One has to look no further than the origin of the 1914 date borrowed by Russell and even arrived at incorrectly due to the lack of a zero year in chronology. The 2520 years have been kicked around for two hundred years in one fashion or another.
Furuli's New Books--Attempt to Refute COJonsson
by ros 264 Replies latest jw friends
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Alleymom
Earnest --
The OTS reference is to
Oudtestamentische Studien.
Edited by P. A. H. De Boer. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965.It's one of those monographs which is published irregularly, like the Vetus Testamentum Supplements.
I have too much to say about your Evil Merodach question to try to knock out an answer tonight. We were at a wedding today and I am beat. But I'll enjoy discussing it tomorrow or Monday. You are right, I am having fun here <s>. I've discussed various chronological issues over the years on the Compuserve forums, but I've never met anyone who was specifically interested in the neo-Babylonian era before.
BTW, I've wanted to get Sack's Amel-Marduk for awhile; maybe I can justify buying it now <s>. If you can get a copy through inter-library loan, I would recommend it, sight unseen. I've read Sack's Images of Nebuchadnezzar, which has a chapter or two on the cuneiform and historical sources, and I would imagine his work on Amel-Marduk would include a similar treatment of the sources.
Marjorie
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Alleymom
Earnest --
You were wondering about whether there might not be a longer reign for Evil-Merodach than is recorded, and you cited the conflicting reports in Josephus of two years in Contra Apion 1.20 and eighteen years in Antiq. 10.11.2. You speculated that perhaps Nabonidus's mother (Adad-guppi) was responsible for expunging the memory of Evil-Merodach from the records.
I see several problems with this:
#1 ---- First, and of most importance, there is the problem that we have dated cuneiform tablets for two and only two years of Evil-Merodach's reign, AND these tablets are linked in an unbroken chain with the dated tablets from Evil Merodach's predecessor (his father Nebuchadnezzar), and with the dated tablets of his successor, Neriglissar.
The last tablets dated to Nebuchadnezzar are from September and October [562]. The first tablet dated to his successor Amel-Marduk is from October 8. By mid-October all the major cities in Babylon had started dating their tablets to Amel-Marduk.
The last tablet dated to Amel-Marduk is from August 7 [560], and the first tablets dated to his successor Neriglissar appear 4 days later and continue in an unbroken chain.
Excerpt from Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C. - A.D. 75, Richard A. Parker, Waldo H. Dubberstein, Brown University Press:1956, pp. 12-13.
Evidence for End of [Nebuchadnezzar's] Reign
VI/14/43 (Sept. 26, 562), Uruk (Pohl, NBRU I 18).
VI/21/43 (Oct. 3,562), Uruk (unpub. text NCBT 286, Goetze, op. cit. p. 44).
VI/26/43 (Oct. 8, 562), Uruk (Contenau, TCL XII 58).
The first tablet dated to Amel-Marduk (see below) comes from Sippar( ?) and is dated on the same day as the last tablet of Nebuchadnezzar from Uruk. Accordingly Nebuchadnezzar died during the first days of October, 562.
AMEL- MARDUK Evidence for Beginning of Reign
VI/26/acc. (Oct. 8, 562), Sippar? (B. T. A. Evetts, Inscriptions of the Reigns of Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar, and Laborosoarchod ["Babylonische Texte" [III] Heft 6 B (Leipzig, 1892)] Evil-Merodach, No.1).
VII/19/acc. (Oct. 31, 562), Babylon (ibid. No.2). Evidence for End of Reign
V/13/2 (Aug. 3, 560), Babylon (unpub. text YBC3692, Goetze).
V/17/2 (Aug. 7, 560) (Clay, BE VIII 1, No.34).
Since the first text dated to Nergal-shar-usur was written at Babylon six days after the Clay text, the date of Amel-Marduk's death may be fixed between August 7 and August 13, 560.The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume III, Part 2, second edition, 1991, pp. 242-243. Excerpt from Chapter 27, Babylonia 605 - 539 BC, D. J. Wiseman.
... the last contract dated by Nebuchadrezzar’s forty-third regnal year was written at Uruk (8 October 562) and the first to be dated by his son and successor Amel-Marduk was written that same day...
