How can the Society deceive people? Because nobody check her statements. Check below and you shall see:
*** w69 3/15 185-6 Astronomical Calculations and the Count of Time *** LUNAR ECLIPSES
Lunar eclipses, as found in Ptolemys canon and presumably drawn from data in the cuneiform records, have been used in efforts to substantiate the dates usually given for particular years of the Neo-Babylonian kings. But even though Ptolemy may have been able to calculate accurately the dates of certain eclipses in the past, this does not prove that his transmission of historical data is correct. His relating of eclipses to the reigns of certain kings may not always be based on the facts. Additionally, the frequency of lunar eclipses certainly does not add great strength to this type of confirmation.
For example, a lunar eclipse in 621 B.C.E. (April 22) is used as proof of the correctness of the Ptolemaic date for Nabopolassars fifth year. However, another eclipse could be cited twenty years earlier in 641 B.C.E. (June 1) to correspond with the date that Bible chronology would indicate for Nabopolassars fifth year. Besides, this latter eclipse was total, whereas the one in 621 B.C.E. was partial. 8
According to the text, there are two possible eclipses. If you are a witness, you will accept the 641 BC one (total eclipse)because it is convenient for the Society chronology but if you are not you will accept the 621 BC (partial eclipse) But is there a way to know which one is the eclipse which Ptolemy mentioned in his Almagest? Yes, there is. Just read the original source, which is the Almagest, which says the following:
In the fifth year of Nabopolassar, which is the 127 th year of Nabonassar, towards the end of the eleventh hour (in the night) between the 27 th and 28 th of the Egyptian (month) Athyr, the moon began to be eclipsed in Babylon, but the largest eclipsed area embraced only a fourth of the diameter on the south side. (Ptolemys Almagest V 14, p. 340)
You may notice that Ptolemy is referring to the eclipse which is dated in 621 BC because as the Society recognised, this is partial, as the description given in the Almagest, whereas the one chosen by the Society is total and it does not fit with Ptolemy description . If 621 is the fifth year of Nabonassar, his last, the 21 st year, was 605 BC and then, Nebuchadnezzar first year was 604 BC. It would be impossible for a person to destroy a city, Jerusalem in 607 BC, when he, Nebuchadnezzar, had not succeed to the royal throne yet.
*** w69 2/1 89 Babylonian Chronology-How Reliable? *** What is thought to be a memorial tablet written either for the mother or the grandmother of Nabonidus, gives some chronological data for this period, but many portions of the text have been damaged, leaving much to the ingenuity and conjecture of historians. The reader can appreciate how fragmentary the text is by ignoring the bracketed material in the following translation of one section of this memorialmaterial that represents modern attempts at restoring the missing, damaged or illegible portions:.
[During the time from Ashurbanipal], the king of Assyria, [in] whose [rule] I was born(to wit): [21 years] under Ashurbanipal, [4 years under Ashur]etillu-ilani, his son, [21 years under Nabopola]ssar, 43 years under Nebuchadnezzar, [2 years under Ewil-Merodach], 4 years under Neriglissar, [in summa 95 yea]rs, [the god was away] till Sin, the king of the gods, [remembered the temple] . . . of his [great] godhead, his clouded face [shone up], [and he listened] to my prayers, [forgot] the angry command [which he had given, and decided to return t]o the temple -hul-hul, the temple, [the mansion,] his hearts delight. [With regard to his impending return to] the [temp]le, Sin, the king of [the gods, said (to me)]: Nabonidus, the king of Babylon, the son [of my womb] [shall] make [me] en[ter/sit down (again)] in (to) the temple -hul-hul! I care[fully] obeyed the orders which [Sin], the king of the gods, had pronounced (and therefore) I did see myself (how) Nabonidus, the king of Babylon, the offspring of my womb, reinstalled completely the forgotten rites of Sin, . . .
Farther along in the text Nabonidus mother (or grandmother) is represented as crediting Sin with granting her long life from the time of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, to the 6th year of Nabonidus, king of Babylon, the son of my womb, (that is) for 104 happy years, . . . Pritchards Ancient Near Eastern Texts, pages 311, 312.
From this very incomplete inscription it can be seen that the only figures actually given are the 43 years of Nebuchadnezzars reign and 4 years of Neriglissars reign. As to this latter monarch, the text does not necessarily limit his reign to four years; rather it tells of something that happened in his fourth year. How far within the reign of Ashurbanipal the life of Nabonidus mother (or grandmother) began is not stated, so that we are left in the dark as to the commencement and the close of the 104 happy years. Nor is there any information as to the lengths of the reigns of Ashur-etillu-ilani, Nabopolassar and Evil-merodach. And there is no mention of Labashi-Marduk, now generally acknowledged by historians as reigning between Neriglissar and Nabonidus.
It will be noted, too, that the conjectured numbers of years, inserted by modern historians on the basis of Ptolemys canon, when added to the 6th year of Nabonidus, give a total of 100 or 101 years, and not the 104 years mentioned in the text itself. So this fragmentary record provides scant information for the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian period.
