@scholar
1.
Jeremiah and Daniel as “Eyewitnesses” of the 70 Years Prophecy
Jehovah’s Witness apologists often appeal to the authority of the prophets
Jeremiah and Daniel – who experienced the Judean exile period firsthand – to
insist that the Babylonian captivity lasted a full 70 years (607–537 BCE). It
is true that Jeremiah and Daniel were contemporaries of the exile. However,
their own writings do not actually state that Jerusalem would lie desolate for
a 70-year exile. Rather, Jeremiah’s prophecy explicitly applies the 70
years to Babylon’s period of supremacy, not to the duration of Jerusalem’s
desolation. In Jeremiah 25:11, the prophet announces: “These nations will
serve the king of Babylon seventy years,” indicating 70 years of
Babylonian domination, after which Babylon itself would be punished (Jer.
25:12). This is exactly what happened – roughly seventy years passed from
Babylon’s rise to power (after Assyria’s fall in 609 BCE) to its fall to Cyrus
in 539 BCE. Jeremiah never said that the Jews would be in exile or that
the land would be empty for that entire period.
Daniel, writing near the end of the Babylonian Empire, likewise does not
redefine Jeremiah’s prophecy as a 70-year exile. Daniel 9:2 reports that
Daniel “discerned by the books the number of years” foretold by Jeremiah, “to
fulfill the desolation of Jerusalem, namely seventy years.” Rather than
introducing a new chronology, Daniel was simply acknowledging Jeremiah’s
prophecy and praying for its fulfillment as Babylon’s 70-year reign neared its
end. Notably, Daniel himself had been exiled in the first deportation (605
BCE), so by 539 BCE he had been in Babylon about 66 years – yet he still viewed
Jeremiah’s “seventy years” as coming to completion. This implies that Daniel
did not rigidly interpret the prophecy as requiring a literal 70-year exile for
every last Jew, but understood it in the context of Babylon’s dominance.
Indeed, the Watchtower’s own defenders admit that Jeremiah’s text “does not say
explicitly” that the 70 years referred to Jerusalem’s desolation. The attempt
to use Daniel and the Chronicler (the author of 2 Chronicles) as later
interpreters to overturn the plain sense of Jeremiah’s words “turns the
matter upside down,” as one scholar observes. The proper approach –
accepted in sound exegesis – is to let Jeremiah’s explicit statements set the
framework, rather than reading into them a doctrine of a 70-year total exile.
In fact, a critical examination of the Hebrew text shows that nowhere does
the Bible unambiguously state “the exile would last 70 years.” As one
linguistic analysis concludes: “there is no such passage anywhere in the
entire Bible” – the text leaves the duration to be inferred from
historical facts, which align with an exile of about half a century, not
seventy years. In short, Jeremiah was an eyewitness to Judah’s last days,
but what he witnessed and prophesied was a seventy-year period of Babylonian
hegemony – not a seventy-year empty land. Daniel, likewise an eyewitness,
confirms Jeremiah’s prophecy was on schedule to end with Babylon’s fall,
without ever asserting that Jerusalem had already been desolate for 70 years.
Appealing to these prophets’ authority cannot rescue the 607 BCE theory,
because their writings simply do not support the notion of a 70-year
desolation from 607 to 537 BCE. On the contrary, modern scholarship
unanimously places Jerusalem’s fall about twenty years later (587/586 BCE),
meaning any “eye-witness” argument for 607 BCE is fundamentally at odds with
both the biblical text and established history.
2.
Interpreting Jeremiah 25 and 2 Chronicles 36 in Context
The cornerstone of the Watchtower’s 607 BCE claim is its reading of certain
Bible passages – chiefly Jeremiah 25:11-12 and 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 – as
proof that the entire exile lasted a full seventy years of unbroken desolation.
This interpretation does not hold up under careful exegesis. As noted,
Jeremiah 25:11 foretells “seventy years” of nations serving the king of
Babylon. It does not say that Judah would be uninhabited for seventy
years; rather, Judah (along with surrounding nations) would be subject to
Babylonian rule for that span. Jeremiah 25:12 then specifies that after
those 70 years are completed, God would punish the king of Babylon, which
happened when Cyrus conquered Babylon (539 BCE). Thus, in its plain
meaning, Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled by the period of Babylonian
domination (c. 609–539 BCE) – an interpretation that aligns
perfectly with the historical record.
What about 2 Chronicles 36:20-21? This verse describes the aftermath
of Jerusalem’s fall, saying the survivors were exiled to Babylon “until the
kingdom of Persia began to reign, to fulfill Jehovah’s word by Jeremiah, until
the land had paid off its sabbaths all the days of lying desolated – to
fulfill seventy years.” At first glance (especially in some translations),
this might seem to support a 70-year desolation. In reality, the Chronicler
is summarizing Jeremiah’s prophecy and its fulfillment, not redefining its
timeframe. The construction “until… until… seventy years” indicates
that the land’s desolation (which did occur after 586 BCE) lasted until
the prophetic period ended with Persia’s ascendancy. In other words, the land
“enjoyed its sabbath rests” during the decades of exile while the 70 years
were running their course, coming to an end when Cyrus’s decree allowed the
return (538–537 BCE). The Chronicler explicitly ties this to “fulfilling
the word of Jehovah by Jeremiah” – a word that, as we have seen, spoke of
seventy years of Babylonian rule. He does not say that Jeremiah’s
prophecy was a “70-year exile”; that is an assumption read into the text.
