Posts by aqwsed12345

posted

118
The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
aqwsed12345

@vienne
This is also a textbook example of distorted hermeneutics and primitive prooftexting:
Ecclesiastes 9:5 -"the dead know nothing at all"
178
Insight Book LIES - then tells the TRUTH!
by BoogerMan in
1. watchtower
2. bible
it-1 p. 493 communication - "when the circumcision issue was resolved by the governing body in jerusalem......".

it-1 p. 881 galatians, letter to the - "by reason of a revelation, paul, with barnabas and titus, went to jerusalem regarding the circumcision issue; he learned nothing new from james, peter, and john, but they recognized that he had been empowered for an apostleship to the nations.

" (galatians 2:1-10).
aqwsed12345
@scholar
Claim 1: Critics “Ignore” the Exile’s Threefold Structure
JW Claim: Opponents of the 607 BCE date allegedly deny the Jewish Exile and its supposed threefold framework of Exile–Servitude–Desolation for 70 years.
Rebuttal: No serious historian denies the Babylonian exile of the Jews – what’s rejected is the Watchtower’s interpretation that these three aspects formed one exact 70-year period starting in 607 BCE. Secular scholars recognize the exile happened in stages (deportations in 597 and 587 BCE, etc.) and that Judah’s servitude to Babylon began even earlier. Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years (Jer. 25:11–12) is usually understood as a round-number period of Babylonian domination, not strictly 70 years of complete land desolation. Critics do not “ignore” the exile at all – they simply disagree that all three elements (exile of the people, servitude of nations, and desolation of the land) overlap exactly for 70 years beginning in 607 BCE. This threefold 607–537 timeline is a Watchtower construct, not a biblical necessity. Even the Bible’s own writers present the 70-year period in different ways. For example, the Chronicler (2 Chron. 36:20–23) links the 70 years to land sabbaths ending with Cyrus’s decree, whereas Zechariah (Zech. 1:12) speaks of “these 70 years” in 518 BCE – a context that fits roughly 587–518, not a 607–537 exile. Far from “denying” scripture, mainstream scholars are interpreting the texts in context. It is actually the Watchtower’s harmonization of “Exile–Servitude–Desolation” into one rigid 70-year block that departs from both biblical evidence and historical facts. Indeed, as historian Lester L. Grabbe observes, the insistence on a literal 70-year desolation of Judah’s land is a naïve reading of prophetic texts (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange). In short, critics fully acknowledge the Exile; they reject the 607 timeline because it forces the historical data into an unsupportable framework.
Claim 2: Josephus “Confirms” a 607–537 BCE Exile
JW Claim: The first-century historian Flavius Josephus purportedly supports the Watchtower’s teaching of a 70-year exile from 607 BCE (Jerusalem’s fall) to 537 BCE (return under Cyrus). Josephus “confirms” this chronology.
Rebuttal: Josephus’s writings do not consistently support the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date – in fact, Josephus gives conflicting statements about the length of Jerusalem’s desolation. The Watchtower cherry-picks one Josephus passage while ignoring others that align with standard chronology (587 BCE). For example, Against Apion I.19 in older translations seems to say the Babylonians “burnt the temple, … and the city lay desolate for seventy years until the time of Cyrus.” On the surface this might sound like a 70-year desolation. However, Josephus is plainly in error here. He misplaces the Temple’s destruction, claiming it happened under Nebuchadnezzar’s father (Nabopolassar), 18 years too early. This confusion led him to start counting 70 years from 605 BCE. Josephus’s own translator (Thackeray) notes that Josephus likely interpolated the Temple burning into Nabopolassar’s reign “erroneously”. In other words, Josephus garbled the timeline from his sources.
Crucially, just two paragraphs later (Apion I.21), Josephus actually affirms the conventional chronology. He there quotes the Babylonian historian Berossus’s list of Neo-Babylonian kings (Nebuchadnezzar 43 years, Evil-Merodach 2, Neriglissar 4, Labashi-Marduk ~0.75, Nabonidus 17) and says “this account is in accordance with our books.” Why did he consider it correct? Josephus explains that scripture recorded the Temple’s destruction in Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year, that the Temple lay waste for 50 years, and that in Cyrus’s 2nd year the reconstruction began. Indeed, 50 years is exactly the period from 587 BCE to 537 BCE. Thus, Josephus elsewhere acknowledges a 50-year desolation, not a 70-year one, matching the traditional 587 BCE date. He even ties this 50-year span to the biblical timeline (“in accordance with our books”). Far from being a cheerleader for 607 BCE, Josephus here implicitly supports 587 BCE.
In summary, Josephus is not a reliable witness for a 607–537 exile. The Watchtower’s argument relies on an out-of-context reading of his flawed statement, while ignoring his later correction. Even Watchtower scholar R. Furuli admits Josephus’ figures are problematic, yet Furuli still quoted the outdated Whiston translation that gave Nabopolassar a bogus 29-year reign. Scholarly rebuttals note that had Furuli used a modern critical text, he’d see Josephus did not actually list a 29-year Nabopolassar. In short, Josephus’s ambiguous statements cannot override the massive contemporary evidence dating Jerusalem’s fall to 587/586 BCE. Appealing to Josephus for 607 BCE is not only selective, it hinges on Josephus’s own chronological mistake, which he effectively corrected elsewhere.
Claim 3: 586 vs. 587 BCE – Does Scholarly Disagreement Undermine Secular Chronology?
JW Claim: Historians dispute whether Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE or 587 BCE, and this alleged uncertainty in secular chronology supposedly shows it is flawed – implying the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date (which they view as biblically certain) is more reliable.
Rebuttal: This argument greatly exaggerates the significance of a minor academic debate. The difference between 586 and 587 BCE amounts to one year, stemming from how ancient regnal years are counted (Judah’s calendar vs. Babylon’s, accession-year counting, etc.). Scholars overwhelmingly agree Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s army in the late 580s BCE, specifically in Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th regnal year. The only question is whether that regnal year corresponds to 587 or 586 BCE – a technicality. Both dates are within the same historical framework, which is anchored by numerous Babylonian records. In contrast, the Watchtower’s date (607 BCE) is a full 20 years earlier, a discrepancy of a completely different magnitude. It’s misleading to equate a scholarly 586 vs. 587 discussion with the Watchtower’s wholesale revision.
The scholarly process actually highlights the strength of the evidence: researchers debate 587 vs 586 because the evidence narrows the destruction to that tiny window. All lines of historical evidence – Babylonian chronicles, datable economic tablets, astronomical observations – point to the late 580s, not to 607. For example, Babylonian Chronicle ABC 5 pinpoints Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign in Judah to 587 BCE (his year 18) by modern dating, and the astronomical diary VAT 4956 independently fixes Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year to 568 BCE, which means year 18 was 587 BCE. At most, an alternative counting could place it in 586 BCE. This tiny uncertainty is no “flaw” in the chronology – it’s normal scholarly precision. It certainly doesn’t imply we can throw out two decades of well-attested history.
Ironically, even Watchtower publications have flip-flopped on whether the destruction was in 587 or 586 before ultimately insisting on 607. Thus, the Watchtower’s own history reflects uncertainty until they imposed their dogmatic solution. In contrast, secular historians remain confident in the 580s BCE timeframe. The bottom line: a one-year debate does not equal an open door for a twenty-year error. Claiming otherwise is a false equivalence. By this logic, one could argue scholars’ debates about 33 CE vs 30 CE for Jesus’ death invalidate the whole timeline – which is clearly absurd. Minor academic debates are a far cry from the Watchtower’s chronological overhaul, which is not supported by any reputable evidence.
Claim 4: A “Single, Unified” 70-Year Biblical Timeline (607–537 BCE)
JW Claim: The Bible supposedly presents a single, unified 70-year period for Judah’s exile that must run from the fall of Jerusalem in 607 BCE until the Jewish return in 537 BCE. In this view, all biblical references to “70 years” share one clear meaning tied to that timeframe.
Rebuttal: There is no consensus even within the Bible itself that the 70 years are a single period of total exile from 607–537. This claim glosses over the complexity and diverse perspectives found in Scripture. The prophecy in Jeremiah 25:11–12 foretells 70 years of nations serving the king of Babylon (implying Babylonian supremacy). Jeremiah 29:10, addressed to exiles, speaks of 70 years “at Babylon” (often understood as Babylon’s domination or the exile in a broad sense, not specifically the land lying empty). By contrast, 2 Chronicles 36:20–21 interprets Jeremiah’s 70 years as the land enjoying its Sabbaths during its desolation, but then immediately says this period lasted “until the first year of Cyrus” – which historically was about 50 years after Jerusalem’s fall. Meanwhile, Daniel 9:2 reflects on Jeremiah’s prophecies of 70 years, and Daniel (writing near the end of those years) seems to treat them as nearly complete in his time (c. 538 BCE). Zechariah 1:12 (in 520 BCE) refers to God’s indignation on Jerusalem “these seventy years,” which from 520 would backdate to ~590 BCE. This suggests different starting reference points (perhaps the initial Babylonian incursions or exile of 597 BCE) rather than a neat 607 BCE start. In short, the biblical texts do not unanimously pinpoint a 607 start – that date is an inference the Watchtower makes by forcing all references into one mold.
Furthermore, the Bible never explicitly links the destruction of Jerusalem with a countdown of exactly 70 years. The prophets simply foretold a 70-year Babylonian period of judgment and exile. History shows that period was roughly 605–538 BCE (from Babylon’s rise to Babylon’s fall). The Watchtower’s insistence on 607–537 is actually a modern interpretation driven by their prophetic chronology (1914 calculation), not a plainly stated biblical timeline. The claim of a “single context” oversimplifies scripture. As Grabbe and other scholars note, treating the 70 years as a literal block of desolation for Judah is a theologically driven reading that ignores the historical context. The Bible’s message about the 70 years is thematic (judgment and restoration) rather than a precise chronological formula to be calculated to the month. In fact, no biblical writer explicitly says “Jerusalem will lie desolate for seventy years from its fall.” That is a harmonization the Watchtower imposes. Therefore, the supposed “unity” of the 70-year period is an illusion – it is the product of selective interpretation rather than a clear scriptural statement.
Claim 5: The Bible Never Defines the 70 Years as Babylonian Domination
JW Claim: Scripture never explicitly defines the prophesied 70 years as a period of Babylonian imperial domination, implying that the 70 years must instead be defined by Judah’s exile/desolation (as the Watchtower teaches).
Rebuttal: This claim is misleading. While it’s true the Bible doesn’t use the exact phrase “70 years of Babylonian empire,” the plain sense of Jeremiah’s original prophecy is indeed the period of Babylon’s rule over the nations. Jeremiah 25:11 clearly says “these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” That is a definition by the Bible itself – servitude to Babylon for 70 years. The Watchtower tries to redefine “serve” as if it meant the Jews were exiled for 70 years, but Jeremiah was addressing multiple nations, not just Judah. Similarly, Jeremiah 29:10 (written to exiles in Babylon) said “when seventy years for Babylon are completed, I will bring you back.” Notice it says “for Babylon,” indicating the period is tied to Babylon’s timeframe (i.e. its dominance), not explicitly “for Jerusalem.” Thus, the Bible very much frames the 70 years around Babylon – specifically the time of Babylonian ascendancy and later Babylon’s punishment after those years (Jer. 25:12).
The Watchtower argument often emphasizes that 2 Chron. 36 and Daniel refer to the desolation of Jerusalem, insinuating the Bible’s 70 years must be about Jerusalem’s condition exclusively. But 2 Chronicles doesn’t say “70 years of desolation” – it says the land kept sabbath “to fulfill seventy years” (alluding to Jeremiah) and that Cyrus’s decree came “in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by Jeremiah”. In other words, the Chronicler understood Jeremiah’s 70-year word as fulfilled by Cyrus’s decree ending Babylonian rule. This is perfectly compatible with the domination interpretation – Babylon fell to Cyrus after ~70 years of regional power. Indeed, Babylon’s empire effectively began with its conquest of Assyria and regions (around 609–605 BCE) and ended in 539 BCE – a period of about 70 years. Biblical scholars widely hold that the “70 years” is a round number symbolizing a long, complete period of exile and foreign domination, not necessarily an exact calendar interval for an empty land. The Watchtower’s complaint that “the Bible never calls it Babylonian domination” is a straw man; the language of Jeremiah does exactly that, and later biblical writers allude to Jeremiah without redefining the period in a radically different way.
Moreover, the context of prophecy in the ancient Near East often used idealized numbers. “Seventy years” likely conveyed a lifespan or a fullness of time under Babylon’s yoke (note: 70 is 10×7, symbolically complete). The Watchtower’s literalistic approach insists it must be exactly 70 years of land desolation, but that is not explicitly stated anywhere. By contrast, Babylon’s role is explicitly mentioned by Jeremiah. In summary, the Bible’s definitions point to Babylon’s period of supremacy as the span of the 70 years, not a mysterious 20-year-longer Jewish exile that defies all historical evidence.
Claim 6: Josephus Supports 607 BCE in Multiple References
JW Claim: Josephus "consistently" supports 607 BCE, his various references harmonize with the Watchtower’s interpretation of a 70-year desolation ending in 537 BCE. In essence, Josephus is a witness on the JWs' side, not just in one passage but overall.
Rebuttal: This is incorrect – Josephus’s references on the exile are anything but consistent, and none unambiguously endorse a 607–537 timeline when properly understood. As discussed, Josephus made an internal error by implying a 70-year desolation starting with an event he mistakenly placed in 605 BCE. But elsewhere, Josephus calculates the time differently. For example, in Antiquities XI.1, Josephus says that the first year of Cyrus was 70 years after the prophecy of Jeremiah (which he places in the 11th year of Zedekiah) – by Josephus’s reckoning that prophecy would have been around 587 BCE, making 70 years land in 517 BCE (long after Cyrus’s first year). This demonstrates how Josephus struggled with the chronology, yielding contradictory numbers. He also preserves the data from Berossus that fix the Neo-Babylonian reigns totaling about 66 years (not 86) from Nebuchadnezzar to Nabonidus. That matches a 587 BCE destruction, not 607.
In fact, Josephus explicitly notes that the Temple lay desolate for 50 years (from 587 BCE to about 537 BCE). This aligns with secular chronology. The Watchtower argument typically strings together Josephus quotes out of context. Rolf Furuli, for instance, cited Josephus’s Apion I.19 about 70 years of desolation and then immediately quoted Josephus saying “the statement (about the kings’ reigns) is correct and according to our books” – giving the false impression Josephus “agrees” that 70 years of desolation is correct according to scripture. In reality, Josephus was referring to Berossus’s list as correct, which, as noted, yields a 587 BCE timeline. By splicing quotes, the you misrepresent Josephus’s stance.
Leading scholars have pointed out these conflicting statements in Josephus. The inaccuracies likely stem from Josephus using different sources (biblical and Babylonian) and not reconciling them perfectly. Thus, trying to enlist Josephus as a firm supporter of 607 BCE is misguided. At best, Josephus provides a confused secondary testimony that occasionally mentions “70 years” of exile in a way the Watchtower likes. But he is not an authority overriding primary historical data. We must remember Josephus wrote centuries after the events, lacking our modern access to Babylonian records; where we can test him against contemporary evidence, Josephus’s 70-year statements do not hold up. In sum, Josephus cannot be honestly cited as consistent proof for 607 BCE – in fact, when understood properly, his work undercuts the Watchtower chronology more than it helps it.
Claim 7: Nebuchadnezzar’s “Seven Missing Years” Must Be Added
JW Claim: The biblical book of Daniel (Dan. 4) says King Nebuchadnezzar temporarily lost his sanity for “seven times” (often understood as seven years). Secular chronology "ignores" these 7 years – implying there is a gap in the historical record. They suggest these seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s absence should be added to Neo-Babylonian chronology, supporting a longer timespan that could accommodate 607 BCE.
Rebuttal: This argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both ancient chronology and the biblical account. No credible evidence indicates Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign had an uncounted 7-year gap. Babylonian records from his reign are continuous year-by-year. Business tablets are dated by the reigning king’s year, and we have economic texts for every year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign up to year 43. There is no sudden break of “unknown ruler” or missing dating that would correspond to an unrecorded hiatus. If Nebuchadnezzar truly was incapacitated for several years, he apparently remained the official king, and the Babylonian administration kept counting the regnal years in order. In other words, those 7 years would still fall within his 43-year reign as recorded – not in addition to it. The Watchtower’s notion of “adding” them seems to presuppose they were somehow left out by historians, but Babylonian scribes who lived through that period did not omit seven years in their dated documents.
Moreover, many scholars interpret Daniel 4’s story theologically or symbolically – it’s possibly a didactic tale about humility, not a precise chronicle requiring us to amend Babylonian king lists. But even if one takes it literally, Nebuchadnezzar’s “seven times” could well be seven periods of a few months (since the text uses “times,” not explicitly years) or simply a figurative way to say “a complete period of punishment.” There is no solid basis to insert a literal seven-year gap into secular history. The Neo-Babylonian chronology is tightly confirmed by multiple lines of evidence. For example, a royal inscription by Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter (the Adad-guppi’ Stele) and numerous contract tablets show a consistent timeline of kings with no room for extra regnal years. If we erroneously added 7 years to Nebuchadnezzar, we would have to push all subsequent events 7 years later, wrecking the synchronism with Persian records and astronomically dated tablets.
