How would a JW handle this? 587 proved correct date for fall of Jerusalem

by confusedjw 54 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • El blanko
    El blanko
    I am not interested in your silly wager and neither is anyone else.

    I'm interested

  • undercover
    undercover
    I am not interested in your silly wager and neither is anyone else. Grow up and get a life!

    scholar

    BA MA Studies in Relugion

    First of all, it's not my silly wager...go back and read the posts smart guy. Second you were the one who said you couldn't respond to all the posts listed. I was giving you an oppurtunity to address one post, one question at a time.

    As for getting a life...I have done just that. I grew up and learned that I had been lied to by the WTS and so I got a life and got out. Now it's your turn to figure it out....

    But ya know what....I've grown tired of your non-answers and your flip comments when you get put on the spot. I've avoided posting on these threads because it always leads to the same thing...you disappearing without answering any of the challenges put your way. So at the risk of being edited or censured:

    [edited]

  • confusedjw
    confusedjw

    Scholar - do you really teach your children this? I mean after the "I want to be right to prove you wrong" bravado has faded, how do you expect people to believe this 607 thing with no evidence? Nice trick calling it the Jonnson cult. Is it also the Britannica Cult and the British Museum Cult?

  • mkr32208
    mkr32208
    Main Entry: ven·er·a·ble
    Pronunciation: 've-n&r(-&)-b&l, 'ven-r&-b&l
    Function: adjective
    1 : deserving to be venerated -- used as a title for an Anglican archdeacon or for a Roman Catholic who has been accorded the lowest of three degrees of recognition for sanctity
    2 : made sacred especially by religious or historical association
    3 a : calling forth respect through age, character, and attainments; broadly : conveying an impression of aged goodness and benevolence b : impressive by reason of age <under venerable pines>

    Venerable Scholar? Oh god I'm gonna barf! Your nothing like a scholar!

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia
    Let me make this one important point/ WT scholars have for many decades calculated 607 for the Fall of Jerusalem. Such a calculation is solidly based on secular and biblical evidence which is fully explained in the Society/s publications. It is based on a Absolute Date which is 539 followed by the relese of the Exiles under Cyrus in 537. These facts are indusputable, Further, a period of seventy years marked that of the Exiles in Babylon who served and remained in Babylon for that period of seventy years which also marked a period of desolation of the land. This means that the Bible clearly sets the beginning and end of the seventy years which concluded in 537 and began in 607. Now, the matter of the seventy years is a matter of interpretation of several key texts and there will be different views on this. WT scholars take the matter of the seventy yeras as serious business, reading the text directly and not trying to manipulate the matter in order to fit some pet hypothesis.

    Okay, please explain to me how 539 BC is an "absolute date" to anchor the chronology. When the Society has claimed 539 as an "absolute date," it often cites the Nabonidus Chronicle as establishing 539 as an absolute date (cf. w55 2/1, p. 94; w68 5/1, p. 268, 8/15, p. 490; si, p. 283), but this is not so. The Chronicle indicates precise dates by month and day (such as the 16th of Tishri) but these do not fix 539 BC as an absolute calendar date. Rather, the Society elsewhere shows that 539 BC is a derived date based on the actual absolute date of 523 BC which the Strm Cambys 400 astronomical tablet establishes as the 7th year of Cambyses II:

    ***it-1 p. 453 Chronology ***

    Since the seventh year of Cambyses II began in spring of 523 B.C.E., his first year of rule was 529 B.C.E. and his accession year, and the last year of Cyrus II as king of Babylon, was 530 B.C.E. The latest tablet dated in the reign of Cyrus II is from the 5th month, 23rd day of his 9th year. (Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C.?A.D. 75, by R. Parker and W. Dubberstein, 1971, p. 14) As the ninth year of Cyrus II as king of Babylon was 530 B.C.E., his first year according to that reckoning was 538 B.C.E. and his accession year was 539 B.C.E.

    The other tablet establishing an absolute date for the Neo-Babylonian period, as you well know, is VAT 4956 which establishes 568 BC as the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzer. Both these dates harmonize well in the generally-accepted chronology. But let's just suppose that your interpretation of the 70 years of Jeremiah trumps external evidence, and one of these must be in error. Why is Strm Cambys 400 to be preferred over VAT 4956? Indeed with the former you still have to count lengths of reigns to get to 539 BC whereas the latter is within the reign of Nebuchadnezzer himself, and it is straightforward to get to 587 BC as the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzer. I don't see how 587 BC contradicts your interpretation of the 70 years if you go with 568 BC as your anchor date instead of 523 BC, which gives 587 BC as the date of the destruction of Jerusalem and then you count down 70 years to 517 as the year marking the end of captivity and 519 BC as the fall of Babylon. Yes, that messes up the Persian chronology by 20 years but as you say, the Bible trumps fallible secular evidence, so it doesn't matter at all what other secular facts have to say -- just as long as we abide by our interpretation of the 70 years. I don't see how this is any different from starting with the anchor date of 523 BC to 537 BC, and then adding 70 years which creates the same 20-year disparity with secular evidence. In short, I see no inherent conflict between 587 BC and your preferred interpretation of the 70 years. Whether there is a conflict or not depends on which anchor date one chooses for oneself.

  • stevenyc
    stevenyc

    Honesty
    Bob of the $ talks and BS walks class
    Very Funny, coughed up my tea reading that.
    steve.
  • wannaexit
    wannaexit

    had this conversation with a family member

    Response: We trust what the faithful and discreet says.

    wanna

  • Berean
    Berean

    scholar, Where is your BA MA from? Berean

  • AlanF
    AlanF

    I want to demonstrate just how breathtakingly stupid this unscholar really is. Almost everything he said in his post timestamped "03-Mar-05 00:32" is demonstrably wrong and/or nonsensical.

