Question about 70 yr. excile:

  Was discussing how secular references point to destruction of Jerusalem in 586/7 with a JW.  Used KISS method of counting back the kings from Babylonian fall (according to WT Daniel book on page 50-51, says it was 539.). 

  Not sure what this person meant.  They said I must think the Jewish excile occurred before the temple was burned.  After also trying to claim there was another king no one knew about until 100 yrs ago (Belshazzar?), they also tried to say the Bible supports 70 yr. excile, but if the fall of Jerusalem happened in 586/7, then that would mean the Jews were exciled for 47 yrs., not 70. 

What??!!!!

  Can someone explain this to me, so I can figure out what the heck they are talking about? 

  And I would love solid references I could have this person look in to that are available at any library in the USA.  Don't want to get accused of handing them "apostate" materials, don't you know!

  Why is it that the WTS uses secular references from Catholic Encyclopedias, etc...to support all kinds of WT doctrines (many taken completely out of context), yet this one date, which is not in the Bible, cannot be supported by secular sources?  HUH???!!!!

Whyizit,

I drew a picture that describes the WTS's false reasoning. You will find my picture at:

http://au.geocities.com/doug_mason1940/WTS_false_reasoning_for_607_BCE.pdf

I have a number of other pieces that you might find useful. Just go to:

http://au.geocities.com/doug_mason1940/babylonian_captivity.html

Please let me know if I have not been of direct help.

Doug

http://www.jwfacts.com/index_files/1914.htm

What were the 70 years?

The Watchtower Society claims that Bible prophecy would be compromised if Jerusalem fell in 587. Other faithful Christians are able to reconcile the 70 year period with Bible prophecy without invention of the year 607.

Several Bible authors refer to a 70 year period, and close reading shows there were more than one 70 year period referred to. It is recommended to read several translations to understand the meaning of the following passages, as the New World Translation has particular inflections to support their specific understanding.

Jeremiah 25 applies a 70 year period to both the surrounding nations and Jerusalem. The 70 years was the entire period the Babylonians were conquering "these nations" and the period of vassalage to the Babylonians.

Jeremiah 25:11-12 "And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years."' 12 "'And it must occur that when seventy years have been fulfilled I shall call to account against the king of Babylon and against that nation,' is the utterance of Jehovah, 'their error, even against the land of the Chal·de´ans, and I will make it desolate wastes to time indefinite."

Jeremiah ends the 70 years with the "account against the King of Babylon". Babylon fell in 539 B.C. indicating the start of this 70 year period against "these nations" could have been 609 B.C.

In a separate passage Jeremiah 29:10 refers to Israelites spending 70 years at Babylon. Reading from verse 1 indicates this includes the time period when the Israelites were taken to Babylon prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. Historians conclude this occurred in the year 605 B.C.

Zechariah 1:12, Zechariah 7:4-5, 2 Chronicles 36:20-23 and Daniel 9:2 all refer to 70 year periods.

Daniel 9:2 "In the first year of his reigning I myself, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah had occurred to Jeremiah the prophet, for fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem, [namely,] seventy years."

Daniel may be indicating the period from the first destruction in 601 B.C. Alternately, 70 years was the length of time the temple was in a state of disrepair, from the start of the siege on Jerusalem in 589 B.C. to the completion of the new temple in 519 B.C.

Whatever the case these, none of these periods point to 607 B.C. and yet Bible prophecy can continue to hold true whilst accepting well supported secular history. Considering Daniel 4 is not an end time prophecy there is no relevance to the precise start and end dates of the 70 years.

The bona fide reason the Watchtower rejects 587B.C. is purely that it undermines their basis for 1914. As proof that convenience is the sole motivator of claiming a literal 70 year period consider the enlightening piece of Watchtower reasoning for why the 70 year desolation of Tyre was not literal.