In fact, Watchtower defenders themselves seldom agree on how to apply these “missing years.” Some suggest Nebuchadnezzar ruled 7 years longer than recorded (making his reign 50 years), others speculate a coregency or an otherwise unattested ruler took over. All such scenarios collide with hard evidence. Notably, no Babylonian text mentions Nebuchadnezzar’s supposed period of madness – which is odd if it lasted a long time. This silence suggests either the episode was brief, non-literal, or simply kept out of official annals. Regardless, the chronological record doesn’t show a gap. As a result, historians have never needed to “add” these years. The only ones insisting on doing so are trying to force-fit a predetermined 607 BCE date. In short, Nebuchadnezzar’s seven “missing” years are a mirage – a conjecture that finds zero support in the detailed Babylonian chronology, where every single year is already accounted for.
Claim 8: Furuli’s Research Is Unrefuted Since Critics Avoid Peer-Review
JW Claim: Jehovah’s Witness scholar Rolf Furuli’s revisionist chronology (supporting 607 BCE) supposedly stands unrefuted because critics have not challenged it in peer-reviewed academic journals. The implication is that mainstream scholars “cannot” disprove his “Oslo Chronology,” or they fear engaging it, so it remains valid by default.
Rebuttal: This claim is demonstrably false. Furuli’s work has been refuted – and notably, it has been reviewed in at least one peer-reviewed publication. In 2004, Prof. Lester L. Grabbe (a respected historian of ancient Judaism) published a scathing review of Furuli’s first volume in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Grabbe characterized Furuli as “an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship” and dismantled his arguments about Persian chronology and the 70 years. Grabbe highlighted how Furuli’s methodology cherry-picks data and relies on naive literalism of biblical texts (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange). So the idea that Furuli has not been addressed “in peer review” is simply wrong – it has, and the verdict was negative.
Beyond formal journals, subject matter experts have weighed in. The renowned Assyriologist Dr. Hermann Hunger (University of Vienna) authored a detailed critique of Furuli’s second volume, pointing out egregious errors in how Furuli handled Babylonian astronomical texts (this review was made available online to inform interested readers). Hunger, an authority on cuneiform astronomy, showed that Furuli’s interpretations of tablets like VAT 4956 were flawed and that his proposed chronologies were untenable. Likewise, analyst H.G. Halsey published a three-part examination of the Watchtower’s use of VAT 4956, further refuting Furuli’s astronomical claims with meticulous analysis. These are serious, substantive refutations – the fact they weren’t printed in Watchtower-friendly venues doesn’t erase them.
The lack of multiple peer-reviewed rebuttals is not a sign of Furuli’s strength but of its fringe status. Academic journals rarely waste pages rebutting every fringe theory (especially one self-published by its author, as Furuli’s books were). It’s telling that when Furuli attempted to present his work to actual experts, it did not persuade them – it drew criticism. In scholarly discourse, silence does not equal endorsement. By this logic, one could claim young-earth creationism is “unrefuted in peer review” – which is misleading, since mainstream scholars consider it already refuted by basic science and thus don’t engage on its terms. Furuli’s chronology is analogous: it’s so at odds with established evidence that specialists see little to debate. In sum, Furuli’s research is far from unrefuted. It has been addressed and found wanting by those qualified to evaluate it (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange). The onus was on Furuli to convince experts with solid evidence, but he has not – instead his work has been largely ignored in academia because it lacks merit, not because it’s unassailable.
Claim 9: Critics Don’t Use Furuli’s Methodology, So Rebuttals Are Invalid
JW Claim: Critics of Furuli (and the 607 BCE chronology) haven’t followed the same “methodology” Furuli used; therefore, their counter-arguments are supposedly flawed or irrelevant. In other words, unless one replicates Furuli’s exact approach, one cannot properly refute his conclusions.
Rebuttal: This argument tries to deflect criticism by moving the goalposts. The true test of any methodology is whether it yields a coherent, evidence-supported result – and Furuli’s does not. His methodology essentially involved discarding or downplaying vast amounts of standard data (like thousands of cuneiform tablets and well-established king lists) while giving outsized weight to a few ambiguous or speculative points that might support a longer timeline. Scholars are right not to emulate such a flawed approach. Instead, critics evaluate Furuli’s claims with sound historical method, examining all evidence, not just a select subset.
In fact, analyzing Furuli’s work reveals that his methodology is riddled with inconsistencies and special pleading. For instance, Furuli speculated that the astronomers’ observations might be fraught with errors, hoping to invalidate well-dated tablets like VAT 4956 – yet he accepted another astronomical tablet (Strm. Kambys 400) because the Watchtower had used it in support of 607. This double standard is not how valid methodology works. Critics rightly point out such inconsistencies rather than reproducing them. As another example, Furuli lifted outdated figures from Whiston’s 18th-century translation of Josephus, leading him to claim “Josephus said Nebuchadnezzar reigned 43 years, Evil-Merodach 18, Neriglissar 40,” etc. – numbers we now know are textually corrupt. A proper method would use current critical texts, which Furuli didn’t; critics justifiably corrected this without needing to repeat Furuli’s error-laden process.
The suggestion that one must use Furuli’s methodology to refute him is like saying astronomers must use Ptolemy’s geocentric model to prove heliocentrism. In reality, one demonstrates the flaws in a method by showing how it contradicts the evidence or established principles. That’s exactly what has been done. Experts have shown Furuli’s approach conflicts with primary sources and even internal logic. For example, Furuli’s “Oslo Chronology” needed to conjure up extra kings or longer reigns to add 20 years; he scoured a damaged tablet for the phrase “ruled for three years” to posit an unknown king, a leap his own source material couldn’t support. Highlighting this desperate leap is a valid refutation; one need not engage in the same speculative treasure hunt to show it’s baseless. In short, critics have no obligation to adopt a faulty methodology. Their task – which they have done – is to expose its faults, and they’ve done so by relying on sound historical and textual analysis. The academic consensus remains that Furuli (and thus Watchtower) methodology is fundamentally flawed, as it requires dismissing an avalanche of consistent data in favor of tenuous reinterpretations. A methodology that produces such skewed results is not one to emulate – it’s one to reject.
Claim 10: A 20-Year Gap Confirms Watchtower Dating (607 BCE vs. 587 BCE)
JW Claim: There is a 20-year gap between secular history’s timeline and the Bible’s (as interpreted by Watchtower). Specifically, secular historians date Jerusalem’s fall around 587 BCE, whereas Watchtower says 607 BCE – a difference of about 20 years. This gap itself “proves” secular chronology is missing 20 years, thereby “validating” the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date.
Rebuttal: This reasoning is completely circular – it assumes what it needs to prove. Yes, the Watchtower chronology and the academic chronology diverge by about 20 years for the Neo-Babylonian period. But that gap is exactly the issue in question, not evidence to end the debate. To “confirm” Watchtower dating, one must show positive evidence for those extra 20 years. And all evidence actually runs contrary to the gap. Decades of research into Babylonian records have found no hint of an extra 20 years inserted anywhere. On the contrary, every reliable source from that era lines up with the shorter chronology (587 BCE). For instance:
- Contemporary King Lists: Ancient Babylonian king lists and chronicles (such as the Uruk King List and Babylonian Chronicle series) enumerate the reigns of Neo-Babylonian kings with no large breaks. Summing those reigns from Nebuchadnezzar’s accession to the fall of Babylon yields about 66–67 years, not 86–87. There is simply no 20-year void where an unrecorded king or extended reign could hide.
- Business Tablets: Tens of thousands of dated economic tablets exist from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon and his successors. These tablets cover every year in sequence – they “fill in” year after year with contracts, receipts, etc., all dated to a specific king’s year. Scholars can trace families and officials through these documents continuously from Nabopolassar through Nabonidus. If 20 extra years existed, we would expect at least a gap or some anomaly in these archives. We find none. The continuity of documents from Nebuchadnezzar’s 1st year through the fall of Babylon is a strong practical confirmation of the traditional timeline.
- Astronomical Tablets: Perhaps most decisively, several Babylonian astronomical records pin absolute dates to Babylonian regnal years, making it impossible to stretch or move those years. One famous example is the astronomical diary VAT 4956, which records planetary and lunar positions in Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year. The only year that matches its detailed observations is 568 BCE (not 588 BCE). Another set of texts, the lunar eclipse tablets LBAT 1419, 1420, 1421, list lunar eclipses in specific regnal years of Nebuchadnezzar – these also align perfectly with 590s–580s BCE dates, locking Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year to 587 BCE. In total, at least five astronomical texts from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (including VAT 4956 and others) “inexorably block” any attempt to shift his reign by even one year, let alone twenty. The motions of planets and eclipses simply do not lie – they are like time-stamped photographs of the sky. For the Watchtower’s 607 BCE to be true, all these tablets would either have to be fraudulent or wildly misdated by ancient scribes, which credible experts like Dr. Hunger vehemently reject.
In light of this overwhelming evidence, historians conclude there is no missing 20 years – the gap exists only in the Watchtower’s interpretation. That interpretation originates from a dogmatic need to make “70 years” fit a particular theology, not from neutral analysis of data. Indeed, to bridge the gap, Watchtower defenders have proposed far-fetched theories (e.g. inventing new kings or equating known figures like Nabonidus’s son with extra rulers). Furuli’s “Oslo Chronology” tried both strategies: he speculated that a Babylonian text’s mention of a king ruling “for three years” might hint at an unknown king, and he even argued Babylonian king Kandalanu was actually Nabopolassar under another name – all to shuffle the timeline around. These hypotheses have been thoroughly debunked. For instance, the “King for 3 years” line comes from a damaged prophecy text and is far too flimsy to assert a new monarch; meanwhile, equating Kandalanu with Nabopolassar contradicts both historical and astronomical data (the reign of Kandalanu is firmly fixed in the 640s BCE by a tablet of Saturn observations). In short, the only way to insert 20 extra years is to rewrite history with unsubstantiated speculation – and even then, the sky itself (astronomy) refutes it.
Therefore, instead of confirming Watchtower dating, the “20-year gap” claim simply highlights that Watchtower chronology stands 20 years apart from reality. All real evidence confirms the conventional timeline (with Jerusalem’s fall in 587/586 BCE), leaving 607 BCE as an outlier based on misinterpretation. As one former Witness publication aptly put it: “The cosmic fingerprint doesn’t lie… Watchtower chronology doesn’t stand a chance.” (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange)
118
The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
aqwsed12345
@Blotty
You're mistaken in both your historical and theological assessments, and your response reveals not only a misunderstanding of early Christian theology but also a refusal to deal honestly with the evidence as it stands. Let me respond directly, without evasion, distortion, or rhetoric. The issue here is not whether one simply finds the word "creator" used verbatim in every instance, but whether the early Church Fathers—especially Justin Martyr and Tertullian—understood Christ as the pre-existent Logos, divine in nature, and the active agent of creation. And the answer is clearly yes.
You question where Justin Martyr or Tertullian call Christ "Creator." The answer is found in Justin Martyr's First Apology (Chapter 60), where he states that the Logos "is the first-begotten of God, and is God" and that through Him, God created all things. This is an unmistakable identification of the Son as the agent of creation. You also ignore Dialogue with Trypho (Chapter 62), where Justin argues that the "Lord" who appeared to Abraham and who created man in Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man in our image”) was the Logos—whom he calls "God" and through whom all things came into being. He even goes as far as to say that the Logos is “God” (theos) and distinct from the Father as His “numerically distinct” but not ontologically inferior Word.
Your claim that Justin merely meant “a god” in Ex.7:1/Ps.83-sense by using allos theos (another god) is another misreading. The Greek language often used the term theos without the article (ho theos) in reference to divine persons in a nuanced way. In fact, Justin is grappling with the same distinction that John's Gospel makes in John 1:1—“and the Word was God (theos en ho logos)”—where the Logos is fully divine but distinct in person from the Father. Justin clearly upholds monotheism while affirming that the Son is divine and not a creature. The use of allos theos does not mean a different kind of god, nor does it mean “a lesser being”; it affirms a second divine person. If Justin were an Arian or subordinationist in the sense you imply, he would not have said that the Son is worshipped and prayed to (First Apology, ch. 67) along with the Father and the Spirit—something utterly blasphemous for a Jew unless Christ is truly God.
Tertullian, in his Against Praxeas, is explicit: “The Word, therefore, is both always in the Father, as He says, ‘I am in the Father;’ and is always with God, according to what is written, ‘And the Word was with God;’ and never separate from the Father, or other than the Father, since ‘I and the Father are one.’” (Adv. Praxean, 8). And in chapter 5: “Everything was created by Him, and without Him nothing was made.” Again, this is a direct echo of John 1:3, affirming the Son’s role in creation. If Christ creates everything, then He is not a creature. If He is eternally with the Father and consubstantial, as Tertullian argues, then He shares the divine nature fully.
But I'll gladly throw the ball back to you, answer which pre-Nicene church father explicitly said that
- the Father "created" (epoisen, ἐποίησεν) the Son
- the Son is the Archangel Michael
- the Holy Spirit is identical with the power of God (dynamis)
...and I could list the distinctive doctrines of the JWs. So the naive (and completely false) historical perception of church history, that "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, there once was a proto-JW church, only that "evil" Constantine "corrupted" it just because he loved paganism so so much. It is quite unfair and dishonest that while you JWs expect us to present explicit doctrinal precision from the Church Fathers' writing, there is not even traces for your distinctive doctrines in the early Christian sources.
You challenge my interpretation of John 17:3 as if the "separation" between the Father and the Son negates the Son's divinity. But as I made clear, that this verse simply asserts monotheism, not unitarianism, and Trinitarians have never denied that the Father is here ho theos, the “only true God”—rather, they affirm that the Son and Spirit share in that very nature, not by being identical persons, but by being of the same divine essence (homoousios). You seem to misunderstand the very foundations of Trinitarian theology: the unity of essence and the distinction of persons. John 17:3 is a relational statement within the economy of salvation, not an ontological disqualification of Christ’s deity. The prayer is about eternal life through knowledge of both the Father and the Son—the Greek kai unites them in one salvific knowledge. You ask: “Why are the other two not mentioned as part of the ‘only true God’?” But the Son is mentioned in the same breath—and that is the point. The Spirit, as John 14–16 shows, comes from both the Father and the Son, proceeding from them and glorifying the Son. Trinitarianism is not a slogan but a coherent synthesis of the entire scriptural witness.
Your reference to Eusebius betrays the usual misuse of history to support a conspiracy theory. Yes, there was a development in rhetoric—because heresies demanded clarity. The faith was defined, not ”invented” at Nicaea. Eusebius himself signed the Nicene Creed, affirming homoousios. The shift was not a corruption of doctrine but the articulation of what the Church had always believed and taught, even if the philosophical language had not yet been developed. The early Fathers, far from suppressing dissent with violence, engaged in rigorous theological disputation. The fact that heresy was sometimes met with political resistance later does not falsify the substance of Nicene orthodoxy. You are importing Enlightenment tropes of ecclesial tyranny into a period where the Church was, in fact, under immense pressure from both pagan and imperial forces.
As for the ad hominem jabs—calling me dishonest or deluded—these only show the weakness of your argument. If you can’t address the content, attacking the person is poor form and beneath serious theological dialogue. You said you would not engage further unless I show respect. I have shown nothing but intellectual honesty, citing primary sources, engaging your claims fairly, and refusing to caricature your position. But intellectual honesty also demands clarity and correction when truth is distorted.
You asked for substance. I have given you the Fathers, the Greek grammar, the historical context, the theological categories, and the scriptural framework. Your rejection of the Trinity is not biblical fidelity—it is a rejection of the full revelation of God in Christ. To deny the Son’s divinity is to stand against the Gospel itself. As Athanasius said, “He became what we are, that we might become what He is.” If Christ is not truly God, then we are not truly redeemed. That’s the truth—not rhetorical sleight of hand, but the confession of the Church, the apostles, and Christ Himself.
118
The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
aqwsed12345

