Scholar,
I too did the course a couple of years ago, though uncertificated and without purchasing the book. I'm an impoverished cheapskate. I still read all the recommended readings I could find and more besides plus the video transcripts. I was indeed enjoyable.
If you still have copies I'd love to read your mini essays arguing for the complete depopulation of the land for a period of 70 years, an idea that flies in the face of one of the central themes of the course.
"Do any of these texts shed any light on the 70 years"
I've not read many of the several thousand texts listed here. This doesn't look like an especially useful list to use unless you want to exhaustively read up on a particular year for clues and need all the archive numbers. There seem to be better ways of working. I'm yet to figure out how to navigate my way to specific translations and find many of the museum and archive cataloguing systems somewhat confusing.
But, yes, in outline the list does shed light on the 70 years. Prior to this the best list of texts I had was Boscowan or Pinches (I forget who, one of the late Victorians who worked on the Egibi Archive) which had a much, much shorter list of something over 100 texts ordered by date. That in itself made explaining the lack of tablets of the missing Kings the JW's assert must have existed incredibly unlikely to have been a random occurrence. This list puts a stake through the heart of the JW case, nail guns the coffin lid shut, encases it in titanium and blasts it into space.
625 BCE (WT date for Neb yr 0) -539 BCE = 86 years of history according to the WT scholars.
Total number of dated texts from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II: 2826
Total number of dated texts from the reign of Amel-Marduk: 167
Total number of dated texts from the reign of Neriglissar: 249
Total number of dated texts from the reign of Labashi-Marduk: 12
Total number of dated texts from the reign of Nabonid: 3910
Covering 66 years of known reigns.
Total number of dated texts from the reigns of known Kings in period = 7164
Total no of dates texts from unknown Kings the WT asserts must have reigned = 0
If the WT is right and these texts are distributed randomly throughout the 86 year timespan they claim they cover, what are the chances of having 20 years with no hits out of a sample size of 7164?
Please check my maths.
No of combinations for choosing 66 "hit years" from 86 = 18,293,741,700,978,245,355
https://www.calculator.net/permutation-and-combination-calculator.html?cnv=86&crv=66&x=24&y=13
For each combination, the chance of randomly obtaining one of the 66 'hit' years in an 86 year timeline = 66/86
For 7164 tries the chances of them all being 'hit years' = 18,293,741,700,978,245,355 * (66/86)^7164
= 5.35 * 10^-805
That's a pobability with over 800 zeros before the decimal point.
Conclusion. To assert that tablets from the missing years "might just turn up on a dig" is laughable at this point.
So "do any of these texts shed any light on the 70 years?"
Yes, none of them are 'missing years' between the 1st of Nebuchadnezzar II and the last of Nabonidus.
