Posts by Alleymom

80

A Review By Carl Jonsson Of Rolf Furuli'sBook On Chronology.

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

this may already have been posted, but if not i am sure that carl jonsson will forgive my linking his review of furuli's book from another site,.

http://user.tninet.se/~oof408u/fkf/english/furulirev.htm .

best regards - hs.

A Review By Carl Jonsson Of Rolf Furuli'sBook On Chronology.

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

this may already have been posted, but if not i am sure that carl jonsson will forgive my linking his review of furuli's book from another site,.

http://user.tninet.se/~oof408u/fkf/english/furulirev.htm .

best regards - hs.

Alleymom

Hillary --

Thanks for posting this link to the review of Furuli's book.

What I noticed when I read Furuli's book was that it seems not to have been proofread or edited very well. There are many sloppy errors. Particularly irksome was the apparent disregard for correct spelling of the names of the scholars he cites. I noticed so many of these that I started keeping a list. There are even names which are correct on one page but incorrect on the facing page. Very sloppy indeed. He gives credit to his assistants, and I am sure they did their best, but the overall result is less than satisfactory for a book which is presented as a scholarly work.

Additionally, no one seems to have double-checked the footnote citations and bibliography and list of authors quoted. Again, I noticed a lot of errors.

The book contains numerous illustrations and photographs obtained from previously published sources which are reprinted here without credit. I believe many of these are from the 19th century and are therefore in the public domain, but AFAIK the usual scholarly practice is to give credit underneath the picture and also in the bibliography. A few of the pictures do have cryptic abbreviations in the caption, and I suspect that many of them are taken from Rawlinson, but he is not listed in the bibliography. Credit for the illustrations on the front cover of the book is given on page 2, but in the credit Behistun is spelled incorrectly as "Bahistun". (It is spelled correctly on pages 137, 140, 150, and 238 --- but the "list of authors quoted" incorrectly gives references to pp. 141 and 151 instead of pp. 140 and 150. I noticed several other errors of that sort in the list.)

Leaving aside the question of content, it is a shame to see so many mistakes in details of spelling and bibliographic references and captions. Perhaps this was rushed to press too quickly, or perhaps Furuli delegated too much of the proofreading and editing to assistants.

I had started keeping a list of such errors, thinking that the author might want to make corrections in a second edition, but I had to put my serious work aside when my best friend was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last fall. Since her death I have had trouble getting my mind back to what I was working on, but coming across this thread tonight has sparked my interest.

Greetings to all of you who gave me such a warm welcome last summer!

Marjorie Alley

32

JW's hold Caucus on Sex Abuse

by DevonMcBride in

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115410,00.html

jehovah's witnesses hold caucus on sex abuse

saturday, march 27, 2004

Alleymom

The AP article was also picked up by the Washington Post. It's on p. A9 of today's paper.

24

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY DANSK

by calamityjane in

jw
friends

.

have a great day dansk.. .

from cj and xjw_b12

Alleymom

Ian ---

I hope you had a splendid day, surrounded with love!

Gosh, it would be easy to shop for you! (What do you buy for a guy who hasn't celebrated a birthday in 19 years? ANYTHING at all!)

Did you and Claire and the boys have FUN?! Did you wear a silly hat and drink champagne? Did you celebrate life?

Birthday blessings!

Marjorie

31

Anything written by Org. that has Nabonidus' years of rule.

by ellderwho in

.

been studying this for a while i think this is a good leverage point if theirs anything written.. ive checked usual spots gtr, babylon the great, insight, any help much appreciated.

Alleymom

Ok, I'm on the right track, but I have to go fiddle with these images some more.

31

Anything written by Org. that has Nabonidus' years of rule.

by ellderwho in

.

been studying this for a while i think this is a good leverage point if theirs anything written.. ive checked usual spots gtr, babylon the great, insight, any help much appreciated.

Alleymom

This is an experiment to see if I can link to an image from Strike9.com

http://www.strike9.com/file.aspx?path=/alleymom/thumbnails/ANE+eclipse+585+BCE.jpg

If it shows up, this is a map of the eclipse of May 28, 585 BCE which was predicted by Thales of Miletus. Note that it is a total eclipse (as indicated by the solid lines).

The next one is the eclipse of 478 BCE which JCanon says was secretly encoded by Herodotus.

http://www.strike9.com/file.aspx?path=/alleymom/thumbnails/ANE+eclipse+478+BCE.jpg

I didn't color this one in, but it is the eclipse numbered 1546880. It cuts diagonally across the top left corner of the map. Note the dotted lines, which indicate that this eclipse was annular, not total.