@slimboyfat
The claim that “the Bible teaches that Jesus’ Father is the only true God (John 17:3) and that Jesus is the Son of God, the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15)” in order to deny the divinity of Christ may sound superficially straightforward, but it is ultimately based on a selective and distorted reading of Scripture, one that ignores both the context and the profound Christological affirmations present throughout the New Testament. This argument hinges on an Arian misunderstanding of what it means for Christ to be called “Son” and “firstborn,” and on a tendentious reading of John 17:3 that tears it from the fabric of Johannine theology and Christian tradition. This simply reductionist prooftexting.
Let us begin with John 17:3, which is often misused as a prooftext to deny the deity of Christ. The phrase “the only true God” applied to the Father in this passage is not, in itself, controversial. Trinitarian theology has always maintained that the Father is the only true God—but it does not say that only the Father is God to the exclusion of the Son and the Spirit. What the verse actually says is this: “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” It is telling that eternal life consists in knowing both the Father and the Son. The Greek word kai (“and”) in this construction does not imply ontological separation or exclusion, but conjunction and unity of purpose. In several cases in the Johannine corpus, kai functions almost appositively—namely or that is—as in John 15:8 or 18:35. Even taken in its usual conjunctive sense, the phrase implies that eternal life is found in knowing both the Father and the Son—not the Father instead of the Son.
Furthermore, the context of John's Gospel reveals the deep unity of the Son and the Father. In John 5:23, Jesus says that “all must honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” The term just as (kathōs) here is critical: the same honor due to the Father is due to the Son. Yet this would be blasphemy if the Son were not divine, as worship is due to God alone (cf. Isaiah 42:8). Jesus also explicitly identifies Himself with the divine name in John 8:58 (“Before Abraham was, I AM”), invoking the ego eimi formula that echoes Exodus 3:14. The Jewish leaders understood this claim and attempted to stone Him for blasphemy—not because He claimed to be merely “God’s Son” in a metaphorical or adoptive sense, but because He made Himself “equal with God” (John 5:18).
Now, turning to Colossians 1:15, the phrase “firstborn of all creation” (prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs) has been misread by Arians since the fourth century as if it meant “first created.” But this is not what the term means. Prōtotokos does not imply that Christ is part of creation—it signifies supremacy and preeminence over creation. In Jewish thought, the “firstborn” was the heir, the one possessing authority and primacy, not necessarily the first temporally. That Paul did not mean Christ was created is made clear by the very next verses: “For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth… all things were created through him and for him” (Col 1:16). The Son is not part of creation—He is its Creator. Paul’s theology here is unmistakably affirming the Son’s divinity, echoing John 1:3: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” If Christ is on the side of the Creator, and not among those things that were created, He is eternal and divine.
To claim that “you really don’t get simpler than that” is a rhetorical sleight of hand that appeals to a surface-level literalism rather than a theological synthesis of the whole of Scripture. Simplicity, in the Arian sense, is not a virtue if it comes at the cost of ignoring the totality of biblical revelation. The very notion that the early Christians saw Christ only as a creature is historically false. The pre-Nicene Church Fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian—all writing well before Nicaea—frequently refer to Jesus as God, Lord, and Creator. These were not Hellenistic fabrications or philosophical corruptions of simple faith; they were the organic development of apostolic teaching as the Church reflected on the full identity of Christ.
Trinitarianism does not deny that the Father is the “only true God,” but it insists that this is said in relation to the Son and the Spirit within the eternal communion of the one divine essence. The Father is the principle without principle, the unbegotten source (fons divinitatis), while the Son is eternally begotten of the Father (ex Patre natus ante omnia saecula) and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both. These are not three gods, but one God in three persons, each fully and equally divine, yet distinct in relation.
Therefore, the biblical texts cited do not support an Arian Christology. Rather, when read in harmony with the broader witness of Scripture and the living tradition of the Church, they affirm the mystery of the Trinity: one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, co-eternal, consubstantial, and undivided. To deny this is not to uphold biblical simplicity, but to impoverish the faith by flattening the richness of divine revelation into a man-made reductionism.
118
The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
aqwsed12345

The Mystery of the Trinity: Understanding the Heart of the Christian Faith
One of the most profound and essential doctrines in Christianity is the mystery of the Trinity—God’s nature as one Being in three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While often regarded as complex or mysterious, this doctrine is not an intellectual puzzle meant to confuse but a theological framework rooted in Scripture that safeguards the very core of the Christian gospel: who God is, how He loves, and how He saves.
God Is One – Yet Three in Person
The foundational affirmation of the Christian faith is that there is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4). Yet the Bible attributes divine qualities, names, and actions to the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Each of these is presented not as different modes or roles of one person, but as distinct persons who are equally and fully God, existing eternally in perfect unity.
· The Father is God (John 6:27, Ephesians 4:6)
· The Son is God (John 1:1–14, Colossians 2:9, Hebrews 1:3)
· The Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4, 1 Corinthians 2:10–11)
These three persons are not separate gods (tritheism), nor is God merely revealing Himself in three successive modes (modalism). Instead, the Trinity teaches that the one divine essence is shared fully and equally by three co-eternal Persons.
Why the Trinity Matters
Some may wonder whether this theological complexity is necessary. Why not portray God in simpler terms—as one person? The answer lies not in philosophy, but in God’s own self-revelation through Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Trinity is not the product of theological speculation, but a faithful reflection of how God has revealed Himself in the narrative of creation, redemption, and new creation.
1. The Trinity Makes Sense of God’s Love
The Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). But love is inherently relational—it requires both a lover and a beloved. If God were a solitary being, He would not have known love until He created something to love. That would mean God’s nature was incomplete prior to creation.
However, the Trinity reveals that within the one divine essence, there has always existed an eternal relationship of love: the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit is the bond of that love. Love is not something God begins to do; it is who He is. Only in the Trinity does the claim “God is love” become eternally true.
2. The Trinity Is the Key to Salvation
Without the Trinity, the gospel collapses. Consider this: Christians believe that Jesus died for our sins, bearing the punishment we deserved, and rose again to grant us life. But who is Jesus? If He is not fully God, He could not bear the infinite weight of sin or satisfy divine justice. If He is not fully human, He could not truly represent us or die in our place.
The incarnation—the Son of God becoming human—only makes sense within the Trinitarian framework. In Jesus Christ, God Himself bore our judgment. This was not a third-party transaction, nor divine child abuse, but the self-giving of God within Himself: the Son offering Himself to the Father through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14).
The cross only achieves salvation because the one who died was both fully God and fully man. Only the God-man could stand in the gap between a holy God and sinful humanity, satisfying justice and demonstrating divine mercy simultaneously.
3. The Trinity Shapes Christian Community
Human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). If God is tri-personal, then being made in His image means we are made for relationship. Community, mutual love, humility, and self-giving are not human inventions—they reflect the eternal life of the triune God.
Jesus commanded His followers: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” (John 15:9). The love that exists between the Father and the Son becomes the model and source for Christian love. The church is not just an organization or belief system—it is a community drawn into the very life of the Trinity.
The Trinity and Church History
Though the doctrine of the Trinity is thoroughly biblical, it was clarified and defended in the early centuries of the church in response to heresies that distorted the gospel. Arius, for example, taught that the Son was the first created being—not eternal and not fully God. Others claimed that God only appeared in three forms at different times (modalism), while still others denied the full personhood of the Holy Spirit.
In response, the early church gathered in councils—such as the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325) and the First Council of Constantinople (AD 381)—to affirm what Christians had always believed: that the Son and the Spirit are of the same divine essence as the Father. These councils did not invent new doctrines but gave precise language to express biblical truth and to guard against misunderstanding.
Even terms like “person” and “essence,” which we now use in everyday theology, had to be developed carefully to avoid confusion. The concept of “personhood” itself owes much of its definition to the theological wrestling of the fourth and fifth centuries.
The Trinity and the Incarnation
The mystery deepens further in the person of Christ, who is both fully God and fully man. This dual nature was also a point of great debate in the early church. Some, like Nestorius, tried to separate the divine and human natures of Christ too sharply, implying two “selves” in Jesus. Others, like Eutyches, merged the two natures into a hybrid, effectively denying Christ’s true humanity.
The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) resolved this by affirming that Christ is one person with two natures—divine and human—without confusion, change, division, or separation. This formulation remains essential for understanding salvation: Jesus represents God to humanity and humanity to God because He is truly both.
Without this, there is no real mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), no true sacrifice, and no hope for reconciliation with God.
The Trinity and Christian Hope
The doctrine of the Trinity is not an abstract mystery for theologians. It is the lifeblood of Christian hope and the foundation of our transformation. Believers are not merely forgiven—they are adopted into the family of God and drawn into the life of the Trinity.
Scripture teaches that those who trust in Christ will be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29, 1 John 3:2). Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Christians participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). The very life of God begins to transform us, from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).
This is the ultimate goal of salvation: not merely escape from judgment, but communion with God, participation in His love, and transformation into His likeness.
Conclusion: A Mystery to Worship, Not to Abandon
The Trinity is indeed a mystery—but not in the sense of something illogical or unknowable. In Scripture, a “mystery” is a truth that was once hidden but is now revealed to be understood more and more deeply. The Trinity invites us into endless wonder, not frustration.
This doctrine is not a burden to carry but a fountain of joy and truth. It anchors our understanding of God’s nature, the meaning of love, the depth of the cross, the promise of adoption, and the hope of glory.
The triune God is not a concept to be analyzed, but a reality to be adored.
We do not worship a formula—we worship the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.
Let us then live, love, and serve in the light of this mystery, not shrinking from it, but allowing it to shape our vision of God, our understanding of the gospel, and our identity as His people.
118
The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
aqwsed12345
The God Who Cannot Be Understood — But Is Worth Knowing
The topic this is the nature of God, and we must begin with a sense of awe and humility. How can finite human beings even begin to speak about the infinite? And yet, speak we must. Because at the very center of Christianity is the question: Who is the God we worship? In exploring the doctrine of the Trinity, we must explore it through Scripture, church history, and deep theology — but always with the aim of answering this simple and vital question.

1. The Trinity: Not a Complication, but a Defense
The doctrine of the Trinity was not created to complicate the Christian faith. It was not a clever invention of theologians with too much time on their hands. It emerged because early Christians were forced to defend the very heart of the gospel — that God Himself came to save us.
The Trinity isn’t a solution to a puzzle; it’s a shield for a miracle. It's the bold claim that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, fully united, and yet personally distinct — not three gods, not three roles, but three persons in one being.

2. A Mystery Worth a Lifetime
Often people say, “The Trinity is a mystery — we just have to accept it.” True. But the word mystery in Scripture (mysterion in Greek) doesn't mean something unknowable — it means something infinitely knowable. Like love, or beauty, or grace — something you can spend your whole life discovering without exhausting.
The Trinity is not illogical. It’s supra-logical — beyond full comprehension, but not nonsense. And that’s exactly what we would expect from God.

3. Three Responses to the Gospel – Then and Now
There are only three responses to the Christian message:
- Accept it fully — and become a disciple.
- Reject it entirely — and remain outside the faith.
- Pick and choose — and create your own version of the gospel.
The third category is the most dangerous. It often leads to false teachings and sects — where Jesus may still be admired, but no longer confessed as God. Where the Spirit becomes a force, not a person. And where the Father is a distant, unknowable deity.
The church had to respond. That’s why the creeds and councils were born.

4. A History Written in Blood and Ink
From the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) to Chalcedon (AD 451), the early church fought to articulate what Scripture revealed: that Jesus is fully God and fully man. That the Spirit is a person, not a power. That God is eternally triune.
These weren't abstract debates. Many of the church fathers suffered imprisonment, exile, torture — and even death — to defend what they believed about Christ and the Trinity.
They fought so that we might know whom we bow before today.

5. The Trinity and the Gospel of Forgiveness
Why does it matter that Jesus is God?
Because only God can forgive sins. Only God can bear the full weight of divine justice. Only God can unite heaven and earth in His own person.
If Jesus were merely an angel, or a created being, then God sent someone else to do the dirty work. But if God Himself came in the flesh, then the cross was not just an act of justice — it was an act of self-sacrificial love.
God chose to be unjust to Himself so He could be merciful to us.

6. Jesus: Fully God, Fully Man
The early heresies (like Arianism, Nestorianism, and Monophysitism) were not just academic errors — they struck at the heart of salvation.
- If Jesus is not fully God, He cannot save us.
- If Jesus is not fully human, He cannot represent us.
The councils made this clear: Christ is one person with two natures — divine and human, unconfused, indivisible. That’s why Mary could be called “Theotokos” — God-bearer. Not because she created God, but because the one she bore was truly God.

7. Why the Trinity Matters Today
The Trinity isn’t just doctrine — it’s the heartbeat of the Christian life.
- God the Father loves us eternally.
- God the Son came to die and rise for us.
- God the Spirit lives in us now.
And this is not just theology. It’s worship. It’s comfort. It’s the source of Christian ethics. “As the Father loved the Son, so the Son loved us. So love one another.” The relationship within the Trinity becomes the model for our relationships.

8. Seeing Christ — and Being Transformed
Jesus is the icon of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). When we look at Him, we see what God is like. And as we gaze on Him, we are changed — "from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18).
This is the great Christian promise: we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). One day, we will not just believe — we will behold.

Conclusion: The Trinity Is the Gospel’s Shape
The doctrine of the Trinity is not a philosophical exercise — it’s the shape of the gospel. Without it, we lose everything. With it, we see the breathtaking beauty of a God who is love, who became one of us, who sent His Spirit to dwell in us — and who is shaping us into His own image.
So the question is not: Do you understand the Trinity perfectly?
But rather: Have you seen His face? Have you tasted His grace? Are you being changed into His likeness?
“The Trinity is not an intellectual burden for Christians. It is the framework of our salvation, the beauty of our God, and the song of our worship.
178
Insight Book LIES - then tells the TRUTH!
by BoogerMan in
1. watchtower
2. bible
it-1 p. 493 communication - "when the circumcision issue was resolved by the governing body in jerusalem......".

it-1 p. 881 galatians, letter to the - "by reason of a revelation, paul, with barnabas and titus, went to jerusalem regarding the circumcision issue; he learned nothing new from james, peter, and john, but they recognized that he had been empowered for an apostleship to the nations.

" (galatians 2:1-10).
aqwsed12345

Among the many vulnerabilities in Jehovah’s Witnesses' doctrinal framework, few are as gaping as their fixation on the year 1914. For many well-meaning Witnesses, this year is sacred: the beginning of Christ’s invisible reign, the end of “the appointed times of the nations,” and the launch of a divine new era. However, a closer look reveals not only historical misrepresentation, but a manipulative distortion of facts, especially regarding the specific date they once proclaimed as divinely appointed: October 2, 1914.
It is not enough to say that Jehovah’s Witnesses believe “something happened” in 1914. The Watchtower organization didn’t just vaguely point to a year and hope history would cooperate. No—their teaching was precise, down to the exact day. According to their interpretation of biblical prophecy and their own publications, October 2, 1914 was the very day that the "gentile times" ended and Christ began ruling invisibly from heaven. Yet, when we examine what actually happened on that date—both in world history and in biblical context—we are met with a deafening silence.
Let’s begin with the often-repeated claim that World War I serves as “proof” that 1914 was a pivotal turning point. It’s a claim that is meant to lend credibility to their prophetic expectations. But World War I began not on October 2, but on July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. By the time October 2 rolled around, the war had already been raging for over two months. And contrary to any Watchtower suggestion, October 2, 1914, passed without a single globally significant event. It was an entirely unremarkable day. No shift in global governance, no prophetic fulfillment, no heavenly coronation—nothing.
But it gets worse. Jehovah’s Witnesses often appeal to the Old Testament to support their prophetic calculations. If that’s the case, then the Hebrew calendar must matter, not the Gregorian one. In 1914, Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—began at sunset on September 21 and ended on September 23. So, even by the Jewish reckoning of time (which they claim underpins their 2,520-year prophetic formula), the outbreak of war in late July didn’t even fall within the same Hebrew year as October 2. The two events aren’t even in the same biblical year, further discrediting any link between the war’s outbreak and the supposed fulfillment of prophecy.
So why do Jehovah’s Witnesses today conveniently omit October 2 when discussing 1914? Why is this specific, once-boldly proclaimed date now rarely mentioned, buried beneath general references to "the year 1914"? The answer is painfully clear: because nothing happened. And yet, by appealing to the war, they attempt to salvage their prophecy—rebranding failure as fulfillment. It’s a classic bait-and-switch. They declared the world would end—or at least be dramatically transformed—on a specific day. That didn’t happen. But instead of owning the error, they redirect attention to the nearest convenient global crisis and retroactively assign it divine meaning.
This is not honest theology. It is prophetic sleight of hand.
Jehovah’s Witnesses continue to affirm the significance of 1914 while sweeping the failed October 2 prediction under the rug. But that date remains a haunting testament to the organization’s failed prophetic claims. It was not a day when the heavens shook or history turned. It was a quiet Friday. And their desperate attempt to retrofit divine prophecy onto the chaos of the First World War should be recognized for what it is: a historical revisionism designed to rescue a discredited prediction.
178
Insight Book LIES - then tells the TRUTH!
by BoogerMan in
1. watchtower
2. bible
it-1 p. 493 communication - "when the circumcision issue was resolved by the governing body in jerusalem......".

it-1 p. 881 galatians, letter to the - "by reason of a revelation, paul, with barnabas and titus, went to jerusalem regarding the circumcision issue; he learned nothing new from james, peter, and john, but they recognized that he had been empowered for an apostleship to the nations.