Indeed, if one translates the Hebrew literally, 2 Chronicles 36:21 is
describing that the land lay desolate during those years up to
the time the prophecy was fulfilled – not that the desolation itself lasted
70 years. The Jewish exiles remained in Babylon “until the kingdom of
Persia began to reign,” which is precisely when Jeremiah’s 70 years expired.
Crucially, neither Jeremiah nor the Chronicler actually uses the phrase
“seventy-year exile.” The notion that “70 years means a literal 70-year
captivity of Judah” is a later extrapolation – one that the text itself does
not demand. In fact, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, we find internal
evidence that the exile did not last a full seventy years. The prophet
Zechariah, writing in 518 BCE (about 19 years after the first returnees arrived
back in Judah), referred to God’s indignation on Jerusalem “these seventy
years” (Zech. 1:12) – a clear allusion to Jeremiah’s prophecy. This
suggests that by Zechariah’s day the prophesied period was already seen as
essentially complete, even though only about 68 years had passed since
586 BCE. The simplest explanation is that the 70 years were a rounded,
prophetic period, not a precise count of empty years for the land. As one
expert observer bluntly notes, “God’s inspired Word nowhere states explicitly
how long that period [the exile] was to last” – the Bible leaves it to
readers to piece together the chronology, which in fact yields about 50
years of exile (from 586 to ~536 BCE). Thus 2 Chronicles 36, read
in context, confirms Jeremiah’s 70-year prophecy was fulfilled with the fall
of Babylon and the return under Cyrus, but it does not teach a 607 BCE
destruction. The chronicler’s intent was to show that Jeremiah’s word came
true, not to retroactively declare that Judah must have been desolate for an
exact 70 years. In sum, Jeremiah 25 and 2 Chronicles 36 align to
support the traditional 587/586 BCE date for Jerusalem’s fall (with a
roughly 50-year exile), not the 607 BCE theory. Any argument to the
contrary must ignore the plain wording that the 70 years were linked to
Babylon’s empire, not exclusively to Jerusalem’s ruin.
3. Did
the Jewish Exile Last a Literal 70 Years?
According to Watchtower publications, the Jews’ Babylonian exile lasted
exactly seventy years – supposedly from the summer of 607 BCE (Jerusalem’s
destruction, in their view) until the Jews’ restoration in 537 BCE. This
claim is flatly contradicted by both the Bible’s chronology and historical
data. As demonstrated above, the Bible does not explicitly say “the exile
will be 70 years.” In fact, multiple scriptures indicate a shorter exile.
The prophet Ezekiel, for example, dated his prophecies by the years of exile of
King Jehoiachin (Ezek. 1:2, 40:1). Jehoiachin was taken to Babylon in
597 BCE; by Babylon’s fall in 539 BCE, only 58 years had
elapsed since that first major deportation. Even counting from the final
destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, the interval to 537 BCE is about
49 years. This is the figure acknowledged by modern scholarship: roughly half a
century of exile. Notably, the Bible’s historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah –
which narrate the return – never state that the exile had lasted 70 years. They
simply report Cyrus’s decree ending Jewish captivity in his first year,
consistent with the prophecy of “seventy years for Babylon” having ended
(Ezra 1:1).
From a historical perspective, all evidence shows that the Judean exile
was about fifty years. Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 587/586 BCE, and
Cyrus’s decree allowing Jews to go home was issued in 538 BCE; many Jews
were back in Judah by 537 BCE. Contemporary records (both biblical and
Babylonian) attest that the Babylonian empire had begun dominating the region
decades before Jerusalem’s fall (captives from Judah were taken to Babylon in
605 and 597 BCE, and Judah became a vassal by 605). Therefore, the period
during which Judah and the surrounding nations “served the king of Babylon”
was approximately 70 years (from the 605 BCE Battle of Carchemish or the
609 BCE fall of Assyria, down to 539 BCE) – fulfilling Jeremiah’s
words. But the period during which the people of Judah were actually in exile
from their land was shorter. This understanding is reflected even in
second-temple Jewish literature: for example, the prophet Zechariah’s
references imply the 70 years of divine anger were effectively over by the late
sixth century.
Jehovah’s Witness apologists argue that “70 means 70” – insisting the
number cannot be symbolic or approximate. Yet, ironically, they acknowledge
that other biblical time-spans (such as the “40 years” of Judah’s punishment in
Ezekiel 4:6, or the “400 years” of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt in
Gen. 15:13) were not always exact to the year, but rounded for theological
emphasis. There is broad agreement among historians and biblical scholars
that the “70 years” in Jeremiah is a schematic or symbolic figure denoting a
long, complete period of Babylonian domination, rather than the precise length
of the exile (So Was It 70 Years, or Not? | BJU Seminary). As Dr.
