My apologies for the many bold and underlining errors in my previous post.
@jgnat:
The best evidence is always contemporary accounts. If it is further [corroborated] by other sources, all the better. The Babylonian Chronicles of the succession of Kings is our closest evidence..... I find the Chronology as worked out using the Babylonian [Chronicles] to be closest to the truth.
That would be 586/587.
I believe Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 607 BC, but what I appreciate about your comment is how honest it was for you to candidly point out what others on here (like @Witness My Fury, like @AnnOMaly, like @Londo111) have also pointed out, but keep glossing over, in this and in other threads, namely, that pinpointing the year when Babylon's destruction of Jerusalem occurred cannot be established using only the Bible. You believe reckoning Jerusalem's destruction as having occurred in 587/586 BC would be "closest to the truth," and I believe Jerusalem's destruction occurred in 607 BC.
As you know, I believe based on the inscription written on the Nabonidus Chronicle that read, "Babylon fell VII/16/17," indicating that the date of Babylon's fall occurred on Tishri 14, 539 BC ("VII": Tishri, the seventh Hebrew month, "14": 14th day; and "17": 17th year of Nabonidus' reign), which year would have become Cyrus' accession year that regnal year, that it would have been during Cyrus' first regnal year, which ran from Nisan 538 BC to Nisan 537 BC, that he issued a decree that permitted the Jews to leave Babylon and "go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah" to commence the rebuilding of the temple, so that in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, the Jews would have returned to Jerusalem at the end of "seventy years" in 537 BC. (Ezra 1:1-3; 2 Chronicles 36:21)
In his Antiquities of the Jews, Book X, chap. 9, par. 7, Flavius Josephus agrees with Jeremiah in stating that it was in Nebuchadnezzar's 18th regnal year, after Gedaliah's assassination, when "all Judea and Jerusalem, and the temple, continued to be a desert for seventy years," so since Ezra 3:6 states that it was "from the first day of the seventh month," that is to say, on Tishri 1, 3225 AM, September 4, 537 BC, Julian, August 29, 537 BC, Gregorian, that the repatriated Jews began to offer sacrifices at God's altar in Jerusalem, and this would be when the 70-year period would have ended, then it would logically mean that by our subtracting 70 years from 537 BC, we will have deduced based on (1) the Bible, (2) Josephus and (3) the Nabonidus Chronicle that the land of Judah had been made to lie desolate by Babylon on or about Tishri 1, 3155 AM, September 27, 607 BC, Julian, September 20, 607 BC, Gregorian, which is when this 70-year period would have begun.
@Londo111 wrote:
What about Adad-guppi stele? It is the obituary of Nabonidus's mother, dating the lengths of every Neo-Babylonian king.
@djeggnog wrote:
Nabonidus' mother is [irrelevant]. Why do you mention this woman?
@Witness My Fury wrote:
Have you actually read that info?
I'll assume you have as you have absolutely no reason not to look at it once presented with it.
Yes, I have read the "Harran" piece, and yours is a fair assumption, for had I not read it before, I would have no business commenting on it.
[1]
"It appears from inscriptions that sometime around the sixth century under Nabonidus, vise-a-vie Cyrus, the Babylonians gained control. Under the neo-Babylonians it recovered some of its’ former glory. It served as the center for worship of the moon god Sin for many centuries. According to Adad-Guppi’s biography, Harran lay desolate (in the possession of the Medes) for fifty-four years (610-556) until, at the beginning of Nabonidus’ reign (555-539) a vision informed him that Marduk was to raise up his young servant Cyrus to scatter the Medes."
This is obviously someone's conclusion, for it is conspicuous that Nabonidus' reign is said to have spanned the years 555 BC through 539 BC, but while @AnnOMaly had anticipated that I would humor her by providing more context to my comment in a previous message about her data being "inaccurate," what I had planned to do when I found the time to do so was to humor you, by asking you three (3) questions based on the following excerpts:
Out of obedience to the divine order Nabonidus rebuilt the temple and committed it to Sin. (CR. Isaiah 44:28-45:1). He further built centers of worship for Sin in Ur and in Teiba, Arabia. The work in Arabia moved Babylonian militia to Yatribe (Median). This was an ominous venture by the king. This act was later viewed as self-imposed exiling of the king and an act madness. In Daniel this journey is said to have been a seven year prolongation by the king Nebakadnezar (Nabonidus’ predecessor).
