scholar pretendus said:
: The Jews returned back home from Babylon in 537
Really! So you claim, but you cannot prove this from the Bible. Indeed, the Bible provides a good deal more proof that the Jews returned to Judea in 538, not 537, B.C.E.
Of course, we've dealt with this issue a number of times in earlier posts on this subject. In every case, scholar pretendus has run away from discussion, for the obvious reason that the Watchtower Society itself has published nothing, aside from easily disproved nonsense, about it. A simple check of Watchtower claims on this subject shows that its doctrine amounts to exactly that -- pure claims, without substance.
: thus fulfilling and ending the seventy yeras
Yes, 70 yeras, posted by a yoyo.
: as confirmed by Jeremiah in acord with Jeremiah, Daniel confirmed by Ezra and Josephus.
LOL!
: Jeremiah in ch 25 clearly applied the seventy years to Judah alone
Abject nonsense. The passage from Jer. 25:8-12, from the NWT, is rather clear:
8 "Therefore this is what Jehovah of armies has said, ‘"For the reason that YOU did not obey my words, 9 here I am sending and I will take all the families of the north," is the utterance of Jehovah, "even [sending] to Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about; and I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of astonishment and something to whistle at and places devastated to time indefinite. 10 And I will destroy out of them the sound of exultation and the sound of rejoicing, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the hand mill and the light of the lamp. 11 And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years."’
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 Chaldeans, and I will make it desolate wastes to time indefinite. 13 And I will bring in upon that land all my words that I have spoken against it, even all that is written in this book that Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations. 14 For even they themselves, many nations and great kings, have exploited them as servants; and I will repay them according to their activity and according to the work of their hands.’"
As anyone can see, nothing in the passage mentions Judah, which fully disproves the claims of this scholar pretendus. Rather, it mentions "this land and . . . its inhabitants and . . . all these nations round about." Indeed, Judah is included in this much more sweeping passage as an afterthought. The overall vision is one of the entire Middle East, of which Judah is but a minor part. So it's obvious that people like scholar pretendus are far overstepping the bounds of reason by claiming that the tiny land of Judah, and by prophetic extension, the claims of the modern-day and irrelevant cult known as Jehovah's Witnesses, have any so-called "prophetic fulfillment" beyond the clearly stated goals of the Bible writers. Thus, astute readers understand the circular and entirely self-serving nature of the "arguments" posted by such as "scholar pretendus" and apologetic Jehovah's Witnesses of his ilk.
: and that other nations would also come under servitude to Babylon.
Duh. That's what the passage clearly states.
: That same chapter described Judah's punishment as one of exile, servitude and desolation lasting for a fixed period of seventy years and that Babylon would be called to account by desolation as with all the other nations.
The usual JW distortion. The overall passages in question clearly state that Judah and the nations round about would become desolate under one simple condition: that they failed to submit to the Babylonian yoke. If they submitted, they would serve the king of Babylon until his time ran out. Most nations submitted. but the Jews did not. Thus, the Jews suffered the extreme penalty of the prophecy -- complete servitude until the Babylonian empire ended. That's what the passage states would happen, and that's what various other Bible passages state did happen (2 Chron. 36, Ezra 1). To claim different is to claim that the Bible says other than what it says -- but this is par for the course with JWs.
: Josephus is the only outside witness or source confirming that period of Jewish history and is account coincides with ours and not yours.
What a complete distortion of the facts! You, along with virtually all Watchtower apologists, are gross liars, as I will prove.
Josephus, as you know very well, said in a somewhat vague way in two passages in his earlier writings that the exile of the Jews lasted 70 years. What he meant by that is anyone's guess, since in his third and last comment on the subject he said that the desolation of the temple lasted 50 years (Against Apion, I, 21). In this last writing on the subject, Josephus explicitly refers to the reigns of various Babylonian kings and lists their reigns totaling to 50 years for the period in question, not 70 (cf. Jonsson, The Gentile Times Reconsidered, 4th Edition, pp. 298-301). So, given the above facts, Josephus is at best a neutral source reference. That you claim Josephus as a confirmation of Watchtower nonsense is, well, a measure of your braindeadness as a JW.
: Josephus is the only source for Berossus and when it suits you rely on Berossus and Josephus but whe the facts turn against you then you seek to discredit Josephus. When you discredit Josphus you discredit Berossus.
