When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed? Why It Matters - What the Evidence Shows

by wannabefree 224 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  AnnOMaly

  Seeing as it's relevant here too, I'll c&p my post from another thread to further underline the point:

  There is a lot the WT article missed out.

  Regarding Ashuretel-ilani, while it is technically true this Assyrian king ruled 'in Babylonia' for four years, what the article doesn't disclose is that he only held one or two of the cities in Babylonia (principally, Nippur) while other cities had been taken over by Nabopolassar.

  [...]

  Similar can be said about Shin-sharra-ishkun. He ruled parts of Babylonia over a period of seven years. The Assyrian empire was in its death throes and there were power struggles between the Assyrian empire and the rising Neo-Babylonian one with cities being won and lost, lost and won. The WT article fails to make clear (deliberately, no doubt) that these kings Ptolemy omits shared the same regnal 'time space' with Nabopolassar. Ptolemy needed to assign one king to a particular year to be able to count and make his astronomical calculations. The inclusion of these competing Assyrian kings (who lost in the end) would have been superfluous to his purposes.
• 

  VM44

  "The Kingless Period"

  The article references the work "Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles," pages 87-88 when it mentions the "kingless period" for Babylon.

  Does anyone have access to that work?

  Can images of pages 87 and 88 be posted here?

  It would be useful to see exactly what is on those pages.
• 

  VM44

  From the article:

  "Why did Ptolemy omit some rules? Evidently, he did not consider them to be legitimate rules of Babylon. For example, he excluded Labashi-Marduk, a Neo-Babylonian king. But according to cuneiform documents, the kings who Ptolemy omitted actually ruled over Babylonia."

  From the wiki article on Labashi-Marduk:

  Labashi-Marduk, was king of Babylon (556 BC), and son of Neriglissar. Labashi-Marduk succeeded his father when still only a boy, after the latter's four-year reign. Most likely due to his very young age, he was unfit to rule, and was murdered in a conspiracy only nine months after his inauguration. He is traditionally listed as a king of the Chaldean Dynasty, however it is not known if he was a Chaldean or native of Babylon, as he was not related by blood to Nabopolassar and his successors. Nabonidus was consequently chosen as the new king.

  From the wiki article on the "Canon of Kings":

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Kings

  "The Canon only deals in whole years. Thus, monarchs who reigned for less than one year are not listed, and only one monarch is listed in any year with multiple monarchs."

  The article asks the question:

  Ptolemy omits some kings in his list. Why?

  The information given above provides the answer in the case of Labashi-Marduk.
• 

  AnnOMaly

  VM44

  "The Kingless Period"

  The article references the work "Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles," pages 87-88 when it mentions the "kingless period" for Babylon.

  Does anyone have access to that work?

  Can images of pages 87 and 88 be posted here?

  It would be useful to see exactly what is on those pages.

  It's no biggie. Grayson's "Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles" is available to view on Google books if you want to see scans. Alternatively, you can read this particular Chronicle on livius.org. It's known as the 'Chronicle Concerning the Early Years of Nabopolassar' and lines 14 and 15 simply say:

  14 For one year there was no king in the land. On the twenty-sixth day of the month Arahsamna [23 November 626] Nabopolassar

  15 ascended the throne in Babylon. The accession year of Nabopolassar (626/625): in the month Addaru [24 February/23 March]

  This 'kingless period' is the same time slot where the Uruk king list includes Sin-šumlišir and Sin-šar-iškun, where it's described in some economic tablets by the words "after Kandalanu" (see Parker and Dubberstein, p. 11), and where Ptolemy's Canon artificially extends Kandalanu's reign by a year, thereby assigning him 22 years instead of 21.
• 

  Dutch-scientist

  Tks Ann,

  Furuli make really a mess. I guess never been peer reviewd.

  What other proof they think they have the WTS in the second part?

  THERE IS NO PROOF for 607BC by the Bible or astronomical or historical.

  JW's do you trust in your leaders made up formula or the 3 above sources?
• 

  Caedes

  What! I had my popcorn at the ready and scholar is a no show! Come on scholar, put all these blasphemous apostates in their place!
• 

  VM44

  Thank you AnnOMaly,

  I think we have most all of the article references as far as Ptolemy is concerned.

  We need to put together a summary of what the evidence REALLY shows!
• 

  VM44

  The article quotes Christopher Walker concerning Ptolemy's Cannon in the following manner:

  "Thus, Christopher Walker of the British Museum says that Ptolemy’s canon was “an artificial scheme designed to provide astronomers with a consistent chronology” and was “not to provide historians with a precise record of the accession and death of kings.”5"

  Here is what Christopher Walker actually wrote:

  "Ptolemy's Canon was an artificial scheme designed to provide astronomers with a consistent chronology into which astronomical observations might be fitted, not to provide historians with a precise record of the accession and death of kings. Nevertheless it has served as the backbone of the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods, and served reliably. Re-adjusted to the Julian calendar, allowing for Ptolemy's assumptions, and taking account of two short periods of confusion which Ptolemy describes as aPaoiXfuia ('having no king') and of the inclusion in Babylonian king-lists of certain short-lived usurpers, there is no difficulty in correlating Ptolemy's chronology with the vast accumulation of data now available from cuneiform sources."

  page 18, Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian period, conquest and imperialism, 539-331 BC:

  Notice that the Watchtower writer omits completely the sentence following the one from which they used.
• 

  VM44

  "there is no difficulty in correlating Ptolemy's chronology with the vast accumulation of data now available from cuneiform sources."

  The Watchtower researcher(s) obviously must have read this, but the article that the Watchtower eventually published claims the exact opposite!
• 

  VM44

  Credit to maninthemiddle for first finding the complete Christopher Walker quote.