Sorry, another 607 question? I'm confused.

by lost_light06 68 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  scholar

  Hellrider

  1636

  Certainly 539 and 537 uses secular evidence that is also used for the construction of Neo-Babylonian chronology but the methodologies used for biblical and secular chronology differ. Celebrated WT scholars use a 'event-based approach' whereas secular scholars use 'regnal-based approach' both produce different outcomes such as 586/587 for the Fall of Jerusalem or 607 BCE. The celebrated ones have wisely noted the historical relevance of the 'biblical seventy years' which escapes the attention of secular scholars hence a twenty year gap is produced.

  Just because something is mentioned by Jonsson does not make it fact in fact Jonsson has made one very critical historical blunder which has been exposed by the said scholar and has been confirmed by the Alan F's buffoonery.

  scholar JW
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  uk humanist

  celebrated ... wisely - I assume you're being sarcastic? Who celebrates these people, and how do they qualify as scholars - do you know who they are? Do you know their qualifications?
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  toreador

  I think Scholar is just blowing smoke up peoples hoodakies for fun. He knows by now the illogicalness of his reasoning.
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  hillary_step

  Scholar,

  Just because something is mentioned by Jonsson does not make it fact

  I agree. Does this obvious standard also apply to 'celebrated scholars' who flush toilets in Brooklyn. If not, why not?

  HS
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  Hellrider

  Celebrated scholar jw:

  Certainly 539 and 537 uses secular evidence that is also used for the construction of Neo-Babylonian chronology but the methodologies used for biblical and secular chronology differ. Celebrated WT scholars use a 'event-based approach' whereas secular scholars use 'regnal-based approach' both produce different outcomes such as 586/587 for the Fall of Jerusalem or 607 BCE.

  Aha. And exactly what is meant by an "event-based approach"? Am I wrong to assume the "methodology" of the "event-based approach" goes something like this:

  Use 539 and 537 as "pivotal dates", and never mind where those dates came from in the first place, never even dare ask the question... Then count back 70 years, because the term "70 years" is mentioned in the Bible. This gets us to 607 bc, which fits nicely in with our 1914-doctrine ( and never mind the fact that our years 365 days long while back then it was 360, and never mind that neither Daniel nor Jeremiah mentions the "day for a year"-rule, and that we ripped this day-for-a-year-thing completely out of context from Ezekiel and Numbers ).

  It goes something like that, am I right? But you`re forgetting one thing: Within you "event-based approach", exactly how do you get to the years 539 and 537? Could you please elaborate on this point? Do you have a copy of an astronomical tablet on these critical years? Because, I am no expert on this, and know much less about this than Alan F, Jeffro, Narkissos, Leolaia, Auldsoul etc, but I do understand this: The years 537 and 539 (or possibly 538) are arrived at via the secular chronology that you so easily dismiss when it doesn`t suit you anymore, and this chronology is partly "regnal-based", yes, but also "event-based", in the sense that certain astronomical tablets fix some of the years exact. But as far as I know, the years 539 and 537 are not fixed exactly by astronomical tablets. So, could you please explain how you arrive at these critical years within your "event-based approach"? And if you can`t do that, and if you can`t come up with some other miracolous thing, then my point still stands, and I will have logically disproven your theories once and for all, and everyone with a minimum of mathematical skills will understand that.
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  AlanF

  Hellrider, I'm not sure how much I'm going to say here that you aleady know, but I'll say it for completeness.

  By about 1900, it had been largely accepted in the scholarly world that Nebuchadnezzar had acceded the throne of Babylon in 605 B.C. Over the next few years, almost all scholars came to accept the modern figures for the regnal lengths of other Babylonian kings, thus establishing 539 B.C. as the last year of Neo-Babylonian kings and the date of Babylon's fall. Note that Smith's Bible Dictionary, as early as 1864, also accepted these dates (see http://corior.blogspot.com/2006/02/evolution-of-606-to-607-bce-in.html for details ), and that the Society's 1968 Watchtower article on chronology listed authorities as early as 1907 who accepted the 539 date.

  The point is that it was establishing both Nebuchadnezzar's accession date and the lengths of the reigns of Neo-Babylonian kings that first established the 539 date. More specifically, Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year in 568/7 B.C. was astronomically established, and then his accession year in 605/4 B.C. was derived from it. In other words, an earlier date was established, and then the date 539 was found by working forward in time.

  During this time, it became evident that the 539 date could also be established by working backward in time from an astronomically established date (althought the tablets from which the information was derived were extremely problematic in many areas, and not nearly as solid as the ones establishing the Neo-Babylonian kings), namely, the 7th year of Cambysses in 523/2 B.C. If that was Cambysses' 7th year, then his accession year, and the 9th of Cyrus, was 530/29 B.C., and Cyrus' accession year was 539/8. If 539/8 was the last year of Neo-Babylonian kings and Cyrus' accession year, then Babylon fell in 539 B.C. -- consistent with what had been first established by working forward in time.