" (galatians 2:1-10).
aqwsed12345
@scholar

1. “Critics ignore the Jewish exile (‘Exile–Servitude–Desolation’) from 607 to 537 BCE.”

Rebuttal: No reputable historians “ignore” the 70-year Babylonian exile; they simply reject the Watch Tower’s 607–537 BCE framing of it. The Bible does speak of a 70-year period of Babylonian domination and exile, but this is not defined as 607–537. Jeremiah 25:11–12 foretells seventy years of nations serving Babylon until Babylon is punished. Mainstream scholars understand this as roughly the 70 years of Babylonian regional hegemony ending in 539 BCE (the fall of Babylon). For Judah, the exile spanned from the fall of Jerusalem (587 BCE) to the return under Cyrus (~538–537 BCE), about fifty years. Critics do not “ignore” the biblical exile; rather, they note that the biblical texts themselves describe the 70 years in different ways – as a period of Babylonian rule over the nations (Jer 25), as Jerusalem’s desolation and Sabbath for the land (2 Chronicles 36:20–21), and as the duration of the Jewish captivity in Babylon (Jer 29:10). All these aspects are considered by scholars. Your charge is a straw man: historians fully acknowledge the exile and desolation but conclude from extensive evidence that Jerusalem fell about 587 BCE, not 607. Even conservative biblical chronologists who take the seventy years literally usually count them from c.605 BCE to 536 BCE, not from 607. In short, the 70-year exile/servitude is not ignored at all – it is understood within the historically attested timeline, not arbitrarily fixed to 607–537.

2. “Josephus confirms this 70-year understanding (i.e. 607–537 BCE).”

Rebuttal: You misuse Flavius Josephus. In fact, Josephus explicitly contradicts the 607 chronology. In Against Apion I.21, Josephus reports that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in his 18th year and that it lay desolate for “fifty years” until Cyrus’ 2nd year, when the Jews returned. Fifty years of desolation fits a 587 BCE destruction (587 to ~537 BCE is ~50 years) and cannot support a 607 date. It is true that elsewhere Josephus paraphrases the biblical prophecy of “seventy years”. For example, Antiquities XI (per the Watchtower’s citation) says “all Judea… continued to be a desert for seventy years”. But this is Josephus merely recounting Jeremiah’s prophecy, not asserting an independent historical chronology. The Watch Tower Society has cherry-picked those “70 years” phrases out of context. When read in full, Josephus does not give two contradictory chronologies; rather, he understood the temple desolation as 50 years within a broader 70-year span of Babylonian supremacy. In Against Apion I.19, Josephus writes that “our city was desolate during the interval of seventy years until Cyrus” – note, during that interval, not for the entirety of it. Josephus’ actual chronology (temple desolate 586–516 BCE = 70 years; exile about 50 years) aligns with the scholarly consensus of a 587 BCE fall. Thus, Josephus affirms the conventional timeline. Modern scholars rely on archaeology and cuneiform records over Josephus for precise dates, but Josephus certainly does not “confirm” a 607 BCE destruction – quite the opposite.

3. “Scholars cannot resolve whether Jerusalem fell in 586 or 587 BCE.”

Rebuttal: This is a minor technicality that you blow out of proportion. Virtually all historians place Jerusalem’s fall in the late 580s BCE – there is no debate about a date as off-base as 607. The slight 586 vs. 587 difference arises from how one counts the calendar year of the final siege (Judah’s regnal year vs. Babylonian accession year). Many standard references give 587 BCE as the year Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, while some older works list 586 BCE – but both refer to the same event, around August of 587. The current scholarly consensus favors 587 BCE as the equivalent date, and even Jehovah’s Witness publications have acknowledged the event occurred in “587/586 B.C.E.” in secular chronology. This very slight uncertainty (less than one year) is not an embarrassment or unresolved crisis – it’s a result of ancient Near Eastern dating conventions. It in no way suggests scholars are clueless; rather, it reflects meticulous caution in correlating Babylonian regnal years with Julian years. Crucially, whether one says 587 or 586 BCE, nobody outside Watchtower circles claims “607 BCE.” The academic community is united that the destruction occurred about twenty years after 607. Your argument is a red herring – a trivial ambiguity on 587 vs 586 does not validate an error as large as 20 years. By analogy, if two historians disagree whether an event happened in late 1944 or early 1945, that doesn’t mean someone claiming it happened in 1924 has any merit. In sum, scholars can and have resolved the date to within a few months (summer 587 BCE); the Watch Tower’s 607 date remains utterly unsupported.

4. “Why can’t scholars precisely determine the start and meaning of the 70 years?”

Rebuttal: Scholars debate the interpretation of the 70-year prophecy only because the Bible itself uses “70 years” in multiple contexts, not because of any deficiency in the historical timeline. Jeremiah 25 clearly refers to 70 years of Babylonian domination over the nations (starting around Babylon’s rise in 609 BCE and ending with Babylon’s fall in 539 BCE). Jeremiah 29:10, by contrast, speaks to the Jewish exiles in Babylon and thus implies 70 years of exile “for Babylon”, which could be viewed as 605 BCE (first deportations) to 536/537 BCE (return). And 2 Chronicles 36:20–21 links the 70 years to the land resting from sabbaths – a theological comment that Judah’s exile fulfilled the sabbath-rest years it had neglected. Because these biblical texts allow different start and end points (609 vs 605 vs 587 BCE, etc.), scholars discuss which specific period was meant. Importantly, none of the viable scholarly views place the start at 607 BCE. The options considered (609, 605, or 587 BCE) all align with standard chronology and yield roughly 70 years ending by 539–515 BCE. Your complaint actually backfires: the fact that the return in 537 BCE is not exactly 70 years after 587 BCE (it’s ~50 years) is one reason scholars conclude Jeremiah’s 70 years were not intended as the interval from Jerusalem’s fall to the return. Instead, the 70 years are understood as a round-number prophecy of Babylonian rule or exile that fits the general historical framework (a common view is 605–536 BCE). In short, scholars do determine the meaning of the 70 years by careful exegesis and historical data – and the mainstream understandings are perfectly consistent with 587 BCE for Jerusalem’s fall. The only people insisting on a rigid 607–537 interpretation are Witness apologists themselves, who ignore the flexible usage of “70 years” in Scripture and the abundance of historical evidence to the contrary.

5. “The Bible never states the 70 years were a period of Babylonian domination.”

Rebuttal: This claim is false – the Bible explicitly connects the 70 years with Babylon’s dominance. Jeremiah 25:11 says “these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” That is a direct statement about Babylonian domination. Jeremiah 25:12 continues that after 70 years “I will punish the king of Babylon”, implying Babylon’s rule would last 70 years until its downfall. Other passages reinforce this: Jeremiah 27:6–7, for example, has God saying he gave “all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar” and that “all nations shall serve him, his son, and his grandson until the time of his own land comes” – which turned out to be about 70 years of Babylonian rule. So the biblical text itself identifies the 70 years with the period of Babylonian empire. Your argument likely relies on a semantic twist: Witness literature sometimes insists the 70 years mean exclusively Jewish exile and land desolation, not “Babylonian rule,” because the verse says Judah would be desolate seventy years (e.g. using 2 Chron. 36 or Dan. 9). However, these are not contradictory concepts. The land of Judah was desolate because Babylon dominated and exiled its people. The Chronicler indeed emphasizes the land rest aspect (a theological point), but he introduces it by saying this fulfilled Jeremiah’s word – and Jeremiah’s prophecy was about serving Babylon. In context, the desolation of Judah was a direct result of Babylonian conquest, which lasted 70 years. Thus, to say “the Bible never states it was Babylonian domination” is simply wrong – Jeremiah said it plainly. Modern scholars overwhelmingly interpret the 70-year prophecy as referring to the duration of Babylon’s hegemony (ca. 609–539 BCE) or the exile under Babylon. The Watch Tower’s insistence that it only refers to Judah’s desolation is a selective reading. In sum, the Bible does state the 70 years were tied to Babylon’s rule, and the end of the 70 years coincides with Babylon’s fall in 539 BCE – not with some imaginary scenario 20 years earlier.

6. “Scholars ignore Josephus’s testimony.”

Rebuttal: On the contrary, historians have examined Josephus’s statements about the exile – and find that Josephus agrees with standard chronology when understood correctly. What scholars “ignore” is not Josephus, but the Watch Tower’s mischaracterization of Josephus. As discussed in point #2, Josephus explicitly says the temple was desolate for 50 years, not 70. Scholars certainly have not ignored that; it is frequently noted that Josephus (writing in the 1st century) simply echoed the biblical 70-year motif in a general sense while elsewhere giving the more historically grounded figure of 50 years. In academic studies of Neo-Babylonian chronology, Josephus is not a primary source – he lived about 600 years after the events. Modern chronology is built on contemporary records: Babylonian chronicles, king-lists, business tablets, and astronomical diaries, which are far more reliable. Josephus’s “testimony” is mainly useful for understanding later Jewish interpretations, not for establishing exact dates. And indeed, Josephus’s later interpolation of “70 years” likely reflects the Jewish tradition of attributing a 70-year exile to fulfill prophecy – a tradition the Chronicler and Daniel also share. But again, Josephus’s actual chronological data (the 50-year figure) matches the historical evidence for a 587 BCE destruction. Far from ignoring Josephus, scholars like Raymond Dougherty and Carl O. Jonsson have pointed out that Watchtower writers quote Josephus out of context to prop up 607. For example, the Watchtower emphasizes Josephus’s phrase “desolate during seventy years” while omitting that Josephus elsewhere limits the desolation to 50 years. In summary, Josephus does not support the 607 date, and scholars have not ignored him – they simply recognize that contemporary Babylonian records carry far more weight than a first-century historian repeating prophetic numbers. And where Josephus gives specifics, he actually sides with the “secular” timeline (50 years desolation).

7. “Scholars ignore the ‘missing 7 years’ in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.”

Rebuttal: There are no “missing 7 years” in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign according to the evidence. This appears to refer to the biblical story in Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar is said to have been insane (“beast-like”) for “seven times” (often interpreted as 7 years). Jehovah’s Witness apologists speculate that secular historians overlook a supposed 7-year period when Nebuchadnezzar was not ruling – perhaps to explain why their chronology is off by 20 years. But this theory holds no water. Babylonian records document Nebuchadnezzar’s reign year-by-year through his 43rd year, with business contracts and dated economic texts for every year from his accession (605 BCE) to his death (~562 BCE). If Nebuchadnezzar had a 7-year hiatus unaccounted for, we would see a gap or irregularity in dated tablets – but we do not. On the contrary, thousands of cuneiform tablets from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign show normal continuity; e.g. tablets are dated to Nebuchadnezzar’s 1st, 2nd, … 37th, … 43rd year without interruption. Astronomical diary VAT 4956 alone records observations in Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year that fix that year to 568/567 BCE, which aligns perfectly with an unbroken reign from 605 BCE onward. If one inserted an extra 7 years of madness, Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year would shift to ~575 BCE – a date that flatly contradicts the celestial positions on VAT 4956. In short, no credible scholar posits a “missing 7-year” gap in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign – this is a purely apologetic invention. The Book of Daniel does not state that Nebuchadnezzar ceased to be king during those years; even if we take the account literally, the Babylonian administration likely continued to date documents by Nebuchadnezzar’s regnal years regardless of his mental state. Thus, there is nothing for scholars to “ignore” – the secular record and the Bible are not in conflict here. All evidence indicates Nebuchadnezzar ruled continuously for 43 years (605–562 BCE), with no mysterious gap. The “7 times” of insanity, if historical, did not alter the chronological count of his reign. It certainly cannot be stretched to support a 20-year chronological distortion required for the 607 theory.

8. “Why isn’t Rolf Furuli’s research published in peer-reviewed journals?”

Rebuttal: The straightforward answer is that Furuli’s 607-based revision is pseudoscientific and would not pass peer review. Rolf J. Furuli is a Jehovah’s Witness and former linguist who self-published books attempting to revise Neo-Babylonian and Persian chronology to accommodate the 607 BCE date. Serious academic journals have stringent standards of evidence. Furuli’s work fails those standards, as documented by experts who have reviewed it. This work relies quite heavily on many quite 'original' observations, conclusions and cherry picking of evidence. It was reviewed as:

"Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship. […] Part of his redating is fairly modest: he accepts the beginning and end of Achaemenid rule according to the standard dating, and puts the beginning of Darius I’s reign only one year later than is conventional. He argues, however, that the first 11 years of Xerxes’ reign overlap with the last 11 of Darius, and that Artaxerxes I came to the throne in 475 BCE and ruled 51 years. (F. has indeed found the interesting fact that a couple of tablets have the years ‘50’ and ‘51’ for Artaxerxes, but he admits that overwhelmingly tablets make 41 his last year and none is found between 41 and 50, suggesting the obvious: a scribal error.) Gifted amateurs have sometimes revolutionized scholarship, notably M. Ventris and Linear B. But Ventris was willing to work with specialists such as J. Chadwick whereas F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history. Perhaps the most telling point is his rather naive argument that the 70 years of Judaean captivity must be a literal 70 years of desolation of the land because some biblical passages make such a statement. A second volume is promised; we shall see if it is any more convincing."
— Lester L Grabbe: Review of "FURULI, ROLF, Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, 1 (Oslo: R. Furuli A/S [[email protected]], 2003), pp. 251. n.p.", in: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 28(5), 40–58,'3. History, Geography and Sociology', 2004. DOI

Furuli claims that the entire established chronology for Babylon and Persia is wrong because he insists the Bible’s 70 years must be literal and unambiguous. To defend this, he had to cast doubt on virtually all primary sources – he alleges that astronomical tablets like VAT 4956 and Strm. Kambys 400 are unreliable and might contain calculated data or errors. Such special pleading does not convince professional historians or Assyriologists, who know these tablets have been studied extensively. Indeed, Furuli identifies only “three principal sources” for Neo-Babylonian chronology (VAT 4956, Strm. Kambys 400, and the Bible) and claims they “cannot be harmonized” – betraying a flawed methodology of ignoring the vast corpus of cuneiform evidence (thousands of business tablets, royal inscriptions, chronicles, etc.) that do harmonize with each other. His work was reviewed by scholar Carl Olof Jonsson, among others, who found that Furuli omitted mention of previous scholarship and of evidence that contradicted his thesis. In Jonsson’s words, Furuli “has an agenda, and he is hiding it.” He presented himself as an objective scholar but did not disclose his Jehovah’s Witness affiliation or engage with contrary evidence (like Jonsson’s own extensive research). These are all red flags that would fail peer review. Academic journals require transparency and engagement with existing research – Furuli provided neither, opting to self-publish. Moreover, when independent experts have looked at Furuli’s specific claims (e.g. his astronomical arguments), they concluded he relied on speculation and misunderstandings of the data. In sum, Furuli’s research isn’t in peer-reviewed literature because it does not meet scholarly standards of evidence. It lives on the fringe, primarily championed by Witness apologists. If his chronology had merit, it would appear in journals of archaeology or Near Eastern studies – but it does not. But here are asome resources:

Rolf Furuli's “response to Carl Olof Jonsson” disproved - By Carl Olof Jonsson

A Review of: Rolf Furuli: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews (Oslo: Rolf Furuli A/S, 2003)

Can the Persian Chronology be Revised? Rolf Furuli's "Response to Jonsson" Examined

ROLF FURULI'S DISCUSSION OF THE BIBLICAL TEXTS ON THE 70 YEARS CRITICALLY EXAMINED BY A PROFESSIONAL LINGUIST

A Review of: Rolf Furuli: Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology (Oslo: Awatu Publishers, 2007)
1. Part I: The astronomical “diary” VAT 4956
2. Part II: The Saturn Tablet BM 76738 + BM 76813 Updated with an addendum 2008-09-02
3. Part III: Are there about 90 “anomalous tablets” from the Neo-Babylonian period?
4. Part IV: The Neo-Babylonian Ledger NBC 4897
5. Part V: Were there unknown Neo-Babylonian kings?
Professor Hermann Hunger: "About the Dating of the Neo-Assyrian Eponym List"

Professor Hermann Hunger: Review of Rolf Furuli, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian Chronology. Vol. II. 2nd ed., Oslo, Awatu Publishers, 2008.

9. “Critics of Furuli don’t use his methodology.”

