Thiele's letter to Gruss about Ptolemy

by Doug Mason 3 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Doug Mason

  I recently provided the letter that Edwin Thiele wrote to Max Hatton about Ptolemy's Canon.

  This time I am providing a copy of the letter Thiele wrote to Edmond Gruss on Ptolemy's Canon.

  In this 1971 letter, Thiele writes about a Watchtower magazine article:

  "The canon is right and Jehovah's witnesses are wrong. What would I say about the (Watchtower) article in general? I would say that such a writer and reader has no business writing about such a subject. He does not know the facts, or if he does, he does not use them in an honest manner. It reminds me of the way an unscrupulous lawyer would deal with facts in order to have them seem to support a case he knows not to be sound."

  A scan of Thiele's letter is avaialble at:

  http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=237788d4032e492650d8dd1254a9f515

  Wait for about 25 seconds for the "Download" button to appear.

  Doug
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  Atlantis

  Doug Mason:

  Thank you Doug!

  Nevada!-
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  BluesBrother

  This is particularly interesting if you can relate it to this WT quote :

  WT 69 2/1 p90

  "And this canon of Ptolemy, what is it? We are particularly interested, seeing that historians find it necessary to lean so heavily upon it in connection with their chronology for the Neo-Babylonian period. Claudius Ptolemy lived in Egypt during the second century C.E., or over 600 years after the close of the Neo-Babylonian period. He was not a historian, and is known primarily for his works on astronomy and geography. As E. R. Thiele states: “Ptolemy’s canon was prepared primarily for astronomical, not historical purposes. It did not pretend to give a complete list of all the rulers of either Babylon or Persia, nor the exact month or day of the beginning of their reigns, but it was a device which made possible the correct allocation into a broad chronological scheme of certain astronomical data which were then available.”—The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, page 293, ftn."
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  jaydee

  Good one Doug, Thanks from me too