@scholar
1. âCritics ignore the Jewish exile (âExileâServitudeâDesolationâ)
from 607 to 537âŻBCE.â
Rebuttal: No reputable historians âignoreâ the 70-year Babylonian
exile; they simply reject the Watch
Towerâs 607â537âŻBCE framing of it. The Bible does speak of a 70-year
period of Babylonian domination and exile, but this is not defined as 607â537. Jeremiah
25:11â12 foretells seventy years of
nations serving Babylon until
Babylon is punished. Mainstream scholars understand this as roughly the 70
years of Babylonian regional hegemony ending
in 539âŻBCE (the fall of Babylon). For Judah, the exile spanned from
the fall of Jerusalem (587âŻBCE) to the return under Cyrus (~538â537âŻBCE), about
fifty years. Critics do not âignoreâ the biblical exile; rather, they note that
the biblical texts themselves describe the 70
years in different ways â as a period of Babylonian rule over the
nations (Jer 25), as Jerusalemâs
desolation and Sabbath for the land (2âŻChronicles 36:20â21), and as
the duration of the Jewish captivity in
Babylon (Jer 29:10). All these aspects are considered by scholars.
Your charge is a straw man: historians fully acknowledge the exile and
desolation but conclude from extensive
evidence that Jerusalem fell about 587âŻBCE,
not 607. Even conservative biblical chronologists who take the seventy years
literally usually count them from c.605âŻBCE
to 536âŻBCE, not from 607. In short, the 70-year
exile/servitude is not ignored at all â it is understood within the
historically attested timeline, not arbitrarily fixed to 607â537.
2. âJosephus confirms this 70-year understanding (i.e. 607â537âŻBCE).â
Rebuttal: You misuse Flavius
Josephus. In fact, Josephus
explicitly contradicts the 607 chronology. In Against Apion I.21, Josephus reports
that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed
the temple in his 18th year and that it lay desolate for âfifty yearsâ until Cyrusâ 2nd year, when the Jews returned. Fifty
years of desolation fits a 587âŻBCE destruction (587 to ~537âŻBCE is ~50 years)
and cannot support a 607 date.
It is true that elsewhere Josephus paraphrases the biblical prophecy of âseventy yearsâ. For example, Antiquities XI (per the Watchtowerâs
citation) says âall Judea⌠continued to be a desert for seventy yearsâ. But
this is Josephus merely recounting
Jeremiahâs prophecy, not asserting an independent historical chronology.
The Watch Tower Society has cherry-picked those â70 yearsâ phrases out of
context. When read in full, Josephus does not give two contradictory
chronologies; rather, he understood the temple
desolation as 50 years within a broader 70-year span of Babylonian
supremacy. In Against Apion I.19,
Josephus writes that âour city was desolate during
the interval of seventy years until Cyrusâ â note, during that interval, not for the entirety of it. Josephusâ actual chronology (temple desolate
586â516âŻBCE = 70 years; exile about 50 years) aligns with the scholarly
consensus of a 587âŻBCE fall. Thus, Josephus affirms the
conventional timeline. Modern scholars rely on archaeology
and cuneiform records over Josephus for precise dates, but Josephus
certainly does not âconfirmâ a
607âŻBCE destruction â quite the opposite.
3. âScholars cannot resolve whether Jerusalem fell in 586 or 587âŻBCE.â
Rebuttal: This is a minor technicality that you blow out of
proportion. Virtually all historians place
Jerusalemâs fall in the late 580sâŻBCE â there is no
debate about a date as off-base as 607. The slight 586 vs. 587
difference arises from how one counts the calendar year of the final siege
(Judahâs regnal year vs. Babylonian accession year). Many standard references
give 587âŻBCE as the year
Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, while some older works list 586âŻBCE â but both
refer to the same event, around August of 587. The current scholarly
consensus favors 587âŻBCE as the
equivalent date, and even Jehovahâs Witness publications have acknowledged the
event occurred in â587/586âŻB.C.E.â in secular chronology. This very slight
uncertainty (less than one year) is not an embarrassment or unresolved crisis â
itâs a result of ancient Near Eastern dating conventions. It in no way suggests
scholars are clueless; rather, it reflects meticulous
caution in correlating Babylonian regnal years with Julian years.
Crucially, whether one says 587 or 586âŻBCE, nobody outside
Watchtower circles claims â607âŻBCE.â The academic community is united that the
destruction occurred about twenty years after 607.
