reneeisorym wrote:
: Can someone help me out? I read this and I don't believe the tablets that prove 587 would disprove the Bible. So can you help me figure out what the Bible really says about the fall?
What you quoted is just the usual JW apologist misrepresentation of what the Bible says. Sure, I'll help you.
:: Counting back from that date, and adding up what they have discerned to be the reigns of each king, 605 BCE is found to be the first year of mighty King Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah says this King destroyed the city of Jerusalem in his 19th year of rule. Hence, counting forward 19 years bring us to 587 BCE. Incidentally, this is also the method Christendom uses.
This is nearly correct, except that what the writer calls Nebuchadnezzar's "first year" is technically his accession year (the accession year can be thought of as the 0th year using the "accession year" method of counting the regnal years of kings; if you don't understand this, I can explain more, or suggest references). However, the writer fails to note that Nebuchadnezzar's accession year can also be found by counting forward the appropriate number of years from a solidly established lunar eclipse in 621 B.C.E. So this date is established by two independent methods.
:: Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand, believe something the secular historians do not. We believe the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God, so we take the Bible's prophecies into account when calculating ancient chronology. —See the charts to the right
This claim is demonstrably false. JWs most certainly do not believe the Bible whenever a direct reading of the Bible contradicts Watchtower tradition. This is easy to prove.
:: The prophet Daniel tells us, “Jerusalem will lie in ruins for seventy years.” (Daniel 9:2, Contemporary English Translation)
The writer here engages in a gross distortion of the quoted passage by using a Bible translation that is inaccurate. The fact is that Daniel 9:2, in the original Hebrew, is ambiguous. This ambiguity is properly reflected in the JWs' own New World Translation:
. . . I myself, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah had occurred to Jeremiah the prophet, for fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem, [namely,] seventy years.
So, all that the passage really says is that in some unspecified manner a period of 70 years is connected with "fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem". One possible interpretation is as the writer claims. Another (which must be correct if various Bible passages are self-consistent) is that the 70 years of Babylonian domination over the Middle East, spoken of in Jeremiah 25:11, 12, had ended, which clued Daniel in that God would soon turn his attention to the exiled Jews and return them to Judah (cf. Jeremiah 29:10 in most any Bible other than the NWT or KJV).
:: However, the secular chronology disagrees with the Bible. Their chronology allows only fifty years – not seventy – from 587 BCE when Jerusalem was supposed to be destroyed, until the Jews returned home in 537 BCE.
The claimed date of 537 B.C.E. for the return of the Jews is wrong. There is no specific Biblical support for it. The Watchtower Society has never done other than engage in a bit of speculation and then merely claim that this date is correct. However, a comparison between the account in Ezra of the Jews' return and a passage in Josephus establishes that the return was in 538 B.C.E. This destroys the JW claim at its root (cf. my post "Fact Jews Returned In 538 BC Kills Off Watchtower Chronology" here: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/118291/1.ashx ).
:: So, Jehovah's Witnesses will not accept secular chronology when it contradicts the Bible.
HA!
:: Hence, counting back from 537 BCE (the year the Bible says the Jews returned home)
An out and out lie.
:: for a full seventy years, we arrive at the year 607 BCE. That must be the year Jerusalem was destroyed. The secular date of 587 BCE, twenty years out, must be wrong. The following pages of this mini-site will show from other Bible prophecies why 607 BCE must be correct.
Many JW critics have shown on this board why all of the JW arguments are wrong. Assuming the search engine works, you might be able to find a bunch of them.
For example, JW apologists, following the Watchtower Society, like to point out that the ancient historian Josephus speaks several times of 70 years of exile or captivity of the Jews. While this is true, they fail to point out that his statements occur alongside other historical claims that are demonstrably untrue even according to JW teaching. So these statements hold little water, especially in view of the following fact: in his last work, Josephus explicitly states that the Temple lay in ruins for 50 years (from 587/6 to 537 when the temple foundations were actually laid, according to Josephus, is about 50 years) and he backs it up by quoting several more ancient writers on the lengths of reigns of their kings, which add up to almost 50 years). Since Josephus appears to contradict himself with regard to 50 or 70 years, he can hardly be used as an authority. But JW apologists refuse to deal with this problem.
The fact is that the Bible and secular history happen to agree with one another pretty much exactly for this time period. It is historically established, for example, that the last vestiges of the Assyrian Empire were wiped out in 609 B.C.E. by an alliance whose major player was the Babylonians, and that the Babylonian Empire was eliminated in 539 B.C.E. by the army of Cyrus the Great. Jeremiah 25:11, 12 says (NWT):
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. 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.
Since the Babylonians became dominant over the Middle East in 609 B.C.E. and ceased their domination in 539 B.C.E., it appears that the 70-year prediction of Jeremiah was correct. Here's another one. Jeremiah 29:10 states (NASB):
For thus says the LORD, 'When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.'
Since the 70 years of Babylonian domination (70 years "for Babylon") ended in 539 B.C.E., this is consistent with Jeremiah 25:11, 12. These passages are also consistent with 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21 (NASB), which says of Nebuchadnezzar:
Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah . . .
The kingdom of Persia obviously began to rule in 539 B.C.E. when Cyrus the Persian defeated Babylon and killed king Belshazzar. These passages are consistent with Jeremiah 27:6, 7 (NASB), where God says:
Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, . . . All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings will make him their servant.
Nebuchadnezzar's line of kings consisted almost entirely of his direct offspring or his sons-in-law; Belshazzar was his actual grandson according to many historians. So when Nebuchadnezzar's dynasty ended in 539 B.C.E., "many nations and great kings" began to "make him their servant", just as the Bible claims.
In view of the above Scriptural and historical evidence, the JWs have no leg to stand on. And what I've shown above barely scratches the surface. I suggest that you get hold of the book The Gentile Times Reconsidered by Carl Olof Jonsson (try the Freeminds site, http://www.freeminds.org/sales/books.htm#wbtbook ) which is a comprehensive look at all the evidence.
AlanF