Rolf Furuli – a defender of the Watchtower view – admits in formulating the
argument, he cannot actually point to a single verse that unambiguously states
“the exile lasted 70 years,” only to inferences from Daniel and Chronicles. And
as we have seen, those inferences crumble under scrutiny. In reality, the
Jews’ exile in Babylon ran from 586 to 538 BCE (if measured from the final
deportation to the decree of Cyrus), which is about 48 years – in full
harmony with the copious historical data from Babylon and Persia, and with the
Bible’s own internal chronology. No faithful “Jehovah’s Witnesses” remained
in Babylon until a 70th year in 537 BCE waiting to leave; they had long
since gone home. The Watchtower’s insistence on a literal 70-year exile is
a prime example of forcing a symbolic prophetic number into a rigid
chronological timeline that neither Scripture nor history supports.
In summary, the claim that the Jewish exile was exactly seventy years
(607–537 BCE) finds no support in the biblical text once it is carefully
examined in context. The Bible indicates a seventy-year period for
Babylon, and a roughly fifty-year exile for Judah. By conflating those
distinct concepts, the 607 BCE defense imposes a chronological
straightjacket on Scripture that obscures the actual fulfillment of Jeremiah’s
prophecy. The historical reality is that Jerusalem’s desolation lasted about
fifty years, not seventy – and this is entirely consistent with God’s word
when properly understood.
4. The
586 vs. 587 BCE Debate – No Support for 607 BCE
Watchtower publications frequently point out that secular historians are
“undecided” whether Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE or 587 BCE, implying
that scholarly chronology is confused and unreliable. It is true that scholars
have cited both 587 and 586 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction.
However, this one-year discrepancy is a far cry from the 20-year revision that
the 607 BCE theory demands – and it arises from minor ambiguities in
interpreting biblical data, not from any serious doubt about the overall
timeline. In fact, whether one prefers 587 BCE or 586 BCE, the
historical and archaeological community is united that Jerusalem’s fall
occurred in the late 7th century BCE, not in 607 BCE. The 586/587
question hinges on how to correlate Babylonian regnal years with the Jewish
civil year. The Babylonian chronicles record Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in terms of
Babylon’s calendar, while the Bible records Judah’s kings in Judah’s calendar –
leading to an uncertainty of a few months in 587/586 BCE for the exact
timing of the final siege’s end. Because the specific Babylonian tablet
describing the capture of Jerusalem is not extant, historians rely on the
Bible’s chronological notes (e.g. “Zedekiah’s 11th year, 4th month, 9th day”)
tied to known anchor points like Nebuchadnezzar’s accession and the well-dated
earlier events of 605 BCE (Battle of Carchemish) and 597 BCE (capture
of Jehoiachin). Using these anchors, it is clear that Jerusalem fell about
18–19 years after 605 BCE – hence the two possibilities, 587 BCE
or 586 BCE, depending on whether one counts Nebuchadnezzar’s accession
year as year 0 or year 1 in Judah’s reckoning.
Crucially, this scholarly debate is confined to a one-year margin and
does not indicate any broader uncertainty about the chronology. In a survey
of the literature, Jeremy Hughes found essentially an even split: a number of
authorities favor 586 BCE and an equal number favor 587 BCE. Renowned
historians such as Edwin Thiele opted for 586 BCE, while others like
Donald Wiseman and K. A. Kitchen have argued for 587 BCE. The
very fact that the disagreement is so narrow highlights how solid the
overall dating is – all experts place the event around that time, based on
the convergence of biblical and Babylonian records. Notably, none of
these historians even remotely suggests a date in the 600s BCE (let alone
as late as 607 BCE) for Jerusalem’s fall. The Watchtower’s assertion that
scholars are “confused” about the date is misleading: they are debating which
summer – 587 or 586 BCE – the city fell, not whether it fell decades
earlier. The uncertainty arises from scriptural ambiguities (like whether
the biblical author counted Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year), not because of
any flaw in the secular chronology.
In practical terms, many modern references use 587 BCE as the date of
Jerusalem’s destruction (and 586 BCE for the burning of the temple the
following month), while some use 586 BCE for the city’s fall – but this is
often simply a difference in inclusive reckoning. The important point is that both
dates lie within one year of each other, and both are about twenty years later
than 607 BCE. The existence of a 586/587 debate therefore in no way
validates the Watchtower’s chronology. If anything, it underscores how no
credible historian considers moving the date by two decades. Indeed, 607 BCE
finds no support in any of the extensive scholarly literature on the fall of
Jerusalem. It is telling that Jehovah’s Witness writers highlight a
one-year academic debate as if it cast doubt on the whole chronology; in
reality, such a minor dispute is typical in ancient chronology and does not
conceal any hidden +20 year gap. By analogy, if ten researchers debated whether
an event happened in late 2020 or early 2021, none of them would accept an
argument that it actually happened in 2000 – yet the Watchtower’s defense of
607 BCE amounts to a claim of that magnitude. In conclusion, the 586
vs. 587 BCE issue is a red herring. Scholars disagree only on a
technicality of calendrical calculation, while unanimously affirming that
Jerusalem fell around 587 BCE. This consensus, built on a wealth of
biblical and Babylonian evidence, utterly excludes 607 BCE as a
plausible date.