FIRST QUESTION
Who would you say is this "Nebakadnezar," described here as "king Nebakadnezar (Nabonidus' predecessor)"?
[2]
"NABONIDUS HI, B
"Col. I
1. I (am) the lady Adda-guppi’, mother
2. of Nabium-na’id, king of Babylon,
.
.
.
29. From the 2oth year of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, that I was born (in)
30. until the 42nd year of Assurbanipal, the 3rd year of Asur-etillu-ili,
31 .his son, the 2 I St year of Nabopolassar, the 43rd year of Nebuchadrezzar,
32. the 2nd year of Awel-Marduk, the 4th year of Neriglissar,
33. in 95 years of the god Sin, king of the gods of heaven and earth...."
When I read this portion of the quote regarding Nabium-na’id, the son of lady Adda-guppi’, the woman that you and the author of this piece refer to as "Adad-Guppi," I thought of a parallel construction based on the 20-year period that the following five (5) men served as president of the US from 1961-1981: John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), Richard Nixon (1969-1974), Gerald Ford (1974-1977) and Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) that I could use to set up my question. This 20-year period might be reckoned in the following manner:
When I take the difference between the 1st year of JFK (1961) and the 3rd year of JFK (1963), I come up with a difference of 2 years; then when I add, to these 2 years, the 6 years between the 3rd year of JFK (1963) and the 4th year of LBJ (1969), I arrive at 8 years; then what I add, to these 8 years, the 5 years between the 6th year of LBJ (1969) and the fifth year of RN (1974), I arrive at 13 years; then when I add, to these 13 years, the 3 years between the fifth year of RN (1974) and the third year of GF (1977), I arrive at 16 years; then when I add, to these 16 years, the difference between the 3rd year of GF (1977) and the fourth year of JC (1981), I arrive at 20 years.
Having said all of this, here is my next question:
SECOND QUESTION
When I take the difference between the 20th year and the 42nd year, I come up with a difference of 22 years; then when I add, to these 22 years, the 2 years between the 42nd year and the 3rd year, I arrive at 24 years; then when I add, to these 24 years, the 20 years between the 3rd year and the 21st year, I arrive at 44 years; then when I add, to these 44 years, the 42 years between the 21st year and the 43rd year, I arrive at 86 years; then when I add, to these 86 years, the 1 year between the 43rd year and the 2nd year, I arrive at 87 years; then when I add, to these 87 years, the 3 years between the 2nd year and the 4th year, I arrive at 90 years. Do you understand Lady Adad-Guppi's reference to "95 years" to have been the result of her having been bad with math become of her age, or do you think that she made an honest mistake in coming up with "95 years"?
[3]
Col. III.
(Translation of lines1-19 is supplemented from the duplicate inscription, as rendered by B. Landsberger, loc. cit.)
.
.
.
5. (Now) in the 9th year of Nabu-na’id,
6. king of Babylon, the fate
7. of herself carried her off, and
8. Nabu-na’id, king of Babylon,
9. (her) son, issue of her womb, . . . . . . . . . . .
10. her corpse entombed, and [robes]
11. splendid, a bright mantle. . . . . . . . . . .
12. gold, bright. . . . . . . . . . .
13. beautiful stones, [precious] stones,
14. costly stones. . . . . . . . . . .
15. sweet oil her corpse he [anointed]
16. they laid it in a secret place.
THIRD QUESTION
If Lady Adad-Guppi's corpse had already been entombed, then who was it that inscribed all of this on this stele? One of her educated attendants? Her son, Nabonius? Her grandson, Belshazzar?
So what is it? A satanic conspiracy to mislead? The ramblings of an old demented woman? A fake?
I would be speculating were I to say that these writings were the "ramblings of an old demented woman," although they might have been, so I'll just say, I don't know. Lady Adad-Guppi isn't relevant.
@AnnOMaly:
How is it unreliable? If any of the data is incorrect, you must tell me and then I can correct it.
Must I? No, I don't think I must. You just want to argue with me about your data, when your data is totally insignificant to me as one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
@djeggnog wrote:
Well, the data is unreliable. I made some notes and tucked them somewhere on my computer or on my iPad, and I suppose I should have posted something to the thread that would jog my memory, but I didn't, so it seems that you and I won't be turning this thread into something that only a few of us on JWN can even understand, that is, beyond that which is on the surface.
@AnnOMaly wrote:
JWN posters are pretty sharp on the whole and anyway, we do not have to turn this thread into anything complex.