[Wiseman goes on to say that there could possibly have been a short co-regency of Amel-Marduk with Nebuchadnezzar during Nebuchadnezzar's illness. There are two tablets with Amel-Marduk's name dated to August/September, and there is the one unusual tablet you've probably heard of with the formula ‘the goddess of Uruk, king of Babylon’. That one is dated to August 29. But in any case "Amel-Marduk was acknowledged as king in all the major Babylonian cities by mid-October. "]
The latest contract dated to Amel-Marduk in Babylon was written on 7 August 560,and within four days other texts recognized Neriglissar as king there, at Uruk, and elsewhere.#2 --- Secondly, there is a business document from the temple of Eanna which records bookkeeping inventories of an institutional herd. It shows running totals for things like ewes, lambs, goat hair, and hides starting in the 37 th year of Nebuchadnezzar and running through the first year of Neriglissar, with Amel-Marduk's brief reign coming in between. I have a copy of the whole article and I've been experimenting today with trying to get it saved as a pdf file, but things are a mess since we upgraded to W2K last week The reference is Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4, 1994. G. Van Driel, K. R. Nemet-Nejat. "Bookkeeping Practices for an Institutional Herd at Eanna."
#3 --- Thirdly, we know that Nabonidus's mother Adad-guppi did not, in fact, expunge the memory of Evil-Merodach. Although he and Labashi-Marduk are omitted in the Adad-guppi inscription, they are both included in the Harran inscription you cited, which was written in the middle of Nabonidus's first year. (This is Beaulieu's inscription 1 = Berger's Stelen-Fragment XI = Tadmor's VAB IV, 8.) There is a transcription and translation of the section which includes brief mention of Awel-Marduk on p. 110-111 of Paul-Alain Beaulieu's The Reign of Nabonidus King of Babylon 556-539 B.C., Yale University Press, 1989. It's in Col. V, line 14 ff. This inscription is, of course, in addition to the numerous dated cuneiform tablets mentioned above. As always, it is important to remember that the historical inscriptions and the business tablets are two separate matters.
But I am not sure I followed your reasoning at this point. Since you cited the Harran inscription, you are aware that Adad-guppi did not, in fact, expunge all mention of Evil-Merodach. Can you run that part by me again? Are you suggesting that she somehow destroyed records of 18 years of a purported 20-year reign, but did not manage to destroy the records for 2 years of this 20-year reign?
Adad-guppi may have been a power beyond the throne, but just think about what would be required to totally erase all memory of Evil-Merodach's reign: not only would the inscriptions and the histories have to be revised, but every single dated contract tablet in all of the cities of Babylonia recording the ordinary business of private citizens would have to be found and destroyed. And then the remaining tablets would no longer fit together in an unbroken chain. But this is not the case. We do have dated contract tablets from each year of each king, and they do fit together in an unbroken chain with the kings who come before and after. This is what JCanon always overlooks when he starts talking about his conspiracy theories.#4 --- And last, there is the whole huge issue of the reliability of Josephus, his use of sources, the numerous corruptions which have occurred during transmission of the text, and the many instances where he contradicts himself, as in the case you cited. Since the reign of Evil Merodach is established through the dated cuneiform tablets, I would not read anything more than simple error into Josephus's contradictory accounts of 18 years for Evil Merodach in Antiquities 10.11.2 and 2 years in Contra Apion 1.20.
As I said yesterday, I haven't seen Sack's Amel-Marduk, but I do have Sack's Images of Nebuchadnezzar, which has a couple of chapters on the cuneiform and historical sources. I checked today, and he does have some things to say about how the Jewish sources treat Amel-Marduk. I'll see if I can summarize those tomorrow.
Many thanks for the link to the 1914 thread from last winter. I haven't finished reading it, but I am enjoying it.
Regards,
Marjorie
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Alleymom
Here are some KISS-type comments on my post to Earnest.
Most people who are not familiar with the wealth of cuneiform material that is available hear the phrase "cuneiform tablets" and automatically think of an inscription or an official history.
To them, it might seem (barely) possible that a devious ruler "changed the records" for whatever reason.
But it is important to keep in mind that most of the material we have from the neo-Babylonian era is in the form of ordinary, everyday documentation. The Babylonians were a literate and legal society (a dangerous combination, as I have remarked in the past), so they generated a lot of "paperwork" in the form of thousands upon thousands of cuneiform tablets. These are dated with the month, day, and year of the king.
I wish I could convey how utterly impossible it would be for anyone to have gone back and changed all the exisiting records, for "the records" are not just the insciptions and histories, but the thousands of everyday tablets, like the junky papers we all have filed away (or piled away) in our houses, bank vaults, glove compartments, plastic milk crates, and desk drawers.