"Isaiah goes on to prophesy: "It must occur in that day that Tyre must be forgotten seventy years, the same as the days of one king." (Isaiah 23:15a) … He says: "These nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years." (Jeremiah 25:8-17, 22, 27) True, the island-city of Tyre is not subject to Babylon for a full 70 years, since the Babylonian Empire falls in 539 B.C.E. Evidently, the 70 years represents the period of Babylonia's greatest domination-when the Babylonian royal dynasty boasts of having lifted its throne even above "the stars of God." Isaiah's Prophecy- Light For All Mankind 1 p. 253

There is no reason that this same reasoning could not be applied to Jerusalem, except that it would undermine the doctrine of 1914.

The number "70" is NOT to be taken literally!

The Talmud frequently uses the number 70 as a kind of stylized exaggeration.

It is a non-literal expression meaning "a lot" or "many".

Where's our "celebrated scholar"??  He's usually got his face glued to screen whenever this topic comes up.

My take is that the 70 years is literally applied as in the jwfacts link I posted above.  It's not necessarily exactly 70 years, but generally applies to "the entire period the Babylonians were conquering "these nations" and the period of vassalage to the Babylonians."  It's about 70 years.

I say that because I believe the "scriptures" of Jeremiah, Zechariah, Chronicles and Daniel  were not prophecy, but written after the fact.  If they were written after the fact, but close to the time it actually happened, then the people who read the "scriptures" would pretty much know what the 70 years meant. 

It is no big mystery.  If you ask when World War One started, it is accepted that it started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, so an actual date can be set of June 28, 1914.  But ask for specifics of when various nations were in bondage to Babylon and how long it lasted, over 2000 years ago when there were no daily newspapers, you will get different answers.  Historians could say that World War One didn't start until a retaliation for that assassination happened, or when other countries joined in later that Summer, or even not until it really became virtually worldwide in September when Japan joined the list of those fighting countries, but History now says the war started on June 28, 1914.  Perhaps history of the 5th and 6th Centuries BCE just told the tale of the 70 year Campaign of Babylon.  Afterall, the 100 Years' War in France lasted from 1337 to 1453, (116 years) but "100" is what people remember. 

Nobody knew that Bible nerds would be wanting to know the exact dates of exact events thousands of years later and saying these things revealed some huge master plan of God when the writers/historians of the stories rounded the number to 70 years to include virtually the entire campaign, not just the captivity of Jews from Judah. 

whyizit

The seventy years was a period of servitude, desolation and exile of the Jews deported to Babylon in 607 BCE until they were released from Babylon due to her fall in 539 BCE in the year 537 BCE. Most if not all modern authorities discard any notion or importance of the seventy years and thus use a chronology based on the regnal years of the Babylonian kings  counting from 539 BCE which marked the end of the Babylonian Monarchy places the fall of Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BCE.

The difference between secular and Bible chronology is one of methodology and the seventy years, WT chronologists such as the celebrated WT scholars insist that a true biblical chronology must factor in the biblical 'seventy years.'

scholar JW

I think what Scholaris saying is that the Bible is exact and correct because it is the Bible.  It must be.
Other modern authorities must be wrong because they don't assume the Bible is correct and look at actual data.

Actual data can be misleading.  Just ignore it and rely on the Bible's infallibility.  That's what he's saying.

OTWO, It's not even about what the Bible says. That's open to several different interpretations. The 607 thing is about what the "celebrated JW scholars" say.

whyizit, This recent thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/175650/1/70-years-3d-607 is the usual back-and-forth between archaelogical, historical, Biblical facts and JW pyramidology nonsense to support 1914.

Wikipedia has a very simple, clear narrative in the second paragraph from this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem#Temple_periods . Of course, such secular sources simply seek clear, proven facts without the distortion of trying to remanufacture history as a way to legitmize false prophecies regarding 1914. Volume 3 of Studies in the Scriptures reveal a wealth of ignorance that "celebrated JW scholars" are still trying to whitewash today.

B the X

On The Way Out

Post 8413

Not only would Bible prophecy be compromised by the claim that Jerusalem fell in 587 or 586 BCE but Bible History would be as well. It is impossible to reconcile the historical placement of the seventy years without 607 BCE as the only beginning date.