Rebuttal: That’s correct in one sense: legitimate scholars do not use Furuli’s skewed methodology – because it is fundamentally flawed. Furuli’s approach was to throw out or downplay most of the primary sources and then manipulate a few data points in isolation to force a 607 BCE outcome. For instance, he questioned the authenticity of astronomical observations and suggested many were retrocalculations, implying the Babylonian scribes might have fabricated data – an assertion for which there is no evidence. No responsible historian would adopt such a method, which starts with a conclusion (607 must be right) and works backward, dismissing vast amounts of evidence as “errors” or “corruptions” without solid proof. Critics of Furuli have indeed engaged with his claims – they just do so using sound historical method rather than Furuli’s contrived system. For example, Jonsson’s critical review examines Furuli’s arguments point by point and refutes them using cuneiform evidence and established scholarship. But Jonsson (and others) do not need to replicate Furuli’s method of cherry-picking anomalies; instead, they demonstrate how consilient the standard chronology is. A proper methodology looks at all available data (business documents, astronomical diaries, king lists, etc.) and finds the most coherent timeline – which is exactly what scholars have done, and it aligns with 587 BCE, not 607. Furuli’s method, by contrast, effectively disregards the majority of data as “untrustworthy” to create an alternate reality. In academic discourse, one does not give equal weight to a method that says, in effect, “ignore 90% of the evidence and focus on a few ambiguous texts.” That is why critics don’t “use his methodology”: it is not a valid historical method. Instead, they expose its fallacies. The claim seems to insinuate that unless one plays by Furuli’s self-serving rules, one cannot refute him – but this is upside-down. One refutes him by upholding standard scholarly methodology, which easily shows where he went wrong. And indeed, multiple independent lines of evidence (from Babylonian archives to astronomical calculations) invalidate Furuli’s 607-based chronology without needing any of his dubious techniques.

10. “A 20-year gap exists between secular chronology and ‘Bible chronology’.”

Rebuttal: What you call a “20-year gap” is an artificial discrepancy created by the Watch Tower’s interpretation, not by any actual hole in the historical record. Secular (academic) chronology for Neo-Babylonian kings is well-established and complete – there is no missing gap. The gap arises only if one insists on 607 BCE for Jerusalem’s fall, which forces all Babylonian dates ~20 years earlier than reality. In practice, the Watch Tower’s Bible chronology means re-dating Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year from 587 to 607, and thus shifting his entire reign and those of his successors. This creates a domino effect of adding ~20 extra years somewhere in the Neo-Babylonian/Persian timeline. Where could 20 extra years come from? The Society’s publications have floated vague suggestions (e.g. an undocumented coregency or an error in “secular” records), but the only place to insert such a gap is by lengthening the reigns of Babylon’s kings beyond attested lengths. For example, in the JW timeline Nebuchadnezzar still rules 43 years but from 624–581 BCE instead of 605–562. This pushes his successor Evil-Merodach to 581–579 BCE (rather than 562–560), and so on – ultimately requiring King Nabonidus (the last Babylonian king) to reign 36 years (575–539 BCE) instead of the actual 17 years (556–539). In other words, JW “Bible chronology” invents an extra 19 years for Nabonidus to make the math work. This is historically untenable: we have yearly records of Nabonidus’s reign through his 17th year (when Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539), and not a single text hinting at a longer reign. There is no 20-year gap in the contemporary data – business tablets and royal inscriptions show a continuous sequence of rulers and years that matches the “secular” timeline exactly. The Persian period is equally well-documented; attempts by Watchtower writers (and Furuli) to shave off years from Persian kings have been thoroughly debunked by scholars, because Persian reign lengths are corroborated by Greek histories, Egyptian records, and dozens of Babylonian tablets dated to those kings. In sum, the supposed 20-year gap is a myth. The Bible itself does not give a precise date for Jerusalem’s fall – it is derived from interpretation of the 70 years. When one interprets the biblical 70 years in light of all evidence, there is no gap at all: Babylon fell in 539 BCE, Jews returned by 537 BCE, and Jerusalem had been destroyed around 587 BCE, exactly as all archaeology and astronomy indicate. The “20-year gap” only exists if one rejects the “uncomfortable” data and clings to a 607 date. But that is a self-imposed gap, not a real one. As one scholar aptly put it, secular chronology doesn’t contradict the Bible – it contradicts the Watchtower’s interpretation of the Bible. When biblical chronology is properly aligned with historical facts, there is no missing 20 years – Jerusalem’s fall in 587 BCE and the return ~537 BCE fulfill the prophetic 70-year framework without any need to rewrite history.
178
Insight Book LIES - then tells the TRUTH!
by BoogerMan in
1. watchtower
2. bible
it-1 p. 493 communication - "when the circumcision issue was resolved by the governing body in jerusalem......".

it-1 p. 881 galatians, letter to the - "by reason of a revelation, paul, with barnabas and titus, went to jerusalem regarding the circumcision issue; he learned nothing new from james, peter, and john, but they recognized that he had been empowered for an apostleship to the nations.

