@sd-7:
You wrote:
The initial problem I noticed was that the Society throws a big red herring in saying that Jeremiah's prophecy in Jeremiah 25 had to do only with Jerusalem. They completely ignore the context of that chapter, which shows clearly that Jeremiah is referring to SEVERAL OTHER NATIONS as part of the 70-year prophecy. "All these nations" can't be referring only to Jerusalem. Jeremiah goes on to prophesy against several other nations which totally backs up what I just said--it's about more than just Jerusalem.
I agree. Things have changed a great deal since the time of Freddy Franz. At least then they were consistent. They were still dead wrong, but Freddy kept everything consistent. When the Jeremiah book came out in 2010, I was looking forward to a verse-by-verse discussion of it, similar to what they did with Isaiah. I wanted to see how they handled the clear grammar of Jeremiah 25. But they bailed for a "lets-just-look-at-the-principles-in Jeremiah" view. Nevertheless, on pp. 162, they wrote:
16 Jehovah proclaimed through Jeremiah that the Jews would serve the Babylonians for 70 years. Then God would bring his people back to their land. (Read Jeremiah 25:8-11; 29:10.) Daniel had full confidence in this prophecy, and he used it to determine when "the devastations of Jerusalem" would end. (Dan. 9:2) "That Jehovah's word from the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished," stated Ezra, "Jehovah roused the spirit of Cyrus the king of Persia," who had conquered Babylon, to restore the Jews to their land. (Ezra 1:1-4) The returnees could thereafter exult in the peace of their homeland and restore pure worship there, as Jeremiah had foretold. - Jer. 30:8-10; 31:3, 11 , 12; 32:37.
I find this paragraph interesting for several reasons: 1) the writer clearly recognized that the verb "serve" was attached to the 70 years, not desolation. 2) the event order was correct - namely that when the 70 years ended, God would bring his people back to their land, which means the 70 years ended before they went back to their land, not after. 3) They admit the meaning of Daniel 9:2 is not that the devastations would last 70 years, but that once the 70 years ended, the end of the devastations would then follow. However, the writer still missed that Jeremiah 25 was speaking of many nations (plural).
Also, the notion that Daniel calculated the end of the 70 years is an assumption. The scripture does not say he determined when the 70 years would begin and end. It just says that he determined that the desolations upon Jerusalem would last 70 years by reading what Jeremiah wrote.
You get that sort of idea from the NIV, which says the devastations would last 70 years. But even in the NWT or the NASB, you don't have to get that idea. It can be read that Daniel decerned from Jeremiah that the seventy years would fulfill the devastations on Jerusalem - or that once the 70 years ended, the devastations could be fulfilled - which does agree with Jeremiah.
The logic of counting backwards to arrive at a date when you could easily just look at the historical evidence--which you have to do ANYWAY to arrive at a date to count BACKWARDS from to begin with, since the Bible says no dates at all--just shows that it's just something they want/need to believe.
But yeah, this is too deep for most JWs to process anyway. I sure had trouble when I was researching this subject myself, but I feel like the Bible's internal evidence makes 607 completely implausible anyway--since it's unlikely Daniel just happened to live to the age of 100 as the Society has claimed. It'd make more sense if he was around 80 by the end of his writings--how many 100-year-olds even of our time still have full mental capacity enough to write down detailed information?
But just Jeremiah alone creates problems for the WTS reasoning. They didn't bother to explain why the New World Translation says "at Babylon" instead of "for Babylon", because they know it's an unjustifiable alteration of the text to serve their interpretations.
I completely agree. I find it very odd (but somewhat expected) that they make it seem like the only evidence for 587 is Berosus and Ptolemy, and that's the entire body of evidence non-607-believers depend on.
MeanMrMustard