A close reading of all of the 'seventy year' texts prove that there was only one such period with the exception of the seventy years of Tyre. Jeremiah 25 shows that the seventy years were for Judah alone and that during that time of Babyloniah domination over Judah the surrounding nations would also suffer a similar fate of servitude.

The ending of the seventy years could not have occurred at the time of Babylon's Fall in 539 BCE because the Jews were still captive to Babylon and Daniel 9:2 shows that at that time the seventy years had not ended.

It is correct to say that there was a previous exile of Jews prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 BCE but that previous exile of ten years previous did not begin the seventy years because the land had not then become a desolate place which was only fulfilled when in 607 BCE the entire population was deported thus leaving a 'empty land'.

Daniel 9:2 proves that at that time of writing which was after the Fall of Babylon the seventy years had not then run its course but was shortly to end with the impending release of the Jews under Cyrus in 537 BCE. Your alternative interpretations do not make much sense for it seems that you are unsure about the matter.

Daniel 4 is most certainly an end-time prophecy because it concerns itself with two things: God's Kingdom and the Gentile Times both of which are eschatological in focus.

We reject 587 BCE not just becaus eof its relevance to the fufillment of prophecy but because it is a false date -false to the Bible and false to history and all secular evidence.

scholar JW

Oh no. Hi (fake) Scholar. I would love to talk, but I am going out to watch the fireworks.

I will check in later to see if a different kind of fireworks happened....

On The Way Out

Post 8414

There is no other alternative but to accept the fact that the seventy years was a definite period of history as modern scholarship attests along with the clear testimony of Daniel, Ezra, Jeremiah, Zechariah and of corse the Jewish historian Josephus. These Bible writers were as in the case of daniel and Jeremiah live d at the time of the seventy years so their experience is far more convincing than those of the moderrn 'arm-chair' critic.

The Bible unlike the writings of secular historians is not fuzzy but specific as to event, time and place so we today can interpet those narratives with the bebefit of fulfilled prophecy. The Apostle Paul's words at Romans 3:3,4 are timeless: "Let God Be True".

scholar JW

Hi whyizit

They said I must think the Jewish excile occurred before the temple was burned.

Yes, that's right. Dan. 1:1-4 indicates that in King Jehoiakim's 3rd year (605 BCE - traditional chronology), the cream of young nobility was taken to Babylon. Also Josephus (using Berossus' record) attests to Jewish captives being taken at the time of Nebuchadnezzar's father's death (Against Apion I, 19 (137)).

I think in addition to the two approximate applications of the "seventy years" phrase in Bible texts as described by AnnOMaly (609/5-539 and 587/6-519/8) there is a third one, which is historically wrong but scriptural nonetheless: that which identifies the "seventy years" to the desolation of the land supposed to have followed the final fall of Jerusalem, in 2 Chronicles 36:21. That period (which was not of complete desolation to begin with) actually lasted about 50 years (cf. the first "seven weeks" = 49 years in Daniel 9), but was (mis-)represented by the Chronicler (and perhaps the last redaction of Jeremiah 25:11) as 70. This imaginary duration of the exile was then followed by Josephus (except when he quotes Berossus in Against Apion) and traditional exegesis down to Russell. But forcing it on Jeremiah 29 or Zechariah, let alone "real" history, is desperate.

It's true that 2 Chron. 36:21, on the surface, makes it appear the desolation itself would last 70 years. However, it may not be that the Chronicler misrepresented the length of time the land was desolated. It may be a misunderstanding on the part of the reader. Other scholars have proposed explanations and interpretations that fit with both the secular and biblical testimony.

2 Chron. 36:12 says the land enjoyed its sabbath rests all the time it lay desolated. This harks back to God's instructions and warnings about keeping Sabbath years (to allow the land to rest every seven years) and Jubilee years (restoring freedom and property every 49 years) in Lev. 25 and 26. If they didn't observe the Sabbaths, they would be punished seven times over, removed from their country and their land forced to rest. It's interesting that the period from Jerusalem's final ruin and depopulation (587) to its restoration (c.538) tallies with a Jubilee period.