Your argument is a red herring â a trivial ambiguity on 587 vs 586 does not
validate an error as large as 20 years. By analogy, if two historians disagree
whether an event happened in late 1944 or early 1945, that doesnât mean someone
claiming it happened in 1924 has any merit. In sum, scholars can and have resolved
the date to within a few months (summer 587âŻBCE); the Watch
Towerâs 607 date remains utterly unsupported.
4. âWhy canât scholars precisely determine the start and meaning of
the 70 years?â
Rebuttal: Scholars debate the interpretation of
the 70-year prophecy only because the Bible itself uses â70 yearsâ in multiple contexts, not because of any
deficiency in the historical timeline. Jeremiah 25 clearly refers to 70 years of Babylonian domination over
the nations (starting around Babylonâs rise in 609âŻBCE and ending with
Babylonâs fall in 539âŻBCE). Jeremiah 29:10, by contrast, speaks to the Jewish
exiles in Babylon and thus implies 70
years of exile âfor Babylonâ, which could be viewed as 605âŻBCE (first
deportations) to 536/537âŻBCE (return). And 2âŻChronicles 36:20â21 links the 70
years to the land resting from sabbaths â a theological comment that Judahâs
exile fulfilled the sabbath-rest years it had neglected. Because these biblical
texts allow different start and end
points (609 vs 605 vs 587âŻBCE, etc.), scholars discuss which specific
period was meant. Importantly, none of
the viable scholarly views place the start at 607âŻBCE. The options
considered (609, 605, or 587âŻBCE) all align with standard chronology and yield
roughly 70 years ending by 539â515âŻBCE. Your complaint actually backfires: the
fact that the return in 537âŻBCE is
not exactly 70 years after 587âŻBCE (itâs ~50 years) is one reason scholars
conclude Jeremiahâs 70 years were not
intended as the interval from Jerusalemâs fall to the return. Instead, the
70 years are understood as a round-number prophecy of Babylonian rule or exile
that fits the general historical framework (a common view is 605â536âŻBCE). In
short, scholars do determine
the meaning of the 70 years by careful exegesis and historical data â and the
mainstream understandings are perfectly consistent with 587âŻBCE for Jerusalemâs fall. The only people insisting on a rigid
607â537 interpretation are Witness apologists themselves, who ignore the
flexible usage of â70 yearsâ in Scripture and the abundance of historical
evidence to the contrary.
5. âThe Bible never states the 70 years were a period of Babylonian
domination.â
Rebuttal: This claim is false â the Bible explicitly connects
the 70 years with Babylonâs dominance. Jeremiah 25:11 says âthese nations shall
serve the king of Babylon seventy years.â That is a direct statement
about Babylonian domination. Jeremiah 25:12 continues that after 70 years âI will punish the king of Babylonâ,
implying Babylonâs rule would last 70 years until its downfall. Other passages
reinforce this: Jeremiah 27:6â7, for example, has God saying he gave âall these lands into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzarâ and that âall nations shall serve him, his son, and
his grandson until the time of his own land comesâ â which turned out to be
about 70 years of Babylonian rule. So the biblical
text itself identifies the 70 years with the period of Babylonian
empire. Your argument likely relies on a semantic
twist: Witness literature sometimes insists the 70 years mean exclusively
Jewish exile and land desolation, not âBabylonian rule,â because the verse says
Judah would be desolate seventy years (e.g. using 2âŻChron. 36 or Dan. 9).
However, these are not contradictory concepts. The land of Judah was desolate because Babylon dominated and exiled its people. The Chronicler indeed emphasizes the land
rest aspect (a theological point), but he introduces it by saying this
fulfilled Jeremiahâs word â and Jeremiahâs prophecy was about serving Babylon.
In context, the desolation of Judah was a direct result of Babylonian conquest,
which lasted 70 years. Thus, to say âthe Bible never states it was Babylonian
dominationâ is simply wrong â Jeremiah said it plainly. Modern scholars
overwhelmingly interpret the 70-year prophecy as referring to the duration of Babylonâs hegemony (ca.
609â539âŻBCE) or the exile under Babylon. The Watch Towerâs insistence that it only refers to Judahâs desolation is a
selective reading. In sum, the Bible does state the 70 years were tied to
Babylonâs rule, and the end of the 70 years coincides with Babylonâs fall in
539âŻBCE â not with some
imaginary scenario 20 years earlier.