    : I have had no involvement with the 587V607 as you incorrectly claim.

    This is gibberish. What the hell is "the 587V607"? It's certainly not English.

    What I actually said makes complete sense: "anyone can easily look up the 607 vs 587 threads he's been involved in". You've certainly been involved in many threads that argue about the 607 date versus the 587 date.

    As usual, you had a brain fart and misinterpreted what I wrote, thinking that I said you were involved with discussions at some website with "587V607" in its name.

    : I have not posted on that site but I am familiar with those letters on chronology.

    Like I said . . .

    : Also, you make false claims concerning both charts that feature in the Aid and Insight volumes which show that WT scholars have provided a coherent presentation of Divided Monarchy which accords well with the 390 year period as prophesied by Ezekiel.

    Nonsense. The Aid book has an extremely long chart, spanning several pages, that lists the Jewish kings and their lengths of reigns. If you think they're in the Insight book, then provide the page numbers. But you can't, and you know it.

    : In fact you cowardly avoid giving any chronology for this period

    We've been through exactly this same thing many times before, you twit. The reason that I can't give a chronology is simple, as I have repeatedly stated and as the many attempts for hundreds of years by competent scholars proves: the Bible's statements are inconsistent and cannot be reconciled so as to result in a completely coherent chronology. Close but no cigars.

    The fact that the Society claims to have come up with a consistent chronology is no more relevant to actually doing so than its leaders' claim to speak for God means that they actually do.

    This problem of inconsistency, being inherent in the Biblical data itself, proves that your next statement is not only an irrelevent non sequitur, but deliberately deceptive:

    : because the Jonsson hypothesis cannot do this simple thing.

    Because you've been confronted with your misrepresentation of this time and time again, it's obvious that you're either far too stupid to participate in a discussion of this nature, or simply an incorrigible liar. I'm certain that it's the latter, because you're not so stupid as to have missed this point so many times.

    Do you have no shame? What value is it to churn away at this chronology stuff if you tell blatant lies and disown the very God you claim to worship?

    : Why is it that many scholars at least make an attempt but you and your Daddy Jonsson cannot?

    I've explained this at least fifty times to you.

    : All that you can do is blindly follow a questionable date 587 without any chronology in support of it,

    Bullshit. There's a direct path from the absolute date of 568 B.C. for the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar (astronomically determined) to his 18th year, 587 B.C. The Bible states that Jerusalem fell in either Nebuchadnezzar's 18th or 19th year (scholars argue over how to interpret the Bible on this, but I think that the arguments of the scholars Jonsson supports resolve this apparent difficulty, resulting in 587 B.C.) which scholars resolve to either 587 or 586 B.C. There's a gigantic amount of additional chronological support in the form of other astronomically confirmed events, tens of thousands of business documents, contemporary inscriptions on stelae, etc., and the testimony of several ancient scholars -- all of which results in an absolutely determined chronology of the Neo-Babylonian era. In view of this, there's an uncertainty of at most one year (due entirely to the Bible itself) in the date of Jerusalem's destruction.

    Leolaia challenged you with some extremely pertinent questions. No doubt you'll ignore that challenge, just as you've ignored most.

    : at least WT scholars not only have a veriable date of 607

    Nonsense. The Bible itself disproves their interpretations, as we've demonstrated on this board ad nauseum. The Society itself has never even commented on some of the discrepancies between what it claims and what the Bible clearly says. You -- you sniveling coward -- have been confronted with the fact that in one case (what Zechariah means by the 70 years) what the Society stated contradicts your claims and the Society's general claims, yet you failed even to acknowledge this. And of course, Furuli's idiotic claims don't help any. He has to invent new Hebrew grammar to get around the clear Biblical statements.

    : but have provide a consistent

    Wrong. According to the Society, the date that they and/or Russell used from 1876 through 1943 for Jerusalem's destruction was 606 B.C. In 1944, in the book The Kindom Is At Hand, they changed the date to 607 -- without giving an honest reason for it.

    : and accurate chronology for the Old and New Testament.

    What a stupid statement! This is precisely what we're arguing about, and you state this as if it's an established fact.

    : What you need to do is to sit down with a glass of Jim Bean

    The first intelligent thing you've said in this post.

    : and do some work, work at providing at least an attempt of a king list for Judah and Israel. If this is too difficult for you then perhaps it will teach you to be a little more modest in matters of chronology.

    I don't need to repeat the work of scholars who are far more competent than little old me, any more than I need to repeat Einstein's derivation of General Relativity to trust that he did his work competently. Nor will I do either.

    Your demand is clearly nothing more than a straw man, and hypocritical to boot. You personally have not verified the Society's chronology published in the Aid book. You won't even manage to set forth a reference to anything in the Insight book on this, as I stated above.

    You, unscholar, are a disgrace to Christianity, and to the scholarly community you claim to be part of. It's thoroughly incompetent, arrogant and dishonest JWs like you who long ago convinced me to quit your destructive cult, and who convince honest-hearted ones today to do so.

    AlanF

  • stillajwexelder
    stillajwexelder

    Now come on Guys - Scholar is entertaining - leave him be - I really enjoy listening and reading people who try to defend the indefensible - I mean I am a member of tha flat earth society - I am off course completely crazy

    stillajwexelder BA MA Studies in Religion PhD in Archeology

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