Need help disproving 607BCE

i hope i am posting in the right board.

anyway, i am newly out of the org, and have a dear friend who i've been speaking to all along about my thought process/decisions.  she has been hesitantly receptive (how's that for confusing?!  LOL) and when i brought up 607BCE to her yesterday, she was truly intrigued and had not heard of this as a false date before.

she is still half in/half out, so i know she isn't going to do a lot of naughty independent research on her own.  but if i emailed her some quick, convenient links about the inaccuracy of the 607 date, i think she'd read them and perhaps be moved to action.

if anyone knows of a link that provides a concise info on the problems iwth the 607 date, i'd really appreciate it so i can forward it onto my friend.

thank you!

All you have to is check the Society's date for the 1st year of King Neb.  which is 624.  Then go to 2Kings25:7-8 and also Jeremiah 52: 12-13, they both say"it was King Neb. 19th year when Jerusalem was desolated.  624 being the 1st year, take 18 years away and you get 606. 607 is wrong and they know it, but they have to have 607 to get 1914, which is a lie also.

This is the simplest way to do it.

Rather than showing her this straight away, ask her to write you up a list of kings.  Tell her that she can find the info she needs on the WTCD and leave her alone to do it, as much as possible.  The idea is to get her to tell you that 607 is not possible.

586/587 the K.I.S.S. approach --- no VAT4956, Ptolemy, Josephus ...

Cheers

Chris

2pink

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but there is no evidence either biblical or secular that has disproved the validity of 607 BCE. I have been studying this subject for nearly forty years and have read all published attempts to dissprove 607 BCE only to find that on a critical analysis none of these attempts have succeeded. The most recent attempt has been by Carl Jonsson who has acquired a reputation of being a competent chronologist has claimed in his most recent work that there are at least seventeen lines of evidence that disprove 607 BCE. However, competent biblical scholars have shown that such a claim is fanciful and is not supported by either the biblical or secular evidence.

This does not mean that 607 BCE or any other date is not capable of being falsified but at this point in time there is simply no evidence that disproves the validity of 607 BCE for the Fall of Jerusalem.

scholar JW

Note that non-scholar JW has not posted on http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/55372/6/586-587-the-K-I-S-S-approach-no-VAT4956-Ptolemy-Josephus-needed

Scholar, no, you cannot disprove a date, you can only prove and disprove something in mathematics. However, there is a mountain of evidence against your date, offering evidence against it. That is why no serious non-jw scholars support it, and your favorite JW BIASED scholar was completely torn to schreds by AnnOMaly on the last two threads on the subject. Instead of considering what she said, you resolved to add-hominem attacks and ran away with the tail between your legs.

And now you are back for more scholary wack-a-mole....

2pink,

I have an amount of material available, but perhaps the simplest is at:

http://www.jwstudies.com/Why_historians_know_Babylon_fell_in_539_BCE.pdf

If you are able to digest something more complex, another piece I wrote is at:

http://www.jwstudies.com/WTS_support_for_the_Babylonian_king-list.pdf

You will find my email address at: http://www.jwstudies.com/contact_me.html

if you have any specific questions.

I wish you well.

Doug

Hi 2pink,

I think that if a JW is willing to accept the failed predictions of Armageddon in 1914, 1925 & 1975 then "607 BCE" is going to be no hurdle for them at all.

Personally, I start and finish with Jesus when talking to JWs, after all, He is the Alpha and the Omega :) Revelation 1 Revelation 21 Revelation 22

That one fact will either open their eyes that Jesus is "God with us", not "a god" with us or get them arguing vehemently.

Blessings,

Stephen

2pink: This might seem silly, but after you have researched a bit and know the outlines of the various theories (for example the babylonian domination theory of 70 years of servitude (609-539) and about 50 years of destruction (587-539)) and the societys position, try just to sit down and read Jeremiah again. Take special care from about chapter 24 and onwards.

It is possible to find statements here and there (eg. in daniel, 2 kings) that seem to give some support to the WTS position, but you got to keep in mind that they are very brief, subject to interpretive bias and all refer back to jeremiahs profecy which give a very detailed picture that TOTALLY clashes with the societys position.

I was very surpriced at least :-).

Besides this, check out Alans excelent site: http://corior.blogspot.com, he deal with the evidence as presented in the societys litterature at great length.

The trick about 607 BC is first to acknowledge that the date is not mentioned in Scripture, in fact no date according to our calendar is so mentioned. The reason is because the people in Bible times had a different dating system to ours. We simply have to deal with what is supplied by the text and to transcribe that to our modern dating system.

Instead of saying either in 607 BC or in 586 BC...etc, what the Bible does say is: "In the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar ...." [2 Kings 28:8] So the question arises: When was this 19th year?

Well, there are two schools of thought.

