there is no point trying to convince scholar (and I said why on p. 8 of this thread), I think the current thread has made a lot of important points to anyone else, e.g.:
  - that the NWT of Jeremiah 29:10 is untenable;
  - that the 70 years of Jeremiah 25; 29 refer to the generic period of Babylonian domination, ending with the fall of Babylon in 539 BC (with the unsuspected help of the WT Isaiah book);
  - that the 70 years of Zechariah 1; 7 refer to the generic period starting with Jerusalem's fall and still going on in 519-518 BC.
  In the process scholar demonstrated and finally admitted his complete ignorance of Biblical languages, which puts his ongoing apology of the "brilliant" NWT in perspective.

  In one word: thanks scholar.
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  toreador

  In the process scholar demonstrated and finally admitted his complete ignorance of Biblical languages, which puts his ongoing apology of the "brilliant" NWT in perspective.

  In one word: thanks scholar.

  To a very dim bulb any light is brilliant by Scholars standards maybe.

  Tor