539 v 587 - the relative merits of each as a pivotal date

by besty 7 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  besty

  However, the lunar data on VAT 4956 fit better with 588 than with 568 B.C.E., twenty years prior. Additionally, the planetary data was most likely calculated backwards and not observed for 568 B.C.E. Thus the most reliable information on VAT 4956, the lunar data, may actually point to 588 B.C.E. as the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar II! ftn3 In that year, he attacked Egypt according to the fragmentary cuneiform tablet BM 33041. In this year, a Bible prophecy that supports the seventy-year desolation, the forty-year desolation of Egypt, began to be fulfilled. (Ezekiel 29:12-14) Removing twenty years from the seventy-year desolation ruins this prophecy, as Egypt's forty-year desolation would be cut short as well, as it ended before an alliance was made with Nabonidus against Persia. Regarding Egypt, Ezekiel 29:18-20 states that it was compensation to Nebuchadnezzar for his successful campaign against the city Tyre. Tyre was to be "forgotten" in a commercial sense for seventy years according to Isaiah 23:15-16, which began when Nebuchadnezzar besieged it after Jerusalem's destruction. (Ezekiel 26:1) Seventy years later, it supplied timbers to the returnees in Jerusalem for Jehovah's temple, in fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. (Isaiah 23:17-18; Ezra 3:7) Both of these prophecies of Egypt and Tyre require a full seventy-year desolation, and ironically are connected to Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year of VAT 4956! (See also in "Additional Reading" regarding VAT 4956 and Ptolemy's Canon of Kings: Appendix to Chapter 14 [ "Let Your Kingdom Come," pages 186-9] and When Did Babylon Desolate Jerusalem? [ Awake! , May 8, 1972, pages 27-8])

  http://onlytruegod.org/jwstrs/539vs587.htm

  Sweet pea is debating a live JW on freeminds on this subject. Any takers on the content of the above paragraph.......
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  Doug Mason

  The real critical date for the WTS is for 537 BCE being the year that the Jews returned to their homeland, and that it was the year they dedicated the altar of the temple. Unfortunately for the WTS, it cannot prove 537 BCE as being the correct date for either event.

  Further, the WTS says the 70 years began 2 months after the destruction of the temple at Jerualem when people went into Egypt, yet it does not end the 70-year period when the opposite happened and people returned to a supposedly empty land, but rather the WTS ends the period when the altar was dedicated. Any scholar will tell you that this did not happen until after the new temple had been completed decades later.

  539 BCE is not an Absolute Date, but is calculated using the secular historians that the WTS rubbishes. The WTS cannot arrive at any date without relying on the very secular historians they decry.

  Where can I see that debate you are referring to?

  Doug
• 

  besty

  Doug

  see here for the debate . . .
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  agonus

  what is there to debate? Neither of these dates have anything to do with an "invisible return of Christ".
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  thetrueone

  There much information here that relates to this topic

  http://www.144000.110mb.com/607/i-3.html#G
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  Leolaia

  The site is dishonest for claiming only two secular bases for 587 (Ptolemy's Canon and VAT 4956) which is then "less" than the support for 539. This ignores such other sources as BM 32312, BM 76738+76813, LBAT 1417, LBAT 1419, LBAT 1420, LBAT 1421, NABON No. 24, NABON No. 8, NABON No. 18, the Uruk King List, the Sons of Ebigi business records, and many other records. Many of these supply absolute dates, while others fix the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian period (leaving no room for a phantom 20-year period required by 607).

  Egypt's forty-year desolation

  There was no 40-year desolation. Just because Ezekiel wrote something warning of a desolation for 40 years doesn't mean it happened. This is particularly clear since Ezekiel made this prediction only after acknowledging that his earlier predictions about Tyre did not come to pass. Egypt was very prosperous at the time it was supposed to have been desolated; not a scintella of historical evidence indicates that it was desolated, depopulated, and utterly destroyed in the 6th century BC.

  Tyre was to be "forgotten" in a commercial sense for seventy years according to Isaiah 23:15-16, which began when Nebuchadnezzar besieged it after Jerusalem's destruction.

  Again, totally wrong. Isaiah wrote concerning events in his own time, the timeframe involved was not the 6th century BC but the 7th century BC. The oracle plainly concerns the Assyrian domination over Phoenicia, and even describes Babylonia as desolated by the Assyrians; Tyre and Sidon were replaced by a new city "Esarhaddon's Port" built by the Assyrians on the coast.
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  besty

  thanks Leo and Doug....
• 

  AnnOMaly

  However, the lunar data on VAT 4956 fit better with 588 than with 568 B.C.E., twenty years prior. Additionally, the planetary data was most likely calculated backwards and not observed for 568 B.C.E. Thus the most reliable information on VAT 4956, the lunar data, may actually point to 588 B.C.E. as the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar II!

  And that is just plain wrong. Anyone who can properly use an astronomy program can find that the claim of a better lunar 588 BCE fit is bunkum.

  I'm sorry I didn't see the debate earlier or I would have rolled up my sleeves and jumped in.