On the one hand there is the entire body of scholarship from every single university and scholastic institution in the world, which says 586/587 BC [Dont be too concerned about that forward slash. That's because the Bible uses two dating systems called regnal and succession years, and we aren't sure which the Bible is using at the text of 2 Kings 25:8, but the difference is only that of six months] and then there is the Watchtower, which says 607 BC. Why this stubborn inclination to hold on to this discredited date? Because this date conveniently leads to 1914 AD, a date pivotal for current Watchtower theology. When the Watchtower drops 1914, they will drop 607 BC. Betcha. 

How can you tell which is the right date? Well, again there is no simple 6 second sound bite, like on TV where we can say one way or other. It takes some thinking and calculation. First, the time period we are talking about is called the Neo-Babylonian period. If you looked up Doug Mason's site that he refers to above, you will see that he lists, according to the historical information available to all, the 5 kings who made up this period. They reigned for a total of 66 years [count 'em] ending in 539 BC.

Now if this period ended in 539 BC, which is a year that the Watchtower agrees to, then when did this period begin? All you have to do is add 66 to 539, which leads to 605 BC. That means that this Neo-Babylonian period began in 605 BC which is the year that Nebuchadnezzar became king.

If 605 BC was his first year then when would his nineteenth year be? Again just count back 19 years: 604, 603, 602, 601, 600, 599, 598, 597, 596, 595, 594, 593, 592, 591, 590, 589, 588, 587 586 BC. Got it? It is so simple and so enlightening that even a child should be able to grasp it.

The Watchtower on the other hand resorts to subterfuge, obfuscation, prevarication, discrediting, circular rationalization, assumed illogic, retrograde cognition, [which is also called "proving that which is assumed". If you assume something you can easily "prove" it. Even a flat earth.] and other fallacious forms of so called "reasoning".

They also use pious platitudes along with imperious pontifications to try and hijack the subject. They will use buzz words like "But evidently this"...and "evidently that" As Deut 18:22 says of false prophets [who make unjust profits]: You must not fear such men!      

There is no one outside the WT and the JW's that agree on 607BC, NO ONE, not even one expert, NONE.

The WT doesn't use secular evidence to prove 607 because there isn't any, so they use THEIR interpretations of OT bible passages that have NO DATES in them, to justify that date, when confronted by biblical evidence to the contrary they claim that only THEIR translations and interpretationas are correct.

I classic sign of circular reasoning.

good input here by everyone here except Scholar.  Sorry pseduscholar but your celebrated Wt pseudoscholars are mistaken.  The Bible indeed disproves 607BCE if we accept the 'absolute date' of 539- as the WT does.  Incidently, the same source the WT accepts 539 from also endore 586BCE.

Go back outside now and play pseudo.

I agve up arguing 607 with any Jw, they just don't know enough about it and those that THINK they do do not accept anything that contridicts their view anyway.

Its a lost cause, that is until one day the GB decides that the "light is getting brighter" and changes 607 to the correct 586.

bohm

Post 279

There is no mountain of evidence against 607 BCE at all rather there is a mountain of false interpretations, assumptions and the ignoring of God's Word which truly characterizes the debate of 587/.586 BCE against 607 BCE. Rolf Furuli has not been torn to shreds by AnnOMaly for the simple reason that she refuses to engage with him on the subject.

The Bible proves beyond a shadow of doubt that 607 BCE is the correct historical date for the Fall rather than the long list of pretenders supported by scholars of higher criticism and apostates.

scholar JW

Scholar, if I may ask a question:

Has Mr Furuli engaded in any debate with Mr.Johanson ?

bohm

Post 281

Excellent advice indeed  The honest inquirer should read Jeremiah but not just sections of it but rather the whole book from beginning to end and one will easily grasp the fact that the seventy years was a period of desolation-servitude and exile from the Fall in 607 BCE until the Return in 537 BCE. This is the one major fact that proves the validity of 607 BCE. and nothing published anywhere in the scholarly literature disproves this simple basic fact.

My challenge is for any poster to refute and disprove this one basic fact and to provide one basic fact that alone proves 587 or 586 BCE for the Fall.

Scholar will now sit back and watch the 'feathers fly'!

scholar JW

Pseudoscholar, you, and 607BCE have been torn to shreds so many times on this and other forums- and proven ridiculously wrong.  Give it up.  Take on a new hobby.

Black Sheep

Post 3654

My response to the so called KISS refutation is for advocates of this proposal to provide one basic fact that proves the validity of either 586 or 587 and refutes 607 BCE for the date of the Fall.

scholar JW

pseudo, I have read the whole book of Jeremiah..including all of ch 25 which makes plain it is 70 years of babylonian dominance- as all the nations of the earth are given to Babylon....and at the end of the 70 years Babylon would be called to account- which they were in 539BCE...and Babylonian dominace began in 609BCE when they overtook the Assyrian Empire.  537BCE has been proven wrong on other threads here...but other than a point of academic interest, these dates go no further...as the WT's numerology on this is complete BS...namely their '7 Gentile Times" doctrine.