The text above is known as Nabon. N 24 ot the Adad-guppi inscription. It was discovered by H. Pognon at Eski Harran in south-eastern Turkey in 1906. However, in 1956 Dr. D. S. Rice discovered 3 other stelae at Haran from the reign of Nabonidus, one of which bore a duplicate inscription of the one discovered in 1906. Fortunately, the section for the chronological information is not damaged. The text says the following:
From the 20th year of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, when I was born, until the 42nd year of Ashurbanipal, the 3rd year of his son Ashur-etil-ili, the 21st year of Nabopolassar, the 43rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, the 2nd year of Awel-Merodach, the 4th year of Neriglissar, during (all) these 95 years in which I visited the temple of the great godhead Sin, king of all the gods in heaven and in the nether world, he looked with favor upon my pious good works and listened to my prayers, accepted my vows
It should be notice that the first 2 kings are Assyrians while the following kings are Neo-Babylonian kings. It means that Adad-guppi lived under Assyrian rule until Nabopolassar revolt with success against the Assyrian yoke. As may be noted, this inscription is telling us the total length for every Neo-Babylonian king (95 years including the years of the Assyrian kings) How does this text help us to date this years in our calendar? Further in the text, it is said that Adad-guppi died in the 9 th year of Nabonidus. If his 17 th year was 539 BC, his 9 th is 546 BC so you just have to add the years of the Babylonian kings counting backwards. Nabonidus 9 years, Neriglissar 4 years, Awel-Merodach 2 years and Nebuchadnezzar 43 years. (9+4+2+43=58 years) So if we add to 546 BC (Nabonidus 9 th year) 58 years we have got the year 604 BC as the Nebuchadnezzars first year. And his 18 th year when he destroyed Jerusalem was 587/6 BC.
The watchtower magazine mentioned above was written in 1969 and it quotes a stale which was found in 1906 when there is a better and undamaged duplicate of the same ancient text discovered in 1956.
The last quotation comes from the following watchtower:
*** w77 12/15 747 Insight on the News *** Claudius Ptolemya Fraud
How certain can we be of the presently accepted chronology of the ancient Babylonian Empire? For many years, chronologists have put heavy reliance on the king list of Claudius Ptolemy, a second-century Greek scholar often considered the greatest astronomer of antiquity.
However, in his new book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, the noted physicist Robert R. Newton of Johns Hopkins University offers proof that many of Ptolemys astronomical observations were deliberately fabricated to agree with his preconceived theories so that he could claim that the observations prove the validity of his theories.
In its comments on Newtons book, Scientific American magazine notes : Ptolemys forgery may have extended to inventing the length of reigns of Babylonian kings. Since much modern reconstruction of Babylonian chronology has been based on a list of kings that Ptolemy used to pinpoint the dates of alleged Babylonian observations, according to Newton all relevant chronology must now be reviewed and all dependence upon Ptolemys [king] list must be removed. October 1977, p. 80.
These findings illustrate why secular history and chronological reckoning cannot be relied upon when they conflict with the Bible. Unlike secular historians, the Bible writers had nothing to gain by misrepresenting the facts. Also, what they wrote became part of all Scripture that is inspired of God.2 Tim. 3:16.
The Society says that the quotation is taken from the Scientific American magazine. Well, the quotation comes from the Newtons book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy page 375. The full page says the following:
-720 March 19, and we would sti11 have the same apparent verification of the king list.
It follows that Ptolemy's king list is useless in the study of chronology, and that it must be ignored. What is worse, much Babylonian chronology is based upon Ptolemy's king 1ist. All relevant chronology must now be reviewed and all dependence upon Ptolemy's list must be removed.
Luckily, the later part of his king list has independent verification. I mentioned in Section VIII.8 that there is a Babylonian record of the lunar eclipse of -522 July 16, which is one of the eclipses that Ptolemy fabricated. More accurately, I should have said that there is a Babylonian record of a lunar eclipse in the 7th year of Kambyses, which is the same year that Ptolemy states. The document was published by Kugler
[1907, pp. 70-71J and the astronomical observations in it are analysed in APO, Chapters IV, X, and XIV. The document gives
the times magnitudes of two lunar eclipses a conjunction of Mercury with the moon, 5 statements of the dates when Venus had its first or last vislbl1lty after or before passing the sun, and 4 such statements for Mars. If we assume that the 7th year of Kambyses began in the spring of -522, the times and magnitudes of the lunar eclipses agree fairly well with the stated values, 3 statements about Venus are accurate whl1e
2 are impossible, and 3 statements about Mars are accurate while 1 is impossible. The most likely situation is that the year is -522/-521 and that there are some scribal errors in the record. Nonetheless, the confirmation of the year is not as strong as we would 11ke.
However, there is another document from the 37th year of Nebuchadrezzar* [Neugebauer and Weidner, 1915J. According to Ptolemy's list, this year began in the spring of -567. The document records 9 measurements of the times of moonrise or moonset, 5 times of conjunctions of the moon with specified stars, plus 1 conjunction of Mercury, 2 of Venus, and 3 of Mars, all with specified stars. When I analyse these on the assumption that the year is -567/-566, I find that the times of moonrise or moonset agree with calculated values within about 1O minutes. The longitudes of the moon and planets inferred from the conjunctions agree with calculated values within lo or less for most observations, although there is a discrepancy of about 3 for one lunar conjunction .
Thus we have quite strong confirmation that Ptolemy's list is correct for Nebuchadrezzar, and reasonable confirmation for Kambyses. Since the beginning of Nebuchadrezzar's reign takes us back to -603 lf -567 is correct for his 37th
year, it seems likely that any error in Ptolemy's list is no more than a few years for dates after -603. So far as I know, there is no astronomical confirmation for earlier dates.
I have not attempted to study the evidence aval1able from sources other than Ptolemy for earlier years.
The other eclipses is -521 January lo.
*1 believe that English-speaking Assyriologists now prefer
this spelling to the traditional Nebuchadnezzar.
So according to Mr. Newton, he agrees that the Nebuchadnezzars first year was 603 BC so take a pencil a paper and calculate yourself his 18 th year when he destroyed Jerusalem.
When a writer is quoting another, he may misquote. It is something that happens frequently but in the case of the Society this misquotation has been deliberately to deceive people. I do not believe that the Society was quoting not knowing her error. Furthermore, I wrote to the Society long time ago comparing the mentioned text and Have you seen any correction? Neither have I.