5.
Astronomical Data: VAT 4956 and the Confirmation of Neo-Babylonian
Chronology
One of the most striking lines of evidence against the 607 BCE
chronology is astronomical. The cuneiform tablet VAT 4956 – an
astronomical diary from Babylon – provides a detailed record of planetary and
lunar observations dated explicitly to “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king
of Babylon.” This tablet has long been known to correlate unambiguously
with 568/567 BCE, confirming that Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year fell
in 568/567 BCE (which in turn pegs his 18th year – the year of Jerusalem’s
fall – to 587/586 BCE)). Faced with this powerful evidence, the
Watchtower’s 2011 apologetic article attempted an audacious counter-claim: it
argued that “much of the astronomical data in VAT 4956 fits the year
588 B.C.E. as the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar II,” thereby supporting
607 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction. This claim, however, is deeply
flawed and has been sharply refuted by specialists. In reality,
VAT 4956 overwhelmingly confirms the conventional chronology, and the
Watchtower’s reinterpretation relies on selective use of data and
misrepresentation of scholarly sources.
First, it must be noted how complete the astronomical evidence on
VAT 4956 is. The tablet records dozens of observations: positions of the
moon relative to reference stars on specific nights, conjunctions and positions
of planets (“Mercury, Venus, Saturn,” etc.) on specific dates, and even a lunar
eclipse. These observations act like celestial timestamps. When modern
astronomers or historians plug these data into astronomy software or
mathematical calculations, they find one clear match in the mid-6th
century BCE. Indeed, as a standard scholarly publication on Babylonian
astronomy concludes, VAT 4956 “contains lunar and planetary
observations … from the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar conclusively dated to
[568/567 BCE].” No credible academic study has dated VAT 4956 to
588 BCE – because doing so produces numerous mismatches with the recorded
positions of celestial bodies. The Watchtower article arrived at its
588 BCE claim only by ignoring a large portion of the tablet’s data.
Specifically, the article admitted that it “did not use” the planetary
observations from VAT 4956 in its analysis, on the rationale that
“some of the signs for the names of the planets and their positions are
unclear” and therefore “open to speculation”. Instead, the Society’s writers
focused solely on 13 instances of the moon’s position. By this cherry-picked
approach, they claimed a significant number of lunar observations could align
with 588 BCE. But this is highly misleading: the excluded planetary
data are in fact crucial, and they strongly pinpoint 568 BCE, not 588.
The Watchtower’s own source, assyriologist David Brown, was cited out of
context to justify dismissing the planetary records. In truth, Brown was
discussing variants of planet nomenclature over centuries, not saying
VAT 4956’s data were too unclear to use. The tablet actually identifies
the planets by their well-known “A-names” (distinctive Babylonian names), which
are not ambiguous at all in context. Thus, there was no valid reason
to exclude the planetary observations – except that they conflict with the
588 BCE hypothesis. By omitting them, the Watchtower article essentially
threw out the bulk of the evidence that professional astronomers consider when
dating such tablets. This is special pleading, not sound scholarship.
Secondly, even within the lunar data, the Watchtower’s analysis had to
employ special assumptions to force a 588 BCE fit. For example, one key
observation on VAT 4956 is a lunar eclipse recorded in “month 3,
day 15” of Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year. In 568 BCE, there was a lunar
eclipse that exactly matches this entry (on July 4, 568 BCE, which
corresponds to 15 Simanu of Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year under the normal
Babylonian calendar). In 588 BCE, however, the only lunar eclipse fell on
July 15, which would ordinarily correspond to month 4 of that
year. To get around this, the Society’s writers proposed that in
Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year the Babylonian calendar started two months late –
i.e. that an extra intercalary month had pushed Nisanu (month 1) all the
way to May of 588 BCE. This is an unconventional and highly implausible
interpretation of the Babylonian calendar. Babylonian months began with the
sighting of the new moon around the spring equinox; in practice, Nisanu 1 in
Babylon never started as late as the beginning of May. The Watchtower admits
that normally that year’s Nisanu would have begun in early April 588 BCE,
but claims a tablet reference to an intercalary month justifies moving New Year
to May 2/3, 588. In fact, as analysts have pointed out, even with an
intercalary month the Babylonians would not start the next year beyond about
early April. Pushing Nisanu to May is far outside known Babylonian practice.