No, they're not; I disagree with this assessment you make here about JWN posters. Many of them have had very little education and most of them cannot articulate their own points of view so they most of them will quite often resort to cut-and-pasting their comments because they can only dream they had the academic wherewithal and mental acuity to be able to articulate the things that want to say, but cannot say themselves. I don't make a big deal about this because no one is perfect, so whenever someone should confront me on here that doesn't know how to construct a sentence or how to put two of them together to make a coherent point, I will often try to help them in the way I respond to their statements.
And you aren't being honest when you suggest that this thread doesn't have to necessarily be turned "into anything complex," when asking me to attack correct your data in some other thread would make this a complex thread, and I've decided that I don't have any interest in doing this. Like I told you:
(djeggnog:)
@AnnOMaly, you don't use the Bible to support your arguments; you use it only when the Bible supports your arguments.
You called this "a real cockamamy sentence," and even if it is, I believe it accuracy states the case about you, @AnnOMaly.
Also, if you are arguing for a particular theological stance, you HAVE to use your primary source - the Bible - in the argument. Don't pretend otherwise.
Believe me, I don't intend to discard my "primary source." Why, were it not for the Bible, you and I wouldn't be having this discussion! For me to claim that I didn't need to use the Bible would be a bit pretentious, but as to whether I would argue "for a particular theological stance," may I remind you that I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and if you don't know what this means, what this means is that I don't care about theology. I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses and I'm only interested in championing Bible truth, but if Christian theology should be your thing, then more power to you: This would, in fact, be your thing, @AnnOMaly, and not mine.
Talking about that other 607 thread, you were supposed to be using the Bible alone.
In a discussion as to the veracity of whether, in fact, Babylon destructed Jerusalem in 607 BC, I don't see how it is even possible to discuss the matter using the Bible alone. There are no dates embedded in the Bible as to the various events recorded in the Bible, from Adam to Noah to Moses to Solomon to Jesus, so the only reason we are even able to discuss whether it was 587 or 607 BC when Babylon deposed Jerusalem is because of the secular resources on which we rely to provide some chronological context to it all.
Anyone to claim to be able to use only the Bible to prove that 607 BC is wrong or to prove that 587 BC is wrong isn't capable of using common sense. @Witness My Fury actually started a thread, entitled "607 wrong using ONLY the bible and some common sense," and despite the provocatively strange title, it turned out to be a very informative thread. I especially liked what I contributed to it as to what Josephus wrote regarding the Phoenician kings (that is to say, the kings of Tyre).
You couldn't stick to that and appealed to Josephus' Tyrian king list which you then dishonestly manipulated and artificially extended to fit with the WTS's time-line. You were called on it and rightly got your butt kicked.
I don't recall getting my butt kicked by anyone in that thread, but if it is your recollection that you did "kick my butt," then maybe I'm wrong and I need to review the thread, since I thought I had merely shared my opinions with you and others in that thread, not debated you as to how right I thought myself to be and how wrong I thought you to be. What I conjectured about the Tyrian king list was just that, conjecture, and I thought what I suggested to have been plausible, even if you didn't agree with me. You see, @AnnOMaly, I had written what I thought to have been plausible in that thread, not what you thought to have been plausible in that thread. Do you see how this works? I share with you what I think, not share with you what you think?
Lesson to be learned: If you lie and make false allegations, you're going to get a thorough hammering.
Ok.
Now with that in mind, be a doll, gather those notes and clearly and concisely lay out where the astronomical data in my table is unreliable.
No, @AnnOMaly, but let me propose something for your consideration regarding 587 BC. You and others on here have opined that Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon's army in 587 BC, so this would mean that by counting forward 2,520 years, starting from 587 BC, we would arrive at the year 1932 AD, correct?
Thus, using the year 587 BC, we would have 587 BC to 1 BC=586 years; 1 BC to 1 AD=1 year; 1 AD to 1932 AD=1,933 years, and when added together (586 +1+1933=2520), this would mean that Jesus had begun actively ruling in heaven as king in 1932 AD for the appointed times of the nations would have ended in 1932. This would also mean that whereas Jehovah's Witnesses have been preaching that Jesus had begun to rule some 18 years earlier than he had actually been ruling, and this would mean that it has only been 80 years since the generation of the sign of Christ's presence began.
