and it's really simple and silly error, if you are not careful...but the main mistake is hiding the error. They counted the wrong way from 597 BCE, the year that Zedekiah's reign as King of Judah started. Once someone inside the WTS caught wind of this error, they had to change the date of Zedekiah's reign from 597 BCE to 617 BCE, to make their entire theology fit, or their theology whould have been shot to bits.
I think I may know how the JWs came up with the 607 BCE date...
by A-Team 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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5go
I think this has been beat to death. 607 comes from that stuipid fomula counting back from 1914 and nothing else. They got lucky around the turn of the century when no one had proof otherwise. Then along comes modern archaeology and proves it wrong.
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still_in74
what you need to remember is that none of the empirical evidence was used to come up with 607 BCE as the date. Recall that 606 BCE was the original year shown as the destruction of Jerusalem right up until the mid 40's.
The original calculation of 606 was determined solely by subtracting 70 years from 537BCE. Thats it. This was not even the calcualtion of the WTS or Russell but rather Nathan Barbour, and before him John Aquila Brown (or something like that) published the date of 604 and thus determined the end of the gentile times to be 1917, and this he published back in 1823, almost 30 years before Russell was born! Barbour later revised this to 606BCE by subtracting the 70 years from the return of the Jews in 537BCE from exile.
Hence when the WTS realized that the math was wrong (no '0' year) instead of moving the date from 1914 to 1915 they simply moved the date of Jerusalems destruction from 606 to 607. How convenient! However they get away with it as most historians allocate a one year degree of error for calculating chronology at that era.
Even today, the WTS sticks with the conclusion that despite what any historical "facts" may indicate, there is no more trustworthy source than the bible and the bible says it was 70 years before the return of the Jews in 537BCE..........according to their present "light"
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TD
Short answer:
The JW's came up with 607 by adjusting 606 (In 1942-43)
The JW's didn't come up with 606.
Prior to the discovery of the Nabonidus Chronicle, 606 (Based on Ussher's chronology) was accepted by many religious groups.
IOW It predates the whole Bible Student / JW movement by many, many years.
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bluebell
they got it from other religious groups
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jwfacts
If you look at http://www.jwfacts.com/index_files/1914.htm it traces the history. The JWs did not get it wrong, they just stole the interpretation from the Second Adventists. Interestingly one of the interpretations was by Miller - that the start date was 677 with the fall of Manassen, to support his year of 1844.
The whole 607 prophecy is a mute point. Every prophecy in Daniel had only one fulfilment yet with no support other than wishful thinking the Watchtower claims Daniel 4 should have two fulfilments.
Daniel 2: An immense image representing kingdoms
Daniel 4: Seven times representing Nebuchadnezzar
Daniel 5: Writing on the wall foretelling Babylon’s immediate destruction
Daniel 7: Four beasts being 4 world powers
Daniel 9: Seventy weeks foreshadowing Christ’s arrival
Daniel 11: Kings of the North and South
Why would Daniel 4 have a second fulfilment when all other prophecies had but one fulfilment? This is where this discussion should end!
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IP_SEC
still_in74, mind sending me a larger version of your avatar?
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still_in74
k, to set the record straight, Im a guy. (perhaps you realized that Ipsec) but I have PM's calling me "baby" and "sister" !! LOL
my avatar was a picture of a young kid caught staring at a womans cleavage in a photo, much like most of us men would do also. Just hope you dont get caught on camera like this kid did!
Thus I have changed my avatar to an image a "guy" would have................ ;)
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neverendingjourney
That kind of thing throws me off all the time. I see an avatar with a woman and the user is really a man or vice versa. Some users have female screen names but are really men and vice versa. It's hard to keep up. I hope no one thinks I'm a tree.
