Article
607 and 1914
The fall of Jerusalem belongs in 587 or 586 BCE. Those two years are one year apart, the Bible's own count of Nebuchadnezzar's 18th and 19th years. 607 is twenty years earlier. 1914 is the year the count reaches only if that earlier year is kept.
1914 was set first
1914 was in print decades before the war. It was the year the count had been built to reach. The destruction date was then whatever start would land there. At first that start was . When the missing year zero made 606 reach 1915, the start was and 1914 stayed.
The 2,520-year reading of Daniel 4 is older than the Watch Tower. reached 1917. expected 1844. Neither taught 607 or 1914.
took that method, and then Barbour's dates. was added as a witness to dates the books had already chosen. In 1928 the Society set the pyramid aside. It did not set 1914 aside.
The claim
Picture a tape measure. One end is already held on 1914. The tape is 2,520 years long, so the other end has to sit in 607. Move that end to 587, the year Jerusalem fell, and the far end is no longer 1914. It is 1934. The year they would not give up was the far end. The start is whatever year makes that end come out.
Daniel 4's "seven times" are read as . Counted from 607, they end in 1914. Change the start, and 1914 moves.
| Destruction | Span | Lands in |
|---|---|---|
| 607 BCE | 2,520 years | 1914 CE |
| 606 BCE | 2,520 years | 1915 CE |
| 587 BCE | 2,520 years | 1934 CE |
| 586 BCE | 2,520 years | 1935 CE |
Years from year A BCE to year B CE, with no year 0, are A + B − 1. The 1934 row is what the teaching about "this generation" would have to absorb if 607 is given up. That case is Generation After Generation.
What is fixed, and what is a reading
Two different questions get collapsed into one date. How long the Neo-Babylonian kings ruled is fixed by . What Jeremiah's seventy years refer to is a reading. The tablets do not settle that reading. They leave no twenty-year hole.
The Bible's own year-count for the burning is Nebuchadnezzar's . That is one year, 587 or 586. It is not twenty. Neither number is 607.
The reign the tablets describe
A contemporary diary and the chronicles date this reign. The steps below walk that chain, and the chain that lands on 607.
From the tablets
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Evidenced
The diary VAT 4956 is dated to Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year, and the sky it records is the sky of 568/567 BCE.
VAT 4956
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Calculated
Year 37 in 568/567 puts his accession in 605 and his year 1 in 604/603. The Babylonian Chronicle (BM 21946) records that in year 7 he took the king of Judah, which is 597.
VAT 4956; BM 21946
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Relative
The Bible dates the burning to his 18th or 19th year, and to Zedekiah's 11th year (2 Kings 25:2, 8; Jeremiah 52:12, 29). Those verses do not give a BCE year.
2 Kings 25:2, 8; Jeremiah 52:12, 29
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Calculated
On that reign, year 18 is 587/586 and year 19 is 586. Zedekiah's 11th year falls in the same window. The Nabonidus Chronicle (BM 35382) has Babylon falling in 539, with the reigns between filled and no twenty-year gap.
BM 35382; 2 Kings 25; Jeremiah 52
From 1914
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Set first
Barbour's Herald of the Morning (1875) and Barbour and Russell's Three Worlds (1877) already run the Gentile times from 606 BCE to 1914. The war begins in 1914. That is a real year. It is not a destruction date read off the tablets.
Herald of the Morning (1875); Three Worlds (1877)
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Relative
Daniel 4's seven times are read as 7 × 360 days, each day a year: 2,520 years. John Aquila Brown used that length in 1823 and reached 1917, not 607 and not 1914.
Daniel 4:16, 23, 25, 32; John Aquila Brown (1823)
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Calculated
There is no year 0, so 606 reaches 1915 (606 + 1915 − 1 = 2,520). The Truth Shall Make You Free (1943) and The Kingdom Is at Hand (1944) move the start to 607, and 1914 stays (607 + 1914 − 1 = 2,520).
The Truth Shall Make You Free (1943); The Kingdom Is at Hand (1944)
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Relative
A second path reaches the same start: seventy years of an empty land, with the return set in 537, so the destruction is 607. Jeremiah 25 and 29 supply the seventy years. The empty-land reading and the year 537 are what make them end at 607.
Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10
607 is twenty years before 587, and two years before Nebuchadnezzar's accession in the other column.
Step 1 of 4
| King | Years | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Nabopolassar | 626–605 | 21 |
| Nebuchadnezzar II | 605–562 | 43 |
| Amel-Marduk (Evil-merodach) | 562–560 | 2 |
| Neriglissar | 560–556 | 4 |
| Labashi-Marduk | 556 | months |
| Nabonidus | 556–539 | 17 |
His accession is . Year 7 is the capture of the king of Judah. Year 18 and year 19 are the burning.
The same years, both kingdoms
Josiah reigns from 640 to 609 (2 Kings 22:1; 23:29). He dies at Megiddo in 609. Nebuchadnezzar's accession is still four years away. Through 607 the king in Jerusalem is Jehoiakim, and the king in Babylon is still Nabopolassar. Jeremiah was called in Josiah's 13th year (Jeremiah 1:2), about 627, and he is still there when the city burns.
Olive bars are the kings of Judah, in order: Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin's three months, Zedekiah. The 607 line falls just inside Jehoiakim, and inside Nabopolassar, two years before Nebuchadnezzar's bar. Brown bars are the Babylonian reigns from the table above. Cyrus is the darker bar from 539. Jehoahaz's three months in 609 sit on the joint between Josiah and Jehoiakim. Dashed bars are not reigns: Jeremiah's dated ministry from his call through the fall of the city, Daniel from 605 through Cyrus's third year (Daniel 10:1), and Jehoiachin's exile until Amel-Marduk releases him (2 Kings 25:27).
Nebuchadnezzar's bar is only the end of the reign that began in 605. The line at 561 is Jehoiachin's release, in the accession year of Amel-Marduk. Labashi-Marduk is the short mark in 556, before Nabonidus. Cyrus begins when Babylon falls in 539.
The sky in year 37
is a contemporary observation of that year. The dated tablets leave no gap for twenty years.
Jeremiah's seventy years
are the term of Babylon. None of those verses says 607.
From a destruction in 587/586 to a return in 538/537 is about fifty years, not seventy. The fifty years are the desolation. The seventy years are a longer span, and the tablets already fill it.
Synopsis
Jerusalem fell in 587 or 586 BCE. 607 is the start required for 2,520 years to end in 1914. The tablets do not leave that start open.
Sources
- 2 Kings 24:12–15; 25:2, 8–10; Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10; 52:12, 28–30; Daniel 4:16, 23, 25, 32; Daniel 9:1–2; Ezra 1:1–3. The 18th and 19th years, and Zedekiah's 11th, are the biblical year-count. They are not a date in the modern era by themselves.
- British Museum 21946, the Babylonian chronicle of Nebuchadnezzar's early years. Year 7: capture of the king of Judah, matching 2 Kings 24:12–15, March 597 BCE.
- British Museum 35382, the Nabonidus Chronicle. Cyrus takes Babylon in 539 BCE.
- VAT 4956, astronomical diary for Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year. The recorded sky matches 568/567 BCE.
- A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles; Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.–A.D. 75. The standard publications of the reign lengths.
- Carl Olof Jonsson, The Gentile Times Reconsidered. A Witness-aware walk through the same tablets, and through the 606-to-607 change. The tablets above do not depend on it.
- John Aquila Brown (1823) for the 2,520 years ending in 1917. William Miller and Daniel 8:14 for 1844. Seventh-day Adventists kept 1844. They did not teach this 1914 chronology.
- N. H. Barbour, Herald of the Morning (1875); N. H. Barbour and C. T. Russell, Three Worlds, and the Harvest of This World (1877). Gentile times from 606 BCE to 1914. Russell, The Time Is at Hand (1889).
- Russell, Thy Kingdom Come (1891), the chapter on the Great Pyramid as God's stone witness. The 1891 printing reads 3,416 inches as 1874. The 1914 printing reads 3,457 inches as the close of 1914. The Watch Tower, November 15 and December 1, 1928, sets the pyramid aside.
- The Truth Shall Make You Free (1943) and The Kingdom Is at Hand (1944) move the start from 606 to 607. The Society's later account says that adjustment, and dropping the zero year, left 1914 in place.