Whoa, whoa, whoa, now just wait a minute. You either don't get the point I've been making or you are being intellectually dishonest. Your original statement was: "Historians also agree on 537 B.C.E. as the year when Cyrus the Great decreed that the Israelites could return to Judea from captivity to rebuild their temple". And so I asked for sources. In response, you quoted from Jack Finegan's Handbook of Bible Chronology that simply says that Cyrus' first year was 538/537 BC. And so again I responded: "You did not give any sources that date the return from captivity specifically to 537 BC, much less supporting your claim that 'historians agree' on this date, as opposed to 538 BC". And so now you give a laconic reference to Parker & Dubberstein's work as "the information source for 537 as the date which Cyrus the Great decreed that the Israelites could return to Judea".
I don't have Parker & Dubberstein in front of me but I assume you have the work yourself. Would you please quote for me the passage where they specifically discuss Cyrus' decree to the Jews and date it to 537 BC? I don't remember seeing such a discussion. Or is this yet another reference to Cyrus' first year being 538/537 BC?
You are insisting that Cyrus made the decree very late in his first year (which began on March 17, 538 BC), in essentially the last two months of the year (between January 1 and March 5, 537 BC). What is the basis for concluding that the decree was indeed made so late in the first year? What's the source? And what is the basis for your claim that "historians also agree" that in fact the decree was made at the end of Cyrus' first year? I know many historians in fact question whether the decrees published in Ezra are genuine (cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Lester Grabbe, etc.) and many who think that Cyrus would have probably have made such a decree at his installation at the beginning of his first year, or in 538 (cf. Matthias Delcor, Lawrence Schiffman, etc.). Indeed the extant historical evidence shows that Cyrus worked on restoring native cults as soon as he obtained power in Babylon. The Cyrus Cylinder (usually dated to 538 BC) states that Cyrus had already "returned the (images of) the gods to the sacred centers [on the other side of] the Tigris whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time" and had "gathered all their inhabitants and returned (to them) their dwellings" and "settled in their habitations, in the pleasing abodes, the gods of Sumer and Akkad whom Nabonidus had brought into Babylon" (lines 30-31), and the Nabonidus Chronicle (3.21-22) dates the latter to between Kislemu and Addaru of Cyrus' accession year (i.e. December-March 539/538 BC), a time prior to Cyrus' first regnal year.
It seems that your only reason for insisting on the last two months of Cyrus' first year is because that's what is demanded by Watchtower chronology. I know of no secular or biblical support for concluding that it was necessarily so late in the first year. Indeed we see in Ezra 3:1 that the Jews were repatriated by "the seventh month" and the only calendrical reference prior to this is "the first year of Cyrus" in ch. 1. The most natural reading of the text is that the Jews were already resettled by the seventh month of the first year of Cyrus (i.e. September 538 BC). If it was already the second year, why did the text not say that? Ezekiel 33:21 moreover shows that the trip between Judea and Babylonia on foot took about five months, so resettlement by the seventh month sounds about right.
I retrieved my information here:
w68 8/15 pp. 493-494 par. 23 The Book of Truthful Historical Dates
He issued the famous edict permitting the Jews to return and rebuild Jehovah’s temple, copies of which were written and circulated throughout the realm. This allowed sufficient time for the Jews to resettle in their homeland, ‘establish the altar firmly upon its own site,’ and “from the first day of the seventh month” start offering up burnt sacrifices to Jehovah. This date, the “first day of the seventh month,” according to the best astronomical tables available (Brown University Studies, Vol. XIX, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.—A.D. 75, (1956) Parker and Dubberstein, p. 29), is calculated to be October 5 (Julian) or September 29 (Gregorian) 537 B.C.E.—Ezra 1:1-4; 3:1-6.
I don't have the astronomical tables in front of me, but I'm quite confident that page 29 bears an accurate witness to the events at hand. An item of interest is that Charles Taze Russell and his associates came to precise conclusions about 1914 prior to the fulfillment of the prophecy while leaving the door open to a measure of uncertainty because of the tentative nature of secular history and possibly being off a year or two as you've illustrated.
si p. 282 par. 26 Study Number 2—Time and the Holy Scriptures
Now, since the Common Era did not begin with the year zero but began with 1 C.E., and the calendar for the years before the Common Era did not count back from a zero year but began with 1 B.C.E., the figure used for the year in any date is in reality an ordinal number. That is, 1990 C.E. really represents 1989 full years since the beginning of the Common Era, and the date July 1, 1990, represents 1,989 years plus a half year since the beginning of the Common Era. The same principle applies to B.C.E. dates. So to figure how many years elapsed between October 1, 607 B.C.E., and October 1, 1914 C.E., add 606 years (plus the last three months of the previous year) to 1,913 (plus the first nine months of the next year), and the result is 2,519 (plus 12 months), or 2,520 years. Or if you want to figure what date would be 2,520 years after October 1, 607 B.C.E., remember that 607 is an ordinal number—it really represents 606 full years—and since we are counting, not from December 31, 607 B.C.E., but from October 1, 607 B.C.E., we must add to 606 the three months at the end of 607 B.C.E. Now subtract 606 1/4 from 2,520 years. The remainder is 1,913 3/4. That means that 2,520 years from October 1, 607 B.C.E., takes us 1,913 3/4 years into the Common Era—1,913 full years brings us to the beginning of 1914 C.E., and three fourths of a year in addition brings us to October 1, 1914 C.E.
“It was in B.C. 606, that God’s kingdom ended, the diadem was removed, and all the earth given up to the Gentiles. 2520 years from B.C. 606, will end in A.D. 1914.” —The Three Worlds, published in 1877, page 83.
We are waiting for the time to come when the government of the world will be turned over to Messiah. We cannot say that it may not be either October, 1914, or October 1915. It is possible that we might be out of the correct reckoning on the subject a number of years.We cannot say with certainty. We do not know. It is a matter of faith, and not of knowledge. "We walk by faith, not by sight." Watchtower, October 15, 1914
I think there's enough evidence based on calender dates and fulfillment to substantiate 1914 as a legitimate prophecy.