This is a repost of my previous post, which contained a few typos in it, which are corrected in this repost.
@Farkel:
Here is the only exposition on this subject that blathering dunderheads cannot dispute because it is a rock-solid argument for the defeat of the 607 BCE idiocy.... I'm waiting for a legitimate challenge.
I just read your thread in its entirety, and nowhere in it did I come upon any "rock-solid argument" from you or from any of the "characters" that contributed to it that I'm sure made it an entertaining read for some. There was nothing of substance in the "scholarship" brought to the five-page thread, but I am here going to focus on just a few of your posts, starting with your initial message.
In your Post 6497, you wrote:
Remember, the WTS's claim of 607 B.C. is a full TWENTY years earlier than the accepted date of 586/87 B.C....
You refer to "586/87 B.C." as being some "accepted date," but the year when Cyrus deposed Babylon is 539 BC, a difference of 48 years, assuming it is to the year 587 BC (and not to the year 586 BC) that you refer, which means that the year 607 BC would be, not 20 years, but 22 years shy of 70 years. Your remark about 607 BC being "a full TWENTY years earlier than the accepted date of 586/87 B.C." I have understood as being the position that you have taken, the opinion that you have taken, which is fine, based upon your acceptance of the regnal years of the Babylonian monarchs listed in Ptolemy's Canon, which I do not accept:
Nabopolassar, 627 BC for 21 years
Nebuchadnezzar, 606/605 BC for 43 years
Evil-Merodach, from 562 BC for two years
Neriglissar, from 560 BC for four years
Nabonidus, from 556 BC for 17 years
End of Babylonian Dynasty, 539 BC
What is not clear to me though is why you are willing to accept "that Jerusalem was destroyed in the 19th year of 'Chad's' reign," a detail that originates with what you read in the Bible at 2 Kings 25:8-10, when secular sources do not provide this particular detail. The same Bible from which you extracted this factoid also provides two other factoids at Jeremiah 29:10 and at 2 Chronicles 36:21, which indicate that "in accord with the fulfilling of seventy years at Babylon," it was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah that the Jews would become exiles in Babylon "until the land had paid off its sabbaths," and yet in your associating the year 587 BC with the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, these other two factoids you do not consider as being relevant in forming your opinion. I assume you know that the books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles were all penned by the same prophet that wrote Jeremiah, and Jeremiah was consistent in all three of these Bible books.
[1] Other than that on which you might have read in the Bible, on what basis are you able to conclude the year 587 BC to have been Nebuchadnezzar's 19th regnal year?
[2] Other than that on which you might have read in the Bible, on what basis are you able to conclude the year 587 BC to have been the year when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar?
Another tricky part to remember is that people were very primitive in those years before Christ....
This is a joke, right?
"Fallen Baby" tells us that Nabonidus ("Nabby") was King when Babylon fell in 539 B.C. The WTS book "Aid to Bible Understanding" tells that "Nabby" ruled seventeen years from 556 to 539 B.C.
You indicated that you were paraphrasing some paragraph on page 184 of the Babylon the Great Has Fallen-God's Kingdom Rules! book, but there is no paragraph contained in the Aid to Bible Understanding book that indicates that Nabonidus "ruled seventeen years from 556 to 539 B.C."
More importantly, what possible difference does it make if there is secular evidence upon which you rely to dispute what the Aid book or what the Bible itself states as to the year when Jerusalem fell to Babylonian forces. You seem to be cherry-picking what things you may have read in the Aid book in arguing here that Jerusalem was deposed in the year 607 BC, but what you read in the Aid book is just one opinion -- Opinion #1 would be the opinion of Jehovah's Witnesses -- and your opinion -- Opinion #2 would be whatever it is you should publish here on this board -- would be a separate opinion. I know what the basis of Opinion #1 is, but I'd like to know the basis of Opinion #2. Note that I've assumed here that your opinion is not based on Opinion #1, but I realize it could be, so I'm asking: On what is Opinion #2 based?
Aid to Bible Understanding on Nabonidus - P 1195:
"Last supreme monarch of the Babylonian Empire...On the basis of cuneiform texts he is believed to have rule some seventeen years (556-539 B.C.E.)."
This quote you provided in your post 6497 was taken out of context, for the very next sentence read:
"(However, see Chronology.)"
I don't know if it is normally your practice to ignore such literacy devices when you should find them embedded in the text of any of the articles you might be reading, but this parenthetical note regarding the cuneiform texts upon which Nabonidus' 17-year rule is reckoned is expounded upon in the article "Chronology," where on page 327 in the Aid book, under the heading "Ptolemy's canon," we read the following in the left column in the first paragraph thereunder:
"Claudius Ptolemy lived in Egypt during the second century C.E., or over 600 years after the close of the Neo-Babylonian period. His canon assigns 21 years to the rule of Nabopolassar, 43 years to Nebuchadnezzar, 2 years to Evil-merodach, 4 years to Neriglissar, and 17 years to Nabonidus, or a total of 86 years. Counting back from Nisan of 538 B.C.E., historians therefore date Nabopolassar's first year as beginning in 625 B.C.E., Nebuchadnezzar's first year in 604, and the destruction of Jerusalem in placed by some in 586, by others in 587. These dates are some 20 years later than those presented in the chart accompanying this article (that is, 624 for Nebuchadnezzar's first regnal year and 607 for the destruction of Jerusalem). This is because we accept the Biblical information, particularly as regards the seventy-year desolation of Judah (running from 607 to 537 B.C.E.), as accurate and as superior in reliability to the ancient secular records."
In your Post 6499, you wrote:
If one can find the year Nebuchadnezzer started his reign, one can find when Jerusalem fell.