6. âScholars ignore Josephusâs testimony.â
Rebuttal: On the contrary, historians have examined Josephusâs
statements about the exile â and find that Josephus
agrees with standard chronology when understood correctly. What
scholars âignoreâ is not Josephus, but the Watch Towerâs mischaracterization of Josephus. As
discussed in point #2, Josephus explicitly says the temple was desolate for 50
years, not 70. Scholars certainly have not ignored that; it is frequently noted
that Josephus (writing in the 1st century) simply echoed the biblical 70-year
motif in a general sense while elsewhere giving the more historically grounded
figure of 50 years. In academic studies of Neo-Babylonian chronology, Josephus
is not a primary source â he
lived about 600 years after the events. Modern chronology is built on contemporary
records: Babylonian chronicles,
king-lists, business tablets, and astronomical diaries, which are far more
reliable. Josephusâs âtestimonyâ is mainly useful for understanding later
Jewish interpretations, not for establishing exact dates. And indeed, Josephusâs
later interpolation of â70 yearsâ likely reflects the Jewish tradition of
attributing a 70-year exile to fulfill prophecy â a tradition the Chronicler
and Daniel also share. But again, Josephusâs actual
chronological data (the 50-year figure) matches the historical
evidence for a 587âŻBCE destruction. Far from ignoring Josephus, scholars like Raymond Dougherty and Carl O. Jonsson have pointed out that Watchtower writers quote Josephus out of context to
prop up 607. For example, the Watchtower emphasizes Josephusâs phrase âdesolate
during seventy yearsâ while omitting that Josephus elsewhere limits the
desolation to 50 years. In summary, Josephus does not support
the 607 date, and scholars have not ignored him â they simply recognize that contemporary Babylonian records carry
far more weight than a first-century historian repeating prophetic numbers. And
where Josephus gives specifics, he actually sides with the âsecularâ timeline
(50 years desolation).
7. âScholars ignore the âmissing 7 yearsâ in Nebuchadnezzarâs reign.â
Rebuttal: There are no âmissing
7 yearsâ in Nebuchadnezzarâs reign according to the evidence. This
appears to refer to the biblical story in Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar is
said to have been insane (âbeast-likeâ) for âseven timesâ (often interpreted as
7 years). Jehovahâs Witness apologists speculate that secular historians overlook a supposed 7-year period when
Nebuchadnezzar was not ruling â perhaps to explain why their chronology is off
by 20 years. But this theory holds no water. Babylonian records document Nebuchadnezzarâs reign year-by-year through his 43rd year, with business
contracts and dated economic texts for every
year from his accession (605âŻBCE) to his death (~562âŻBCE). If
Nebuchadnezzar had a 7-year hiatus unaccounted for, we would see a gap or
irregularity in dated tablets â but we do not. On the contrary, thousands of
cuneiform tablets from Nebuchadnezzarâs reign show normal continuity; e.g.
tablets are dated to Nebuchadnezzarâs 1st, 2nd, ⌠37th, ⌠43rd year without
interruption. Astronomical diary VAT
4956 alone records observations in Nebuchadnezzarâs 37th year that fix that year to 568/567âŻBCE, which aligns
perfectly with an unbroken reign from 605âŻBCE onward. If one inserted an extra
7 years of madness, Nebuchadnezzarâs 37th year would shift to ~575âŻBCE â a date
that flatly contradicts the
celestial positions on VAT 4956. In short, no
credible scholar posits a âmissing 7-yearâ gap in Nebuchadnezzarâs
reign â this is a purely apologetic invention. The Book of Daniel does not
state that Nebuchadnezzar ceased to be king during those years; even if we take
the account literally, the Babylonian administration likely continued to date
documents by Nebuchadnezzarâs regnal years regardless of his mental state.
Thus, there is nothing for scholars to âignoreâ â the secular record and the Bible
are not in conflict here. All evidence indicates Nebuchadnezzar ruled
continuously for 43 years (605â562âŻBCE), with no
mysterious gap. The â7 timesâ of insanity, if historical, did not alter the
chronological count of his reign. It certainly cannot be stretched to support a
20-year chronological distortion required for the 607 theory.
8. âWhy isnât Rolf Furuliâs research published in peer-reviewed
journals?â
Rebuttal: The straightforward answer is that Furuliâs
607-based revision is pseudoscientific and would not pass peer review. Rolf
J. Furuli is a Jehovahâs Witness and former linguist who self-published books
attempting to revise Neo-Babylonian and Persian chronology to accommodate the
607âŻBCE date. Serious academic journals have stringent
standards of evidence. Furuliâs work fails those standards, as documented
by experts who have reviewed it. This
work relies quite heavily on many quite 'original' observations, conclusions
and cherry picking of evidence. It was reviewed as:
"Once again we have an amateur who wants to
rewrite scholarship. [âŚ] Part of his redating is fairly modest: he accepts the
beginning and end of Achaemenid rule according to the standard dating, and puts
the beginning of Darius Iâs reign only one year later than is conventional. He
argues, however, that the first 11 years of Xerxesâ reign overlap with the last
11 of Darius, and that Artaxerxes I came to the throne in 475 BCE and ruled 51
years. (F. has indeed found the interesting fact that a couple of tablets have
the years â50â and â51â for Artaxerxes, but he admits that overwhelmingly
tablets make 41 his last year and none is found between 41 and 50, suggesting
the obvious: a scribal error.) Gifted amateurs have sometimes revolutionized
scholarship, notably M. Ventris and Linear B. But Ventris was willing to work
with specialists such as J. Chadwick whereas F. shows little evidence of having
put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and
Persian history. Perhaps the most telling point is his
rather naive argument that the 70 years of Judaean captivity must be a literal
70 years of desolation of the land because some biblical passages make
such a statement. A second volume is promised; we shall see if it is any more
convincing."