Dandamaev, in the preface to his monumental work Slavery in Babylonia, lists the kinds of material we have from this era. If you scroll through the following list, you will see the kinds of everyday tablets I have been talking about:
Muhammad A. Dandamaev, Slavery in Babylonia from Nabopolassar to Alexander the Great (626 - 331 BC), revised edition, Northern Illinois University Press, 1984. Excerpts from pp. 1-3.
"Many thousands of economic-administrative and private legal documents have come down to us from Babylonia.
Their contents are very diverse:
promissory notes;
mortgages;
contracts concerning the sale, lease or gift of land, houses and other property, the hire of slaves and livestock, the training of artisans;
receipts for tax payments;
documents of international trade;
records of court proceedings;
inventories of various items;
correspondence of an official nature and
letters containing family news and the like;
and even such prosaic daily records as credentials, staff schedules, and address files.
In addition, there have been preserved
historical chronicles,
royal inscriptions,
fragments of laws,
literary works,
texts dealing with grammar, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and religion,
bilingual dictionaries,
maps,
itineraries,
house plans,
labels or tags for various objects,
And so on.
All this material permits one to recreate the everyday life of the Babylonians.
For the period in question we also possess, from neighboring areas, documentary materials of many kinds ... Above all one must mention in this context the thousands of neo-Assyrian and Elamite documents and the Aramaic and Demotic papyri.I'm going to follow up with a KISS explanation of those tablets I cited which show the beginning and end of each king.
Marjorie
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Alleymom
Perhaps the hard-to-convince might be wondering if the original translators of the documents made mistakes which have been blindly followed by the scholars who came after them. How reliable are the translations? How confident can we be that a certain tablet is really dated to month V, day 23, year 21 on Nebuchadnezzar, for instance?
If you were to browse in a large university library in the area of the PJ 3000's you would find volumes which contain the published cuneiform texts. It is the custom for the scholars who publish the texts to include not only their own transliteration and translation of each tablet, but also to include plates showing the actual wedge-shaped cuneiform writing, either as a photograph, or more commonly, as a line drawing.
When cuneiform texts are published in academic journals such as the Journal of Cuneiform Studies it is also the case that they provide photographic plates or line drawings of the actual tablet showing the wedge-shaped cuneiform writing.
Scholars who evaluate the material for their own research do not rely on the English translations or even on the previous scholars' transliterations. They go back and re-read the texts for the themselves.
It boggles the mind to think of the effort men like Dandamaev have put into their research. For instance, read what he says in Slavery in Babylonia:
Having set for myself the task of collecting and studying the material in the Babylonian documents of the seventh through the fourth centuries BC, I transcribed and translated all the documents known and available to me from the eleventh through the second centuries BC.
When scholars who are reviewing the texts for their own research come across a line or word with which they have any question or disagreement, they publish their suggested correction. These minor revisions might suggest a new phrasing in the body of the document based on an expanded knowledge of the language. The lists of witnesses and the dates at the end of each contract tablet, on the other hand, are very straightforward.
So what about the dated tablets cited by Parker & Dubberstein in Babylonian Chronology and cited by Donald Wiseman in the Cambridge Ancient History? (The ones which establish the end of each king's reign and the beginning of his successor's reign.) Have these been reviewed by other scholars? Absolutely.
For instance, Dandamaev listed 123 published documents for Amel-Marduk (562-560 BC) in Slavery in Babylonia, 1984, p. 9.
BE 8 31-34, 38; BIN 1 136, 143; BIN 2 109; BRL II: 47 f.; BRM 1 54, 55; CT 51 43; CT 55 77, 182, 719, 753, 787; CT 57 147 (?), 320; Dalley 68; EM 1-24; GCCI II 76-95; JCS 24:106 UNC 15; Liverpool 9, 10; McEwan 3, 46; Mesopotamia 10-11:15 no. 29; Sack AOATS 4 1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 19, 21-23, 28, 29, 35, 40, 41, 56, 57, 61, 64, 66, 75-77, 79, 80, 82, 94; SAKF 135, 150; Speleers 277, 286, 292; Stigers 19; TCL 12 59-62; UCP 9/I II 29; VS 5 17; VS 6 55, 56; VS 20 2, 54; ZA 66: 282, 284, 286; ZA 67:43 f., 48f., 49 f.; ZA 69:42 f., 44.
If you were to consult his list of abbreviations and then painstakingly compare each document with the ones cited by Parker & Dubberstein you would see that they are talking about the same tablets. Scholars have read and re-read these texts for years and they agree on the translations of the dates.
The WT cited an early authority in their 1965 WT article "The Rejoicing of the Wicked Is Short-lived", WT 1/1/1965. They refer to Ramond Philip Dougherty's Nabonidus and Belshazzar, A Study of the Closing Events of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Yale Oriental Series, Resarches, Vol. XV; Yale University Press, 1929.
