JW Insider

Ever since they reported Fred Flintstone’s lower facial discoloration as evidence of masking during a prehistoric pandemic my faith in them has been shaken.
 
 
 

OK. I think I'm done.
These two LBAT 1419 eclipses marked for NEB14, and NEB32 clearly fit the following:
NEB14 ULUL is September 15, 591 BC at sunrise NEB32 ULUL is September 25, 573 BCE a couple hourse before sunset You can find other eclipses during, let's say, a 60 year time period from 625 to 565, but they don't match the eclipse descriptions in question. They don't match the position of the eclipse relative to the horizon and times that are shown in the tablets.
A lot of Witnesses might probably be wondering if there is any way that these eclipses might match a time period 20 years further back in time, because the WTS has produced a NB chronology where one must add 20 to the dates that are accepted by all NB archaeologists and specialists. So I checked for a similar set of eclipses in Ulul 14/15 591+20 611. Also checked Ulul 13,14,15,&16. Did the same for 611, 610 and 609. These would be 20, 19 and 18 years prior to the "accepted" dates, in order to try to match the Watchtower dates. 
Since ULUL always starts in August or September, we'll simply look for the first full moon in August even if it means the month started too early, and go all the way to the last full moon in October, even if it meant that the month started too late.
So we'll check for all the possible candidates for Ulul 13th-16th, for 609, 610 and 611 BCE, even checking a few extra days beyond a three month period just to make sure nothing could have been missed. Results:
-------------------------
August 609. Nothing. September 4, 609 looks like a possible candidate. It's an excellent visible eclipse, and must have been one in the same series of this Saros cycle. But that's the problem, it was very visible at night. There was no eclipse at sunrise per the tablet's "instructions." It was very visible much earlier in the morning, but only 3 to 5 hours before sunrise. Because this one doesn't work we don't need to test part two 18 years later. October 609. Nothing -------------------------
August 610. Nothing. September 16, 610 looks like a possible candidate. But, it peaked at around 1 to 2 in the morning, very visible, and there was no eclipse near sunrise. October 610. Nothing. -------------------------
August 611. Nothing. September 26th 611. Partially visible eclipse, but only up to about midnight. No eclipse near sunrise. October 611. Nothing. -------------------------
If 609 had turned out to be a candidate for the 14th year of Nebuchadnezzar, then we could have said that 607 was his 16th year, and 606 his 17th, etc. But it didn't work out in favor of the WTS chronology.
If 610 had turned out to be a candidate  for the 14th year, then 609 would be the 15th, 608 the 16th, 607 the 17th, and 606 the 18th. But it didn't work out in favor of the WTS chronology.
If 611 had turned out to be a candidate, then 607 would have been the 18th year, and this is exactly what the WTS chronology claims. But testing for 611 showed no fully visible eclipse in that period.
But it does produce excellent, nearly perfect results for 591 and 573, so we now have two dates we can mark in the chart. Next post will make use of these dates. If anyone in the world can find them to mean something else, or has found anything I missed about them, I will remove them and use another archaeological date to begin the BCE/CE association with the relative chronology now in the chart.

625 624 623 622 621 620 619 618 617 616 615 614 613 612 611 610 609 608 607 606 605 604 603 602 601 600 599 598 597 596 595 594 593 592 591 590 589 588 587 586 585 584 583 582 581 580 579 578 577 576 575 574 573 572 571 570 569 568 567 566 565 564 563 562 561 560 559 558 557 556 555 554 553 552 551 550 549 548 547 546 545 544 543 542 541 540 539 538 537 536 535 534 533 532 531 530 N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 591 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  

It looks like CyberSky5 can calculate back into the past. So I just downloaded it.
Found out about it here: http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-software.html Got it here: http://www.cybersky.com/index.htm I've never used any version of it before today. It's a 30-day free trial and it says the free trial only has 10,000 sky objects instead of 30,000 in the full version. But the other functionality is supposed to be there, and the free version puts a watermark on any video or picture you create from the sky images.
So, here goes. It installed on first try but didn't create a desktop icon. To start it I had to search CyberSky in the Windows 10 search box (lower left of a Windows 10 screen).
First thing was to set the location to Baghdad, Iraq using Location on the menu bar. Since I'll be going back to this I also set it as my "Home" location and "Site 1" for good measure. It shows the latitude and longitude, so that I could correct this to Babylon, Iraq if I need to.
Here's what it looks like so far:

