by Ding 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
In "The Time Is At Hand," (1889), Russell gave the date of creation of Adam as 4129 BCE.
Now the WTS' date for the creation of Adam is 4026 BCE.
Has anyone seen an explanation for how they arrived at these dates? Did they just pull them out of the air? When did they change their date system and why?
They use "pivotal" dates from secular sources (once called "absolute" dates like 539 BCE). They use the Bible's references to the lifespans of individuals in the bible, calculate overlaps. Changes are due to changes in secular source information and interpretation by the WTS of bible dates.
Don't they even claim to know the month, day, and hour as well? I just seem to remember that from somewhere...
In "The Time Is At Hand" (1889), Russell said that the period of the Judges lasted 450 years.
In "Life Everlasting In Freedom of the Sons of God," Franz said that the period of the Judges lasted 350 years.
The Bible didn't change, so what did?
Can anyone supply specific WT references where these dates were actually calculated and changed?
For an apocalyptic religion that is so tied to its chronologies, I would expect that a change in 103 years in its "creation of Adam" date would have been a HUGE shift requiring an explanation of why the adjustment was being made. This would seem to be so whether the organization made the change based on new Bible interpretations or on new secular information.
Was the change made quietly without JWs noticing or was it done with fanfare of "new light" being disclosed by the faithful and discreet slave, for which JWs were duly grateful?
To me, it's similar to the change from the 1874 parousia to the 1914 parousia. What explanations did the organization give for the changes?
1975 was based on a mistaken calculation blamed on KJ bibile why 6000 years didn't end in 1874 but in 1975. There's the 100 missing years, no zero year between bc/ad adds one more year? I don't know where the two other missing years would be but then again it's impossible to accurately calculate years from Adam to the flood so any number will do I guess.
Blondie - when you say they calculate overlaps -- r u referring to how the bible says so and so died at 80 years of age -- seth died at say 185 years of age, they didnt die exactly on the day they were born, there must have been months not accounted for for every one mentioned in the Israelite nation and lineage down to Christ amounting to a vast amount of time if someone was 80 years plus 10 months, etc. that would be 10 months not counted in the arriving at specific dates......do I make sense?
I always wondered if that would throw the dates factor out the window - even the pivotal dates are under scrutiny i.e. 539/607.. calendars and record keeping from nation to nation were all different, apparently the Jewish calendar seems to be the better of it all... a lot of histories were based on astronomy and so on..
But the months not counted for every male kind of made me wonder how far off everything really is
All JW dates for the 'creation of Adam' are rubbish, because they are based on a false premise. They dogmatically select 607 for the fall of Jerusalem and count backwards from there. I and others have shown that 607 is not even supported by the Bible let alone all the archaeological evidence against it.
Blondie - when you say they calculate overlaps -- r u referring to how the bible says so and so died at 80 years of age -- seth died at say 185 years of age, they didnt die exactly on the day they were born, there must have been months not accounted for for every one mentioned in the Israelite nation and lineage down to Christ amounting to a vast amount of time if someone was 80 years plus 10 months, etc. that would be 10 months not counted in the arriving at specific dates......do I make sense?
I always wondered if that would throw the dates factor out the window - even the pivotal dates are under scrutiny i.e. 539/607.. calendars and record keeping from nation to nation were all different, apparently the Jewish calendar seems to be the better of it all... a lot of histories were based on astronomy and so on..
The source material for the Judean divided monarchy provides some protection for years 'creeping' away due to potentially overlapping months, because there are cross-checks where such-and-such starts reigning in someone-or-other's nth year, and then another person starts reigning in that person's nth year. Much of the chronological information for that period (e.g. the books of Kings and Chronicles) can be compared with other extant historical records, and is essentially the same kind of information as is found in those other records. Naturally, the Jewish records have their own cultural spin, just as all nations' records did.
However, pretty much everything in the Bible prior to about 1000BCE is essentially myth and folklore, for which there is no evidence at all. If any of it happened, it has become so distorted (as is usually the case with tribal orally transmitted folktales) so as to make any attempt at an accurate chronology worthless. So much so that the only ones who bother are fringe religious groups who try to make dates fit their own end-times agendas.
Thanks Jeffro, thats about what I felt and your answer falls in line with that
LOL. The book you need is " God's kingdom of a thousand years has approached". (1973) Fred Franz wrote it, and he details how the 100 year balls-up happened. There never was a chance of it making sense though, as using Bible chronology, some of Noah's ancestors must have lived through the Flood, if you add up all their life-spans; so finding the date for Adam's creation must be a hopeless exercise too.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/207525/1/More-Old-Rubbish
What if, as I suspect, the Genesis story predates Judaism and is a fragment from earlier Canaanite legends? There is a style of writing where you are vague but most people think you are definitive. Vagueness has saved me many times in life. I had trouble practicing at first b/c I only wanted to write on the one hand, on the other hand memos. People won't pay for that stuff.
I recall hearing explanations from Franz at conventions but they were cursory. The actual calculation part would have to be much more complex than could be covered in a lecture. He could have written a detailed memo and attached it to a WT. How do you know which secular sources to trust as reliable? REading secular history much gets revised with antrhopology or science. Q was almost a certainty when I was in college. Read the lit now, few scholars believe in Q now. I am simplifying it.