â Lester L Grabbe: Review of "FURULI, ROLF, Persian Chronology and
the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian
and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, 1 (Oslo: R.
Furuli A/S [[email protected]], 2003), pp. 251. n.p.", in: Journal for the
Study of the Old Testament, 28(5), 40â58,'3. History, Geography and Sociology',
2004. DOI
Furuli claims that the entire
established chronology for Babylon and Persia is wrong because he
insists the Bibleâs 70 years must be literal and unambiguous.
To defend this, he had to cast doubt on virtually all primary sources â he
alleges that astronomical tablets like VAT
4956 and Strm. Kambys 400 are
unreliable and might contain calculated data or errors. Such special pleading
does not convince professional historians or Assyriologists, who know these
tablets have been studied extensively. Indeed, Furuli identifies only âthree
principal sourcesâ for Neo-Babylonian chronology (VAT 4956, Strm. Kambys 400,
and the Bible) and claims they âcannot be harmonizedâ â betraying a flawed methodology of ignoring the vast corpus of cuneiform evidence (thousands
of business tablets, royal inscriptions, chronicles, etc.) that do harmonize with each other. His work
was reviewed by scholar Carl Olof Jonsson, among others, who found that Furuli omitted mention of previous scholarship
and of evidence that contradicted his thesis. In Jonssonâs words, Furuli âhas an agenda, and he is hiding it.â He
presented himself as an objective scholar but did not disclose his Jehovahâs
Witness affiliation or engage with contrary evidence (like Jonssonâs own
extensive research). These are all red flags that would fail peer review.
Academic journals require transparency and engagement with existing research â
Furuli provided neither, opting to self-publish. Moreover, when independent
experts have looked at Furuliâs
specific claims (e.g. his astronomical arguments), they concluded he relied on
speculation and misunderstandings of the data. In sum, Furuliâs research isnât
in peer-reviewed literature because it does
not meet scholarly standards of evidence. It lives on the fringe,
primarily championed by Witness apologists. If his chronology had merit, it
would appear in journals of archaeology or Near Eastern studies â but it does
not. But here are asome resources:
Rolf Furuli's âresponse to Carl Olof Jonssonâ
disproved - By Carl Olof Jonsson
A Review of: Rolf Furuli: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of
the Jews (Oslo: Rolf Furuli A/S, 2003)
Can the Persian
Chronology be Revised? Rolf Furuli's "Response to
Jonsson" Examined
ROLF FURULI'S DISCUSSION OF THE BIBLICAL TEXTS ON THE 70
YEARS CRITICALLY EXAMINED BY A PROFESSIONAL LINGUIST
A Review of: Rolf Furuli: Assyrian,
Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology (Oslo: Awatu Publishers, 2007)
-
Part I: The astronomical âdiaryâ VAT 4956
- Part II: The Saturn Tablet BM 76738 + BM 76813 Updated
with an addendum 2008-09-02
- Part III: Are there about 90 âanomalous tabletsâ from the
Neo-Babylonian period?
- Part IV: The Neo-Babylonian Ledger NBC 4897
- Part V: Were there
unknown Neo-Babylonian kings?
Professor
Hermann Hunger: "About the Dating of the Neo-Assyrian Eponym List"
Professor Hermann Hunger: Review
of Rolf Furuli, Assyrian, Babylonian,
and Egyptian Chronology. Vol. II.
2nd ed., Oslo, Awatu Publishers, 2008.