Already in 1929 Dougherty was familiar with more than two thousand dated cuneiform tablets establishing the kings and their reigns. He says that the chronology established on the basis of the cuneiform documents "must be accepted as the ultimate criterion in the determination of Neo-Babylonian chronological questions..." (p. 10)
So when you read the lists of tablets I posted last night (the ones saying we have tablets dated to year 43 of Nebuchandnezzar through September and October and then we have tablets dated to Amel-Marduk's accession year beginning October 8 followed by tablets from all over Babylon by mid-October, etc.) you can be sure that the dates on these tablets have been read and reviewed many times.
There really is an unbroken chain of kings with each one's predecessor and successor known through the dated "everyday life" tablets.
This is primary evidence. The opinions of the later historians and chronographers (Herodotus, Xenophon, Megasthenes, Berossus, Polyhistor, Ptolemy, Josephus, the Seder Olam, Jerome, Eusebius, Syncellus, etc.) are secondary and tertiary (or worse), so one must evaluate their opinions, especially any divergent opinions, in light of the mass of primary evidence, the dated cuneiform tablets themselves.
The WT seizes on any discrepancy in these later historians and makes a big deal over it. But the later historians were writing many years after the events of the 6 th century and they were often relying on earlier historians, whose work was also opinion and hearsay rather than an eyewitness account, and which had also been transmitted for many years.
Modern scholars (except for a few orthodox rabbis who hold to the old Seder Olam) agree on the chronology of the neo-Babylonian era because it is now based on primary evidence rather than on ancient historians' interpretations.
Marjorie
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Gamaliel
Alleymom,
A tremendous thanks for those last two posts especially. It's impossible to see how anyone can understand this and still focus on a scribal error or translation error here and there. When a body of evidence is so overwhelmingly coherent -- and even interlocking -- it provides for easy identification and correction of its own set of anomalies.
I don't know if anyone has seen Furuli's book yet, but I expect that, at the very least, an apologist who intends to be (or appear) thorough will end up clarifying the fact that there IS a body evidence to maneuver around. If he minimizes or ignores any major lines of evidence he risks fallout from academia.
Gamaliel
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mouthy
Allymom I found it!!!!!lol!!!! thanks ..Only took me two hours HA! ha! Yes I was DF for saying I did not believe Jesus came invisably in 1914- also I did not think THIS generation was the one to see Armageddon.... Bloody Nerve I think since they dont believe it now either. But I must be sure to tell you they DID come back to reinstate me last March 2002 So I dont know if it was to shut my mouth or recover their tracks....
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AlanF
Marjorie, I'm posting this mainly for your sake, since you don't have a background as a JW, but other readers may find the information entertaining as well.
"Scholar" has called the Watchtower's 607 date "momentous" and a figure that could only have been arrived upon by divine direction. He also wrote:
... keep in mind that the Church has authority in such matters as its teachings are based upon three elements: Bible, Tradition and Magisterium or Governing Body with its Faithful and Discreet Slave. So if it does make doctines or teachings for the faithful then it is doing so under the guidance and soirit direction of the our Lord and Saviour. Jesus Cjrist. Amen.
"Scholar" is of course being quite hypocritical here, since Watchtower teaching is explicit that all "teachings of men" -- in particular, "Tradition" and "Magisterium" -- are valueless unless they conform the the basic element -- the "Bible". Indeed, much of the Watchtower's ranting against the Catholic Church and "the sects of Christendom" is based on this teaching.
What "scholar" has inadvertantly done here is to admit that he buys into The Fundamental Doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses -- i.e., that the JW Governing Body speaks for God and is to be viewed as inspired. This means that whenever the GB contradicts the Bible, the Bible is to be given second fiddle. In other words, the JW Governing Body has caused the community of Jehovah's Witnesses to worship it rather than God, since JWs give more credence to it than to God. JWs like "scholar" would change their minds immediately on any subject if the GB so instructed them -- including dropping the "momentous" 607 date. While they routinely object to this accuation, the fact is that any JW who refuses to go along with the GB and tells his fellow JWs about it is quickly disfellowshipped for "apostasy", i.e., disagreeing with the "Magisterium".
