gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
AlanF,
Thanks again for the clearing up this issue with "scholar." And thanks for the informative offline discussion, too. Much appreciated.
Also, to correct a statement I made about Bible Student associations being the best collectors of this old material. I'm thinking that AlanF and COJ probably have them all beat. Hillary Step's "Seussian" imagery of a bed balanced precariously atop a roomful of books must be pretty close to the truth.
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
Looking into this issue I happened to run across another issue that was new to me, but won't be new to others of you here. The new chronology of the WT began to replace the old "1874 chronology" anywhere between 1929 and 1942. The old "Awake" magazine, the Golden Age, in the 3/27/1935 issue, p. 413 said that 1935 was the year 5962. In other words, it appears that the 6000th year, beginning 38 years later would start (at the latest) in 73 end in 74. (Until then, the WTS held that the 6000 years were up in 1873.) By 1942, this calculation appears to have pointed to 1975. I'm wondering who first pushed the new 6,000 year updated chronology: Clayton Woodworth, Rutherford, FWFranz?
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
AlanF,
Thanks for that. Good work again, of course. And quite entertaining. (I wrote you an email, btw.) I had to suspect that this was the case. I set up the reminders of "scholar's" failure the last time he tried this, but didn't have the wherewithal to press the point. Thanks for coming to truth's rescue.
Seems like scholar hasn't yet figured out that if his venerated Society could be wrong in the past then it can also be wrong in the present. Amazing how he thought he found a mistake in COJ just because it he was directly contradicted in the Proclaimer's book.
We'll see if so-called "scholar" has the integrity to face this issue, or if he simply admits to getting a page number wrong in CoC, exactly as he did in his previously aborted attempt to discredit COJ, quoted above.
I've been reading as much of Elliott's Horae Apocalypticae, Henry Fynes Clinton, and Christopher Bowen as I could find. (Christopher Bowen's charts and work were published in Elliott's work.) Even got to read some of the related works of three different 19th century writers all named John Brown.
Because of the connection to the trampling with the 1,260 in Revelation, it seems a much better exegesis anyway to link the 1,260 (sometimes 1,290) with the Gentile Times, rather than the WTS's 2,520. This was the solution that those just before (and long before) J A Brown had already used and those just after him had also used. Problem was that all the best starting points would land a 1,260ish year period for the Gentile Times somewhere between 500CE and 1330CE, a few hundred years shy of the great religious events surrounding or after the Reformation. To make it useful you had to stop it at some Catholic Papal concern or with Mohammed. (Elliott spent so much time on the Muslim connection that he wrote long sections in Horae Apocalypticae on just that subject.)
Only a 2,520 year length could reach up to the "current" times or even much further into the future. I can just see the 8,000 Memorial partakers in the Watchtower Society 500-some-odd years from now, voting to change the starting point to 70 CE -- and expecting Armageddon in 2590 CE. When even that fails, I guess they could try adding the 1260 to the 2520 and expecting Armageddon sometime between 3780 CE and 3850 CE.
Gamaliel
In God We Trust!
(All others pay cash.)
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
scholar,
I forgot to mention above that alleymom wisely corrected your mistake with her post at http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/57055/840965/post.ashx#840965 which said in part:
You have made a mistake and I hope you will retract it.
Carl Olof Jonsson does NOT say that Nabonidus reigned only 16 years. Throughout his book The Gentile Times Reconsidered, he says over and over again that Nabonidus reigned 17 years. There is not one place in the entire book where he says Nabonidus reigned "16" or "sixteen" years. You made that up yourself by taking two of his numbers and subtracting them, without understanding whether COJ was using inclusive or exclusive reckoning. You then attributed the results of your own erroneous calculation to COJ and put words in his mouth.
First of all, please note that you made an error in your citation. You refer to footnote 1 on page 91. That is a mistake. The footnote is on page 90.
[followed by Alleymom's clear explanation of your math mistake.]
Followed by your retraction (or at least your last reponse in the thread):
You are right about the page number when I referred to GTR, it should have read p. 90 than p. 91. I simply showed the different reigns for moth computations to illustrate the difference of the dates given by both sources for the beginning and end of the reign of Nabonidus of about 17 years.
Your "retraction," of course, wouldn't directly admit the real mistake, although it did refer directly to your insignificant page number mistake. So much for scholastic honesty! Still, I'm glad that C O Jonsson's book is being looked at carefully, for whatever reasons. However, I hope the above also helps you understand why I'm still suspicious of your claims about Jonsson. You failed miserably with that last attempt to discredit him.
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
scholar,
I assume that a statement I found on a Website ( http://www.bibledecoded.com/understanding120.html ) reflects the statement from COJ that is in question here:
The original calculations were mostly based on dates from John Aquila Brown, who in 1823 published The Even-Tide in which he claimed that the "seven times" of Daniel 4 were a period of 2520 years running from the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar?s reign in 604 B.C.E. to 1917 C.E. While Brown never equated the 2520 years with the "Gentile Times," other writers soon did.
I believe this is so from what I can gather in Portuguese on the site ( http://geocities.com/observa3/gentios1.htm ) which translates a few chapters of the GTR book. I see that the Proclaimer's book contradicts this, as you said, when it states that J.A.Brown (and Elliott) did tie Daniel's 7 times to the Gentile Times. (I see that Elliott was mentioned in the Proclaimer's book, although I can't verify that Elliott made a direct connection between Daniel's 7 Times and the Gentile times, either.) I noticed from the Portuguese site that COJ identifies some writers who had identified the 1,290 days (years) with the Gentile Times (all the way back to the 1300's and 1500's.
