by waton 88 Replies latest social current
Hello,
Even if they use as reference 586, They found other date and they link date to their data.
Then, if JW was right , i.e. Jerusalem's fall was 607 ... This paper showed a gap of twenty years with the historical facts
Hence, even if , we can criticize, the choice of 586 , at the end , other date show that it was the right date
Best Regard
The original article (Reconstructing biblical military campaigns using geomagnetic field data) in the October 24, 2022 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can be read here.
Explaining the method used it says:
The Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts describe Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns to the Southern Levant during the 10th to sixth centuries BCE. Indeed, many destruction layers dated to this period have been unearthed in archaeological excavations. Several of these layers are securely linked to specific campaigns and are widely accepted as chronological anchors. However, the dating of many other destruction layers is often debated, challenging the ability to accurately reconstruct the different military campaigns and raising questions regarding the historicity of the biblical narrative.
The destruction of Jerusalem as one of those chronological anchors is based on an earlier article (The Earth's magnetic field in Jerusalem during the Babylonian destruction: A unique reference for field behavior and an anchor for archaeomagnetic dating) in the August 7, 2020 issue of PLoS One (PLoS = Public Library of Science) journal, which can be accessed here.
In that article it says :
Unlike biblical sources regarding earlier periods, the detailed biblical descriptions regarding the end of the Iron Age and specifically the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE are considered historically reliable by the vast majority of researchers.
In support it cites The fall and rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian rule (2005) by Oded Lipschits and two articles in the journal Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins.
So the date of 586 BCE for the destruction of Jerusalem is not based on archaeomagnetic dating, but it is used as an anchor because it is considered historically reliable. The diagram below of field intensity results does help to give an idea of sequence but the dating is based on the anchors.
Yes, I know that's what slim said yesterday, far more succinctly than I have done, but I thought it would be of interest to read the original articles.
it is considered historically reliable
That doesn’t sound very scientific if the assumed date has any bearing on the accuracy of the results.
Also, if I read the article correctly, it describes the resulting data as probable and not as a measurement with the tolerance.
Off the top of my head, I’m not sure ( I didn’t check) I think that 539 is the standing WT also uses to establish the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy in Daniel 9 of Jesus in the 1st Century.
If 586 does not line up with Christian interpretation of Daniel 9, there is a problem.
Fisherman : That doesn’t sound very scientific if the assumed date has any bearing on the accuracy of the results.
The assumed date is not only based on the historically reliable biblical descriptions. It is also determined by a variety of other means which include records of the Babylonian campaigns, stamped jar handles and other archaeological evidence as discussed by Oded Lipschitz and others.
If you are interested, the two articles in the journal Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins are:
The Rosette stamped jar handle system and the Kingdom of Judah at the end of the First Temple Period. ZDP 2013;129:1–23; and
The Settlement on the Southwestern Hill of Jerusalem at the End of the Iron Age: A Reconstruction Based on the Archaeological Evidence. ZDP. 2006;122(2):140–50.
The assumed date is not only based on the historically reliable biblical descriptions. It is also determined by a variety of other means
Probably like the results but not factually like 539 which stands on its own.
There was also an article in the The Economist of December 18, 2021 on the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union where Yoav Vaknin presented his findings. I include it in full as the whole article cannot be accessed without a subscription.
When Sennacherib, King of Assyria, sent his army to the kingdom of Judah in 701BC, and had it destroy the city of Lachish, 43km south-west of Jerusalem, he was doing his bit for science as well. As Yoav Vaknin of Tel Aviv University told this year’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held in New Orleans and online, residual magnetism in the burnt-down buildings is helping archaeologists to date other finds in the area. It also helps geophysicists to chart the ups and downs of terrestrial magnetism.
Mr Vaknin’s work at Lachish is the most recent of a series of studies he has performed that were enabled by arsonous ancient kings. The first examined a building destroyed when Jerusalem was burned by Babylonian troops in 586BC. According to the biblical Book of Kings, this happened “in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon”.