Unfortunately for the Watchtower, its own history is full of examples showing that its leaders are the Keystone Kops of scholarship. Indeed they are often laughable in their bumbling attempts to deal with science, history or any severe academic discipline."Scholar" calls the 607 date "momentous", but until 1944 the Watchtower taught that Jerusalem fell, not in 607 B.C.E. but in 606. This, despite the fact that as early as 1914 C. T. Russell was informed that 606 was wrong, and the 1917 book The Finished Mystery used 607 rather than 606 for its comments on the "Gentile times" chronology.
The simple fact is that C. T. Russell got the date 606 wrong when he borrowed his chronology from the "Second Adventist" Nelson Barbour in 1876. Barbour and Russell claimed that Babylon fell to Cyrus in 536 B.C., and that the Jews returned to Judah that year. They used exactly the same wrongheaded notion of counting back 70 years from that date to arrive at 606 B.C. for the destruction of Jerusalem. Then, obviously under "divine direction", they counted forward 2,520 years from 606 B.C. and came to 1914 A.D., to arrive at their wondrously self-consistent mythological "bible chronology". Of course, the particular "holy spirit" that directed them could not do simple chronological calculations and so it directed them to neglect the fact that there is no zero year between B.C. and A.D. dates. It should have prompted them to promote 1915 rather than 1914, but we know that God's ways are higher than man's ways.
In early 1943 the Watchtower Society's oracle and head theologian, Freddie Franz, was preparing a book on a variety of topics, The Truth Shall Make You Free. One chapter covered the Gentile times chronology. It appears that during the writing of this chapter, the holy spirit contacted Freddie and straightened him out on the proper year for the beginning of the Gentile times. So from about the middle of the book (page 239, to be specific) onward, Freddie held that the Gentile times began in 607 B.C., whereas earlier in the book he held that it began in 606 B.C.
Unfortunately the holy spirit was still suffering from a bit of chronological dyslexia, since it forgot to change the date of Jerusalem's destruction to be in accord with the revised Gentile times starting date. And of course, being fully responsive to the holy spirit, Freddie went right along with this and published the wrong figure.
The interesting situation was this: from page 239 onward in The Truth Shall Make You Free, the Watchtower Society taught that the Gentile times began about October, 607 B.C., but that Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar about ten months later, in August, 606 B.C.!
Apparently someone noticed that not all was kosher with this reversal of cause and effect, so in the Watchtower's next offering, the 1944 book The Kingdom Is At Hand, the Society published a revised chart of Bible chronology showing that Jerusalem fell, not in 606 but in 607 B.C. And here is where one can find an explicit lie told by the Watchtower Society in print: a footnote on page 171 claims that the date was changed in the previous year's book, on page 239, but that book contained no such change. Indeed, a careful look at the book shows several explicit statements after page 239 which indicate that the Society still taught that Jerusalem fell ten months after the Gentile times began.
Of course, Jehovah's Witnesses as a whole are far too stupid to notice such things, and the few who are not are afraid of the consequences of pointing out the Society's lies, and so Freddie's lie stands to this day. Like Freddie and C. T. Russell, today's writing staff, under the direction of the "Magisterium", continues its Keystone Kops tradition of pseudo-scholarship.
Anyone who wants more details about the above date change can find full particulars here: http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/606.htm
AlanF
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Alleymom
Mouthy ---
Thanks for confirming that you were DF'd over 1914. I am so sorry it took you such a long time to find the thread. (((mouthy)))
So I guess you would have to disagree with Scholar when he said the Society doesn't enforce dogmatism in chronology, right?
Scholar --
You wrote to Simwitness and said:
There is no room for dogmatism in chronology and you accuse the Society of enforcing such as dogma.
They enforced it for Mouthy.
Marjorie
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scholar
Alan F
It ia somewhat amusing that the community of Witnesses are the Keystone cops of scholarship when such a small group without the benefits of univiversity education have been able to produce a translation of the Bible unequalled for its depth of scholarship and its multi-lingual facility, which you grudgingly have paid some respect. Even the Second Day Adventists who have made an extensive service to the field of biblical chronology and with their own universiies offering degree in theology and biblical studies have not produced their translation of the Bible.
Your comments about apparent revisions of various dates only amount to historical curiosity as it was not until the mid forties that major studies or interest began in the rare field of biblical chronology with the researcg began by Thiele. Therefore, it is not surprising that chronological schemas then proposed would have been adjusted to meet the advances of inguiring biblical scholarship.
Please keep in mid that you were a person who intellectually believed in Witness teaching and for some peculiar you became converted to the idea that the beliefs that you held were now wrong. Was your intellect not functioning, were you deceived or brainwashed? One cannot but wonder abour your intellectual integrity and credibility and whether you are counted as a Christian.
scholar
BA MA Studies in Religion