9. âCritics of Furuli donât use his methodology.â
Rebuttal: Thatâs correct in one sense: legitimate
scholars do not use Furuliâs skewed methodology â because it is fundamentally
flawed. Furuliâs approach was to throw
out or downplay most of the primary sources and then manipulate a few
data points in isolation to force a 607âŻBCE outcome. For instance, he
questioned the authenticity of astronomical observations and suggested many
were retrocalculations, implying the Babylonian scribes might have fabricated
data â an assertion for which there is no evidence. No responsible historian
would adopt such a method, which starts with a conclusion (607 must be right)
and works backward, dismissing vast amounts of evidence as âerrorsâ or
âcorruptionsâ without solid proof. Critics of Furuli have indeed
engaged with his claims â they just do so using sound historical method rather
than Furuliâs contrived system. For example, Jonssonâs critical review examines
Furuliâs arguments point by point and refutes them using cuneiform evidence and
established scholarship. But Jonsson (and others) do not need to replicate Furuliâs method of
cherry-picking anomalies; instead, they demonstrate how consilient the standard chronology is.
A proper methodology looks at all available
data (business documents, astronomical diaries, king lists, etc.) and finds the
most coherent timeline â which is exactly what scholars have done, and it aligns with 587âŻBCE, not 607. Furuliâs
method, by contrast, effectively disregards the majority of data as
âuntrustworthyâ to create an alternate reality. In academic discourse, one does
not give equal weight to a method that says, in effect, âignore 90% of the
evidence and focus on a few ambiguous texts.â That is why critics donât âuse
his methodologyâ: it is not a valid historical method. Instead, they expose its fallacies. The claim seems to
insinuate that unless one plays by Furuliâs self-serving rules, one cannot
refute him â but this is upside-down. One refutes him by upholding standard scholarly methodology,
which easily shows where he went wrong. And indeed, multiple independent lines
of evidence (from Babylonian archives to astronomical calculations) invalidate
Furuliâs 607-based chronology without needing any of his dubious techniques.
10. âA 20-year gap exists between secular chronology and âBible
chronologyâ.â
Rebuttal: What you call a â20-year gapâ is an artificial discrepancy created by the Watch
Towerâs interpretation, not by any actual hole in the historical record.
Secular (academic) chronology for Neo-Babylonian kings is well-established and complete â there
is no missing gap. The gap arises only
if one insists on 607âŻBCE for Jerusalemâs fall, which forces all
Babylonian dates ~20 years earlier than reality. In practice, the Watch Towerâs
Bible chronology means re-dating Nebuchadnezzarâs 18th year from 587 to 607,
and thus shifting his entire reign and those of his successors. This creates a
domino effect of adding ~20 extra years somewhere in the Neo-Babylonian/Persian
timeline. Where could 20 extra years
come from? The Societyâs publications have floated vague suggestions
(e.g. an undocumented coregency or an error in âsecularâ records), but the only
place to insert such a gap is by lengthening
the reigns of Babylonâs kings beyond attested lengths. For example, in
the JW timeline Nebuchadnezzar still rules 43 years but from 624â581âŻBCE
instead of 605â562. This pushes his successor Evil-Merodach to 581â579âŻBCE
(rather than 562â560), and so on â ultimately requiring King Nabonidus (the last Babylonian
king) to reign 36 years (575â539âŻBCE) instead of the actual 17 years (556â539).
In other words, JW âBible chronologyâ invents an extra
19 years for Nabonidus to make the math work. This is historically
untenable: we have yearly records of
Nabonidusâs reign through his 17th year (when Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539),
and not a single text hinting at a longer reign. There is no 20-year gap in the
contemporary data â business tablets and royal inscriptions show a continuous
sequence of rulers and years that matches the âsecularâ timeline exactly. The Persian period is equally
well-documented; attempts by Watchtower writers (and Furuli) to shave off years
from Persian kings have been thoroughly debunked by scholars, because Persian
reign lengths are corroborated by Greek histories, Egyptian records, and dozens
of Babylonian tablets dated to those kings. In sum, the supposed 20-year gap is
a myth. The Bible itself does not give a precise date for Jerusalemâs
fall â it is derived from interpretation of the 70 years. When one interprets
the biblical 70 years in light of all evidence, there is no gap at all: Babylon fell in 539âŻBCE, Jews
returned by 537âŻBCE, and Jerusalem had been destroyed around 587âŻBCE, exactly
as all archaeology and astronomy indicate. The â20-year gapâ only exists if one
rejects the âuncomfortableâ data and
clings to a 607 date. But that is a self-imposed gap, not a real one. As one
scholar aptly put it, secular chronology doesnât contradict the Bible â it
contradicts the Watchtowerâs
interpretation of the Bible. When biblical chronology is properly
aligned with historical facts, there is no missing 20 years â Jerusalemâs fall
in 587âŻBCE and the return ~537âŻBCE fulfill the prophetic 70-year framework
without any need to rewrite history.
