Jeffro
1041
Agreed! Ezekiel 40:1 simply refers to the fact that Ezekiel prophesied in the 25th year of the exile and the 14th year after the city had been struck down. So what?
I love facts and I love Jeremiah 25:12 because it is my favourite text. I love that scripture. Your interpretation of that text is bogus and nonsense and our interpretation is better than yours.
There is no need to twist the scripture because they read plainly and simply for Jeremiah consistently states that the land would become a desolated place without an inhabitant and even tells its duration in that state of seventy years and not fifty. The major exile began with the final destruction of the city duriung Neb's 18th year and the last year of Zedekiah when the land was totally emptied. No other interpretation makes sense.
Further, in Neb's 23 rd year other exiles were taken from other areas outside of Judah so there is no problem here.
If your chronology is superior to Jonsson then Jonsson would like to know and you will make trouble for yourself with other apostates. Interestingly other scholars using the same secular chronology propose 588 and 589 so the matter is further confused.
You cast aspersions on other Witnesses becaus ethey do not go outside the square but you forget that scholar has gone outside the square and has been studying chronology and has many books on chron ology not published by the Society since the seventies. This means that scholar is familiar with all aspects of chronology and is well qualified to endorse as accurate that chronology.
Regarding the twenty year gap during the short Neo- Babylonian period is not of my making but simply comes into existence when the seventy years is fed into the mix. Now if we omit the seventy years then all is well but if we p;ut it in as we must do as it represents a major period of biblical history in that rather short period of Neo-Babyloian history., In fact, from the reign of Nebuchadnezzer to the last king Nabonidus we have a total period of some 66-67 years which is dominated by the lon ger period of sev enty years contemporaneous with that same period. This means that the seventy years demands scholarly acceptance and any attempt to ignore this critical period is dishonest, deceitful scholarship and I condemn all those guilty of such subterfuge.
How then care there be any other evidence for that period could overide the most outstanding piece of biblical history. The seventy years obliterates totally all other secular evidence of the NB period for the purposes of constructing a chronology. In short, the seventy years makes such so-called evidence farcical and redundant. Jonsson's so called 18 lines of evidence is irrelevant when compared to the historical validity of the biblical seventy years. Therefore, this fact alone ensures the validity of 607 BCE from all other pretenders such as 589, 588, 587, 586 BCE.
Yes the word that was accomplished in Chronicles was the Return of the Exiles in 537 and not the Fall of Babylon in 539 BCE and such Return ended that seventy years. So it was that those exiles became servant to Babylon until a new ruler at Babylon namely Cyrus who then released the exiles in 537 BCE. The date of 537 for the return is certainly compatible with known history of that period as most reference works attest, There is no reference publsihed that offers anything other that 537 is the date for the return.
I do need to grasp at straws because my situation is not desperate for we make our views publicly known and are quite able to public defend such views. The Bible reads plainly and simply on these matters so we have nothing to fear.
Jeremiah quite clearly refers to the seventy years as a period of desolation, exile and servitude and Josephus also agrees.
scholar JW