If you look at the time, you can see that I also set the date to 591 BC. On this one you don't have to subtract (add a negative one) to translate "negative" dates to BC. So that simplifies the dates.
Also, by default you can't see below the horizon, but on the Map menu, you can just select "Look Below Horizon." (The Babylonians could predict or calculate an assumed but unobservable event whether it be movement of stars and planets in the daytime, or an event that was invisible because it was below the horizon.) This gives us a way to check out if their calculations were really correct. 
The last thing to do for eclipses is to click a little button on the toolbar. There's a menu item for it too I'm sure, but this is easy. It's the little gray circle with a lighter gray circle around it. In the picture above, it's right there just above the X at the top left corner of the dark blue sky. It's the button that will show where the earth is casting a shadow. It will show where that shadow would be, even if the moon isn't there to "catch" it. So it's useful to test lunar eclipses, or see how closely the sun, earth and moon happened to align, even if they didn't quite make a visible eclipse.
So now the only thing to do is "drag" the sky and horizon around so that you can look in a certain direction along the horizon. Drag it until you are looking West and you can click the hours until the sun sets. Drag it up and down so that you are either looking straight up to stars above you, or left and right to find the moon. You can also play with the "Field of View" to see more or less of the sky at once. I'll drag mine to see if I can show a few sky objects at once.

I clipped just a small part of the sky picture, and I set this for September 15, 591 BC at 6:29 in the morning, just a couple "degrees" after sunrise. The Sun, as expected is just above the East point on the horizon. Venus must have been quite visible as the "morning star" an hour ago, because I see it just below the Sun, and it's just drifted below the horizon.
But as I look to the West, the Moon is just below the horizon, too. And that little "double image" gray circle above the moon is there because I set the "Earth Shadow" button to show it. And it is overlapping with the moon, therefore this shadow would be creating a eclipse, but not visible, unless you lived farther to the West (below the horizon), or if there had been a huge tall mountain to climb up on as an observatory, and therefore could see further over the horizon than others. An airplane at 35,000 feet over Baghdad might work too. (Babylon is about 55 mi South of Baghdad, but if it had been West of Baghdad, this would be a very good reason to reset our location more accurately.)
Just for fun, and to get used to the program, you can click the time button to move forward or backward one second at a time, or one minute, or one hour, or day, month, year etc. This gives you a time-lapse animation of the sky and as you go exactly one day at a time you can get a sense of how fast or slow each of the different planets move against the backdrop of the stars. If you move one month at a time, you'd see these planets appear to move much faster and notice some other phenomena about where certain objects rise/set along the horizon.
Since eclipses only happen at about the time of a full moon you can also just move from full moon to full moon, before searching if there is an eclipse that month. Do this 233 times and you have just gone through 233 lunar months (18 years) to get to the next position in that particular saros cycle. I haven't seen where this program allows a quick jump from one lunar eclipse to the next lunar eclipse, which was available in Sky6.  
And, by the way, there is a misconception implied by some already that the Saros cycles means you will see the exact same lunar configuration to match the one that was seen 18 years and 11 days earlier or later. This is not really possible. We can already see the two readings for Nebuchadnezzar has one of them beginning at sunrise and one of them closer to sunset. They continue to drift a bit from the previous positions 18 years earlier.
Just to get an idea of what I'll be doing, I'm moving the time along one lunar month at a time to see if I can find every possible lunar eclipse calculated around sunrise. When I find one I will jump 18 years and see if the next lunar eclipse is about 2 hours 20 minutes before sunset, plus or minus an hour or so just to be safe. This way we can reject some eclipses as not in this particular saros cycle. But we might also be able to identify the right years BCE, if there is only one set of years that fits.
Moving one lunar month forward (about 29.5 days, I will check the position 28, 29, 30 and 31 days later to be safe and give every chance for other years to become candidates. Just for fun, here is the one I checked for the next lunar month.

This is just a couple minutes after sunrise, and this is the day where the moon is closest to seeing earth's shadow, 29 days later, the days on either side of this show the shadow drifting even further.
So, who knows what I'll find? As easy as this is, everyone should get involved. It's free! And we can all help correct one another if we are making a mistake or wrong assumption!
 