Nonsense. On the other hand, it's trivial to prove that your criticisms apply in spades to the Watchtower Society's written arguments about all of this "Bible chronology". This has been done many times over the years, and you've completely glossed over all the evidence, which proves that self-proclaimed loyal JWs such as yourself have no respect for the very Bible you claim to uphold, or for simple facts of history.
: Our methodology and interpretation is superior to that of modern scholars because we have revelation form God about such matters and His Word.
Really. Such as C. T. Russell's revelation that the world of mankind would end in 1914. And when it didn't, his further revelation that it would end in 1918. And when it didn't, that the world would end in 1920. And when it didn't, that it would all end in 1925. And when it didn't, 1941 or so, and 1951 or so, and 1975, 1984, 1994, 2000, and as the Watchtower Society claims to this day, "Armageddon is just around the corner".
The simple fact is that Russell's date of 1914 was a mistake from its inception. When Nelson Barbour first came up with that date as the "end of the Gentile times" back in 1875, he messed up. He did not know that there was no "zero year" between "AD" and "BC". So when he argued (incorrectly) that the "times of the Gentiles" began in 606 B.C., as opposed to current Watchtower claims of 607 B.C., he was wrong. Since he was wrong, his claims were not a product of "revelation", which disproves your overall claims -- obviously wrong interpretations cannot be a product of an infallible God. And of course, when Fred Franz in the 1940s discarded virtually all of Russell's prophetic dates in favor of his own dates, which were accepted without apparent question by the entire community of "Jehovah's witnesses", he repudiated Russell's dates and clearly declared that all of Russell's so-called "Bible chronology" was a mere product of a man's -- Russell's -- imagination.
: Further, we have a precise calender date, a year which you do not have.
Anyone can come up with a precise calendar date. Here you go: 1946.
The problem is to relate a claimed precise calendar date to so-called Bible prophecy -- without circular arguments and so forth. No JW to date has been able to do this with the "Gentile times chronology" or anything else. If you disagree, then do point our readers to the appropriate references, the Internet being preferred in this venue. Of course, I know very well that you can not and will not do so.
: Your misguided interpretations cannot give and has not given you a year because if you are so certain then name your year, write a paper complete with spreadsheet and tell everyone what a clever little boy you and that only you have sold a problem which has baffled scholars for decades namely the year of the Fall. Perhaps you may even score an award for such flashes of truth.
LOL! A typical JW-ish sidestep! The simple fact -- as you know perfectly well -- is that scholars are divided on the question of the date of Jerusalem's destruction based on only one fact -- the Bible itself is unclear. The clear Bible passages that we have, in conjunction with the clear cuneiform passages we have from the relevant time period or thereabouts, suggest that either 586 or 587 B.C. was when Jerusalem was destroyed. Based on the available information, secular scholars favor 587, whereas most evangelical scholars, based on the work of Edwin Thiele, favor 586 B.C. The point is irrelevant for Watchtower chronology, which claims 607 B.C. (but until 1944 the Society claimed 606 B.C.), because neither 586 nor 587 has anything to do with the Society's present claim that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C. -- a claim for which there is no secular evidence at all.
Given scholar pretendus' usual abysmal scholarly performance, here are a few facts he cannot refute:
1) No one can prove whether the Jews returned to Judah from Babylon in 537 B.C. as opposed to 538 B.C.
2) Jeremiah 25 clearly speaks of various nations around Babylon, including but not limited to the Jews, as included among the nations condemned to the denunciations that the prophet Jeremiah spoke of.
3) Jeremiah 25:12 clearly states that, when the punishment declared by Jehovah upon the Jews and the nations around it was completed, the king of Babylon was to be punished. That punishment, without argument, was visited upon the king of Babylon in 539 B.C., when Belshazzar the king of Babylon was killed in the night when the army of Cyrus breached the walls of Babylon and conquered the city and the Babylonian empire. Thus, when the prophet Jeremiah, in Jer. 25:12, clearly states, "when seventy years have been fulfilled I shall call to account against the king of Babylon", we have no choice but to conclude that the Bible writer agrees that the end of the 70 years of Babylonian supremacy corresponds with the punishment of the king of Babylon, when the 70 years had ended, and the end of the subservience of the Jews and the nations round about it to Babylon. Thus, the claims of the Watchtower Society and its defenders, such as scholar pretendus, are proved false.
AlanF