2 Chron. 36:12 goes on to say that the land would rest, pay off its sabbaths UNTIL 70 years are completed in fulfillment of Jeremiah's words. Seeing as Jeremiah never said the land would be desolate for a 70 year period but instead associated 70 years with Babylonian hegemony over the nations, it doesn't make sense that the Chronicler (who was familiar with Jeremiah's words) was suggesting the land was desolate for 70 years. But because all these ideas from Leviticus and Jeremiah are concertinaed together, the reader then jumps to the erroneous conclusion that the period of desolation from Jerusalem's fall to the exiles' return must have been 70 years long. 

|___________punishment/Jerusalem's fall______________l a n d    r e s t e d_______________sabbaths paid off|

|------7 0    y e a r s    B a b y l o n i a n    d o m i n a t i o n-----------------------------------------Jeremiah's words fulfilled|

Hi Whyizit,

OnTheWay Out has said it for me,

Jeremiah ends the 70 years with the "account against the King of Babylon". Babylon fell in 539 B.C. indicating the start of this 70 year period against "these nations" could have been 609 B.C.

It most certainly could have been 609BCE when Babylon conquered Assyria, most scholars mark 609BCE as the starting point for Babylonian domination, hence Jeremiah 25, 'that these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years.", implying a number of nations, rather than the nation of Israel.

Alternately, 70 years was the length of time the temple was in a state of disrepair, from the start of the siege on Jerusalem in 589 B.C. to the completion of the new temple in 519 B.C.

Here he has shown two explanations for the 70 year period, both reconcile a 587/6 destruction for Jerusalem. There are alternative explanations for a 70 year period that fit in with scripture.

What the JW's do is to set up a strawman argument. They tell you that that the 70 scriptural period HAS to begin with Jerusalems destruction and HAS to end with Cyrus announcing decree which they guesstimate at 537BCE, yet this is not what the scriptures actually say. The strawman is then set up that if you accept a 587/6 date you are then arguing with scripture, this is then presented as a scripture VS secular debate and ask you which one you should choose, the bible or secular sources.....typical strawman.

The reality is that alternative explanations for a 70 year period do harmonise with the bible and secular sources.

Paul

AnnOMaly,

To me a simple but valid 'rule of thumb' in Biblical exegesis is that most often the texts do mean what they appear to mean. Iow, the average reader / hearer generally has it right until s/he buys into overinterpretations based on extra-textual (and, in many cases, inter-textual) grounds. Otherwise you have to posit writers deliberately trying to be misunderstood by an audience who couldn't jump from one (con)text to another as we can so (too?) easily do.

While 2 Chronicles 36 alludes to both Jeremiah and Leviticus it doesn't follow that the meaning of the latter texts can be imposed on the former. What matters to the intention of the Chronicler is what he makes of those allusions. That the Jubilee scheme could explain a 50-year desolation is apparent from Daniel 9 (which also uses the "7 x" curse motif in transforming the 70 years of Jeremiah into 70 weeks of years). But this is not what the writer of Chronicles seems to be doing. As I suggested above, it also seems to me that the extant redaction of Jeremiah 25:11 conflates two originally distinct understandings of the "70 years," one applied to the desolation of Judah (as in 2 Chronicles) and the other to Babylonian rule over the "nations" (closer to the initial meaning of Jeremiah).

Imo, assuming that the Bible never speaks of a 70-year desolation of Judah is an error symmetrical to that of the WT, and based on the same presupposition (that Bible texts cannot be historically wrong just because they happened to be included in the Bible).

Hi Narkissos

I hear what you're saying about the danger of over-interpreting and where the text should be taken at its word, however - after considering what you've said - it still doesn't make sense to me that the Chronicler was misrepresenting the 70 years.

If the Chronicler had access to the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel, if he knew that Jeremiah composed a lament over Josiah which was recorded in a compilation of dirges (2 Chron. 35:25), then surely he had access to Jeremiah's prophecies too (he alludes to another of Jeremiah's prophecies in the preceding verse - 2 Chron. 36:20 --> Jer. 27:7), as well as other canonical records. Jeremiah (note, specifically Jeremiah) NEVER associated a period of 70 years with the desolation of the land. So why would the Chronicler make it appear that he did? I don't think he did.

