‘scholar’:
A nice summary of your position but WT scholars have shown that the lunar eclipse described in VAT 4956, 3 Simanu according to the Julian calendar would be 15 July 588 BC and that the New Year would have begun 2/3 May. The solstice 9th Simanu mentioned in the tablet is dated six days earlier thus would be 9 July 588 BC. No doubt much debate about this new research with continuing controversy but WT scholars are quite relaxed and comfortable about such controversies and so is the said scholar.
It’s not merely ‘my position’. 🙄 And it’s 15 Simanu, not 3, which can literally never be 15 July in any year of the neo-Babylonian period, for the same reasons that Nisan can never begin in May and the solstice can never be in July. So much for “WT scholars”. The only option for the JW position, despite their 2011 claim that researchers found it consistent with 588BCE, is to claim VAT 4956 ‘must be all wrong after all’. 🤦♂️