When one examines the details, the supposed “perfect fit” of the July 15,
588 BCE eclipse is achieved only by contorting the calendar in a way
Babylonian astronomer-scribes themselves would not have done. In contrast, the
conventional placement (Nisanu starting in early April 568 BCE)
produces an eclipse in month 3 that matches VAT 4956 with no special
pleading. The Watchtower’s approach here amounts to special-case special
pleading piled on top of data exclusion – all to dodge the straightforward
implication of the tablet’s content.
When all the astronomical observations on VAT 4956 are
considered – lunar and planetary – the evidence for 568/567 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar’s
37th year is overwhelming. Experts have calculated that 13 out of 15
lunar positions on the tablet match 568/7 BCE perfectly (the slight
discrepancies being attributable to normal observational error), and all 5
planetary positions recorded on VAT 4956 also correspond to where the
planets would have been in 568 BCE. By contrast, if one tries to date
those planetary positions to 588 BCE, none of them line up correctly –
which is precisely why the Society chose to ignore them. The Society’s claim
that “much” of the data fits 588 BCE is only true in the sense that by
dropping most data points and tweaking a calendar, one can get some of
them to fit. This is not a sound method. Tellingly, no peer-reviewed scholarly
publication has endorsed the 588 BCE interpretation. It exists solely
in Watchtower apologetics and the writings of one Jehovah’s Witness advocate
(Rolf Furuli). On the other hand, the standard 568 BCE dating of
Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year has stood unchallenged in academia for decades,
precisely because it is so well supported.
It is also worth noting the double standard in the Watchtower’s use
of astronomical evidence. In the same 2011 article, the Society accepts and
cites the computed dates for Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE,
which are derived from the same corpus of Neo-Babylonian tablets that include
VAT 4956. For example, another astronomical text (the so-called
“Strm. Kambys 400” tablet) fixes the seventh year of Cambyses II
to 523 BCE by means of an eclipse – a result the Watchtower does not
dispute when discussing Persian chronology. The Society even uses such tablets
to establish 539 BCE, the pivotal date that it agrees on. Yet, when
an equally robust tablet (VAT 4956) points to a date that undermines
607 BCE, the Society suddenly declares the evidence “ambiguous” and the
methods “speculative.” In fact, Babylonian astronomical diaries like
VAT 4956 are widely regarded as reliable for fixing absolute dates because
the motions of the moon and planets are calculable and were accurately observed
by the Babylonians. As one astronomer notes, even without reading the
cuneiform script, a modern investigator can use the sky data on VAT 4956
to “reach [their] own conclusions based on the available evidence” – and
the conclusion will invariably be Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year = 568/7 BCE (The Astronomical Diary, VAT 4956 | aperi mentis).
The Watchtower’s attempts to dismiss the astronomical data have been
characterized by specialists as misleading and unjustified. Scholars
have pointed out that the Society misquoted sources like Hunger, Steele, and
Brown in its discussion of the tablet, giving the false impression that experts
question the tablet’s evidentiary value, whereas in reality experts affirm its
accuracy and felt misrepresented by the Watchtower’s citations (The Jerusalem Book).
In conclusion, VAT 4956 stands as a powerful witness against the
607 BCE chronology. Its recorded celestial coordinates anchor
Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year in 568 BCE, which by extension places his 18th
year (the year of Jerusalem’s fall) in 587 BCE. The Watchtower’s claim
that the tablet can be re-dated to 588 BCE does not withstand critical
examination – it is achieved only by excluding inconvenient planetary data and
by positing an abnormal Babylonian calendar for that year. When one “lets the
stars speak” without bias, the heavens declare that the conventional
Neo-Babylonian chronology is correct to within a month or two. Far from
supporting 607 BCE, the astronomical diary VAT 4956 definitively
refutes it. This is why no secular historian rejects the established dates
of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. The only way to maintain 607 BCE is to cast
aside objective astronomical evidence – a step that underscores the unsoundness
of the Watchtower’s position.
6. The
Myth of “Missing Years” in Neo-Babylonian History
Because the evidence for Jerusalem’s fall in 587/586 BCE is so
abundant, Watchtower defenders are forced to speculate that the historical
record might be incomplete – that perhaps there were “missing years” (or
even missing kings) in the Neo-Babylonian chronology that scholars have
overlooked. The 2011 Watchtower article hints at this by noting “gaps” in the
Babylonian Chronicles and pointing out a few apparent discrepancies in business
documents during the transitions between kings. The suggestion is that the
reigning king list might have unknown figures or that existing kings may have
ruled longer than the records show, thus adding extra years that could shift
the timeline back to allow a 607 BCE destruction. This suggestion has
been thoroughly investigated – and decisively rejected – by historians. In
reality, the Neo-Babylonian chronology (spanning from Nabopolassar’s ascension
in 626 BCE to Cyrus’s conquest in 539 BCE) is one of the best-documented
periods in ancient history, with a convergence of numerous sources: king
lists, chronicles, thousands of dated economic tablets, and later classical
accounts. There are no unaccounted gaps of twenty years.