  The Watchtower Society is perfectly well aware of all this, and so the only reason for its wanting to retain the backward calculation of 539 and dump the forward calculation is that the latter clobbers its claims about the 607-1914 "Gentile times" doctrine. That's also why it wants to dump Ptolemy's Canon and refuses to discuss any of the solid evidence that the Neo-Babylonian king's reigns are correct in modern chronology.

  Your arguments are exactly right, and scholar pretendus will never deal with them directly.

  AlanF
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  Kaput

  It is not your business to decide what methodology the celebrated WT scholars should employ. It is their business and they have decided that 539 BCE is a adequate pivotal date for the reconstruction of OT chronology.

  "Rule by decree" cuz this "truth will set you free".
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  Hellrider

  Alan F:

  Thanks, and thanks for clearing up a couple of things. I thought it was the capture of Jerusalem in 597 that was astronomically fixed, but now I realise that it was 568/67. I knew that it wasn`t 539 or 537, because I have found very little about these later dates in what I`ve read (I haven`t bothered buying any books on this, but I read all the articles I find on the internet about it). But I have understood that this whole issue can be easily solved by pure math and logic, and this part of it (the logic and math) isn`t easy to find/understand in what has been written about it so far (in what I have found, at least). It`s so easy to not see the forrest for the trees on this subject, and I can understand why celebrated scholar jw is so confused on this. Unlike many others here, I don`t think he is a troll, I think he actually believes in this (in other words, he is this dumb...). This is because he set his mind on something years ago, and all the informatuion he has since then gathered on it, he "molds" so that it fits into his allready preconceived Watchtower-induced theory. He`s not the first to do this, not long ago I met a woman that believed fully that the DaVinci-code was true. And so she had become interested in early christianity, and although she now has a lot of info on the subject, she makes all of it "fit" into her allready established theory. The same thing goes for a lot of other conspiracy-theories, such as the socalled "revisionists" (mostly neo-nazis) on the Holocaus-subject. They will have read tons of articles, books, looked at the primary sources/evidence, and still hold onto their wacky ideas, because they once made up their mind, and then "molds" all the info so that it fits with their established idea. Celebrated scholar jw is the same kind of guy. And to hide the weaknesses of his "argument", he tries to hide them, and confuse the opponent by bringing up a lot of irrelevant details. Next he`ll probably bring up the colour of Nebuchadnezzars socks on the day of the assault on Jerusalem, or how many cows his army ate in a week during the siege. This is all a smoke-and-mirror-tactics. The truth here is in the math, and you`re right, I don`t expect scholar will deal with them directly. I don`t think he`ll ever wake up from his Watctower-induced coma either, as he is unable to see the simplest points.
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  scholar

  Hellrider

  1637

  Celebrated WT scholars prefer an 'event-based' approach to chronology rather than the 'regnal-based-approach' because it avoids the confusion over the use of regnal years conicciding with know historical events. For example, this is the reason why scholars and apostates have found themselves in a predicament with using a regnal-based chronology because it fails to determine whether the historical event of the Fall of Jerusalem is dated to 586 or 587 BCE. Biblical chronology based upon necessary secular data avoids this problem by simply factoring historic events such as the seventy years and coinciding this with biblical and regnal data for the reigns of the both the Judean and Babylonian Monarchy.

  scholar JW
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  Hellrider

  Scholar jw:

  Biblical chronology based upon necessary secular data avoids this problem by simply factoring historic events such as the seventy years

  I have spent the last three or four posts explaining you why this results in an inlogical, mathematical impossibility, but you simply don`t understand it, and I think I know why. Scholar jw, I am curious about this: When you meet an argument that you can`t answer, because this argument destroys your entire worldview, does it then make you feel perfectly a-okey and at ease and with peace of mind when you simply ignore the argument? Inside your head, does it work like this? Are you the kind of personality-type that can look reality in the eye, and simply block it out, ignore it, pretend it isn`t there, and pretending it so strongly that it actually isn`t there! I think you are. I think that if someone invented a time machine, and we transported you back to 586 and placed you in the basement of the Temple, when you heard the battle going on outside and Nebuchadnezzars catapults started bombarding the Temple, and the rocks started falling from the ceiling, the minute before it came crashing down, you would go: "This is not happening... mumble mumble ...the celebrated wt scholars... mumble mumble ....our eventbased chronology...7o years of desolation and servitude starting in the fall of 607...methodology and interpretation equals chronology... mumble mumble ". And the whole thing would come crashing down, and still you wouldn`t change your mind.

  In a way, I admire this. It really exemplifies the power of the mind, the power of imagination over reality. I admire that fact, that man can convince himself of the craziest of ideas, stare reality in the eye and ignore it, stare even a simple math-puzzle in the eye, and proudly proclaim: "In this case, 2 pluss 2 = 5". With no hesitation. This is even crazier than believing that the moon is made of swiss cheese, and that there is a man living in the holes in the cheese. You sir, have offered me whole new perspective on insanity! It`s a beautiful thing.