I came across this article written in 2004 by an Evangelical.
“When did Jerusalem
Fall?”, Rodger Young, Journal of the Evangelical Society [JETS], 47/1 (March
2004), 21-38.
http://www.rcyoung.org/articles/jerusalem.pdf
These
are the Conclusions of the 18-page analysis
(1) Jerusalem fell
in the fourth month (Tammuz) of 587 BC.
All sources which bear on the question—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2 Kings—are consistent
in dating the event in that year.
(2) Ezekiel consistently
dated events from the time that Jehoiachin was taken captive in early 597 BC.
He used Tishri years in all his reckoning.
(3) Similarly, 2 Kings
24–25 consistently used Tishri years and non-accession reckoning for Judean
kings. For Nebuchadnezzar, non-accession years, starting in Nisan, were used.
(4) In the writings
of Jeremiah (which excludes the fifty-second chapter), Jeremiah consistently
used Tishri years for Judah, as did Ezekiel and the source for the last
chapters of 2 Kings. This is in harmony with the usage of Judah throughout the
monarchic period, in contrast to Thiele’s assumption that Jeremiah and Ezekiel
used Nisan reckoning for Judah. Jeremiah
used non-accession years for the kings of Judah and for Nebuchadnezzar. There
is not enough information to determine if he started the years for
Nebuchadnezzar in Tishri or Nisan; both assumptions fit the data.
(5) All three sources
are internally consistent and consistent with each other. There are no texts
which bear on the question of the chronology of the last years of the Judean
monarchy and the fall of Jerusalem which do not fit the methods described here
regarding how the biblical authors treated the history of their times.
(6) None of these
conclusions was arrived at by forcing presuppositions on the data found in the
scriptural text received from the Masoretes, except perhaps the presupposition
that when the data conflicted with one of our hypotheses, then any reasonable
set of hypotheses which did not conflict with the data was to be preferred over
the set which produced conflict. This approach may be contrasted with an
approach which says that when a favorite set of hypotheses conflicts with the data,
the data will be declared in error and no further effort will be expended to
see if another set of hypotheses offers a better explanation.
(7) The use of Decision Tables reveals that previous
studies have overlooked many possibilities that were entirely consistent with
the ideas of the author of the study, but which were not explored simply because
they were never thought of. This failure to explore all the possibilities has
been a major problem in the studies of OT chronology, and one that has led to
significant confusion in the chronologies produced. It is to be hoped that
future studies will not declare that some new solution is to be preferred, or
the text needs to be emended, until it is demonstrated that there are no other
sets of hypotheses that better explain the data. Ignoring this practice will
reduce the credibility of the study.