" (galatians 2:1-10).
aqwsed12345
@scholar
You have presented a defense of the 607 BCE date for Jerusalem’s fall, hinging on a particular reading of biblical “70 years” prophecies and selective use of historical sources. Below is a point-by-point rebuttal of each claim (1–7), following your own structure, and a conclusion addressing the charge that scholarly refutations are mere “rehashes” that ignore the “Exile–Servitude–Desolation” triad. Each point is examined in light of biblical context and established historical evidence.
1. Jeremiah and Daniel as Eyewitnesses to a 70-Year Exile?
Claim: Jeremiah and Daniel were eyewitnesses whose testimony confirms a literal 70-year Exile that included servitude, exile, and desolation.
Rebuttal: Neither prophet actually “confirms” a 607–537 BCE exile in the way you assert. Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years (Jer. 25:11-12; 29:10) does speak of a 70-year period, but critically, it applies that period to the Babylonian empire’s dominance, not to a full 70-year desolation of Judah. Jeremiah 25:11 foretells that “these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years,” and verse 12 adds that after those seventy years Babylon would be punished. This aligns perfectly with history: Babylon’s supremacy began with its final defeat of Assyria (609 BCE) and ended with Babylon’s own fall (539 BCE) – a span of about 70 years. Jeremiah was not prophesying that Judah would lie empty for exactly 70 years; he was warning that Judah (among other nations) would serve Babylon until Babylon’s power was broken.
Daniel 9:2, written near the end of the exile, shows Daniel reflecting on Jeremiah’s prophecy, not redefining it. Daniel “discerned by the books” that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years, and he prayed for Jerusalem’s restoration (Dan. 9:2-19). The Watchtower you treat Daniel’s wording as an independent eyewitness confirmation that the exile must have been a full 70 years. In reality, Daniel is reading Jeremiah. As one analysis observes, using Daniel’s later interpretation to override Jeremiah’s clear original meaning “turns the matter upside down”. Jeremiah’s own words are unambiguous about the focus of the 70 years: they are tied to Babylon’s period of domination. Daniel and the author of Chronicles, writing after the fact, understood that prophecy in light of the exile that had occurred, but they do not claim the power to rewrite Jeremiah. In short, Jeremiah was an eyewitness to Jerusalem’s fall and Daniel an eyewitness to the exile’s end, but neither actually states that Judah would be completely depopulated for exactly seventy years. Your argument reads an “exile–servitude–desolation” triad into their testimony that Jeremiah himself did not explicitly make. Their prophetic testimony supports a 70-year Babylonian servitude, not a 70-year complete exile from 607 BCE onward.
2. Do Jeremiah 25 and 2 Chronicles 36 Support the Watchtower’s View?
Claim: Jeremiah 25 and 2 Chronicles 36 support the Watchtower’s understanding of the 70 years (i.e. a full 70-year desolation and exile from 607–537 BCE).
Rebuttal: This claim hinges on cherry-picked interpretation. Jeremiah 25:11-12 is unequivocal that the seventy years were to end when Babylon was called to account for its crimes – in other words, when Babylon fell in 539 BCE. Far from supporting an end of the period in 537 BCE, Jeremiah’s prophecy pinpoints Babylon’s downfall as the terminus. The Watchtower reading has to bend Jeremiah’s words, suggesting that the “fulfilled” seventy years only ended when the Jews returned two years after Babylon’s fall. But Jeremiah 25:12 does not say “when seventy years end, Babylon will be destroyed two years later” – it says Babylon itself would be punished at the completion of the seventy years. History confirms Babylon was conquered by Cyrus in 539 BCE, exactly seventy years after 609 BCE (when Babylon’s hegemony began). Your insistence that 537 BCE must be the end-point finds no support in Jeremiah’s text, and indeed contradicts Jeremiah’s clear timing.
What about 2 Chronicles 36:20-21? The Chronicler writes that the Jews were carried off to Babylon “to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths... to fulfill seventy years.” On the surface this might seem to endorse a 70-year land desolation. However, context is key. Verse 20 in the same passage says they served the king of Babylon “until the kingdom of Persia began to reign.” That places the end of servitude in 539 BCE, consistent with Jeremiah. The Chronicler does not contradict Jeremiah; rather, he echoes Jeremiah’s prophecy and explains Judah’s exile as allowing the land to recuperate (a theological explanation drawing on the idea of Sabbath rests in Leviticus 26). Notably, the Chronicler sticks very closely to Jeremiah’s description of the 70 years as a period of servitude under Babylon, ending it when Cyrus of Persia took power. In other words, 2 Chronicles 36 supports that the exile was related to a 70-year period, but it does not insist that Judah lay completely desolate for that entire span. The Watchtower’s understanding reads the Chronicles text as if it said “the land lay desolate for seventy years” – but that is not what it actually states. It says the exile and land rest fulfilled Jeremiah’s words, which as shown above, refer to Babylon’s 70-year dominance. Thus, when read in context, neither Jeremiah 25 nor 2 Chronicles 36 validates a 607–537 BCE timeline. On the contrary, they align the 70 years with the period of Babylonian rule culminating in 539 BCE, leaving the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date with no explicit biblical support.
3. Must the 70 Years Be Literal? (Ezra and Josephus to the Rescue?)
Claim: The 70 years must be taken as a literal time span, and both Ezra (biblical chronology) and the historian Josephus fully support a 607–537 BCE exile.
Rebuttal: Serious scholars do take the seventy years literally – but literally applied to the correct period. There is no dispute that the Bible’s seventy-year prophecy represents a real period of roughly seventy years; the debate is when that period occurred. As shown, the biblical evidence points to 609–539 BCE for Babylon’s dominance (about 70 years), rather than 607–537 BCE for Judah’s exile. Your insistence that it must be 607–537 is circular: it assumes what it needs to prove. Indeed, the Watchtower’s own 2011 article admitted that if one counts seventy years from the accepted date of Cyrus’s decree (~538/537), one does not reach 607 unless you assume the period only began at Jerusalem’s fall. That assumption is precisely what Jeremiah’s text does not support, as we’ve seen. So yes, the “70 years” are literal – but literal in the sense Jeremiah intended, not in the forced sense the Watchtower requires.
The appeal to Ezra is also misguided. The book of Ezra nowhere mentions “607 BCE,” of course; the argument is that Ezra (who likely authored 2 Chronicles) believed Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled by the return from exile. Ezra 1:1 does say Cyrus’s decree came “in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by Jeremiah.” This is true – the exile did end as Jeremiah foretold. But Ezra gives no dates for the length of exile, nor does he say it lasted seventy years. In fact, by synchronizing biblical data with Persian records, Ezra implies the return occurred around 538 BCE (Biblical Evidence Against Watchtower Society Chronology - Mentes Bereanas), which would make the total exile (from Jerusalem’s destruction in 587 BCE to the first return) about fifty years, not seventy. You claim that Ezra “fully supports” a 607–537 span is baseless; Ezra confirms the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy without redefining it. He certainly does not say “the land was desolate for 70 years.”
What of Flavius Josephus? It is true that Josephus, writing centuries later, references the 70-year period. But he is far from an endorsement of Watchtower chronology – in fact, he ends up undermining it. Josephus makes two relevant statements: (a) that the Babylonian captivity lasted seventy years in total, and (b) that the Temple was desolate for a subset of fifty years. Notably, Josephus explicitly writes that Nebuchadnezzar burned the Temple in his 18th year and that it lay desolate for 50 years until Cyrus’ second year (when rebuilding began). This matches the historical timeline of 587 BCE (Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year) to 538/537 BCE (Cyrus’ first regnal year) almost exactly as a 50-year span. In contrast, the Watchtower’s 607–537 BCE scheme requires the Temple to be desolate for 70 years, not 50. Josephus himself would place the fall of Jerusalem around 587 BCE, not 607 – he identifies Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year as the destruction of Jerusalem, which by all standard chronologies is 587. You attempt to harmonize Josephus by saying the 50-year desolation occurred “within” a 70-year interval. But this only highlights the problem: if 50 of the 70 years were the desolation, what were the other 20? Josephus’s data imply that he, like many Jewish readers, saw the seventy years as spanning from an earlier Babylonian campaign (or from the exile of 605 BCE) down to the Temple rebuilding. In any case, Josephus does not support a 607 start. In fact, researchers have noted that Josephus is inconsistent – at times he implies even 100 years of desolation in one passage, elsewhere 70, elsewhere 50. This inconsistency shows that Josephus cannot be treated as an infallible chronological authority. The Watchtower’s habit of quoting Josephus only when he mentions “seventy years” and ignoring his explicit “fifty years” statement is academically dishonest. In sum, there is no “full support” from Ezra or Josephus for the specific 607–537 BCE exile idea. The literal 70-year prophecy is real, but it was fulfilled by Babylon’s rise and fall, not by an imaginary twenty-year-longer exile of Judah.
4. 586 vs. 587 BCE – Are Secular Scholars “Confused”?
Claim: Secular experts can’t even agree whether Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE or 587 BCE, showing confusion. By contrast, Watchtower chronology (607 BCE) is clear and superior.
Rebuttal: Highlighting the 586 vs. 587 debate is a red herring. The one-year difference arises from nuances in reckoning Nebuchadnezzar’s regnal years and the precise month of Jerusalem’s fall – it does not indicate fundamental confusion about the decade. All scholars agree Jerusalem was destroyed in the late 580s BCE, about fifty years before the Jews returned from exile. Whether one calculates the year as 587 or 586 BCE, one is only adjusting minor chronological details. This academic discussion in no way lends credence to 607 BCE, which is twenty years removed from the entire scholarly consensus. Indeed, the very fact that the scholarly debate is confined to 587 vs. 586 underscores how well-established the late 580s date is – no historian places the event anywhere near 607 BCE.
Your argument here is essentially: “scholars differ by one year, so they must be wrong by twenty years – and our completely different 607 date must be right.” This is plainly a non sequitur. The small discrepancy (586/587) is the result of different ways of harmonizing biblical data with Babylonian records, but both dates fall in the correct reign of Nebuchadnezzar and align with the same body of evidence. By contrast, 607 BCE contradicts all that evidence. Thousands of contemporary cuneiform records from the Neo-Babylonian period – including business tablets dated by the reigning king’s year, Babylonian chronicles, and astronomical texts – unequivocally show that Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th regnal year (when Jerusalem fell, per Jeremiah 52:29) was around 587/586 BCE. These sources establish a precise sequence of Babylonian kings with no gaps, leaving no room for an extra twenty years. It is telling that even Rolf Furuli, a Jehovah’s Witness writer who attempted to defend 607, did not initially mention 607 BCE at all in his first volume analyzing Neo-Babylonian chronology – presumably because inserting 607 is indefensible without special pleading.
Rather than indicating “superior” clarity, the 607 BCE claim stands alone, unsupported by any neutral scholarship. The Watchtower’s chronology is “clear” only by fiat – it is based on starting with 537 BCE (the return) and assuming a 70-year exile, thus back-calculating to 607. This is a textbook case of circular reasoning. Meanwhile, scholars have put forward solid reasons for preferring 587 or 586 BCE (most today favor 587 BCE, but either way within months of each other). The Watchtower criticism of scholars “not agreeing on the date” rings hollow when one realizes that all credible historians and archaeologists find Jerusalem’s fall in the 580s BCE, and none find it in 607 BCE. In fact, extensive evidence compiled by researchers like Carl Olof Jonsson in The Gentile Times Reconsidered converges on 587 BCE as the likely year – Jonsson enumerated at least 17 lines of evidence (biblical and secular) pointing to the late 580s BCE. This is hardly confusion; it is a robust consilience of data. By contrast, the Watchtower’s 607 date is entirely dependent on its interpretation of prophecy, against all empirical evidence. Clinging to 607 and mocking scholars for a minor internal debate is like claiming superiority of a flat-earth model because scientists disagree whether a certain mountain is 8,850 or 8,840 meters tall. The 20-year error in Watchtower chronology is of a completely different magnitude than the 1-year question among scholars – and only the former is actually an error at all.
5. VAT 4956 and Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th Year: 588 BCE?
Claim: The astronomical diary VAT 4956 has been misdated by scholars. It actually confirms 588 BCE (not 568 BCE) as Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year, thus supporting the Watchtower’s 607 BCE timeline.
Rebuttal: This claim is a cornerstone of the Watchtower’s 2011 defense of 607 BCE, but it collapses under scrutiny. VAT 4956 is a Babylonian astronomical text that scholars universally date to 568/567 BCE, as it records dozens of lunar and planetary observations that fit that year, which was Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year according to the standard chronology. The Watchtower article seized on a few calculated positions and asserted that “much” of the data could fit 588 BCE. However, this conclusion was achieved only by ignoring most of the evidence and even hypothesizing that ancient or modern conspirators altered the tablet. Jehovah’s Witness researcher Rolf Furuli, whose work influenced the Watchtower, literally suggests that someone in modern times used a “modern grinding machine” to carve the year numbers “37” and “38” and Nebuchadnezzar’s name onto the tablet’s damaged edges – an accusation for which he offers no proof. Such a theory betrays the desperation of the 607 BCE defense: to make VAT 4956 fit 588 BCE, one must propose an unlikely forgery or massive copying error, because otherwise the tablet plainly supports the established chronology.
When the entirety of VAT 4956’s data is considered, the 568 BCE dating stands firm. The diary includes positions of the moon and five planets on specific dates. In 588 BCE, those positions do not line up. Furuli argued that 13 lunar observations seem to match 588 BCE better, but even if that were so, the planetary data are wildly off – which is why he theorized they were later “calculations” inserted by an ancient scribe. In reality, analyses have shown that virtually none of the lunar positions in VAT 4956 genuinely match 588/587 BCE when properly calculated, whereas all of them match 568/567 BCE. The Watchtower’s attempt to fit 588 BCE also required assuming an unusual extra intercalary month not supported by the record, in order to make one eclipse observation “fit” their timeline. As one detailed critique concluded, The Watchtower’s handling of VAT 4956 was based on a “flawed understanding” of Babylonian calendrical cycles, selectively excluding clear planetary references (which are explicitly named on the tablet) to force a 588 BCE alignment.
By contrast, if one dates Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year to 568 BCE (which corresponds to his accession in 605 BCE, destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, etc.), everything falls into place. The tablet’s described lunar eclipses and planetary positions make sense in 568/567 BCE and in no other year near that era. Indeed, modern sky software reconstructions confirm the 568 BCE match and refute the 588 BCE claim. In plain terms, VAT 4956 conclusively anchors Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year in 568 BCE, not 588. Your argument to the contrary relies on fringe revisionist work that mainstream Assyriologists (and even interested amateurs with astronomy tools) have found to be riddled with errors. Hermann Hunger, a renowned Assyriologist, reviewed the Witnesses’ astronomical arguments and found them unconvincing, noting that all relevant celestial data favor the conventional chronology. The Watchtower’s own quotation admits “much” (not all) data fits 588 BCE – a tacit concession that much more of it does not. In fact, attempting to date VAT 4956 to 588 BCE produces multiple absurdities unless one invokes a mysterious ancient fraud. This special pleading stands against the entire corpus of Neo-Babylonian astronomical and economic texts, which, taken together, leave no doubt that Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year = 568 BCE and his 18th year = 587 BCE. The VAT 4956 tablet, rather than vindicating Watchtower chronology, is one of the clearest refutations of it, unless one believes in a conspiracy by ancient scribes with grinding machines.
6. Nebuchadnezzar’s “Seven Times” – Evidence of Missing Years?
Claim: Nebuchadnezzar’s seven-year bout of insanity (“seven times” in Daniel 4) reflects real missing years in Babylonian history, presumably explaining a gap in chronology.
Rebuttal: This imaginative claim lacks any supporting evidence in the historical record. Daniel 4 narrates Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling by God, during which he was insane for “seven times” (widely understood as seven years). You suggest that secular historians have failed to account for these seven years – implying that the Neo-Babylonian timeline might be missing seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, thereby helping the 607 BCE theory. But all actual data shows no such gap. Babylonian chronology, from Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar through Nebuchadnezzar and on to his successors, is well documented year-by-year. Business contract tablets and administrative texts are dated by the reigning king and regnal year – and they cover every year of Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign without interruption. If Nebuchadnezzar had spent seven years off the throne or incapacitated, we would expect to see anomalies (e.g. an interregnum, co-regency, or at least a note of a king’s absence). We see none. The Babylonian records show Nebuchadnezzar reigning continuously, and then being succeeded by his son Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach) the very next year after Nebuchadnezzar’s last (43rd) – with no extra seven years inserted. In fact, Babylonian sources and later catalogues (Ptolemy’s Canon, Berossus, etc.) all agree on the length of each king’s reign. The idea of “missing years” is a fantasy: as one scholar quipped, “quantities of dated documents exist for each of [the Neo-Babylonian kings’ reigns],” leaving no room for phantom rulers or extra years.
Furthermore, the Bible itself does not support adding seven extra years to Nebuchadnezzar’s chronology. Daniel 4 does not say Nebuchadnezzar ceased to be king during his madness – to the contrary, it implies his kingdom was preserved for him until he recovered (Dan. 4:26, “your kingdom will be assured to you”). His officials likely managed affairs in his name, and the official counting of years continued unabated. (Similarly, if a modern monarch is incapacitated for a time, the calendar years of their reign don’t pause.) Indeed, 2 Kings 25:27 records that Evil-Merodach became king in Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year of Jehoiachin’s exile – a synchronism that fits perfectly with Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign (since Jehoiachin’s exile year 37 = Nebuchadnezzar’s year 43) without any gap. There is thus zero indication in Scripture or history that Nebuchadnezzar reigned 50 years instead of 43. The “seven times” of Daniel 4 are meant as a theological lesson about humility, not as a cryptic alteration of chronology.
Your claim appears to stem from the fact that Watchtower doctrine assigns a secondary prophetic meaning to those “seven times” – equating them to 2,520 years and ending in 1914 CE. But that is a separate doctrinal leap. Nowhere does secular history show a mysterious seven-year hole requiring explanation. If anything, the notion is self-defeating: if Nebuchadnezzar truly had “missing years” unaccounted for by his chroniclers, the Watchtower could not reliably use his reign-length to derive 607 BCE in the first place. In reality, all evidence indicates no missing period: Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity did not expunge seven years from the calendar of Babylon. The chronology stands solid, and 607 BCE would require not seven but twenty missing years (since the well-documented 587 BCE destruction would have to be shifted two decades earlier). Proponents of 607 have never identified where those twenty years could come from without dismissing a mountain of evidence. In summary, Nebuchadnezzar’s “seven times” are a non-factor for historical dating – they leave no trace in the chronological record and cannot be invoked to paper over the glaring 20-year discrepancy in Watchtower chronology.
7. Josephus on the 70 Years and Temple Desolation
Claim: Josephus supports the Watchtower chronology, particularly by noting the temple’s desolation lasted 50 years within a 70-year interval – just as the Watchtower teaches.
Rebuttal: This is a misrepresentation of both Josephus and Watchtower teaching. As discussed in point 3, Josephus gives mixed information: he mentions 70 years in some places, but also explicitly says the Temple was desolate for 50 years. Your here try to have it both ways – using Josephus’s 50-year statement (which actually matches the conventional 587–537 BCE span) and wrapping it into a vague “70-year interval” to claim support for 607–537. This is historical sleight-of-hand. The Watchtower teaches that Jerusalem was completely desolate for the entire 70 years (607–537 BCE). Josephus does not say that. Rather, Josephus indicates a 70-year period from the time of Judah’s initial calamities until the restoration, but within that, only 50 years of actual desolation of the Temple. In Against Apion I.21, he writes: “Nebuchadnezzar... laid our temple desolate, and so it lay in that state of obscurity for fifty years, but that in the second year of Cyrus its foundations were laid”. This clearly places a 50-year desolation from 587 BCE (Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year) to 537 BCE (Cyrus’ 2nd year). In the same work (Apion I.19), Josephus refers to an “interval of seventy years” of Babylonian captivity. The simplest reconciliation of Josephus’ statements is that he understood the Jews’ captivity as seventy years (perhaps counting from an earlier exile in 605 BCE down to 536/535 BCE), but recognized that the worst period, when the Temple lay in ruins, was fifty years.
This in no way “fully supports” the Watchtower’s version of events. On the contrary, Josephus’s figures reinforce the fact that the Temple was not desolate for 70 years. Watchtower publications often omit Josephus’s 50-year statement precisely because it undermines their claim of a 70-year total desolation. It is only by a convoluted reading that one can claim Josephus agrees with the notion that the exile ran from 607 to 537 BCE. If we were to take Josephus at face value, we’d place Jerusalem’s fall in the 18th of Nebuchadnezzar (as he does) – which, by all evidence, was 587 BCE, not 607. In fact, Josephus’s assignment of the Temple’s destruction to Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year aligns with the biblical record (Jer. 52:29) and with standard chronology, not with the Watchtower’s altered timeline. Your argument glosses over this. It’s worth noting too that Josephus, writing in the 1st century, did not have access to the precise records we have today; he was attempting to make sense of biblical prophecies and second-hand historical memories. Where Josephus’s accounts conflict with proven historical data (e.g. the length of certain reigns), historians rightly favor the concrete data. The Watchtower’s approach, however, cherry-picks Josephus when convenient (citing the ambiguous “seventy” references) and explains away his explicit “fifty” reference – betraying a bias toward dogma over evidence. In truth, Josephus provides no support for a 607 BCE destruction of Jerusalem. If anything, his work underscores that the Jewish exile and desolation were understood to have been about fifty years, consistent with a 587 BCE fall and 537 BCE return. The “70-year interval” he and others mentioned is simply another way of referring to the Babylonian captivity as a whole (often counting from an earlier starting point). Thus, claim 7 collapses: Josephus is not an ally of the 607 BCE chronology, and the attempt to press him into service only highlights the weakness of the Watchtower’s case.
Conclusion
Your defense of the 607 BCE date relies on a rigidly literalist yet inconsistent reading of Scripture, coupled with speculative and conspiratorial reinterpretations of historical data. Each of the seven claims, when examined closely, fails to stand up to academic scrutiny:
- Biblically, you conflate “servitude, exile, and desolation” into one blanket 70-year period, whereas the texts (Jeremiah, Daniel, Chronicles, Ezra) distinguish the 70 years of Babylonian domination from the shorter period of Jerusalem’s actual desolation. The “Exile–Servitude–Desolation triad” is not an established biblical formula but a Watchtower contrivance that forces the scriptures into an unwarranted chronology. Far from ignoring this, scholarly rebuttals like Gentile Times Reconsidered have methodically dismantled that conflation.
- Historically, your arguments collapse under the weight of evidence. The claim of secular confusion (586 vs 587) is a smokescreen – the real confusion is in Watchtower writings that must deny or distort a vast array of primary sources. Business tablets dated to Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, royal chronicles, and astronomical diaries all point to the conventional chronology. Critical analyses of Jehovah’s Witness apologetic literature – including detailed critiques of Rolf Furuli’s works by experts – have shown that the Society’s chronology is not only unsubstantiated but flatly contradicted by the data. These scholarly refutations are hardly “boring rehashes”; they often break new ground in examining Watchtower claims, and they have accounted for the very points your raise. For instance, multiple publications have dealt extensively with the Jeremiah 25/29 issue, the Chronicles interpretation, the 70 vs 50 years in Josephus, and the astronomical texts like VAT 4956, thoroughly rebutting the Watchtower’s interpretations.
The dismissive charge that all academic rebuttals are mere rehashes is ironic, given that the Watchtower’s 607 BCE defense recycles arguments long ago posed – and refuted – in debates with scholars. In reality, it is you who rehash the same points (e.g. attacking “Ptolemy’s Canon” or positing missing years) that have been answered by historians repeatedly over the last century. The scholarship marshaled against 607 BCE is extensive and up-to-date, incorporating discoveries from cuneiform texts and refined biblical exegesis. These rebuttals have not been refuted by the Society – indeed, the Society often ignores them, preferring to present its followers with a simplified narrative. But ignoring counter-evidence is not the same as refuting it.
In conclusion, the 607 BCE date for Jerusalem’s fall is untenable both biblically and historically. Jeremiah and Daniel do not support it when properly understood. The chronicler of 2 Chronicles does not support it. Ezra and Josephus do not truly support it. Secular records absolutely devastate it, and attempts to salvage it via VAT 4956 or “missing years” require extraordinary assumptions that specialists have rejected. The Watchtower’s chronology is a house built on sand – specifically, on a misreading of the 70-year prophecy. No amount of polemical distraction can change the fact that 607 BCE is off by twenty years. Meanwhile, 587 BCE (or 586 BCE) for Jerusalem’s destruction remains supported by an overwhelming convergence of Biblical context and empirical data. Your arguments, far from demolishing the secular chronology, only highlight the lengths to which one must go to defend 607. It is fitting to close with the observation that even Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own former scholars have reconsidered and abandoned the 607 BCE dogma in light of the evidence. The truth is not “boring,” and repeating it is not a “rehash” – it is necessary so long as misinformation persists. The evidence, once again, confirms: Jerusalem fell in 587 BCE, and the “70 years” ended in 539 BCE with Babylon’s fall, exactly as history and an honest reading of Scripture attest.
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Insight Book LIES - then tells the TRUTH!
by BoogerMan in
1. watchtower
2. bible
it-1 p. 493 communication - "when the circumcision issue was resolved by the governing body in jerusalem......".

it-1 p. 881 galatians, letter to the - "by reason of a revelation, paul, with barnabas and titus, went to jerusalem regarding the circumcision issue; he learned nothing new from james, peter, and john, but they recognized that he had been empowered for an apostleship to the nations.