By the way, what is this Jonsson hypothesis, exactly? Previously I understood you to identify the "hypothesis" of COJ with the the numbers of deportations COJ proposes and/or the possible meanings of desolation in Jeremiah and other scriptures. Now, if you are saying this "hypothesis" is weakened by a possibility that J A Brown associated the Gentile Times with the 7 Times, then you have obviously widened the scope of this proposed "hypothesis." You're starting to remind me of a JW friend of mine who has pointed out typos in Ray Franz' CoC book.
To be fair, your point was: "neither of these men can interpret modern history so how is it possible they can be trusted with ancient primary sources." That's not a complete non sequitor, but I can't see a direct connection, either. That's like saying the Bible is worthless because of copying errors, or that your ideas are worthless because of that glaring mistake you made over at http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/57055/839862/post.ashx#839862 when you said:
Yes, accurate and reliable chronology gives the reign of Nabonidus from 556-539 BCE of some seventeen years. Interestlingly, Carl Jonsson in his GTR, 1998, p.91, ftn.1. gives a reign of 16 years from 555-539 BCE.
Sometime soon, I will give my experience in finding a series of about 5 historical mistakes in the book "God's Kingdom of 1,000 Years Has Approached" (ka). After mentioning them to the right person, the upshot was that we were going to study the book again, but, of course, with no changes or corrections to the book. During the second study I discovered another 5 or so mistakes. That book ultimately led me to realize that the dishonesty was on purpose. Basically, I ended up leaving the JWs because I found exactly this type of dishonesty to be pervasive. After all, if these men cannot interpret their modern history how can they be trusted with ancient primary sources? What's worse, it was obvious that the writer of the ka book DID know how to interpret their modern history, but deliberately chose to lie about it. Quite a difference in that and this single mistake you are claiming out of thousands of facts.
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
blues,
Thanks Gamaliel for the info and the link to the "Bible Students". After having been told all my life that the Russellites wandered off into oblivion when they would not accept the "Progressive" changes in the WTS - I know find them alive and kicking and with a useful website.
It was interesting to read their view of events 1916 - 1919 . There are two sides to every story!
That's the truth. JWs have an ambivalent view of Bible Students these days. They provide a lot of free resources that otherwise would cost thousands. (My wife should be thankful for them.)
On the Rutherford stuff, the Proclaimers book is awefully one-sided. The version I had heard from my table head at Bethel and a couple other old-time Bethelites was exactly in line with the Bible Students' story.
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
Hillary,
Thanks for the info. Both my copies of GTR have been on continuous loan to others who needed them more than I and, in truth, I have still done little more than skim the book myself. My differences about 1914 were on Scriptural grounds, and it wouldn't have made an iota of difference if, by some coincidence, the JWs had actually used a true chronology to get their dates.
Remembering what COJ was able to uncover on other pre-Russell matters, I was pretty sure that sending him this would more likely just be an excuse to speak with him on some specifics questions within Elliott's work. But I won't embarrass myself by sending this info to him. Elliott already had put almost the entire set of evidence (the jubilees, the 7 times, the 6000 years, the parallel dispensations) only slightly adjusted by Barbour and Russell. The only thing Elliott was missing was the Great Pyramid.
BTW, do you (or perhaps AlanF) know how to get ahold of the "revived" issues of The Bible Examiner? Evidently COJ wrote for the magazine per a reference in Penton's "Apocalypse Delayed."
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
AlanF,
Thanks for the info. I was sure this was not new info, in any sense. It's just that there is some obvious renewed interest by JW's in the whole 607 thing because of the Furuli's latest effort. Originally, I was just going to point out that Elliott's book called the day-for-a-year thing a "hypothesis", to turn the phrase back on a poster here who just loves to call Jonsson's work a "hypothesis," thinking, I guess, that there is some polemic value in that (although it seems that now he realizes that the word "hypothesis" doesn't reflect Jonsson's supposed "dogmatism" that this poster would now like to associate pejoratively with Jonsson).
I had noticed the point about 606 meaning Nebuchadnezzar's succession and invasion of Judah. I'm glad you brought it up. This understanding is better suited to the more probable meaning of Jeremiah and Chronicles when the 70 years are identified for Babylon's rise to power affecting all nations around Judea, rather than their specific association for 70 years with Judea herself. Is there more evidence that this is how Elliott saw it and that Barbour simply misunderstood, or did Barbour purposely make the change believing that all chronology before 536 BCE was murky (and therefore flexible) as Jerry Leslie (Bible Student) says about Russell?
I had mentioned some plans to you for the end of summer. Those plans have changed. I'll write or call you about it on the weekend if you are not terribly busy.
Gamaliel
gamaliel report, september 2003: .
the source of the 606 and 607 bce date for nebuchadnezzar's destruction of jerusalem was originally based on misunderstanding ptolemy and some poor biblical exegesis.
interestingly, a lot more jehovah's witnesses are now aware of second adventist origins for c.t.russell's ideas.
stillajwexelder,
I'll do that now. Thanks for the reminder. For all I know, he already knew this. Jonsson traced some other Russell doctrines nearly back to the 18th century according to Jim Penton's "Apocalypse Delayed." He must have better access to good libraries than I do in NYC. I have been having a hard time getting any of the old Second Adventist books even from the NYC Reference Library lately. I managed a tiny bit from Storrs, but most things they say they have are missing from the shelves. I've done better on eBay than the library! But the Bible Student associations themselves are the best collectors of this stuff, obviously.
Gamaliel