This is the first time I have scanned and uploaded an image, so I am not sure if it will work.

I will add comments only if the images display properly.

Marjorie

31

Anything written by Org. that has Nabonidus' years of rule.

by ellderwho in

.

been studying this for a while i think this is a good leverage point if theirs anything written.. ive checked usual spots gtr, babylon the great, insight, any help much appreciated.

Alleymom

I can't seem to get the formatting to work right on these quotes!

Robert --

What I didn't see was anything saying that 586/587 was the 17/18 year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign. Not the actual year of the desrtuction but where it says the destruction took place in the 17/18 year of Nebuch's reign and not just how that works out to 586/587. Did that make more sense?

I think maybe you have picked up the number "17" from the discussion of Nabonidus' reign and the fall of BABYLON.

The destruction of Jerusalem took place in Nebuchadnezzar year 18/19, not 17/18.

For now I suggest you don't worry about accession year dating vs. non-accession year dating, or Tishri-Tishri calendar years vs. Nisan-Nisan years. Just remember that dates can be plus or minus 1 year.

Here are some relevant quotes on this from the Insight book and the NWT:

it-2 p. 481 Nebuchadnezzar

Finally, in 607 B.C.E., on Tammuz (June-July) 9 in the 11th year of Zedekiah’s reign (Nebuchadnezzar’s 19th year if counting from his accession year or his 18th regnal year), a breach was made in Jerusalem’s wall.

2 Kings 25:8-9

And in the fifth month on the seventh [day] of the month, that is to say, the nineteenth year of King Neb·u·chad·nez´zar the king of Babylon, Neb·u´zar·ad´an the chief of the bodyguard, the servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he proceeded to burn the house of Jehovah and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; and the house of every great man he burned with fire.

Jeremiah 52:12-14

And in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that is, [in] the nineteenth year of King Neb·u·chad·rez´zar, the king of Babylon, Neb·u´zar·ad´an the chief of the bodyguard, who was standing before the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem. And he proceeded to burn the house of Jehovah and the house of the king and all the houses of Jerusalem; and every great house he burned with fire. And all the walls of Jerusalem, round about, all the military forces of the Chal·de´ans that were with the chief of the bodyguard pulled down.

Is this helpful? I think the one from the Insight book is pretty plain. Let me know if you want other quotes.

Marjorie

31

Anything written by Org. that has Nabonidus' years of rule.

by ellderwho in

.

been studying this for a while i think this is a good leverage point if theirs anything written.. ive checked usual spots gtr, babylon the great, insight, any help much appreciated.

Alleymom

Shotgun said: The only problem I have found is that it only matters to those who have already opened their minds to doubts or are only interested in JW beliefs and are not JW's. I presented this very subject to two elders from both our own publications and the bible, once they saw the years did not add up they said so what's your point..........Then they recited a phrase scholar has used...you have to trust the bible. That has nothing to do with it but it changes the direction to make you think you are being disloyal to God and the bible for challenging the WT chronology which backs the 1914 date.

Shotgun --

Good point! Yes, I know a lot of JW's are not ready to hear this. This was obviously the case with the two elders with whom you spoke.

But I think that it is important for exJW's to be able to reassure themselves about the errors in the chronology, and sometimes it helps to have a simplistic explanation. For instance, Scholar's subtraction seems correct at first, doesn't it? But if you work through it with wooden blocks, the error is very apparent.

When presented with a complex subject like Bible chronology, peoples' eyes tend to glaze over as their brains freeze up. I've seen this happen over the years with kids I've tutored in algebra. You can take one look at their eyes and see when you have lost them. They may be nodding up and down, but they are no longer processing a thing you say. That's when it is important to make things real again. Get out the blocks and balls and coins and number lines and other manipulatives, and go over it until they get past the block.

I think the danger is that if exJW's START to look at the chronology because they've heard that it is wrong, they may possibly fall into that confused, frozen-up mindset. That doesn't happen to everyone, of course. And plenty of people, even if they do get confused by the subject, will be happy enough to settle for knowing that ALL scholars agree on 586/7 as the date when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. (With the exception of a few orthodox rabbis who take a different date, one that is even further removed from the WT's date of 607.)

But for those who do experience frozen-brain syndrome, that's a time when they are in danger of remembering the Society's position, which is basically: oh, this stuff is too hard, I bet it would be easy for the secular historians to have made a mistake, maybe I should just trust the Bible (i.e. the Society's interpretation of the Bible) and forget about all this.

It's important to realize that the Society would like people to believe they have to choose between the Bible and secular history. But that's nonsense! Plenty of Bible scholars as well as secular historians see no conflict between the cuneiform tablets and the accounts of the last days of Judah as found in the Bible.

It is the Society's interpretation of the Bible which is in actual conflict with the Bible.

But, as you say, some people, like your two elders, aren't ready to look at the evidence.

Thanks for the comments!
Marjorie

31

Anything written by Org. that has Nabonidus' years of rule.

by ellderwho in

.

been studying this for a while i think this is a good leverage point if theirs anything written.. ive checked usual spots gtr, babylon the great, insight, any help much appreciated.

Alleymom

JCanon --

Basically, the experts know that Thales could not have predicted the eclipse for the Lydian-Median peace agreement in 585BCE and thus that date has been dismissed by such experts as Otto Neugebaur

I have never seen anything other than a date of May 28, 585 for the eclipse predicted by Thales of Miletus. Do you have a reference to this in Neugebaur?

It is certain that an eclipse DID occur on that date, and it fits in with Herodotus' story of the battle between the Lydians and the Medes. Astyages then took over the throne from his father Cyaxares, he reigned 35 years, and that brings us down to 550, the year when Cyrus became king (not of Babylon), which was year 6 of Nabonidus.

The trouble is that everything you have spun is fantasy when compared with the actual thousands of dated cuneiform tablets. For instance, you say Nabonidus reigned 19 years. But the last dated tabets for him are in his 17th year. We have dated tablets for the first months and last months of every one of the kings' reigns.

A consistent chronology must account for all of the pieces of the puzzle, and your chronology completely ignores the day-to-day events recorded in tens of thousands of tablets from cities all over Babylon. It also fails to take into account the independently established chronologies of neighboring nations. Have you ever researched the double-dated Elephantine papyri from the 5th century, for instance?

Your conspiracy theory will not float. Even if the Bab. Chronicles and the astronomical diaries were altered for some strange reason by the Persians, they absolutely could not and did not alter the tens of thousands of everyday business, legal, and economic tablets from all over Babylon, from private individuals and business houses and the temples. They could not and did not alter the 5th century Aramaic papyri from the colony at Elephantine.

I know that the presentation I made in the KISS thread was very simplistic. I was focusing on the lengths of reigns of the kings, the relative chronology. In my little story of the class project where the teacher was making a timeline on the back wall, there was one team which was assigned to prepare a strip of paper representing the neo-Babylon empire. It was tacked down on the timeline with the right hand edge at 539, which is the date accepted by all modern scholars (other than a few orthodox rabbis using the Seder Olam) for the fall of Babylon.

I simplified by accepting the 539 date, and I know I simplified. In my story, the kids aren't ready to get into all the astronomical data, so the teacher tells them where to attach one end of their strip of paper.

But you want to focus exclusively on where to attach the strip of paper, while IGNORING the staggering, immense amount of data which establishes beyond ANY doubt how long the strip of paper should be. It's all well and good to say we need to be sure about where to attach the paper. Without that, you are not going to have a true chronology.

But you seem to be totally focused on VAT 4956 and nothing else, to the point where you have lost touch with the reality of the primary data, the thousands of cuneiform tablets which speak to the regnal lengths of the kings. You add a year or two whenever you need to stretch things out to make your chronology work.

I know I have posted the data for the beginning and ends of each king's reign. I think it was over in the Furuli thread somewhere.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/54983/14.ashx

Why don't you read over the data that establishes the beginning and end of each king's reign? Then you will see how impossible your theories are.

I haven't wanted to get into long discussions with you, because I am not sure it would be a kindness when you are so obsessed with this. Couldn't you just give yourself permission to ease up on the eclipse data for awhile? If you just can't drop the chronology altogether, maybe you could at least put the eclipse data aside for awhile while you do some research on the Elephantine papyri and the cuneiform tablets. Seriously, from things you have said, I practically feel as if I should ask to see a note from your doctor before discussing chronology with you, and I really don't want to do anything that will fuel your obsession.

I wish you well, but I think you need some help, JCanon. I answered you this time because I don't want to be rude, but I am worried about you. I don't want to get into long involved discussions about any of this with you, ok? I think you need to check back with your doctor, and if he isn't helping, you ought to ask for another doctor.

With kind thoughts,
Marjorie

147

586/587 the K.I.S.S. approach --- no VAT4956, Ptolemy, Josephus needed

by Alleymom in

nabonidus -- 17 years.

nebuchadnezzar -- 43 years.

nabonidus -- 17 years

Alleymom

Thank you for all that work and the KISS approach.

You're very welcome! One of these days I am going to get all my books and articles organized and get the articles scanned into the computer, and then I'll really have some fun! Marjorie