Consider the reign of Nebuchadnezzar himself. He is known to have reigned
43 years (605–562 BCE). We possess over 500 economic (business) tablets
dated to specific days and months within Nebuchadnezzar’s regnal years.
These tablets form a near-continuous year-by-year record of his rule. The same
is true for his successors: we have contemporaneous tablets dated to the reigns
of Evil-Merodach (Amel-Marduk), Neriglissar, and Nabonidus, covering every year
attributed to them by historians. If, for example, Nebuchadnezzar had actually
reigned 20 years longer than thought (as the 607 BCE theory effectively
requires), there would be 20 years of missing business tablets – a
glaring hole in the otherwise continuous stream of dated documents. But no such
hole exists. On the contrary, tablets dated to Nebuchadnezzar’s 43rd year
exist, followed by tablets from Evil-Merodach’s accession and 1st year,
then his 2nd year, then Neriglissar’s accession and so forth. The
sequence of reigning years is seamless. Historian Rolf Furuli, in his attempt
to challenge the chronology, scoured these texts for anomalies. He found a
couple of instances where an accession-year tablet of one king had an earlier
date in the year than a final-year tablet of the previous king – a result of
how Babylonians counted regnal years by New Year’s, causing slight overlaps at
the new year. Such minor overlaps are well understood by scholars and do not
add extra years; they certainly do not imply hidden rulers. In fact, these
overlaps occur in the matter of months (e.g. Nebuchadnezzar died in the
autumn of his 43rd year, Evil-Merodach’s accession year began earlier that
spring by Babylonian reckoning). The Watchtower article asks, “Could others
have ruled between the reigns of these kings?” and muses that if so,
“additional years would have to be added”. But this is pure speculation without
evidence – and indeed, all evidence argues against it. The Uruk King List,
an ancient Babylonian document compiled not long after the Neo-Babylonian
period, explicitly lists the kings from Nabopolassar through Nabonidus in order
with their lengths of reign. Its figures for each reign match those derived
from the business tablets and other records. For example, it gives
Nebuchadnezzar 43 years, Evil-Merodach 2 years, Neriglissar “3 years and 8
months,” Labashi-Marduk (Neriglissar’s son) a reign of just “3 months,” and
Nabonidus 17 years. These precise numbers reflect authentic archival memory. If
a mystery king had ruled for, say, 10 years between any of these known kings,
the king list and the archival tablets would betray some gap or inconsistency. They
do not. On the contrary, we find tablets dated to Labashi-Marduk’s short
reign of a few months (showing he was recognized as king for that brief period),
followed shortly by tablets in Nabonidus’s accession – a clear indication of
smooth succession. The idea that a decades-long phantom king (or an unnoticed
extension of a known king’s reign by 20 years) could slip into this
well-documented era is simply not credible.
Furthermore, the writings of later historians confirm the same sequence.
The Babylonian priest-historian Berossus (3rd century BCE), whose
works are partially preserved via Josephus, gives the duration of each
Neo-Babylonian king’s reign in agreement with the canonical figures: Nebuchadnezzar
(~43 years), Evil-Merodach (2), Neriglissar (4), Labashi-Marduk (9 months),
Nabonidus (17). He mentions no extra monarchs. The Canon of Ptolemy, a
later Hellenistic-era king list used by astronomers, likewise lists the kings
and their regnal lengths matching the cuneiform data. Even Josephus,
despite some internal inconsistencies, ultimately preserves information that
from the fall of Jerusalem to the 1st year of Cyrus was about 50 years (as we
will discuss in the next section), which aligns with the standard chronology ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154).
These multiple witnesses (Babylonian contemporary records, native king lists,
and later historians) interlock to give a consistent timeline with no room
for an extra 20 years.
The Watchtower argument seizes upon the phrase “gaps in the history
recorded in the Babylonian chronicles” –
indeed, the Babylonian Chronicle tablets are broken or lost for some years in
the 590s BCE, so they do not narrate every event. But a gap in a narrative
source is not a gap in the timeline. The chronicles are like a patchy
historical diary; missing entries do not equate to missing years, because other
sources cover those years. The business tablets, for example, have no such
gaps year-to-year. It is also telling that no archaeological discovery from
the last century and a half of Mesopotamian research has turned up any trace of
an “extra” Neo-Babylonian king or an unexplained additional regnal year. On
the contrary, every new find (such as additional contract tablets published in
recent decades) continues to fill in details consistent with the existing
chronological framework, sometimes even narrowing the dates of transitions
to within a month or two. The Society’s suggestion that “additional years would
have to be added” is a tacit admission that its 607 BCE theory cannot
be reconciled with the evidence as it stands – one must imagine adding
fictional years. That is not how historical revision is done; one would need
actual evidence of those years. None has been forthcoming. Scholars have
scrutinized the possibility extensively and found “any evidence in support
of such assumptions is completely lacking.” On
the contrary, as a leading chronologist observes, each known year in the
Neo-Babylonian era is attested by numerous documents, and if a king had ruled
longer or an unknown king existed, we would have a “large number of
tablets” dated to those additional years – yet we do not . All lines of
evidence converge on the conclusion that the Neo-Babylonian period lasted as
long as we think – no more, no less.