" (galatians 2:1-10).
aqwsed12345

@scholar
1. Jeremiah and Daniel as “Eyewitnesses” of the 70 Years Prophecy
Jehovah’s Witness apologists often appeal to the authority of the prophets Jeremiah and Daniel – who experienced the Judean exile period firsthand – to insist that the Babylonian captivity lasted a full 70 years (607–537 BCE). It is true that Jeremiah and Daniel were contemporaries of the exile. However, their own writings do not actually state that Jerusalem would lie desolate for a 70-year exile. Rather, Jeremiah’s prophecy explicitly applies the 70 years to Babylon’s period of supremacy, not to the duration of Jerusalem’s desolation. In Jeremiah 25:11, the prophet announces: “These nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years,” indicating 70 years of Babylonian domination, after which Babylon itself would be punished (Jer. 25:12). This is exactly what happened – roughly seventy years passed from Babylon’s rise to power (after Assyria’s fall in 609 BCE) to its fall to Cyrus in 539 BCE. Jeremiah never said that the Jews would be in exile or that the land would be empty for that entire period.
Daniel, writing near the end of the Babylonian Empire, likewise does not redefine Jeremiah’s prophecy as a 70-year exile. Daniel 9:2 reports that Daniel “discerned by the books the number of years” foretold by Jeremiah, “to fulfill the desolation of Jerusalem, namely seventy years.” Rather than introducing a new chronology, Daniel was simply acknowledging Jeremiah’s prophecy and praying for its fulfillment as Babylon’s 70-year reign neared its end. Notably, Daniel himself had been exiled in the first deportation (605 BCE), so by 539 BCE he had been in Babylon about 66 years – yet he still viewed Jeremiah’s “seventy years” as coming to completion. This implies that Daniel did not rigidly interpret the prophecy as requiring a literal 70-year exile for every last Jew, but understood it in the context of Babylon’s dominance. Indeed, the Watchtower’s own defenders admit that Jeremiah’s text “does not say explicitly” that the 70 years referred to Jerusalem’s desolation. The attempt to use Daniel and the Chronicler (the author of 2 Chronicles) as later interpreters to overturn the plain sense of Jeremiah’s words “turns the matter upside down,” as one scholar observes. The proper approach – accepted in sound exegesis – is to let Jeremiah’s explicit statements set the framework, rather than reading into them a doctrine of a 70-year total exile. In fact, a critical examination of the Hebrew text shows that nowhere does the Bible unambiguously state “the exile would last 70 years.” As one linguistic analysis concludes: “there is no such passage anywhere in the entire Bible” – the text leaves the duration to be inferred from historical facts, which align with an exile of about half a century, not seventy years. In short, Jeremiah was an eyewitness to Judah’s last days, but what he witnessed and prophesied was a seventy-year period of Babylonian hegemony – not a seventy-year empty land. Daniel, likewise an eyewitness, confirms Jeremiah’s prophecy was on schedule to end with Babylon’s fall, without ever asserting that Jerusalem had already been desolate for 70 years. Appealing to these prophets’ authority cannot rescue the 607 BCE theory, because their writings simply do not support the notion of a 70-year desolation from 607 to 537 BCE. On the contrary, modern scholarship unanimously places Jerusalem’s fall about twenty years later (587/586 BCE), meaning any “eye-witness” argument for 607 BCE is fundamentally at odds with both the biblical text and established history.
2. Interpreting Jeremiah 25 and 2 Chronicles 36 in Context
The cornerstone of the Watchtower’s 607 BCE claim is its reading of certain Bible passages – chiefly Jeremiah 25:11-12 and 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 – as proof that the entire exile lasted a full seventy years of unbroken desolation. This interpretation does not hold up under careful exegesis. As noted, Jeremiah 25:11 foretells “seventy years” of nations serving the king of Babylon. It does not say that Judah would be uninhabited for seventy years; rather, Judah (along with surrounding nations) would be subject to Babylonian rule for that span. Jeremiah 25:12 then specifies that after those 70 years are completed, God would punish the king of Babylon, which happened when Cyrus conquered Babylon (539 BCE). Thus, in its plain meaning, Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled by the period of Babylonian domination (c. 609–539 BCE) – an interpretation that aligns perfectly with the historical record.
What about 2 Chronicles 36:20-21? This verse describes the aftermath of Jerusalem’s fall, saying the survivors were exiled to Babylon “until the kingdom of Persia began to reign, to fulfill Jehovah’s word by Jeremiah, until the land had paid off its sabbaths all the days of lying desolated – to fulfill seventy years.” At first glance (especially in some translations), this might seem to support a 70-year desolation. In reality, the Chronicler is summarizing Jeremiah’s prophecy and its fulfillment, not redefining its timeframe. The construction “until… until… seventy years” indicates that the land’s desolation (which did occur after 586 BCE) lasted until the prophetic period ended with Persia’s ascendancy. In other words, the land “enjoyed its sabbath rests” during the decades of exile while the 70 years were running their course, coming to an end when Cyrus’s decree allowed the return (538–537 BCE). The Chronicler explicitly ties this to “fulfilling the word of Jehovah by Jeremiah” – a word that, as we have seen, spoke of seventy years of Babylonian rule. He does not say that Jeremiah’s prophecy was a “70-year exile”; that is an assumption read into the text. Indeed, if one translates the Hebrew literally, 2 Chronicles 36:21 is describing that the land lay desolate during those years up to the time the prophecy was fulfilled – not that the desolation itself lasted 70 years. The Jewish exiles remained in Babylon “until the kingdom of Persia began to reign,” which is precisely when Jeremiah’s 70 years expired.
Crucially, neither Jeremiah nor the Chronicler actually uses the phrase “seventy-year exile.” The notion that “70 years means a literal 70-year captivity of Judah” is a later extrapolation – one that the text itself does not demand. In fact, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, we find internal evidence that the exile did not last a full seventy years. The prophet Zechariah, writing in 518 BCE (about 19 years after the first returnees arrived back in Judah), referred to God’s indignation on Jerusalem “these seventy years” (Zech. 1:12) – a clear allusion to Jeremiah’s prophecy. This suggests that by Zechariah’s day the prophesied period was already seen as essentially complete, even though only about 68 years had passed since 586 BCE. The simplest explanation is that the 70 years were a rounded, prophetic period, not a precise count of empty years for the land. As one expert observer bluntly notes, “God’s inspired Word nowhere states explicitly how long that period [the exile] was to last” – the Bible leaves it to readers to piece together the chronology, which in fact yields about 50 years of exile (from 586 to ~536 BCE). Thus 2 Chronicles 36, read in context, confirms Jeremiah’s 70-year prophecy was fulfilled with the fall of Babylon and the return under Cyrus, but it does not teach a 607 BCE destruction. The chronicler’s intent was to show that Jeremiah’s word came true, not to retroactively declare that Judah must have been desolate for an exact 70 years. In sum, Jeremiah 25 and 2 Chronicles 36 align to support the traditional 587/586 BCE date for Jerusalem’s fall (with a roughly 50-year exile), not the 607 BCE theory. Any argument to the contrary must ignore the plain wording that the 70 years were linked to Babylon’s empire, not exclusively to Jerusalem’s ruin.
3. Did the Jewish Exile Last a Literal 70 Years?
According to Watchtower publications, the Jews’ Babylonian exile lasted exactly seventy years – supposedly from the summer of 607 BCE (Jerusalem’s destruction, in their view) until the Jews’ restoration in 537 BCE. This claim is flatly contradicted by both the Bible’s chronology and historical data. As demonstrated above, the Bible does not explicitly say “the exile will be 70 years.” In fact, multiple scriptures indicate a shorter exile. The prophet Ezekiel, for example, dated his prophecies by the years of exile of King Jehoiachin (Ezek. 1:2, 40:1). Jehoiachin was taken to Babylon in 597 BCE; by Babylon’s fall in 539 BCE, only 58 years had elapsed since that first major deportation. Even counting from the final destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, the interval to 537 BCE is about 49 years. This is the figure acknowledged by modern scholarship: roughly half a century of exile. Notably, the Bible’s historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah – which narrate the return – never state that the exile had lasted 70 years. They simply report Cyrus’s decree ending Jewish captivity in his first year, consistent with the prophecy of “seventy years for Babylon” having ended (Ezra 1:1).
From a historical perspective, all evidence shows that the Judean exile was about fifty years. Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 587/586 BCE, and Cyrus’s decree allowing Jews to go home was issued in 538 BCE; many Jews were back in Judah by 537 BCE. Contemporary records (both biblical and Babylonian) attest that the Babylonian empire had begun dominating the region decades before Jerusalem’s fall (captives from Judah were taken to Babylon in 605 and 597 BCE, and Judah became a vassal by 605). Therefore, the period during which Judah and the surrounding nations “served the king of Babylon” was approximately 70 years (from the 605 BCE Battle of Carchemish or the 609 BCE fall of Assyria, down to 539 BCE) – fulfilling Jeremiah’s words. But the period during which the people of Judah were actually in exile from their land was shorter. This understanding is reflected even in second-temple Jewish literature: for example, the prophet Zechariah’s references imply the 70 years of divine anger were effectively over by the late sixth century.
Jehovah’s Witness apologists argue that “70 means 70” – insisting the number cannot be symbolic or approximate. Yet, ironically, they acknowledge that other biblical time-spans (such as the “40 years” of Judah’s punishment in Ezekiel 4:6, or the “400 years” of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt in Gen. 15:13) were not always exact to the year, but rounded for theological emphasis. There is broad agreement among historians and biblical scholars that the “70 years” in Jeremiah is a schematic or symbolic figure denoting a long, complete period of Babylonian domination, rather than the precise length of the exile (So Was It 70 Years, or Not? | BJU Seminary). As Dr. Rolf Furuli – a defender of the Watchtower view – admits in formulating the argument, he cannot actually point to a single verse that unambiguously states “the exile lasted 70 years,” only to inferences from Daniel and Chronicles. And as we have seen, those inferences crumble under scrutiny. In reality, the Jews’ exile in Babylon ran from 586 to 538 BCE (if measured from the final deportation to the decree of Cyrus), which is about 48 years – in full harmony with the copious historical data from Babylon and Persia, and with the Bible’s own internal chronology. No faithful “Jehovah’s Witnesses” remained in Babylon until a 70th year in 537 BCE waiting to leave; they had long since gone home. The Watchtower’s insistence on a literal 70-year exile is a prime example of forcing a symbolic prophetic number into a rigid chronological timeline that neither Scripture nor history supports.
In summary, the claim that the Jewish exile was exactly seventy years (607–537 BCE) finds no support in the biblical text once it is carefully examined in context. The Bible indicates a seventy-year period for Babylon, and a roughly fifty-year exile for Judah. By conflating those distinct concepts, the 607 BCE defense imposes a chronological straightjacket on Scripture that obscures the actual fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy. The historical reality is that Jerusalem’s desolation lasted about fifty years, not seventy – and this is entirely consistent with God’s word when properly understood.
4. The 586 vs. 587 BCE Debate – No Support for 607 BCE
Watchtower publications frequently point out that secular historians are “undecided” whether Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE or 587 BCE, implying that scholarly chronology is confused and unreliable. It is true that scholars have cited both 587 and 586 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction. However, this one-year discrepancy is a far cry from the 20-year revision that the 607 BCE theory demands – and it arises from minor ambiguities in interpreting biblical data, not from any serious doubt about the overall timeline. In fact, whether one prefers 587 BCE or 586 BCE, the historical and archaeological community is united that Jerusalem’s fall occurred in the late 7th century BCE, not in 607 BCE. The 586/587 question hinges on how to correlate Babylonian regnal years with the Jewish civil year. The Babylonian chronicles record Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in terms of Babylon’s calendar, while the Bible records Judah’s kings in Judah’s calendar – leading to an uncertainty of a few months in 587/586 BCE for the exact timing of the final siege’s end. Because the specific Babylonian tablet describing the capture of Jerusalem is not extant, historians rely on the Bible’s chronological notes (e.g. “Zedekiah’s 11th year, 4th month, 9th day”) tied to known anchor points like Nebuchadnezzar’s accession and the well-dated earlier events of 605 BCE (Battle of Carchemish) and 597 BCE (capture of Jehoiachin). Using these anchors, it is clear that Jerusalem fell about 18–19 years after 605 BCE – hence the two possibilities, 587 BCE or 586 BCE, depending on whether one counts Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year as year 0 or year 1 in Judah’s reckoning.
Crucially, this scholarly debate is confined to a one-year margin and does not indicate any broader uncertainty about the chronology. In a survey of the literature, Jeremy Hughes found essentially an even split: a number of authorities favor 586 BCE and an equal number favor 587 BCE. Renowned historians such as Edwin Thiele opted for 586 BCE, while others like Donald Wiseman and K. A. Kitchen have argued for 587 BCE. The very fact that the disagreement is so narrow highlights how solid the overall dating is – all experts place the event around that time, based on the convergence of biblical and Babylonian records. Notably, none of these historians even remotely suggests a date in the 600s BCE (let alone as late as 607 BCE) for Jerusalem’s fall. The Watchtower’s assertion that scholars are “confused” about the date is misleading: they are debating which summer – 587 or 586 BCE – the city fell, not whether it fell decades earlier. The uncertainty arises from scriptural ambiguities (like whether the biblical author counted Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year), not because of any flaw in the secular chronology.
In practical terms, many modern references use 587 BCE as the date of Jerusalem’s destruction (and 586 BCE for the burning of the temple the following month), while some use 586 BCE for the city’s fall – but this is often simply a difference in inclusive reckoning. The important point is that both dates lie within one year of each other, and both are about twenty years later than 607 BCE. The existence of a 586/587 debate therefore in no way validates the Watchtower’s chronology. If anything, it underscores how no credible historian considers moving the date by two decades. Indeed, 607 BCE finds no support in any of the extensive scholarly literature on the fall of Jerusalem. It is telling that Jehovah’s Witness writers highlight a one-year academic debate as if it cast doubt on the whole chronology; in reality, such a minor dispute is typical in ancient chronology and does not conceal any hidden +20 year gap. By analogy, if ten researchers debated whether an event happened in late 2020 or early 2021, none of them would accept an argument that it actually happened in 2000 – yet the Watchtower’s defense of 607 BCE amounts to a claim of that magnitude. In conclusion, the 586 vs. 587 BCE issue is a red herring. Scholars disagree only on a technicality of calendrical calculation, while unanimously affirming that Jerusalem fell around 587 BCE. This consensus, built on a wealth of biblical and Babylonian evidence, utterly excludes 607 BCE as a plausible date.
5. Astronomical Data: VAT 4956 and the Confirmation of Neo-Babylonian Chronology
One of the most striking lines of evidence against the 607 BCE chronology is astronomical. The cuneiform tablet VAT 4956 – an astronomical diary from Babylon – provides a detailed record of planetary and lunar observations dated explicitly to “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.” This tablet has long been known to correlate unambiguously with 568/567 BCE, confirming that Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year fell in 568/567 BCE (which in turn pegs his 18th year – the year of Jerusalem’s fall – to 587/586 BCE)). Faced with this powerful evidence, the Watchtower’s 2011 apologetic article attempted an audacious counter-claim: it argued that “much of the astronomical data in VAT 4956 fits the year 588 B.C.E. as the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar II,” thereby supporting 607 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction. This claim, however, is deeply flawed and has been sharply refuted by specialists. In reality, VAT 4956 overwhelmingly confirms the conventional chronology, and the Watchtower’s reinterpretation relies on selective use of data and misrepresentation of scholarly sources.
First, it must be noted how complete the astronomical evidence on VAT 4956 is. The tablet records dozens of observations: positions of the moon relative to reference stars on specific nights, conjunctions and positions of planets (“Mercury, Venus, Saturn,” etc.) on specific dates, and even a lunar eclipse. These observations act like celestial timestamps. When modern astronomers or historians plug these data into astronomy software or mathematical calculations, they find one clear match in the mid-6th century BCE. Indeed, as a standard scholarly publication on Babylonian astronomy concludes, VAT 4956 “contains lunar and planetary observations … from the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar conclusively dated to [568/567 BCE].” No credible academic study has dated VAT 4956 to 588 BCE – because doing so produces numerous mismatches with the recorded positions of celestial bodies. The Watchtower article arrived at its 588 BCE claim only by ignoring a large portion of the tablet’s data. Specifically, the article admitted that it “did not use” the planetary observations from VAT 4956 in its analysis, on the rationale that “some of the signs for the names of the planets and their positions are unclear” and therefore “open to speculation”. Instead, the Society’s writers focused solely on 13 instances of the moon’s position. By this cherry-picked approach, they claimed a significant number of lunar observations could align with 588 BCE. But this is highly misleading: the excluded planetary data are in fact crucial, and they strongly pinpoint 568 BCE, not 588. The Watchtower’s own source, assyriologist David Brown, was cited out of context to justify dismissing the planetary records. In truth, Brown was discussing variants of planet nomenclature over centuries, not saying VAT 4956’s data were too unclear to use. The tablet actually identifies the planets by their well-known “A-names” (distinctive Babylonian names), which are not ambiguous at all in context. Thus, there was no valid reason to exclude the planetary observations – except that they conflict with the 588 BCE hypothesis. By omitting them, the Watchtower article essentially threw out the bulk of the evidence that professional astronomers consider when dating such tablets. This is special pleading, not sound scholarship.
Secondly, even within the lunar data, the Watchtower’s analysis had to employ special assumptions to force a 588 BCE fit. For example, one key observation on VAT 4956 is a lunar eclipse recorded in “month 3, day 15” of Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year. In 568 BCE, there was a lunar eclipse that exactly matches this entry (on July 4, 568 BCE, which corresponds to 15 Simanu of Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year under the normal Babylonian calendar). In 588 BCE, however, the only lunar eclipse fell on July 15, which would ordinarily correspond to month 4 of that year. To get around this, the Society’s writers proposed that in Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year the Babylonian calendar started two months late – i.e. that an extra intercalary month had pushed Nisanu (month 1) all the way to May of 588 BCE. This is an unconventional and highly implausible interpretation of the Babylonian calendar. Babylonian months began with the sighting of the new moon around the spring equinox; in practice, Nisanu 1 in Babylon never started as late as the beginning of May. The Watchtower admits that normally that year’s Nisanu would have begun in early April 588 BCE, but claims a tablet reference to an intercalary month justifies moving New Year to May 2/3, 588. In fact, as analysts have pointed out, even with an intercalary month the Babylonians would not start the next year beyond about early April. Pushing Nisanu to May is far outside known Babylonian practice. When one examines the details, the supposed “perfect fit” of the July 15, 588 BCE eclipse is achieved only by contorting the calendar in a way Babylonian astronomer-scribes themselves would not have done. In contrast, the conventional placement (Nisanu starting in early April 568 BCE) produces an eclipse in month 3 that matches VAT 4956 with no special pleading. The Watchtower’s approach here amounts to special-case special pleading piled on top of data exclusion – all to dodge the straightforward implication of the tablet’s content.