As I see it, no matter whether one should prefer 607 BC or 587 BC as the year when Solomon's temple and Jerusalem's was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, no matter whether there are 70 years that separated Jerusalem's destruction from the release of the Jewish exiles by Cyrus or only 50 years that separate these two events, God's kingdom as expressed through the rulership of Christ Jesus now holds sway over "the kingdom of the world" (Revelation 11:15), either since 1914 or, at the latest, since 1932, which means that Satan has been hurled down from heaven to the earth and there is only "a short period of time" remaining before the rider on the white horse, Jesus Christ, completes his conquest and brings to ruin those ruining the earth. (Revelation 6:2; 11:18; 12:10-12)
Should the calculations of Jehovah's Witnesses be off by some 18 years, it seems to me that this would mean that the end of this system of things will likely come even sooner than we had realized and at least we have been warning folks for an additional 18 years that the end is imminent whereas no other Christian denomination seems to be aware of how close we are to the end of this system of things.
If 587 BC is the correct year and the year when "the Lord's day" at Revelation 1:10 actually began was 1932, how does this 18-year difference change things for you? Does it make you want to join us in preaching the good news about the established kingdom of God through Christ or what? Do you know what I think, @AnnOMaly? I think that you could care less whether it is 607 BC or 587 BC, or whether it is 1914 or 1932. I think you like arguing this issue as if it were important to mankind's salvation when you don't care about anyone's salvation, do you? You're just having fun on JWN, distinguishing yourself as a theologian and a historian that knows a thing or two about eclipses and full moons that in the grand scheme of things Jesus never indicated that knowing these things would lead anyone to life, am I right? Have fun, @AnnOMaly. Enjoy the rest of your life.
@Londo111:
[I]n reading your responses, I'm not sure whether or not you are perhaps toying with people here.
So you think I'm just joking around here?
If you are, it would be an unwise use of time for me to formulate a lengthy reply.
A lengthy reply would be lost on me when there are too many words on a page, it makes it hard to get through long messages because this sometimes means that I'm going to have to look up the definitions of the words I don't understand, like "unwise" and "formulate," so thank you for not doing so.
@AnnOMaly:
Bttt for eggie.
There was no need for you to have bumped this thread on my account. I didn't forget it was here, but I was busy.
His notes must need a lot of collating. I cannot imagine him wanting to pass over a golden opportunity to show me up if he believed there was any substance to his claims.
I cannot imagine thinking it necessary for me to try to prove anything to you. I post here for the benefit of the lurkers that read these threads, although I did think that you knew this about me, @AnnOMaly.
@Dagney:
@Ann: He's probably not back from service yet.
Was that supposed to be a joke at my expense? Do you know me? If not, then why would you be here fathoming a guess as to what it is I might be doing at any given time? I don't serve Jehovah based on the time of day, like maybe starting a job at 1:00 pm and knocking off at 2:00 pm. I am rendering to Jehovah sacred service both "day and night" in his spiritual temple, but babes in Christ, even fleshly Christians, tend to view their service to God as they do a job, as a chore, a drudgery, and their service, while commendable, is as of a Christian in training. They don't do it out of love for God and neighbor; they do it out of a sense of duty.
I'm never "back from service," @Dagney; this has no meaning to me. I'm always found serving my God, Jehovah, day and night, in his spiritual temple. You cannot see my white robe, but I always have it on; I hardly remove it. I'm wearing it day and night.
You may not be aware of this, but right now, as I compose this post, I'm rendering direct service to God in his Great Spiritual Temple as do all dedicated servants of Jehovah, just like when I study the Bible at home with the family, that is direct service to God, sacred service. Whenever I should attend meetings at the Kingdom Hall, that would constitute sacred service to God. If I should raise my hand to participate during any of the meetings held there, this would direct service to God, sacred service.
Those today who are in Jehovah's great Spiritual House are maintaining themselves a clean people, wearing their "white robes" such that they are clean physically, clean mentally, clean morally, clean emotionally, clean spiritually, and doing so in every way so that we are privileged to serve our God in his temple, "day and night." Our basic responsibility in Jehovah's spiritual temple is to maintain the purity of our white robes, maintain our clean standing before God, and those of us that appreciate the privileges we are assigned in his spiritual house are doing their best to carry out those responsibilities.
What's interesting is that the apostle John doesn't see everyone standing before God's throne; only those arrayed in white robes are the ones he sees. It is these white robe wearers that John sees 'coming out of the great tribulation,' and these are the ones who are 'observing the commandments of God,' following the example set by Christ's anointed followers, who have "the work of bearing witness to Jesus."
@djeggnog
