Hi IW,
: Looking forward to your response.
Keep your shirt on, keep your shirt on. Been busy!
: LOL, what's it like for your poor wife? Does she ever win an argument? Yes, I am sure she does.
Better believe it! But not on Biblical chronology.
: It's only here you are such a pesky piece of taffy. Posting to you feels like walking in taffy, just no way to get out without some of it stuck to our shoes. lol
If I'm taffy, you're the La Brea Tar Pits.
Now back to business, yup.
I see that we've been working at cross purposes a bit here. Let me reiterate our exchange. I had said to you:
:::: ... if Watchtower chronology is correct, it would overthrow a tremendous amount of good scholarship and invalidate much of what we know about ancient history. That ain't gonna happen, any more than Newton's Laws are going to be overthrown. Second, the Bible itself clearly kills the basics of Watchtower chronology...
So, I clearly established the parameters of the discussion: Watchtower chronology. I have also stated repeatedly that we are concerned here with Neo-Babylonian chronology, i.e., 626-539 B.C., since this is the period critical to Watchtower claims.
I also want to emphasize that the Bible itself proves that modern secular chronology is correct, via 2 Chronicles 36:20, Jeremiah 25:11, 12 and a host of other scriptures. When both the Bible and secular history agree down to a year on most critical dates (note that 587/6 for Jerusalem's destruction is argued about only because the Bible is the only source of information, and it is ambiguous) it's pretty much a no-brainer to conclude that the secular dating is correct and therefore will not change.
It should also be clear that minor details of events are not my concern here. Indeed, it has proved to be, for about 100 years, that new minor details, while possibly revising some ideas of events, have not materially changed the basic and most widely accepted chronology by more than three years since Isaac Newton's Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended was published in 1728. For example, Newton dates the destruction of Jerusalem as occuring in the 160th year since Babylonian king Nabonassar began to rule (747 B.C. by modern dating) and the fall of Babylon as occuring in the 210th year. That translates to 588 and 538 B.C., just one or two years different from presently accepted dating. Newton did not assign specific calendar dates to these events, but stuck to relative dating, typically using the "Nth year of Nabonassar" (of course, this simply means Nth year from Nabonassar's first year). By about 1900, every critical date in the Neo-Babylonian period was either exactly what today's scholars accept, or just one year different. By not later than about 1920, virtually all scholars agreed on all critical dates. What dates? The following:
Nebuchadnezzar's accession: 605
Jehoiachin's deportation: 597
Jerusalem's destruction: 587/6
Babylon's fall: 539
Cyrus' 1st year: 538
Return of Jewish exiles: 538/7
Given the above background, it should be evident that you missed the point with your reply, because you were talking about all of ancient history rather than the much narrower topic of critical dates in the Neo-Babylonian period. You said:
::: Our knowledge of ancient history is not as static as you try to assert it is in the first statement, it is more fluid.
I did not realize that you had misunderstood so completely, and so I replied:
:: It is not fluid for the Neo-Babylonian period. It was established many decades ago and has not changed by more than a year, in the basics, for more than three hundred years.
Of course, I should have said that the chronology had not changed by more than three years, rather than by one year.
Given this background, let's examine your reply:
: What I am about to post is not in any way connected to Jonsson's work only to my statement that ancient history is something which is continually being discovered and each discovery changes the picture.
Note that you still have not picked up on my repeated emphasis that we are talking not about all of ancient history, but only about the critical dates in Neo-Babylonian chronology.
: Smithsonian June 2003, Saving Iraq's Treasures, Ashur, page 49
: "Yet in 614 BC., the Medes-a people from today's Iran--attacked the Assyrian Empire and laid waste to fortified Ashur...
Fine. 614 B.C. is the presently accepted date for when Ashur was attacked. That it may well have survived for some time, perhaps a couple of years after the initial attack, does not change any date in presently accepted Neo-Babylonian chronology.
: Archeology Odyssey, July/August, Plundering the Past, The Rape of Iraq's National Museum, page 19,
: "One important group of tablets was found as recently as 1986. At Sippar, 20 miles southwest of Baghdad, Iraqi achaeologists discovered a nearly intact archive from the Neo-Babylonian period (625-539 B.C.)...
Once again, the new discoveries have not changed any long-accepted dates.
: My point was that our knowledge of ancient history is subject to change,
In general, of course. No one is going to dispute that. What I am quite certain of is that the critical dates of Neo-Babylonian history that are currently accepted are not going to change, because there is too much material that zeroes in on them. To overthrow them would require the discovery of an even greater amount of contrary evidence, and then we would be left with a huge mass of contradictory information that would lead nowhere. It's the same with Newton's Laws of physics, as I mentioned previously.
: whereas my knowledge of my appearance is not.
Your knowledge, yes. Our knowledge of you on this board, no. Why? Because I've never seen you, and neither has anyone else that I know of.
::: The gorilla comparison was off the mark because I know what I look like.
And in the same way, modern scholars know what the dates of Neo-Babylonian chronology "look like".
:: Yes, but no one else on this board knows what you look like. For all we know, you could be a talking gorilla.
: Now you are changing the parameters of our original discussion
On the contrary, I have stuck to them. You have completely misunderstood the parameters, as I showed above.
: (there's that taffy again.
There's that tar again.
: You originally said:
:: Suppose I come up with a theory: "IslandWoman is a 500 pound gorilla."
:: If anyone were to make a good argument for this theory, would you acknowledge it?
The point here is that you know that you're not a gorilla, by personal experience (at least, I hope this is so ). It is as certain that you are not a gorilla as it is that today's Neo-Babylonian chronology is not wrong by 20 years -- which is what Watchtower chronology demands. It is nearly as certain that the critical dates I listed above for this period are not going to change much, if at all, no matter how many additional archaeological finds are made.
: In the original discussion I asked if you would acknowledge a good argument,
And I said I would, but that it was not possible that modern secular chronology for the Neo-Babylonian period could be overthrown. I said this because I've studied the material, and to me it's as certain as the fact that you're not a gorilla.
: you came back and asked me if I would acknowledge one.
And in the same way that I said that a good argument could not be made because certain facts preclude it, you also stated certain facts (i.e., you can see that you're not a gorilla) that convince you that a good argument cannot be made.
: It was never about proving anything to others but only our own recognition of a good argument.
Well, not entirely. We don't exist in a vacuum, so what others think is important. More to the point, both of us know the facts, and those facts show that a valid counterargument cannot be made. As you pointed out:
: My appearance is known to me, the detailed facts of ancient history may or may not be fully or without a doubt accurately known.
Except that the critical dates for the Neo-Babylonian period are accurately known.
: Therefore to say that no evidence will ever be found that could influence your judgment on the matter is imo just a tad prejudicial and closed minded.
Well, I suppose I wouldn't stake my life on it, but neither would I stake my life on an assumption that Newton's Laws will never be overthrown. It's really a matter of probabilities. The probability that new material will be found that would overthrow modern Neo-Babylonian dating is next to nil. So is the probability that Newton's Laws will be overthrown.
: Weight of evidence is fine, but if all science was simply based on the weight of evidence of past theories than the earth would still be the center of the universe, the stars are still going around us aren't they?
This is a really bad example, IW. There never was any "weight of evidence", scientifically speaking, for the earth being the center of the universe. There never was any scientific evidence at all. The only reason people thought that was because of mythical notions handed down in hoary theological works like the Bible.
There exist today a number of "theories", such as the theory of gravity, that are so well established by empirical evidence that they cannot possibly be changed in a significant way. They may well be modified and made more accurate, just as Newton's law of gravitational attraction was modified slightly (but extremely significantly) by Einstein's theory of gravity. No doubt Einstein's theory will eventually be modified a bit as well.
But note an important point: these well-established theories are not overthrown by new evidence, they are modified by it. In the same way, just as the archaeological discoveries you pointed out above have modified some details of events in the Neo-Babylonian period, they have not overthrown the overall framework of dates of critical events. Some present theories of 'whatever' may well be overthrown, but not things like gravity -- there is simply too much weight of evidence and experience.
: Science moves forward precisely because it challenges the weight of evidence that came before, it seeks to understand the unknown by inventing hypotheses sometimes built on the slimmest weight of evidence.
Very true. Now, if you could manage to come up with a reasonable scenario that could invalidate presently accepted Neo-Babylonian chronology, I'd be all ears. But you'd have to explain why the huge mass of evidence that for hundreds of years has pointed in one direction is invalid. Unless you can, this is merely an interesting but rather useless exercise -- kind of like me speculating whether you could be a 500-pound gorilla. That, of course, was a point of my counter-example.
: You are talking about dates. I was talking about a concept, a question: Would AlanF acknowledge a good argument even though it went against what he believed to be true?
And the answer is Yes. But it would have to be proved.
: This is after all what is expected of JWs who wander in here is it not?
No question about it.
AlanF
