Looking for secular proof for 609 BC...

by AuldSoul 33 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  PP...Textually, the reference to Nebuchadnezzer in Jeremiah 25:9 has all the appearance of a gloss: "I am going to send for all the peoples of the north, says Yahweh, [[including King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon, my servant]], and I will bring them against this land and against all these surrounding nations", and the textual tradition as you note also supports this (LXX lacks the gloss, while 4QJer c and MT contain it, just as the reference to "the king of Sheshach," a similar explicit reference to the Babylonian king, is also present in 4QJer c and MT but missing in the LXX). I personally am persuaded by the evidence of two editions of Jeremiah that circulated during the exilic period, with the older shorter recension attested in the LXX (which lacked the specificity in the later recension, and which resembles closely the early prophesies of Jeremiah during the reign of Josiah in ch. 1-6) and the Qumran text represents a mixed tradition between the two versions.

  Jeffro...As for the connection with Daniel, there is a clear allusion to Jeremiah 25:1 and other texts referring to "the word of Yahweh addressed to Jeremiah" in Daniel 9:2.
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  scholar

  AuldSoul

  It is utter nonsense to suggest that Assyria fell in 609 BCE and that from Jeremiah's viewpoint that it makes perfect sense for the seventy years to apply to Babylon's ascendancy rather than to Jerusalem. For starters, the focus of Jeremiah was not Babylon but Judah, Jerusalem and its people and the seventy years would be a period of servitude to Babylon, exile in Babylon and the desolation of Judah by Babylon.

  Isaiah's seventy year prophecy was to do with Babylonian domination of the entire region including Tyre and Judah but its focus was not Judah but Tyre and the surrounding nation. So it merely highlights the simple Jeremiac fact that the seventy years would be a period of servitude caused by an exile from a depopu;ated and devastated homeland.

  The suggestion that the seventy years was a period only of Babylonian domination as suggested by the Jonsson hypothesis is impossible because historians and scholars cannot agree as toa beginning for the seventy years whether it be 609 or 605 because both dates gave their repective strengths and weaknesses. It is impossible to agree on a date for the Fall of Assyria and a suitable date for the beginning of Babylon's subjugation for the region because these events are simply to 'fuzzy' to be of service to chronology.

  That is one good reason why celebrated WT scholars have chosen dates that admit no fuzziness and were events that were clearly ethched on the minds and hearts of Jeremiah's and Daniel's audiences to wit : The Fall of Jerusalem, destruction of the Temple and and depopuling of the Land in 607 during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzer and the Judah's last monarch, Zedekiah and the Return of the Exiles under the Cyrus after Babylon's Fall (539 BCE) back to Judah in order to restore all things.

  scholar JW
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  AuldSoul

  Scholar, consider the marginal references from the celebrated WT scholars attached to Daniel 5:26 and Daniel 5:30.

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  Daniel 5:26 — “This is the interpretation of the word: ME´NE, God has numbered [the days of] your kingdom and has finished it.

  Isaiah 13:11 And I shall certainly bring home [its own] badness upon the productive land, and their own error upon the wicked themselves. And I shall actually cause the pride of the presumptuous ones to cease, and the haughtiness of the tyrants I shall abase.

  Jeremiah 25:12 “‘And it must occur that when seventy years have been fulfilled I shall call to account against the king of Babylon and against that nation,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘their error, even against the land of the Chal·de´ans, and I will make it desolate wastes to time indefinite.

  Jeremiah 27:7 And all the nations must serve even him and his son and his grandson until the time even of his own land comes, and many nations and great kings must exploit him as a servant.’

  Jeremiah 50:1 The word that Jehovah spoke concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chal·de´ans, by means of Jeremiah the prophet:

  Jeremiah 51:11 “Polish the arrows. Fill the circular shields, O men. Jehovah has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because it is against Babylon that his idea is, in order to bring her to ruin. For it is the vengeance of Jehovah, the vengeance for his temple.

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  Daniel 5:30 — In that very night Bel·shaz´zar the Chal·de´an king was killed

  Isaiah 21:9 And here, now, there is coming a war chariot of men, [with] a span of steeds!” And he began to speak up and say: “She has fallen! Babylon has fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he has broken to the earth!”

  Jeremiah 51:8 Suddenly Babylon has fallen, so that she is broken. Howl over her, YOU people. Take balsam for her pain. Perhaps she may be healed.”

  Jeremiah 51:31 “One runner runs to meet another runner, and one reporter to meet another reporter, to report to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured at every end,

  Jeremiah 51:39 “When they are heated I shall set their banquets and I will make them drunk, in order that they may exult; and they must sleep an indefinitely lasting sleep, from which they will not wake up,” is the utterance of Jehovah.

  Jeremiah 51:57 And I will make her princes and her wise ones, her governors and her deputy rulers and her mighty men drunk, and they must sleep an indefinitely lasting sleep, from which they will not wake up,” is the utterance of the King, whose name is Jehovah of armies.

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  Consider it carefully and get back to me.
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  scholar

  AuldSoul

  I have carefully considered your selected verses and all that these show is that Babylon was soon to receive Judgement by Jehovah as announced by the prophets particularly Daniel and Jeremiah. Jeremiah in accordance with 25: 12-14 whereupon after Babylon had fallen and the captives were released by the new king of Babylon namely Cyrus in 537, that city would also receive a similar fate to that of Judah namely a desolation in this case to 'times indefinite.

  scholar JW