To Beroea:
I don't know that anyone can say for sure that N. H. Barbour borrowed his 'gentile times' doctrine directly from John Aquila Brown. Brown was certainly the first (that anyone can find in 19th century literature) one that used a period of 2,520 years that began in the 7th century B.C. and ended in the 20th century A.D. However, contrary to what the Society says on page 134 of the Proclaimers book, Brown did not equate the 2,520 years with the 'gentile times'. For Brown, the 'gentile times' were a period of 1260 years and had a completely different application than the '2,520 years' (I don't remember off the top of my head what his ideas were). It was some commentator in the late 1820s, if I remember right, who began equating the 'gentile times' with the '2,520 years'. See Carl Jonsson's The Gentile Times Reconsidered for details.
Barbour seems to have gotten his ideas from a number of sources, and he apparently made his own original contributions as well. A likely major source was E. B. Elliott's Horae Apocalypticae, a huge multi-volume tome on "sacred revelation" published in five different editions from about 1844 through the early 1860s. In the first two editions Elliott mentioned the notion of 2,520 years ending in 1914, but by the 3rd edition (1847?) he had dropped it, so it's not clear how influential Elliott was on Barbour. In the Proclaimers book the Society says that one Reverend Bowen from England originated the revised chronology that Barbour ultimately adopted, but it's not at all clear what Barbour's source for this was. There were many, many books, pamphlets and periodicals published in the mid-19th century that are now lost, which could have been Barbour's sources.
From the fragmentary available writings of Barbour, it appears that he first made a prediction of 'the end of the world' for 1873 in 1869, in a paper he circulated through the Adventist community. He published a revised paper in 1871, which is available from several sources, reaffirming his prediction. After 1873 passed without incident, Barbour revised the prediction (I don't know if there are any extant sources where this revision was printed) to 1874. I believe that these predictions were published in one or more Adventist publications, as well as in Barbour's own periodical which went by several names over the years, including The Midnight Cry and Herald of the Morning. After the failure of his 1874 prediction, Barbour ceased publication of any periodicals for a short time. In the publications printed through 1874, I don't believe Barbour made any mentions of 1914, and I don't remember any references to the '2,520 years' (check Jonsson to be sure).
In June 1875 Barbour restarted his periodical under the name Herald of the Morning. Over the next several months he developed the theme that "the gentile times are a period of 2,520 years that will end in 1914". He finalized this, I think, in the October issue. From a reading of the material in the June through October issues, it's not clear whether these ideas were completely new with Barbour, or were partly borrowed from earlier sources. What he did do was to develop notions like "there was a prophetic period called 'the gentile times' ", that this period was 2,520 years long, and that Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great in 536 B.C. (this was wrong). When C. T. Russell read Barbour's periodical in early 1876, these ideas were fully developed, and Russell eventually adopted all of them without any changes.
John Aquila Brown used 604 B.C. as the start of the '2,520 years' because that was Nebuchadnezzar's first year. That happens to have been a correct date, but Brown was apparently not aware that the Babylonians also used the "accession year dating system" for dating the reigns of their kings. Thus, Nebuchadnezzar's accession year was 605 B.C., but Brown didn't know it.
Brown and later commentators used a chronology that was the most popular during their time. It was fairly accurate, but not completely accurate by today's reckoning, since certain important dates were off by a year or two, and important pieces of archaeological information were not discovered and published until well into the latter half of the 19th century.
In this "standard" chronology (which not all scholars accepted without reservation), Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great in 538 B.C., and the Jews returned to Judah in 536 B.C. (these dates are one year too late by today's most popular reckoning). However, for unknown reasons Barbour adopted 536 B.C. for both events. In any event, Reverend Bowen used 536 B.C. as the date for return of the Jews from exile in Babylon.
From the 536 B.C. date, Bowen and Barbour calculated back 70 years and arrived at 606 B.C. This was based on the incorrect assumption that the "70 years" mentioned by Jeremiah and other Bible writers were years of total desolation of Judah, so that if this total desolation ended in 536 B.C., it must have begun 70 years earlier in 606 B.C.
Note that this chronology of the time between Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne of Babyon and Babylon's fall was a major departure from the chronology that Brown used. While Brown used the correct date for Nebuchadnezzar's accession year, Bowen and Barbour had to move it back 20 years to 624 B.C.
Also note that the events that Brown and Bowen/Barbour used as the beginning of the period of 2,520 years were different. For various reasons Brown thought that Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne was the event that began the 2,520 year period. However, Barbour thought that the initiating event was the beginning of the period of total desolation of Judah that began the 2,520 years. This is a subtle but important point in understanding just what these people taught. Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in August, 605 B.C., whereas the complete desolation of Judah began in early September, 587/6 B.C.
Hope this helps.
AlanF