Mr Vaknin says that date is considered reliable by biblical scholars. So he and his colleagues were able to pinpoint the moment when this building, the remains of which were found under a car park, was destroyed. Those remains included pieces of the polished upper floor and the burnt wooden beams that once supported it.
The fire's heat would have erased any magnetism in the minerals of this floor. Earth's magnetic field then left its mark as those minerals cooled, magnetising them anew. Assuming the fragments have not moved since then, the alignments of their magnetic fields will point in the direction of Earth's field as it was on that fateful day.
Looking for magnetic alignments in this way was well understood when Mr Vaknin began his investigation. But he and his colleagues also did an experiment. They heated samples of the fallen floor in their laboratory and exposed them to a magnetic field as they cooled down, thus repeating what had happened when the edifice was destroyed. By comparing the resultant magnetisation with the original one, and knowing the strength of the field they had themselves applied, they were able to estimate the strength of Earth's magnetic field on the day of the sack.
They have now repeated this approach at other sites, leading to well-dated reconstructions of the magnetic fields connected with the sackings of Gath, Kinneret, Bethsaida and Ekronin, as well as Lachish and Jerusalem, courtesy of military campaigns by Aramean, Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The dates range from about 830 BC to exactly 586 BC.
That is more or less the maximum span for which this approach is feasible. Written accounts of earlier invasions, in the Bible and other texts, are thought insufficiently reliable. And after the Babylonians came the Persians, who were, as Mr Vaknin observes, "kind enough not to destroy cities".
It is, though, an extremely useful span, for it coincides with a hiatus in the archaeological record called the Hallstatt plateau. This "plateau" is a flat stretch of the calibration curve used for a technique called radiocarbon dating. It is a period from 400-800 BC, when, for reasons not entirely clear, radiocarbon dating breaks down.
Samples from the time of the plateau have hitherto been undatable within that four-century span. This might now change. Radiocarbon dating relies on measuring the amount of C14, an unstable isotope of carbon, in organic materials such as wood. Thanks to the ingenuity of Mr Vaknin and his colleagues, and the ruthlessness of ancient kings, the magnetisation of inorganic materials that have been exposed to heat, such as shards of pottery from cooking vessels, offers an alternative.
Why does it matter?
1914 is not based on the fall of Jerusalem.
Nelson Barbour thought it did and thus Charles Russell and his prodigy did.
But that does not make it so.
1914 is based on 2520 years after the kings in the line of David lost their sovereignty as sitting on Jehovah's throne in Jerusalem. That happened prior to the fall of Jerusalem.
Interesting read, Earnest. Thank you kindly.
when Jerusalem was burned by Babylonian troops in 586BC. According to the biblical Book of Kings, this happened “in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon”.
Conclusions. I’m not convinced.
Fisherman : Conclusions. I’m not convinced.
I understand. The date of Jerusalem's destruction has often been discussed on this forum and I have no quarrel with those who use 539 as an anchor and work back 70 years to determine when Jerusalem was destroyed. That is based on faith and exegesis with which not everybody agrees. This particular thread is about a scientific method to reconstruct when biblical military campaigns occurred and uses 586 as an anchor for the destruction of Jerusalem, which the majority of scholars accept.
I referred in an earlier post to the archaeological reasons for this. If you have an interest in knowing why the majority of scholars accept 586 you can read the two articles I referenced, here and here. The book by Oded Lipschitz, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule, should be available in most academic libraries and you can see the contents here.
Fisherman : ... I think that 539 is the standing WT also uses to establish the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy in Daniel 9 of Jesus in the 1st Century.
The crucial year WT uses to establish the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy in Daniel 9 is 455 for the 20th year of Artaxerxes, when Nehemiah was granted permission to rebuild Jerusalem. This is contrary to most secular works which place Artaxerxes' 20th year at 445/444, but, again, 455 is largely based on faith and exegesis. As the book Aid to Bible Understanding states (p.137):
Undoubtedly the strongest proof for the date of 455 B .C.E . as the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, however, is the fact of the Messiah's appearance in the year 29 C .E., and his death in 33 C .E ., in fulfillment of the time period indicated in Daniel's prophecy.-Dan. 9 :25, 26.