Virtually everyone agrees that 539 B.C. is the date Babylon fell to the Medes. There are 67 years from the start of Nebuchadnezzer's reign to the fall of Babylon. This brings us back to 605/606 B.C. The Bible clearly states that Jerusalem fell in the 19th year of Neb's reign. This brings us forward to 586/587 B.C.
How's that for simple?
I admit it is rather "simple" to take the difference between the two dates and do the math that enabled you to arrive at "605/606 B.C." However, even if it were true that "virtually everyone agrees that 539 B.C. is the date Babylon fell to the Medes," this does nothing at all to establish the year when Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon. I assume by my bringing this up here, you now can see this. You say that "the Bible clearly states that Jerusalem fell in the 19th year of Neb's reign," but this doesn't have anything at all to do with what you say here about the significance of 539 B.C. that "virtually everyone agrees" to have been "the date Babylon fell to the Medes." No matter what the Bible says, what you do not do is explain the significance of Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year as you see it or what it has to do with 539 BC. What you do not do is explain the significance of Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year or what it has to do with 587/586 BC.
[1] Please explain the significance of Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year to the year 539 BC.
[2] Please explain the significance of Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year to the year 587/586 BC.
In your Post 6510, you wrote:
The hard problem you are forever unwilling to face is that you cannot tie Jesus' statement about the times of the gentiles to Daniel's prophecy.
There is no nexus between the topic you were discussing in your other thread regarding the year 587 BC as the year when Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon or 607 BC as the year when Jerusalem was destroyed and this point you raised as to Jesus' statement at Luke 21:24 regarding the appointed times of the nations and Daniel's prophecy regarding the "seven times" at Daniel 4:25. In the instant thread, however, this topic centers around why it is Jehovah's Witnesses put their faith in what the Bible indicates as to when it was Jerusalem had to have been destroyed by Babylon, even if secular sources should all contradict our belief and believe that instead of 607 BC, Jerusalem was deposed in the year 587 BC. The introduction of anything into this thread that falls outside of these parameters would be just as off-topic as when you introduced this same topic in your thread.
I don't know that what things I have said here in this response would be viewed by you as being a "legitimate challenge" to the arguments you made in this other thread, but I trust you will regard my arguments here as having legitimacy.
My agenda was to show what the Bible and the WTS publications said about the subject.
Actually, like I told @AnnOMaly once, your agenda is to use God's word to win arguments. Your desire is to turn away as many folks as you can away from Christ. You hope that your arguments will be considered by some as sufficient to prove the Bible to be flawed, to prove it is not inerrant, and that it provides no hope to the millions of those that have read it as to the glorious future that God has promised to fulfill by means of Millennial kingdom for which kingdom many God-fearing persons have prayed.
Your agenda, in fact, is to convince folks to turn away from God and to have them marginalize Jehovah while magnifying his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that they do not turn to Jehovah. Many of you know quite well that Jesus himself stated at John 14:6 that "no one comes to the Father except through Jesus," which means it is necessary to come to the Father, that coming to Jesus isn't enough. There's no getting around this fact no matter what you might wish to be the case.
Those of you here on JWN that are feigning ignorance while deliberately driving this discussion do so knowing that it isn't possible to prove scripturally that Jerusalem was destroyed either in the year 607 BC or in the year 587 BC apart from drawing inferences and logically deducing from the scriptures the year when the land of Judah began to lay desolate for seventy years as had been foretold by the prophet Jeremiah "until the land had paid off its sabbaths." (Jeremiah 29:10; 2 Chronicles 36:21)
Let's be honest: Your agenda is primarily directed at undermining respect for God's word and destroying faith in God's word by those among God's people that should come to JWN seeking answers to difficult Bible-related questions and comfort from those that may have gone through the similar experiences in the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses that may have led to disfellowshipping actions or unsettling outcomes that do not set well with them. Jehovah's name is regularly blasphemed here as one contemptuous insult after another is routinely lobbed at Jehovah, as if God were a man that had the capacity to lie to us instead of the Universal Sovereign that made all things.
None of the "lovebombing" that occurs here on JWN is any different than what is received by those attending the local congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses for the first time, even when the attendee should be unbaptized, except those doing the welcoming and commiserating are typically bitter folks, holding grudges against the elders in their former local congregation or against members of the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses, which certainly isn't the genuine love that Jesus indicated would identify those who are his followers today. (John 13:35)
If anyone wishes to discuss this topic with me honestly, if anyone is able to have a honest discussion with me, I'm willing to do that, but my wish is that all of the nonsense, strawmen, flawed or meaningless arguments that have no bearing on this topic cease, and all of the cut-and-pasting from articles written by someone else or from Watchtower publications where one needs to guess at the purpose of someone doing so isn't helpful.
@Farkel:
My argument is rock solid and all your bullshit cannot refute it. I have counted backwards and forwards the chronologies of the Kings of Israel during that period and my argument is rock solid.
I know you said that, but what you didn't do was prove that your argument is rock solid; it isn't. As long as you keep referring to Nebuchadnezzar's 19th regnal year using the Bible, as long as you cannot explain the significance of his 19th regnal to either the year 539 BC or the year 587/586, your argument is mush. Prove your argument without appealing to the Bible for support using only secular evidence and only then will you have made a rock solid argument since those of us that put our faith in God's word do not make appeal to secular evidence to support our viewpoint.
Moreover, Christians only use secular evidence as to the deposing of Babylon by Cyrus to establish the probable date for when this event occurred. Even if this event should not have occurred in 539 BC, Christians believe the Bible when it states that the land of Judah lay desolate for seventy years as had been foretold by the prophet Jeremiah "until the land had paid off its sabbaths." (Jeremiah 29:10; 2 Chronicles 36:21)
@djeggnog