When all the astronomical observations on VAT 4956 are considered – lunar and planetary – the evidence for 568/567 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year is overwhelming. Experts have calculated that 13 out of 15 lunar positions on the tablet match 568/7 BCE perfectly (the slight discrepancies being attributable to normal observational error), and all 5 planetary positions recorded on VAT 4956 also correspond to where the planets would have been in 568 BCE. By contrast, if one tries to date those planetary positions to 588 BCE, none of them line up correctly – which is precisely why the Society chose to ignore them. The Society’s claim that “much” of the data fits 588 BCE is only true in the sense that by dropping most data points and tweaking a calendar, one can get some of them to fit. This is not a sound method. Tellingly, no peer-reviewed scholarly publication has endorsed the 588 BCE interpretation. It exists solely in Watchtower apologetics and the writings of one Jehovah’s Witness advocate (Rolf Furuli). On the other hand, the standard 568 BCE dating of Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year has stood unchallenged in academia for decades, precisely because it is so well supported.
It is also worth noting the double standard in the Watchtower’s use of astronomical evidence. In the same 2011 article, the Society accepts and cites the computed dates for Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, which are derived from the same corpus of Neo-Babylonian tablets that include VAT 4956. For example, another astronomical text (the so-called “Strm. Kambys 400” tablet) fixes the seventh year of Cambyses II to 523 BCE by means of an eclipse – a result the Watchtower does not dispute when discussing Persian chronology. The Society even uses such tablets to establish 539 BCE, the pivotal date that it agrees on. Yet, when an equally robust tablet (VAT 4956) points to a date that undermines 607 BCE, the Society suddenly declares the evidence “ambiguous” and the methods “speculative.” In fact, Babylonian astronomical diaries like VAT 4956 are widely regarded as reliable for fixing absolute dates because the motions of the moon and planets are calculable and were accurately observed by the Babylonians. As one astronomer notes, even without reading the cuneiform script, a modern investigator can use the sky data on VAT 4956 to “reach [their] own conclusions based on the available evidence” – and the conclusion will invariably be Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year = 568/7 BCE (The Astronomical Diary, VAT 4956 | aperi mentis). The Watchtower’s attempts to dismiss the astronomical data have been characterized by specialists as misleading and unjustified. Scholars have pointed out that the Society misquoted sources like Hunger, Steele, and Brown in its discussion of the tablet, giving the false impression that experts question the tablet’s evidentiary value, whereas in reality experts affirm its accuracy and felt misrepresented by the Watchtower’s citations (The Jerusalem Book).
In conclusion, VAT 4956 stands as a powerful witness against the 607 BCE chronology. Its recorded celestial coordinates anchor Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year in 568 BCE, which by extension places his 18th year (the year of Jerusalem’s fall) in 587 BCE. The Watchtower’s claim that the tablet can be re-dated to 588 BCE does not withstand critical examination – it is achieved only by excluding inconvenient planetary data and by positing an abnormal Babylonian calendar for that year. When one “lets the stars speak” without bias, the heavens declare that the conventional Neo-Babylonian chronology is correct to within a month or two. Far from supporting 607 BCE, the astronomical diary VAT 4956 definitively refutes it. This is why no secular historian rejects the established dates of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. The only way to maintain 607 BCE is to cast aside objective astronomical evidence – a step that underscores the unsoundness of the Watchtower’s position.
6. The Myth of “Missing Years” in Neo-Babylonian History
Because the evidence for Jerusalem’s fall in 587/586 BCE is so abundant, Watchtower defenders are forced to speculate that the historical record might be incomplete – that perhaps there were “missing years” (or even missing kings) in the Neo-Babylonian chronology that scholars have overlooked. The 2011 Watchtower article hints at this by noting “gaps” in the Babylonian Chronicles and pointing out a few apparent discrepancies in business documents during the transitions between kings. The suggestion is that the reigning king list might have unknown figures or that existing kings may have ruled longer than the records show, thus adding extra years that could shift the timeline back to allow a 607 BCE destruction. This suggestion has been thoroughly investigated – and decisively rejected – by historians. In reality, the Neo-Babylonian chronology (spanning from Nabopolassar’s ascension in 626 BCE to Cyrus’s conquest in 539 BCE) is one of the best-documented periods in ancient history, with a convergence of numerous sources: king lists, chronicles, thousands of dated economic tablets, and later classical accounts. There are no unaccounted gaps of twenty years.
Consider the reign of Nebuchadnezzar himself. He is known to have reigned 43 years (605–562 BCE). We possess over 500 economic (business) tablets dated to specific days and months within Nebuchadnezzar’s regnal years. These tablets form a near-continuous year-by-year record of his rule. The same is true for his successors: we have contemporaneous tablets dated to the reigns of Evil-Merodach (Amel-Marduk), Neriglissar, and Nabonidus, covering every year attributed to them by historians. If, for example, Nebuchadnezzar had actually reigned 20 years longer than thought (as the 607 BCE theory effectively requires), there would be 20 years of missing business tablets – a glaring hole in the otherwise continuous stream of dated documents. But no such hole exists. On the contrary, tablets dated to Nebuchadnezzar’s 43rd year exist, followed by tablets from Evil-Merodach’s accession and 1st year, then his 2nd year, then Neriglissar’s accession and so forth. The sequence of reigning years is seamless. Historian Rolf Furuli, in his attempt to challenge the chronology, scoured these texts for anomalies. He found a couple of instances where an accession-year tablet of one king had an earlier date in the year than a final-year tablet of the previous king – a result of how Babylonians counted regnal years by New Year’s, causing slight overlaps at the new year. Such minor overlaps are well understood by scholars and do not add extra years; they certainly do not imply hidden rulers. In fact, these overlaps occur in the matter of months (e.g. Nebuchadnezzar died in the autumn of his 43rd year, Evil-Merodach’s accession year began earlier that spring by Babylonian reckoning). The Watchtower article asks, “Could others have ruled between the reigns of these kings?” and muses that if so, “additional years would have to be added”. But this is pure speculation without evidence – and indeed, all evidence argues against it. The Uruk King List, an ancient Babylonian document compiled not long after the Neo-Babylonian period, explicitly lists the kings from Nabopolassar through Nabonidus in order with their lengths of reign. Its figures for each reign match those derived from the business tablets and other records. For example, it gives Nebuchadnezzar 43 years, Evil-Merodach 2 years, Neriglissar “3 years and 8 months,” Labashi-Marduk (Neriglissar’s son) a reign of just “3 months,” and Nabonidus 17 years. These precise numbers reflect authentic archival memory. If a mystery king had ruled for, say, 10 years between any of these known kings, the king list and the archival tablets would betray some gap or inconsistency. They do not. On the contrary, we find tablets dated to Labashi-Marduk’s short reign of a few months (showing he was recognized as king for that brief period), followed shortly by tablets in Nabonidus’s accession – a clear indication of smooth succession. The idea that a decades-long phantom king (or an unnoticed extension of a known king’s reign by 20 years) could slip into this well-documented era is simply not credible.
Furthermore, the writings of later historians confirm the same sequence. The Babylonian priest-historian Berossus (3rd century BCE), whose works are partially preserved via Josephus, gives the duration of each Neo-Babylonian king’s reign in agreement with the canonical figures: Nebuchadnezzar (~43 years), Evil-Merodach (2), Neriglissar (4), Labashi-Marduk (9 months), Nabonidus (17). He mentions no extra monarchs. The Canon of Ptolemy, a later Hellenistic-era king list used by astronomers, likewise lists the kings and their regnal lengths matching the cuneiform data. Even Josephus, despite some internal inconsistencies, ultimately preserves information that from the fall of Jerusalem to the 1st year of Cyrus was about 50 years (as we will discuss in the next section), which aligns with the standard chronology ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154). These multiple witnesses (Babylonian contemporary records, native king lists, and later historians) interlock to give a consistent timeline with no room for an extra 20 years.
The Watchtower argument seizes upon the phrase “gaps in the history recorded in the Babylonian chronicles” – indeed, the Babylonian Chronicle tablets are broken or lost for some years in the 590s BCE, so they do not narrate every event. But a gap in a narrative source is not a gap in the timeline. The chronicles are like a patchy historical diary; missing entries do not equate to missing years, because other sources cover those years. The business tablets, for example, have no such gaps year-to-year. It is also telling that no archaeological discovery from the last century and a half of Mesopotamian research has turned up any trace of an “extra” Neo-Babylonian king or an unexplained additional regnal year. On the contrary, every new find (such as additional contract tablets published in recent decades) continues to fill in details consistent with the existing chronological framework, sometimes even narrowing the dates of transitions to within a month or two. The Society’s suggestion that “additional years would have to be added” is a tacit admission that its 607 BCE theory cannot be reconciled with the evidence as it stands – one must imagine adding fictional years. That is not how historical revision is done; one would need actual evidence of those years. None has been forthcoming. Scholars have scrutinized the possibility extensively and found “any evidence in support of such assumptions is completely lacking.” On the contrary, as a leading chronologist observes, each known year in the Neo-Babylonian era is attested by numerous documents, and if a king had ruled longer or an unknown king existed, we would have a “large number of tablets” dated to those additional years – yet we do not . All lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that the Neo-Babylonian period lasted as long as we think – no more, no less.
In short, the “missing years” argument is a myth. It arises not from evidence, but from the necessity of finding somewhere to shove an extra 20 years into history to accommodate 607 BCE. The hard data – tens of thousands of dated cuneiform tablets, astronomical diaries, and ancient king lists – leave no blank to fill. The scholarly consensus is that there are no gaps in the Neo-Babylonian chronology large enough to account for a twenty-year error. Even Rolf Furuli, after proposing some adjustments, could at best shift certain Persian dates by 10 years (a thesis which has also been rejected by experts), and he notably failed to produce any concrete evidence of missing Babylonian regnal years. Indeed, as has been pointed out, Furuli in his book did “not explicitly mention the 607 B.C.E. date” at all – a telling omission of the very point he ostensibly set out to prove. The reason is clear: the evidence for the established chronology is so massive that directly arguing for extra years in Nebuchadnezzar’s time would be academic suicide. Thus, the idea of adding years to Nebuchadnezzar’s reign or inserting unknown rulers is entirely speculative and contradicted by the harmonious records at hand. All known data fix the fall of Jerusalem in the 18th–19th year of Nebuchadnezzar, which corresponded to 587 BCE (or 586 BCE) – not twenty years earlier.
7. Josephus, Classical Sources, and Watchtower Misuse of History
In defending the 607 BCE date, Jehovah’s Witness apologists sometimes appeal to Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, as well as other classical sources. Josephus is quoted as saying that the Jews were exiled for 70 years, which on the surface might seem to support the Witness interpretation. However, a closer look at Josephus’s writings – and how the Watchtower uses them – reveals a pattern of selective quotation and even contradiction. Far from corroborating 607 BCE, Josephus’s accounts actually align with the standard chronology (with Jerusalem’s fall in the 580s BCE) and expose the inconsistency of the 70-year exile claim.
It is important to understand that Josephus in his various works was not entirely consistent on chronological details. In some passages, he indeed paraphrases the biblical prophecy of a 70-year Babylonian captivity. For example, in Antiquities of the Jews (Book XI, ch.1), Josephus writes that the first year of Cyrus (538 BCE) was “the seventieth year from the day that our people were removed from their land to Babylon”, as Jeremiah had foretold that after serving Nebuchadnezzar and his descendants for 70 years, they would be restored (Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI). This shows Josephus understood the prophecy of Jeremiah as involving 70 years from exile to restoration. The Watchtower frequently cites such statements, implying that even a Jewish historian reckoned a full 70-year exile ending in Cyrus’s time. What the Watchtower fails to mention is that Josephus elsewhere quantifies the historical interval in a very different way. In Against Apion (Book I, §19), Josephus discusses the chronology of the temple’s desolation. There he explicitly states: “Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth year of his reign, laid our temple desolate, and so it lay in that state for fifty years; but in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its foundations were laid, and it was finished again in the second year of Darius.” (Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154) This is a remarkable passage: Josephus here pegs the desolation of the temple (and thus Jerusalem) to 50 years in duration, not 70. He even ties it to known reigns – from Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year (which we know to be 587 BCE) to Cyrus’s 2nd year (537/536 BCE) is about 50 years. Indeed, this matches the biblical and historical reality almost exactly. So we have Josephus in one work essentially acknowledging a 50-year desolation, even as in another context he referenced the “70 years” prophecy. How do we reconcile this? It appears Josephus himself was combining the theological prophecy with the historical facts: he repeats Jeremiah’s 70-year prophecy in a general sense, but when he calculates the actual timeline, he comes out with 50 years. This is not surprising, because by Josephus’s time the historical duration from the fall of Jerusalem to the rebuilding of the temple was well known from sources like Berossus (whom Josephus quotes in the same section). Josephus elsewhere provides additional chronological details that further affirm the traditional dates. For instance, in Antiquities XX.10, he sums up that the entire duration from the first temple’s construction under Solomon to its destruction under Nebuchadnezzar was 470 years, and then says “after the termination of the Babylonian captivity, seventy years” the second temple was built and endured another 500+ years (What does Josephus say about 586/87 BCE?). Even there, his phrasing “seventy years’ captivity” is a general descriptor, but his specific numbers (combined with other statements he makes) actually indicate about 50 years between the temple’s destruction and the decree of Cyrus (What does Josephus say about 586/87 BCE?) (What does Josephus say about 586/87 BCE?). In short, Josephus’s historical data is fully consistent with a 587 BCE destruction and a return in 537 BCE, whereas his rhetorical references to “70 years” reflect the biblical prophecy without attempting to assert a precise chronology. The Watchtower typically cites only the latter, leaving readers with the false impression that Josephus “confirmed” a 70-year exile, when in fact Josephus explicitly recorded that the temple lay desolate for 50 years ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154).
The misrepresentation goes further: The Watchtower’s 2011 article presented a table of classical historians’ figures for the Neo-Babylonian kings and implied they are unreliable or conflicting. In doing so, it omitted crucial context. For example, the article fails to mention that Berossus’s figures agree exactly with the modern chronology, and that even Ptolemy’s Canon (though compiled in the 2nd century CE) was based on well-attested records and likewise matches the Mesopotamian evidence. The Society also selectively quotes Josephus regarding the start of the “servitude.” They highlight that Josephus (in Antiquities X.6) said Nebuchadnezzar took Judean captives in his 8th year, not earlier, arguing that this contradicts other sources and supports a later date for the start of Babylonian servitude. But this is a red herring: Josephus’s comments on the start of the 70 years are secondary (and he elsewhere contradicts himself on that point too), whereas his data on the end of the period are clear (50 years from destruction to Cyrus). If anything, Josephus’s mention that Nebuchadnezzar didn’t fully deport Jerusalem until his 18th year (which is historically accurate) undermines the idea that 70 years of complete desolation began earlier.
Beyond Josephus, other ancient sources unanimously point to a fall of Jerusalem in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, 18–19 years after his accession (i.e. 587/586 BCE). Berossus, as preserved in Josephus, reports that Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his father in 605 BCE, defeated Jerusalem, and that the Neo-Babylonian kingdom lasted 66 years in total until Babylon’s fall ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154). This total is exactly what we get from 605 to 539 BCE. The Tyrian King List quoted by Josephus (in the same Against Apion I.19-20) notes that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre in his 7th year and gives a timeline that also implies about 50 years from that point to Cyrus’s era ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154). All these independent data align with the well-established 587/586 BCE date. None places the destruction in 607 BCE. In fact, no ancient author, Babylonian or Greco-Roman, explicitly supports a 607 BCE date or a 70-year desolation from 607–537 BCE. That concept arises solely from a particular literalist interpretation of Scripture that ignores the actual historical fulfillment.
In light of this, the Watchtower’s use of Josephus and others can be seen as polemical cherry-picking. They quote Josephus when he echoes Jeremiah’s prophecy (as any pious Jew would) but ignore him when he provides the historical interval that contradicts their timeline ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154) (Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI). They similarly cast doubt on Ptolemy or Diodorus when those historians conflict with 607, yet they freely rely on the very same historians’ evidence to date events like Cyrus’s conquest (539 BCE) which they accept. This inconsistent methodology – embracing evidence when it suits them, dismissing it as “uninspired” or “incomplete” when it doesn’t – reveals that the 607 BCE doctrine is driven by dogma, not objective analysis. The scholarly consensus on Neo-Babylonian chronology, supported by Josephus’s actual chronological data and all other ancient sources, is that Jerusalem fell in 587/586 BCE and that the exile lasted about 50 years ( Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, BOOK I, section 154) (Appendix, The Gentile Times Reconsidered - Carl Olof Jonsson). There is no credible support, ancient or modern, for extending the desolation to 70 years ending in 537 BCE.
Finally, it should be noted that the “70 years” in biblical theology was understood by later Jewish writers as a period of national judgment and servitude, not a precise calendar duration for the land’s emptiness. The second-century BCE book of 2 Chronicles (cited above) and the first-century writings of Josephus both treat the 70 years as prophecy fulfilled by the Persian restoration, without feeling a need to reconcile every chronological detail. The early Christian chronographer Theophilus of Antioch (2nd century CE) explicitly states that the Jews were in captivity at Babylon for 70 years, “until Cyrus” – showing that he, too, followed the standard timeline (with 587 BCE as the start) albeit phrased in terms of the prophecy. In other words, for ancient interpreters, the theological truth was that God had ordained “70 years” for Babylonian domination and Jewish subjugation; the historical reality was that this prophecy manifested in events spanning roughly 609–539 BCE, with Jerusalem desolate c.587–537 BCE. There is no conflict between these when one understands the flexibility of biblical numeric idiom (70 as a number of completion or punishment). It is only the modern Watchtower’s insistence on a rigid 607–537 timeline that creates a false conflict. By refuting their arguments point-by-point – from the scriptural exegesis to the astronomical records and ancient historians – we see that the 607 BCE date is neither biblically required nor historically tenable. All available evidence, including the very sources the Watchtower tries to enlist, actually converges on the conclusion that Jerusalem was destroyed around 587 BCE and that the prophesied 70 years ended with the return of the exiles under Cyrus. The 607 BCE apologetic stands on misinterpretations and selective use of data, and it collapses under a full, honest scrutiny of the Bible and history.

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