Indeed you will not obtain 607 by taking off 70 years from 539 but will simply arrive at the useless date of 609 which is a utterly meaningless date for both historical and chronological purposes.
But mommy says that 70 years of Babylonian domination end in 539 B.C.E. when the Babylonian Empire falls, shortening the time Tyre would be subject to Babylon (Isaiah, Vol. 1, p. 253). Unless mommy's calculations are off, she is telling us that 609 B.C.E. is the date when Babylon's 70 years of domination started.
The seventy yeras refered to in Isaiah 23: 15 are for Tyre alone as the text clearly states. The Isaiah commentary merely shows that the seventy yeras for Tyre and Judah were to run concurrently and applied to that sapect of Babylonish domination (servitude) as foretold by Jeremiah at 25:11 as 'these nations will serve'.
False...mommy admits that Tyre never did serve Babylon for 70 years. How can there be two concurrent overlapping periods of 70 years when Tyre's period is much shorter than 70 years? Mommy says instead that the period in which Tyre was humbled was part of a 70 years of domination by Babylon and different nations came under this domination at different times. This domination ended in 539 B.C.E. Your attempt to posit two concurrent overlapping 70-year periods misses the whole point of mommy's reference to Jeremiah 25.
Using all of my scholarly brain power I arrive at 609 which for intents and purposes is a useless date because nothing happened in that year which ammounts to any consensus within scholarship.
LOL!! Going by universally-accepted (except for mommy) chronology, 609 B.C.E. was (1) the final defeat of the Assyrians at Harran -- an event that ended the Assyrian Empire (cf. Insight, Vol. 1, p. 205), (2) the year when Pharoah Necho, trying to assist the Assyrians, defeated the Babylonians at Carchemish, (3) the year of the last major battle of the Judahites, against Pharoah Necho and his army at Megiddo (producing a chronologically-relevant synchronism with Egyptian history), which (4) ended Josiah's life and the reign of the last faithful Yahwist king. It was thus a year that saw Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Judah in armed conflict. Quite an eventful year! Going by even mommy's chronology, 609 B.C.E. was (5) the year Nebuchadnezzer laid seige to Jerusalem, completely fulfilling Jeremiah's cooking-pot prophecy (Jeremiah 1:13-16), according to mommy (cf. w77 12/15, p. 760), and (6) the completion of the last of the unfulfilled sabbatical years.
WT scholars have shown to their great credit, considerable wisdom and ingenuity in the selection quite arbitrarily of the pivotal date 539 for the Fall of Babylon.
LOL!! So you are admitting that mommy's chronology rests on an arbitrary basis? This raises again the issue that you have avoided time and time again. There are many different absolute and pivotal dates to use. You arbitrarily start off with 539 which then, according to you, makes 587 impossible as the date of Jerusalem's fall. But I can start off with a different date entirely, and apply mommy's interpretation of the 70 years, which leaves 587 entirely intact, no problemo! I have no issue to pick at all with the validity of 539 per se, but only to note that mommy's interpretation of the 70 years has radically different results depending on which date you start off with (and curious how you happen to choose the date that makes mommy's 70 years conflict with 587), whereas the chronological framework accepted by everyone else derives the same result from any of the possible absolute dates.
This date (i..e 539) is universally accepted by scholars because it is based on astronomical evidence, secular and biblical history. Thus it is the most well attested date in OT history and serves as the only suitable candidate for the purposes of chronology.
It is universally accepted by scholars just as the other absolute dates are, which you are forced to arbitrarily omit because they conflict with your chronology. You could just as well be lauding the virtues of 605 BCE as a pivotal date (the Battle of Carchemish, based independently on one of several absolute dates), but you don't because if you use that as an anchor date, 607 BCE as the date of Jerusalem's fall becomes totally impossible.
Second, you say that 539 is based on "biblical history" and is "the most well attested date in OT history and the only suitable candidate for the purposes of chronology". False....there is no biblical date associated with the fall of Babylon, the event is certainly described and prophesied about, but there are no dated synchronisms or other indications in the Bible itself as to when this happened (e.g. saying something like "Babylon was conquered 154 years before the third year of King XXXX" or "Babylon was conquered in the fourteenth year of King XXXX). In contrast, Jeremiah 46:2 provides exactly this sort of information for the Battle of Carchemish ("in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim", which is also synchronized with Babylonian chronology in 25:1), which is solidly fixed by astronomical and secular evidence to 605 BC. Thus you arbitrarily choose between anchor dates, yet choose the date that just so happens to produce a conflict with 587 BC when mommy's interpretation of the 70 years is added.
It is true that there are many other dates that could serve as a pivotal date and such dates are used by other scholats such as Thiele but why not use the best date if one is available?
Interesting that mommy's interpretation of the 70 years is forcing you to choose between solidly established anchor dates, something actual scholars of the period don't actually do. Earlier in this thread, I already presented reasons why 605 is an even slightly better-attested date than 539.
Our chronology is based on our methodology which would differ from the methodology of Thiele, Finegan etc.
A flawed methodology, yes. One that Thiele, Finegan, etc. would never contemplate.
So, to answer your question as to why and how we discriminate with 539 it is simply the case that we have a precise methodology that is Bible based and it matters not that there is a twenty year gap between the biblical and secular chronology or the sacred and profane chronology.
Yet if you start off with 605 BC as indicated, your cherished 607 date disappears in smoke, 587 BC is perfectly acceptable and not in conflict with mommy's interpretation of the 70 years at all (and thus, by your own criteria, is perfectly Bible-based), and the Persian chronology (including 539 BC) is off by 20 years or so which is perfectly acceptable because "it matters not that there is a twenty years gap between the biblical and secular chronology or the sacred and profane chronology".
Of course, this equally plausible scenario is unthinkable because mommy doesn't think this way.
