Chronology is about methodology and interpretataion which I call the Golden Rule of Chronology. You believe in 587 and use a different methodology to calculate it. But 587 cannot be a absolute date or pivital date marking the Fall of Jerusalem because you cannot be definite about whether it should be 586 or 587. You have big problem here my girl.
Again you side-step the point I was making, that your interpretation of the 'seventy years' is not necessarily in conflict with 587 BC as the date for Jerusalem's destruction. It is this conflict that is used to justify your approach to the historical evidence. Your "methodology", rather than seeking a preponderance of the historical evidence (which overwhelmingly points to 587/6 BC), basically accepts the secular evidence establishing 539 BC as a pivotal date ? in particular the astronomically-based absolute date of 523 BC and regnal information of the early Persian period ? and then rejects virtually all relevant secular chronological data of the Neo-Babylonian period and the Assyrian period because it supposedly conflicts with the 'seventy years'. You say that we have no choice but to construct a chronology that respects the Bible. That is a requirement of your "methodology". My point is that this conflict only exists when you start with an absolute date of 523 BC. One could just as easily pick a whole host of other absolute or pivotal dates (e.g. 651, 605, 597, 568 BC) to anchor one's chronology, and then add 'seventy years' after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/6 BC for the end of the exile two years after Babylon's fall ? in full accordance with scholar's "Bible trumps secular evidence" methodology. It doesn't matter if this "seventy years" conflicts with the secular evidence pointing to 539 BC as the fall of Babylon. As scholar says, we must go with the Bible (actually, one's interpretation of the Bible).
What you think is a "big problem", the uncertainty over whether Jerusalem fell in 587 or 586 BC, is due to an apparent discrepency in the OT which places the fall in either Nebuchadnezzer's 18th year or 19th year (cf. 2 Kings 25:8; Jeremiah 52:12, 29). You bring this up as if this were seriously a consideration for choosing which absolute date one should start off with: 523 BC (with 539 as a derived pivotal date) is good because it supposedly avoids this ambiguity while 651 or 568 BC is bad because it forces us to face this problem in the biblical text. In reality, the relative merits of these absolute dates lie in their confirmability and reliability in constructing a consistent chronology of the Neo-Babylonian period ? not whether they help us avoid certain exegetical difficulties in the Bible. What I find humorous is that you always pose the "587 or 586" quandry as if it were a fatal flaw on the part of chronologists who do not stick to the Bible (such as rejecting the "correct" interpretation of the 'seventy years' in your view) when it is the Bible itself that has given rise to the uncertainty. Regardless of what year is picked as the date of Jerusalem's fall, there is still an exegetical problem in the text that needs to be resolved. To consider the problem intractable, hopeless, and without solution is to admit that the Bible is intractable, hopeless, and contradictory on chronological matters. Is that a position you really want to pursue? It doesn't mesh well with your Bible-inerrant "methodology".
Rather than consider the problem intractable, various solutions have been proposed to harmonize the biblical data, by pointing out that regnal years were counted differently according to accession and non-accession year systems and that the calendar was either reckoned from Tischri to Tischri or Nisan to Nisan. Some have solved the problem in favor of 587, others in favor of 586. It's true that there is no consensus. But since when in your "methodology" did consensus ever matter? Am I to believe that you care greatly about the lack of consensus between 587 and 586 and yet you don't give a rat's ass about the near TOTAL consensus in the field against 607? Between the two dates, I am most persuaded by 587 because the references to Nebuchadnezzer's 19th year are intelligible according to the non-accession year system and 587 best accounts for Ezekiel 40:1 which dates the 25th year of Jehoiachin's exile (e.g. 574/3 BC) to the 14th year following the fall of Jerusalem. This solution to the exegetical problem (placing the fall in Nebuchadnezzer's 18th regnal year in the accession year system and the 19th year if counting the accession year as the first regnal year) is also the one adopted by the Watchtower Society (cf. Insight, vol. 2, p. 481). I hardly see any reason for you to find fault with it, unless you disagree with the Society.
