scholiar:
Are you saying that Jeremiuah did not preach against Judah but for the nations only.
Nice attempt at a 'bait and switch' by switching to "only". You said Jeremiah's message was "mainly targeted to Judah", and claimed this is confirmed by the first chapter. You lied.
Jeffro has simply piggybacked COJ for he may have fooled you but not scholar.
You have previously said I've put things forward that are not supported by "COJ". You've contradicted yourself. Idiot.
Methinks the watch illustration is brilliant because it shows how the twenty hap is removed by factoring the seventy years which are missing from the NB chronology and history.
There are significant problems with the JW chronology for the Neo-Babylonian period beyond just the '20-year gap'. As I've explained elsewhere:
- 624-621 BCE – BM 21946 provides a continuous year-by-year record of Nebuchadnezzar’s activities up to the eleventh year of his reign, and shows Nebuchadnezzar returning to the ‘Hatti-land’ straight after his enthronement. However, the Watch Tower Society’s chronology has Nebuchadnezzar doing ‘a lot of nothing’ from his enthronement up until 620 BCE.
- 621 BCE – With the Society’s 20-year ‘adjustment’, Nebuchadnezzar’s 601 BCE attack on Egypt should be moved to 621 BCE. However, 621 BCE falls before their reckoning of when Jehoiakim began paying tribute. This is problematic because Josephus gives the attack on Egypt as the reason for Jehoiakim’s refusal to pay tribute after three years. (“But on the third year, upon hearing that the king of Babylon made an expedition against the Egyptians, he did not pay tribute,” Antiquities of the Jews, Book X, Chapter 6 as quoted in The Watchtower, 15 October 1964, p. 637.) If the attack on Egypt is placed in 619 BCE, such that the subsequent request for Jehoiakim’s tribute were made on Nebuchadnezzar’s return to Babylon in early 618 BCE, this would mean Jehoiakim’s refusal to pay would fall in the second year of paying tribute rather than the third. This would suggest that the attack on Egypt would have to have been in 618 BCE. However, BM 21946 (rows 5 to 7 on the reverse) places the attack on Egypt in Kislev (December), at the same time the Society says Nebuchadnezzar was laying siege to Jerusalem.
- 620 BCE – Nebuchadnezzar’s demand for tribute from Jehoiakim in his accession year should be placed in 624 BCE according to the Society’s 20-year gap. However, the Society will not admit there was a siege on Jerusalem in Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year, despite both BM 21946 (rows 12 and 13 on the front) and Berossus attesting to his presence in the region to demand tribute in Sebat (February 604 BCE). Instead, it states that Jehoiakim was “compelled” to pay tribute (without acknowledging that this was to curtail a siege) in what they claim was ‘really’ Nebuchadnezzar’s ‘first year of Jehoiakim’s vassalage’, which they place in 620 BCE (Insight, “Babylon”, volume 1, page 238; Daniel’s Prophecy, page 32).
- 620-618 BCE – The Society’s chronology constrains the period for which Jehoiakim paid tribute from early 620 BCE to mid-618 BCE (about 2.5 years). This contradicts BM 21946 (rows 12, 13, and 15 to 17 on the front, and rows 1 to 5 on the reverse), which places Nebuchadnezzar in the region to exact tributes on various occasions, from his accession year through to his fourth year, which should be 625 BCE (early 624 BCE) until 621 BCE when adjusting for the Society’s 20-year gap. It further contradicts BM 21946 (row 8 on the reverse), which says Nebuchadnezzar stayed in Babylon during his fifth year (620 BCE in the Society’s chronology).
- 618 BCE – In addition to the problems the Society’s chronology causes regarding the reason for which Jehoiakim refused to pay tribute after three years, it also creates further problems for the timing of events between Jehoiakim’s refusal to pay and the siege that resulted in most of the Jews being exiled to Babylon. 2 Kings 24:2 states that in between these two events, various “marauder bands” of “Chaldeans”, “Syrians”, “Moabites” and “the sons of Ammon” attacked Judah. BM 21946 (rows 9 and 10 on the reverse) states that Nebuchadnezzar sent these “companies” in his sixth year, which should be 619 BCE in the Society’s chronology. However the Society constrains these “marauder bands” to the latter half of 618 BCE—which would be Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year in the Society’s interpretation—when BM 21946 (row 11 on the reverse) says the siege itself took place. In fact, BM 21946 (rows 6 to 10 on the reverse) places three full years between the attack on Egypt and the siege on Jerusalem, but the Society’s chronology forces all these events into late 618 BCE.
- 609 BCE – The Watch Tower Society says an eighteen month siege against Jerusalem began in December of 609 BCE and ended in 607 BCE. However, because Jeremiah used Tishri-based dating for the reigns of Judaean kings, ‘the tenth month’ (Teveth) of Zedekiah’s ninth year begins at the end of 590 BCE. The siege ended in July of 587 BCE, and therefore lasted about thirty-one months (including a 13th intercalary month during 589BCE).
