Hi Earnest,
I'm glad to hear you got Jonsson's book, and will be checking some references.
I think you need to be more precise in speaking about Furuli's statement about Strm. Kambys. 400. and 539. It's obvious that Furuli is speaking only of possible uncertainty in that if that text were the only means of establishing the date, then the many problems, such you pointed out that Newton discussed, would produce uncertainty. But because 539 is established with virtually complete certainty via documents from the pre-539 period and from later documents pertaining to that period, the uncertainty is only with respect to how much stock can be put in Strm. Kambys. 400. Nevertheless, the fact that the latter agrees with standard dating as established by these other documents removes all uncertainty. Thus, Furuli's statement is deceptive and insincere, because the way he phrased it, his readers get the impression that 539 is not well established by any means, when precisely the opposite is true. Furuli has learned well from the Society in this. Furuli's doubts are genuine only in the sense that he believes that the claims the Society has made are true because they "speak for God", and not in terms of an objective evaluation of the evidence. He rejects evidence that contradicts Watchtower claims only because it contradicts Watchtower claims.
Keep in mind that the only reason Furuli uses this document as he does is because the Watchtower Society does so, and that the only reason the WTS now uses it is to avoid charges of hypocrisy in terms of using other documents, such as Ptolemy's Canon, to establish 539 while at the same time rejecting those same documents as being accurate in the pre-539 period. Clearly it would be self-serving for the Society to do this, and because they did it all the time before the Insight book was published, they came in for plenty of criticism.
Given the above, your statement that "it does show that Furuli has good reason for his caution" is true only with respect to how solidly Strm. Kambys. 400. establishes 539, and not with respect to any other documents.
In support of my above contentions, note the following: You quoted a bit from Jonsson's book, in a footnote where he quotes from Robert Newton. Here is a bit more on this, including the context of Jonsson's quotation.
Robert Newton's thesis in The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy was that Ptolemy fabricated various "observational" data in order to support his astronomical theories. Despite his severe criticisms, Newton said that Ptolemy's king list, presented in the Canon, could be trusted to give accurate lengths for the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and the Persian king Cambyses. Note in the quotation below (p. 374) that Newton uses the astronomer's convention that B.C. dates are stated with a minus sign and are one year "earlier" than B.C. dates, so that -522 is equivalent to 523 B.C.:
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. 70-71] and the astronomical observations in it are analyzed in APO [Ancient Planetary Observations and the Validity of Ephemeris Time, Robert R. Newton, 1976] Chapters IV, X, and XIV. The document gives the times and magnitudes of two lunar eclipses, a conjunction of Mercury with the moon, 5 statements of the dates when Venus had its first or last visibility 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 while 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 like.However, there is another document from the 37th year of Nebuchadrezzar [Neugebauer and Weidner, 1915] [[This is VAT 4956]]. 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 analyze 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 10 minutes. The longitudes of the moon and planets inferred from the conjunctions agree with calculated values within 1 degree or less for most observations, although there is a discrepancy of about 3 degrees 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 if -567 is oorrect 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 available from sources other than Ptolemy for earlier years.
Thus, according to a strong critic of Ptolemy's Canon, the Canon is correct for the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, because the 37th year of this king is astronomically confirmed.
You should note that Newton's 2nd-to-last statement above is not correct -- there is astronomical confirmation for the reigns of several Babylonian kings prior to Nebuchadnezzar.
Now, we know that the Society rejects VAT 4956 (cf. Appendix to chapter 14 in Let Your Kingdom Come) simply because it contradicts its own chronology. The Society allows that the astronomical information may be correct (how could it not, in view of the actual evidence as summarized by Newton?) but claims that the resulting dates may be applied to the wrong king or whatever. Yet -- displaying its usual hypocrisy -- the Society turns around and accepts Str. Kambys. 400 lock, stock and barrel -- astronomical information plus application to the reign of Cambyses! It is this gross scholastic dishonesty that you ought to come to grips with, Earnest.
Finally, you told "scholar": "If you are able to produce a scan of this chart please do so." You don't really expect this guy to do that, do you? He has yet to produce anything of substance at all. It's obvious that he knows that knowledgeable people on this board will prove his claims wrong, just as I have done with respect to various scriptures bearing on 539 B.C.
AlanF