 

There are several more evidences that the above timeline is correct, although they cover shorter segments of the timeline. I have read scholarly papers concerning nearly 20 additional "smaller" pieces of evidence that would also help to establish that the relative positioning of each king in the timeline is exactly as shown above. The main point is that there are no pieces of evidence that would force any adjustments to the timeline. Every new piece of evidence discovered helps to "cement" this timeline. No new secular evidence, so far, would give us reason to doubt the accuracy.
So we should be ready to look for "witnesses" that could help us connect this relative timeline to our own BCE/CE era. By now, most everyone agrees that this can be accomplished due to the exactness and regularity of cycles and intervals with respect to the sun, moon, planets and stars. This is alluded to in Genesis:
(Genesis 1:14-16) . . .Then God said: “Let there be luminaries [lights] in the expanse of the heavens to make a division between the day and the night, and they will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. 15 . . .  the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars.
If we can find any one witness to any one year on the timeline, then it should be clear that this is the same as putting a date on all the other years in the timeline. Identifying the 9th year of Nabonidus, for example, is exactly the same as identifying his 8th year, his 7th year, etc.
So here's the first potential witness to synchronize the BCE/CE era to the timeline:
There are more than a dozen texts in this era that list eclipses, and a few of these list the types of eclipses that are predicted to repeat every 223 lunar months (18-plus years, saros cycles). The only way this predictability could ever be discovered is if someone in Babylon was keeping and passing down an accurate calendar. And the king list was the simplest form of this year-by-year calendar. Some of these "saros" cycle texts tracked such 18-year repetitions over a few centuries at a time.
Let's start with the tablet that A.J.Sachs numbered LBAT 1419.
It covers about 162 years worth of eclipses at 18 year intervals. They start even before the N-B period. By the way, if there are 10 "saros" cycle eclipses on a tablet, you know it means it is covering about a 162 year period, even if you haven't yet figured out which BCE dates the eclipses belong to. [2 eclipses = 1*18=18 years, 3 = 2*18=36 years, 4 = 3*18 =42 years, ... 10 = 9*18=162].
The first two clearly legible eclipses recorded on the tablet are, as expected, 18 years and 11 days apart. 
14th [year] Nebuchadrezzar, month 6, [eclipse] which was passed by [=would not be observable] at sunrise 32nd [year] Nebuchadrezzar, month 6, [eclipse] which was passed by [=would not be observable]. At 35° [2 hrs, 20 min] before sunset. So they knew from even older accurate calendars that these two eclipses would be happening in this series, but they also could predict that they would not be observable as they happened (due to bright daytime sunlight). Can we find two eclipses using astronomy programs that would ONLY fit those two descriptions? We would have to find a predictable eclipse starting at sunrise on about the 14th day of Ulul (month 6: Aug/Sep), and then another one that started 2 hours and 20 minutes before sunset on the 14th day of Ulul (month 6: Aug/Sep), 18 years later. We could go looking for this particular pattern in an astronomy program. This is a new computer, so I'll download an astronomy program today and look. Notice that the eclipse before the first one would land about 4 years prior to Nebuchadnezzar's reign (Nabopolassar), and the next one would land well after. Even if we don't know the BCE dates yet, we should find this particular saros cycle to match the following highlighted years:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96   N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 It's been a while since I had Sky6 I think it was on any recent laptop, but I'll see what's out there. Hopefully free. And report back when I get a chance.
 