Ross E. Winkle's approach makes the best sense to me. One of the arguments he puts forward is the verses' literary style and parallelisms it uses. He says:

"In this passage there are two sets of parallel clauses either beginning with 'ador lemallot.Displaying the text according to a quasi-poetic style (in order to highlight the parallels) results in the following (my translation):

Line

1    And they were servants to him and his sons

2    until ('ad) the reign of the kingdom of Persia

3    in order to fulfill (lemallot) the word

4    of the LORDin the mouth of Jeremiah

5    until ('ad) the land enjoyed its sabbaths

6    (all the days of its desolation

7    it kept sabbath)

8    in order to fulfill (lemallot) seventy years

Line 2 completes the thought of line 1, while lines 3-4 further clarify lines 1 and 2. Line 5, which starts with the same word as line 2, must be parallel to it. Precedent for this type of parallelism can be found in Exod 16:35:

And the people of Israel ate the manna forty years,

till ('ad) they came to a habitable land;

they ate the manna,

till ('ad) they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

This parallelism can also be seen in Jer 1:3:

It came also in the days of Jehoiakim . . . ,

and until ('ad) the end of the eleventh year

of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah,

until ('ad) the captivity of Jerusalem

in the fifth month.

One more example of this type of parallelism is in 2 Chr 36:16, a text only a few verses away from the text under discussion:

But they kept mocking the messengers of God,

despising his words,

and scoffing at his prophets,

till ('ad) the wrath of the LORDrose

against his people,

till ('ad) there was no remedy.

In all three examples, the second element beginning with "till/ until" ('ad) parallels temporally the first element beginning with the same word. One assumes the case is the same in 2 Chr 36:20b-21.

Line 8 of 2 Chr 36:20b-21 is parallel to lines 3-4 not only linguistically (lemallot) but also conceptually (Jeremiah prophesied the seventy years). Therefore it makes sense to take lines 6-7 as a parenthetical element further explaining line 5. This appears to disassociate the "seventy years" from delineating the length of time for the years of sabbath rest. In other words, the land completed its enjoyment of the sabbath rests (which had begun after the desolation of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.) by the time of Persia's conquest of Babylon, this latter event marking the end of the seventy-year "rule" of Babylon. ...

... In any case, while the Chronicler has injected a new theological issue into the seventy-year prophecy (i-e., the sabbath rest of the land), he does not seem to have radically changed the meaning of Jeremiah's prophecy." - Jeremiah's Seventy Years For Babylon: A Re-Assessment, Part I: The Scriptural Data, AUSS, 1987, Vol 25, No. 2, pp. 209-211.

Hi AnnO'Maly,

Thank you for this interesting quote.

I do agree on the double `ad construction pointing to the same terminus ad quem (although not from a different terminus a quo, as your interpretation would require), and on the parenthetical character of (Winkle's) lines 6-7; however I don't see how it should follow from those structural observations that "this appears to disassociate the "seventy years" from delineating the length of time for the years of sabbath rest," since the theme of the sabbath rest is already expressed in v. 5 -- which the parenthesis only explains. Should line 8 come before line 5 it might have been a little different. But even thus it would not weigh much against the following contextual fact: the lack of any indication of a terminus a quo other than the exile following the destruction of the temple (v. 17-20) under Zedekiah (v. 11-14) leaves the reader/hearer little choice but understanding the 70 years as being the duration of the LAST exile AND the desolation of the land. To construe it otherwise you would have to posit a reader who not only knows the book of Jeremiah (in which of its wildly different versions, which precisely split just after 25:11f?) perfectly but analyses it as a modern scholar, with all the data of comparative chronology at hand. Needless to say this is a highly improbable hypothesis for an original audience, hence for the meaning the author wished to convey (whether he was aware of the actual duration of the exile/desolation and the possible drift of meaning from the 70 years in Jeremiah 25:11b; 29:10 is another matter).

pseudo scholar said: