scholar,
I can't believe your hypocrisy. You have the nerve to discuss "integrity" when you have so often proven false to your own scholarly pretensions. You have attempted to leverage these pretensions in so many of the discussions about 607 and 539, that I feel it's useful to speak up.
I can count more than 10 times when it appeared to readers that you had been shown to be wrong or had been thoroughly embarrassed and then you just left the discussion without explanation. But then you have the nerve to come back and start all over in a subsequent discussion, only to make more of the same false, disproven or unsubstantiated statements again, or to contradict yourself again, and to run away again and again. What kind of integrity is that? What does it say about your hypocritical use of the word scholar?
There was one time recently when I thought you were finally trying to change this perception by staying with the discussion in spite of difficult questions in the thread Furuli's New Books--Attempt to Refute COJonsson. Your trademark ability to ignore the question, or put up roadblocks to avoid answering, and other typical diversionary tactics were actually being used far less often, I thought. Then you were caught making a claim that wasn't true about something Carl Olaf Jonnson had written. (You pointed out a mistake he supposedly had made. I believed you, even though I could see that the mistake wasn't significant.) But then it was shown that you were the one who had made the mistake. You never apologized. What kind of scholarship or integrity is displayed by you?
You've not only implied, but you have directly stated many things that you have also directly contradicted. There are too many to mention but I will show a couple of them: (formatting mine)
From your 2nd post in this forum under the name, scholar: "The secular date of 586 or 587 in its own way confirms the validity of a scripturally reckoned date of 607. ...because there are some scholars who regard the chronology in the old testament as symbolic or mythical "
From your 12th post: "Scholars have no evidence for 586 or 587, but simply base their calculations upon their interpretation on secular chronology which is fraught with difficulties"
From your 15th post: "There is an abundant evidence for 607 as the biblical date for the Fall of Jerusalem."
Also from 15th post: "The Society has over many decades has demonstrated that their chronology is scholarly, consistent with ancient astronomy and history."
But from post #67, in January of this year: "You are probably correct that the secular weight of evidence favours 586/587 but this view is something I have recognized in many of my earlier postings....Whereupon there are very few biblical dates if any, apart from the Fall of Babylon that enjoys complete consensus. The calculation of 607 is well based on historical evidence..."
My real concern with you, I hope you can see, is not sloppy mistakes like confusing Jehoiachin and Jehoiachim, or Kings of Israel with Kings of Judah. We've all made our share of these types of mistakes. My biggest concern is the muddled thinking reflected in many of your posts. You also display a very unscholarly approach to questions and evidence. If you have some evidence to consider, I could care less about grammar or spelling. I'll gladly put up with pretensions, sarcasm, name-calling and a noticably haughty attitude. That's one thing that makes learning and sharing on a Web forum a little more interesting than sitting in a classroom. (Although most of my truly memorable teachers had those same characteristics to some degree.)
I've seen you claim or imply a few times that you had made charts or had worked out the evidence on paper for a specific claim. Then when someone asked you to share your evidence, you tell them you won't answer unless they produce their own mostly irrelevant chronology of the Judean and Israelite kings first. Or you tell them that you "have not responded...because [you] plan a holistic approach". Or you tell them (as you have also told me) that you don't want to respond because you think everyone's "mind is already made up." More typically, you have just ignored these requests and gone on to the next thread to start the claims all over again. You must know that this is frustrating and, perhaps, this is your goal.
You and I had turned the thread The New World Translation into a chronology discussoin which you abandoned as soon as I found that your claim was incorrect, based on your own Insight book. I'm not here to run people into the ground -- so I didn't want you to continue just to see you squirm. I still am happy to continue that thread just to discuss the evidence in a civil manner. You may think I missed something; I may think you missed something. Either one of us may still change our mind or we might be able to explain why we continue to believe as we do. Of course, not all threads are worth finishing, but it surprises me that someone who wants to make use of a "scholarly" title, would allow himself a reputation based on a consistent pattern of inexplicably abandoning such threads -- on a subject which you ostensibly take very seriously.
Gamaliel