Did Jeruselm fall in 587 or 586 BCE? (page 2)

blondie

a watcher, are you a faithful jw?

Fixing the "true" date affects whether the dates like 1914, 1918, 1919 are scriptural per the WTS.

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102015160?q=607+1914&p=sen#h=83

Finkelstein

Who cares? What has that got to do with my personal relationship with Jehovah?

Because if you know of false apostate teachings/Prophecies, its your loyal duty to Jehovah to speak up about them and to point out who is teachings these falsehoods .

.......less you be an apostate yourself

You have been witnessed to nevertheless

Seems very nonsensical to me that anyone would try to reasonably pinpoint a specific year that took place 2,600 + years ago! With all the calendar changes over the centuries, lack of reliable historical dates or dates based loosely on some event or someones birthday it's a fools game. It's fairly unreliable to go back even 100 or 200 years and establish a definite date. But then faith is blind, deaf, and DUMB!

just saying!

shepherdless

I have to disagree, eyeuse2badub.

Ptolemys Canon (a list of eclipses going back to about 700BC) which gives the date and year of each eclipse by reference to the relevant King and the the number of years that King has been on his throne, has proven to be incredibly reliable.

These days we can calculate the exact dates of solar and lunar eclipses 1000s of years into the past and 1000s of years into the future. There is a NASA website which gives the data.

While Ptolemys Canon doesn’t say the exact date a king came to power (only the year) the data has proven 100% accurate each time there has been other info to check it with (eg those Babylonian tablets Watchtower was so desperate to discredit a few years ago).

For what it is worth, Ptolemys Canon records Nebuchadnezzar as coming to power in about 605BC, which would mean that (assuming the Bible is factually correct and accurate) the destruction of Jerusalem occurred in about 587 or 586BC.

Doug Mason

Hi,

I came across another article that supports the 587 BCE date.

https://www.critiquesonthewatchtower.org/new-articles/2019/02/Jerusalem_587_586.pdf

I think that concreting in the correct date provides further information that deals blows to the WTS's imaginary 607 BCE date. Working through the process provides mental discipline that defies the method that the WTS uses to arrive at their date.

Doug

shepherdless

That is useful, Doug. When first reading up on this, I never bothered to go through the details of what type of “year“ is being referred to in each biblical passage and what the effect is. A lot of work to decide between 586 and 587. It was enough for me to see it was pretty clear that Watchtower chronology was hopelessly wrong, and CT Russell should have picked that up right at the start, because (for example) when writing “The Time is at Hand”, he refers to Ptolemys Canon.

Amongst the excellent and thoroughly researched articles I have seen (eg Gentile Times Reconsidered), there is one point I have not seen highlighted, as follows.

J-dubs like to say something like, “Well secular history might lead to 587BC, but the bible says 607BC.” Actually, secular history makes no mention whatsoever of the destruction of Jerusalem. There is, for example, a Babylonian tablet recording the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC (recorded in both the Bible and Babylonian Chronicle), but the relevant Babylonian tablet for events of 587BC has never been found. We only presume the destruction of Jerusalem occurred because the Bible says so.

So my answer to “Well secular history might lead to 587BC, but the bible says 607BC”, is that there is no secular history, and the only date you can get from a literal reading of the bible is 587BC (or possibly 586BC).

Phizzy

Good points Shepherdless, just a note for JW's, there is no such thing as " Bible Chronology", in the sense of historically testable and verifiable stuff.

There is only accepted history and Chronology to work from, JW Org recognizes this of course, and works from the destruction of Babylon, 539 B.C.E, for a lot of its very doubtful calculations. Like a lot of Bible believers who like to take it as almost literal, and accurate, they then struggle to make the Bible's claims fit actual History.

And the Bible certainly does NOT say Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E ( see above Posts).

rickroll

Even if by some huge leap over the grand canyon that the temple was destroyed in 607 which is most certainly was not, the cult has been wrong on all of its predictions. The end did not come in 1914 and WW1 was not what they predicted. They lie, selectively forget and change what they said to cover it all up. There are so many lines of evidence to show that the temple was destroyed in 586-7 and none to show it was 607. The cult uses the same lines of date setting when it comes to all other dates but then switches to some mystic bull crap when it comes to 607. The fact is its a cult, its a dangerous cult and the leaders are a bunch of drunken idiots who show they are not that smart every day.

eyeuse2badub

Comments noted Sheherdless

However, Ptolemy, the astronomer, lived in the 2nd century CE. I'm not completely disregarding his stuff but still he lived 6 or 7 hundred years after the supposed destruction of Jerusalem. With all the exaggeration and hyperbole surrounding the ancient accounts of kings /rulers and their dynasties, who's reasonably willing to bet on the accuracy of dates and the accounts of historians from such times in the past? Not me!

just saying!

Finkelstein

Lets make it perfectly clear, the WTS made Jerusalem's destruction on 607 because it wanted to make 1914 work even pushing the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem 1 year from their original release date from Babylon. (538)

607 - 70 = 537 BCE

Daniel's prophecy was wrong in the number of years of desolation.

The first deportation of slaves occurred when Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylon in 605 and made Jerusalem under his control of that year.

In the 19th year of his rein (586) spoken about in the bible, he overthrew Jerusalem and destroying its main temple, taking much of its inhabitants to Babylon, the desolation started then in that year of 586.

Archeological findings have also supported this occurrence.

Did Jeruselm fall in 587 or 586 BCE?

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