Last night in the Jeremiah Book

by BroMac 26 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  BroMac

  I dont understand when this happened:

  *** jr chap. 2 pp. 19-21 par. 11 Serving in “the Final Part of the Days” ***

  10 Imagine how Jeremiah must have felt on learning of Josiah’s death! Moved with grief, he chanted dirges over the king. (2 Chron. 35:25) This was already a time of worry, and international instability brought pressure on Judah. The rival powers—Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon—were jockeying for control of the region. And the religious climate within Judah had changed with Josiah’s death. That was the end of a regime essentially favorable toward Jeremiah’s activity and the beginning of a hostile one.........

  11 The inhabitants of Judah put Josiah’s son Jehoahaz on the throne in Jerusalem. Jehoahaz, also known as Shallum, reigned for just three months. When Pharaoh Necho returned south after fighting the Babylonians, he removed the new king and took him to Egypt, and Jeremiah declared that Jehoahaz would “return no more.” (Jer. 22:10-12; 2 Chron. 36:1-4) In his place, Necho enthroned Jehoiakim, another of Josiah’s sons. Jehoiakim did not imitate his father’s good example. Far from continuing his father’s reforms, he practiced idolatry.—Read 2 Kings 23:36, 37.

  What year did this happen? Are they saying this happened after Carchemish?
• 

  transhuman68

  Here's something to go along with:

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

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

  The sad fact is that the kingdom of Judah was little more than a rest-stop on the way to a battlefield for the armies of the surrounding empires, and was very rarely independant from them; most times being forced to pay tribute to avoid being destroyed completely.
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  Jeffro

  (The following years are the correct years. For JW years, add 20; except for the placement of Daniel 1:1, which they botch completely.)

  Josiah was killed during the Battle of Megiddo, in the summer of 609BCE.

  Jehoahaz took the throne and ruled for 3 months. In 608, Necho replaced Jehoahaz with Jehoiakim as king in Jerusalem.

  This is consistent with Jeremiah 25:1, where Jeremiah (who counts accession years as part of the reign) associates the first year of Nebuchadnezzar (605) with the 4th of Jehoiakim (Tishri-based dating - scroll right in table below). This places Jeremiah 25:1 between October 606 and March 605BCE.

  The battle of Carchemish happened in the summer of 605BCE.

  It is also consistent with Daniel 1:1 where Daniel (who doesn't count accession years) gives Jehoiakim's 3rd year* as being in Nebuchadnezzar's reign with no year given (Nebuchadnezzar's accession year). This took place January-February 604 BCE, which is confirmed by BM21946.

  *Note that Daniel uses Nisan-based years but these have not been shown separately to simplify the table; the "regnal years" indicated below start the April after the Tishri-based years.

  609

  608

  607

  606

  605

  604

  Apr

  Oct

  Apr

  Oct

  Apr

  Oct

  Apr

  Oct

  Jeremiah 25:1

  Apr

  Carchemish

  Oct

  Daniel 1:1

  Josiah dead

  Jehoahaz king

  Jehoiakim's 1st (accession) year

  Jehoiakim's 2nd (1st regnal) year

  Jehoiakim's 3rd (2nd regnal) year

  Jehoiakim's 4th (3rd regnal) year

  Battle of Megiddo

  Nebuchadnezzar's 1st (accession) year
• 

  Jeffro

  The positioning of Josiah's death and Jehoahaz in the table above show the order of events, but are not to scale and are not intended to represent the specific months for those events.

  And I really don't like the table-editing tools on this forum.
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  AnnOMaly

  The decisive battle of Carchemish was summer 605 BCE. The Jeremiah book was talking about an earlier set of events.

  As Jeffro has outlined (nice graphic!), Josiah was killed when Necho and his army were on their way up to the Euphrates to help the Assyrians regain Harran in 609 BCE. ABC 3 narrows down the month to Du'uzu (month IV - June/July). We know that after Josiah's death Jehoahaz reigned 3 months. We also know the Egyptians continued their battle campaign until Ululu (month VI - Aug./Sept.). Jehoahaz will have been removed by Necho on his way back home. Therefore, Jehoahaz's 3 months would have lasted from about month IV to month VII (i.e. Tishri or Sept./Oct.) with Jehoiakim beginning to reign from about Tishri 609 BCE.
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  AnnOMaly

  By the way, if we take into consideration Berossus' account (via Josephus), it is possible that Daniel was taken in 605 BCE shortly after Carchemish, just before Neb. had to rush back to Babylon to secure the throne.
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  Doubting Bro

  Does anyone know at what point the WT sneaks the 20 years into the timeline? I was at the meeting last night and started googling some of the events discussed and they were all 20 years off. Is there a point where WT chornology and real history actually are in synch?
• 

  Jeffro

  AnnOMaly:

  it is possible that Daniel was taken in 605 BCE shortly after Carchemish

  It is possible that Nebuchadnezzar demanded tribute from Jehoiakim before returning to take the throne around August 605BCE. In this scenario it may be that Nebuchadnezzar sent a military force to Jerusalem on his behalf while he hurried home to claim the throne, rather than personally going there himself.

  It is also possible that Daniel was taken in early 604BCE (the same Nisan-based regnal year). Babylonian chronicles confirm that Nebuchadnezzar did return to the "Hatti-land" (which includes Judea) in what we know as January/February 604BCE. It is also possible that the author of Daniel did not realise that the reigns of the kings of Judah were Tishri-based rather than Nisan-based (though this doesn't seem to be consistently applied throughout 1 & 2 Kings anyway). It is also plausible that, for some reason, Jehoiakim's reign was only recognised from Nisan of 608. 608 to 598BCE is a good fit for Jehoiakim's 11-year reign. Many Jewish sources seem to cite 608 for the start of his reign rather than 609.
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  Jeffro

  Doubting Bro:

  Does anyone know at what point the WT sneaks the 20 years into the timeline? I was at the meeting last night and started googling some of the events discussed and they were all 20 years off. Is there a point where WT chornology and real history actually are in synch?

  The JW chronology has a gap of 20 years that are not accounted for, somewhere between 582BCE (the year they assign for the end of Nebuchadnezzar's reign) and 556BCE (the beginning of Nabonidus' reign). During that period, they ambiguously place the reigns of Neriglissar (4 years) and Labashi-Marduk (9 months) somewhere in that period, leaving 20 years unexplained. (Some JW publications indicate the years 'suggested' by secular authorities, but the JW literature doesn't really commit to those dates, and the 'suggestions' are generally followed by poor attempts to debunk the secular sources.) The years JWs assign for all events prior to the reign of Nabonidus are therefore wrong. They also avoid specifics about dating the Egyptian rule of Hophra (aka Apries) for similar reasons.

  

  The 'gap' starts at 20 years, but it actually widens as you go further back, because the JW interpretation of the various reigns of Judah and Israel don't properly account for various co-regencies. The only time they 'suggest' a co-regency is when the Bible otherwise seems to contradict itself, otherwise they take the biblical accounts as... well... gospel. By the time you get back to the beginning of Solomon's reign, the JW chronology is out by about 66 years.
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  Doubting Bro

  Jeffro,

  Thanks so much for the information. Very helpful!