In short, the “missing years” argument is a myth. It arises not from
evidence, but from the necessity of finding somewhere to shove an extra
20 years into history to accommodate 607 BCE. The hard data – tens of
thousands of dated cuneiform tablets, astronomical diaries, and ancient king
lists – leave no blank to fill. The scholarly consensus is that there are no
gaps in the Neo-Babylonian chronology large enough to account for a twenty-year
error. Even Rolf Furuli, after proposing some adjustments, could at best
shift certain Persian dates by 10 years (a thesis which has also been rejected
by experts), and he notably failed to produce any concrete evidence of
missing Babylonian regnal years. Indeed, as has been pointed out, Furuli in
his book did “not explicitly mention the 607 B.C.E. date” at all –
a telling omission of the very point he ostensibly set out to prove. The reason
is clear: the evidence for the established chronology is so massive that
directly arguing for extra years in Nebuchadnezzar’s time would be academic
suicide. Thus, the idea of adding years to Nebuchadnezzar’s reign or
inserting unknown rulers is entirely speculative and contradicted by the
harmonious records at hand. All known data fix the fall of Jerusalem in the
18th–19th year of Nebuchadnezzar, which corresponded to 587 BCE (or
586 BCE) – not twenty years earlier.
7.
Josephus, Classical Sources, and Watchtower Misuse of History
In defending the 607 BCE date, Jehovah’s Witness apologists sometimes
appeal to Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, as well as
other classical sources. Josephus is quoted as saying that the Jews were exiled
for 70 years, which on the surface might seem to support the Witness
interpretation. However, a closer look at Josephus’s writings – and how the Watchtower
uses them – reveals a pattern of selective quotation and even contradiction.
Far from corroborating 607 BCE, Josephus’s accounts actually align with
the standard chronology (with Jerusalem’s fall in the 580s BCE) and expose
the inconsistency of the 70-year exile claim.
It is important to understand that Josephus in his various works was not
entirely consistent on chronological details. In some passages, he indeed
paraphrases the biblical prophecy of a 70-year Babylonian captivity. For
example, in Antiquities of the Jews (Book XI, ch.1), Josephus
writes that the first year of Cyrus (538 BCE) was “the seventieth year
from the day that our people were removed from their land to Babylon”, as
Jeremiah had foretold that after serving Nebuchadnezzar and his descendants for
70 years, they would be restored (Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI). This
shows Josephus understood the prophecy of Jeremiah as involving 70 years from
exile to restoration. The Watchtower frequently cites such statements, implying
that even a Jewish historian reckoned a full 70-year exile ending in Cyrus’s
time. What the Watchtower fails to mention is that Josephus elsewhere
quantifies the historical interval in a very different way. In Against
Apion (Book I, §19), Josephus discusses the chronology of the temple’s
desolation. There he explicitly states: “Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth
year of his reign, laid our temple desolate, and so it lay in that state for fifty
years; but in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its foundations were
laid, and it was finished again in the second year of Darius.” (Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154)
This is a remarkable passage: Josephus here pegs the desolation of the temple
(and thus Jerusalem) to 50 years in duration, not 70. He even ties it to
known reigns – from Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year (which we know to be
587 BCE) to Cyrus’s 2nd year (537/536 BCE) is about 50 years. Indeed,
this matches the biblical and historical reality almost exactly. So we have
Josephus in one work essentially acknowledging a 50-year desolation, even as in
another context he referenced the “70 years” prophecy. How do we reconcile
this? It appears Josephus himself was combining the theological prophecy with
the historical facts: he repeats Jeremiah’s 70-year prophecy in a general
sense, but when he calculates the actual timeline, he comes out with 50 years.
This is not surprising, because by Josephus’s time the historical duration from
the fall of Jerusalem to the rebuilding of the temple was well known from
sources like Berossus (whom Josephus quotes in the same section). Josephus
elsewhere provides additional chronological details that further affirm the
traditional dates. For instance, in Antiquities XX.10, he sums up that
the entire duration from the first temple’s construction under Solomon to its
destruction under Nebuchadnezzar was 470 years, and then says “after
the termination of the Babylonian captivity, seventy years” the
second temple was built and endured another 500+ years (What does Josephus say about 586/87 BCE?). Even
there, his phrasing “seventy years’ captivity” is a general descriptor, but his
specific numbers (combined with other statements he makes) actually indicate
about 50 years between the temple’s destruction and the decree of Cyrus (What does Josephus say about 586/87 BCE?) (What does Josephus say about 586/87 BCE?). In
short, Josephus’s historical data is fully consistent with a 587 BCE
destruction and a return in 537 BCE, whereas his rhetorical references
to “70 years” reflect the biblical prophecy without attempting to assert a
precise chronology. The Watchtower typically cites only the latter, leaving
readers with the false impression that Josephus “confirmed” a 70-year exile,
when in fact Josephus explicitly recorded that the temple lay desolate for
50 years ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154).
The misrepresentation goes further: The Watchtower’s 2011 article presented
a table of classical historians’ figures for the Neo-Babylonian kings and
implied they are unreliable or conflicting. In doing so, it omitted crucial
context. For example, the article fails to mention that Berossus’s figures
agree exactly with the modern chronology, and that even Ptolemy’s Canon
(though compiled in the 2nd century CE) was based on well-attested records
and likewise matches the Mesopotamian evidence. The Society also selectively
quotes Josephus regarding the start of the “servitude.” They highlight that
Josephus (in Antiquities X.6) said Nebuchadnezzar took Judean captives
in his 8th year, not earlier, arguing that this contradicts other sources
and supports a later date for the start of Babylonian servitude. But this is a
red herring: Josephus’s comments on the start of the 70 years are
secondary (and he elsewhere contradicts himself on that point too), whereas his
data on the end of the period are clear (50 years from destruction to
Cyrus). If anything, Josephus’s mention that Nebuchadnezzar didn’t fully deport
Jerusalem until his 18th year (which is historically accurate) undermines the
idea that 70 years of complete desolation began earlier.
Beyond Josephus, other ancient sources unanimously point to a fall of
Jerusalem in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, 18–19 years after his accession
(i.e. 587/586 BCE). Berossus, as preserved in Josephus, reports
that Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his father in 605 BCE, defeated Jerusalem,
and that the Neo-Babylonian kingdom lasted 66 years in total until Babylon’s
fall ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154).
This total is exactly what we get from 605 to 539 BCE. The Tyrian King
List quoted by Josephus (in the same Against Apion I.19-20) notes
that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre in his 7th year and gives a timeline that
also implies about 50 years from that point to Cyrus’s era ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154).
All these independent data align with the well-established 587/586 BCE
date. None places the destruction in 607 BCE. In fact, no ancient
author, Babylonian or Greco-Roman, explicitly supports a 607 BCE date or a
70-year desolation from 607–537 BCE. That concept arises solely from a
particular literalist interpretation of Scripture that ignores the actual
historical fulfillment.
In light of this, the Watchtower’s use of Josephus and others can be seen
as polemical cherry-picking. They quote Josephus when he echoes
Jeremiah’s prophecy (as any pious Jew would) but ignore him when he provides
the historical interval that contradicts their timeline ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154)
(Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI). They
similarly cast doubt on Ptolemy or Diodorus when those historians conflict with
607, yet they freely rely on the very same historians’ evidence to date events
like Cyrus’s conquest (539 BCE) which they accept. This inconsistent
methodology – embracing evidence when it suits them, dismissing it as
“uninspired” or “incomplete” when it doesn’t – reveals that the 607 BCE
doctrine is driven by dogma, not objective analysis. The scholarly consensus
on Neo-Babylonian chronology, supported by Josephus’s actual chronological data
and all other ancient sources, is that Jerusalem fell in 587/586 BCE and
that the exile lasted about 50 years ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154)
(Appendix, The Gentile Times Reconsidered - Carl Olof Jonsson).
There is no credible support, ancient or modern, for extending the desolation
to 70 years ending in 537 BCE.
Finally, it should be noted that the “70 years” in biblical theology was
understood by later Jewish writers as a period of national judgment and
servitude, not a precise calendar duration for the land’s emptiness. The
second-century BCE book of 2 Chronicles (cited above) and the
first-century writings of Josephus both treat the 70 years as prophecy
fulfilled by the Persian restoration, without feeling a need to reconcile every
chronological detail. The early Christian chronographer Theophilus of
Antioch (2nd century CE) explicitly states that the Jews were in
captivity at Babylon for 70 years, “until Cyrus” – showing that he, too,
followed the standard timeline (with 587 BCE as the start) albeit phrased
in terms of the prophecy. In other words, for ancient interpreters, the theological
truth was that God had ordained “70 years” for Babylonian domination and
Jewish subjugation; the historical reality was that this prophecy
manifested in events spanning roughly 609–539 BCE, with Jerusalem desolate
c.587–537 BCE. There is no conflict between these when one understands the
flexibility of biblical numeric idiom (70 as a number of completion or
punishment). It is only the modern Watchtower’s insistence on a rigid
607–537 timeline that creates a false conflict. By refuting their arguments
point-by-point – from the scriptural exegesis to the astronomical records and
ancient historians – we see that the 607 BCE date is neither biblically
required nor historically tenable. All available evidence, including the
very sources the Watchtower tries to enlist, actually converges on the conclusion
that Jerusalem was destroyed around 587 BCE and that the prophesied 70
years ended with the return of the exiles under Cyrus. The 607 BCE
apologetic stands on misinterpretations and selective use of data, and it
collapses under a full, honest scrutiny of the Bible and history.