TAKING A RELATIVE TIMELINE AND MATCHING IT TO OUR OWN ERA (BCE/CE)
Pieces of this topic are already under discussion elsewhere in this thread, so it's time I got caught up. There are a lot of questions and claims (and accusations and insults) flying around which might be better answered after presenting more data.
But, as some of the dust-ups settle, it's also a good time to review just how far we have gotten with the relative chronology, before jumping into a discussion of the astronomical diaries/tablets. Clearly this information is of highest interest to other Witnesses, so I will review how the relative data is being presented in terms of what the WTS has said about the secular evidence for the relative data.
REVIEW
Back on page 5 of this topic, I quoted from a WTS publication, "Let Your Kingdom Come" (1981) that can be found on jw.org here: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101981019
Concerning the king list that's associated with Ptolemy, jw.org said: "Most modern historians accept Ptolemy’s information about the Neo-Babylonian kings and the length of their reigns..." Therefore, we used it as a tentative baseline to see if this "witness" holds up under the "scrutiny" of further evidence. We tested it against Berossus. jw.org (at the link above) admits that "Ptolemy's figures agree with those of Berossus." So Berossus provided a second "witness" that agreed with the first. The publication at jw.org didn't mention the Uruk king list, but we also tested against that king list, and this provided a third witness that exactly agreed with the first two. Then the Nabonidus Harran Stele (NABON H 1, B) is mentioned and the jw.org publication admits: "The figures given for these three [Neb,E-M,Neriglissar] agree with those from Ptolemy’s Canon."  Therefore this becomes a fourth witness agreeing with the first three, and even agreeing not just on three kings mentioned but also the entire length of Nabopolassar and first of Nabonidus. The jw.org publication does not mention that the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8 ) also confirms the period from Nabopolassar 16th to Nabonidus' accession year, touching, again, on all the N-B kings. This becomes a fifth witness all in perfect agreement with the other four. Then the jw.org publication refers to the Business/Contract tablets admitting: "Thousands of contemporary Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found that record simple business transactions, stating the year of the Babylonian king when the transaction occurred. Tablets of this sort have been found for all the years of reign for the known Neo-Babylonian kings in the accepted chronology of the period." So these tablets provide a sixth witness agreeing with the previous five. In effect, they are actually providing a great crowd of additional witnesses, up to 10,000 more witnesses, so far, to the entire N-B timeline.
So, now that we have all these witnesses to the Neo-Babylonian timeline before us, we can present what the Babylonians would have used as their own timeline. So far, again, I have only put relative dates at the top for the 96 different years of data from the first year of Nabopolassar to the last year of Cyrus. (Wel'll fix that shortly.)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of two "witnesses" Royal King List and Berossus Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of 3rd witness: the Uruk King List N-B period confirmed by agreement with 4th witness: the Adad-Guppi' stele (Nabon H 1, B) thru Nabonidus 9th                                                                 N-B period confirmed with 5th witness: the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8.)                                                     Entire N-B period confirmed by 1000's of business tablets incl lengths & order of reigns, & all transitions between all kings. So in Babylon, If a person wanted to calculate someone's age, or the length of time from the beginning to the end of a specific business deal, or the length of time from a specific event that would have happened in the timeline, then all they needed was a chart like the above. All they needed was a king list that gave the order and lengths of reigns.
If it were currently the 4th year of Nabonidus and I had was explaining how I know I just turned 60 years old, I would say, for example, "I was born in the 14th year of Nabopolassar, so I lived 7 years under Nabopolassar, 43 years under Nebuchadnezzar, 2 years under Evil-Merodach, 4 years under Neriglissar, and these last 4 years under Nabonidus." (7+43+2+4+4=60.) 
Similarly, if I were a Jewish person exiled in Babylon and knew that a trustworthy prophet had claimed that nations would be under the yoke of Babylon for 70 years, and that this time period would end when Persia conquered Babylon, then I might use the same timeline or king list to measure back from the first year of Cyrus to get an idea of when these 70 years must have begun. If I started counting from the 2nd regnal year of Cyrus, I might come up with, for example, 1 year under Cyrus, 17 under Nabonidus, 4 under Neriglissar, 2 under Evil-Merodach, 43 under Nebuchadnezzar, and therefore the last 3 years under Nabopolassar -- which would gets me to about the 19th year of Nabopolassar. (1+17+4+2+43+3=70.) Living in those times, I would never think of dates like 605, 607, 609 etc. I would just have an idea that it was around the 19th year of Nabopolassar.
We now see that, according to all the evidence that has been available so far --including all the secular evidence presented at the jw.org link above-- the 19th year of Nabopolassar was about 607 BCE. (This is why I don't have a problem with 607 BCE as the start of the 70 years of Jeremiah, by the way. It's about right, or at least within a couple of years depending on when exactly you end the period, and how accurately you wish to count backwards.)

TAKING A RELATIVE TIMELINE AND MATCHING IT TO OUR OWN ERA (BCE/CE)
Pieces of this topic are already under discussion elsewhere in this thread, so it's time I got caught up. There are a lot of questions and claims (and accusations and insults) flying around which might be better answered after presenting more data.
But, as some of the dust-ups settle, it's also a good time to review just how far we have gotten with the relative chronology, before jumping into a discussion of the astronomical diaries/tablets. Clearly this information is of highest interest to other Witnesses, so I will review how the relative data is being presented in terms of what the WTS has said about the secular evidence for the relative data.
REVIEW
Back on page 5 of this topic, I quoted from a WTS publication, "Let Your Kingdom Come" (1981) that can be found on jw.org here: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101981019
Concerning the king list that's associated with Ptolemy, jw.org said: "Most modern historians accept Ptolemy’s information about the Neo-Babylonian kings and the length of their reigns..." Therefore, we used it as a tentative baseline to see if this "witness" holds up under the "scrutiny" of further evidence. We tested it against Berossus. jw.org (at the link above) admits that "Ptolemy's figures agree with those of Berossus." So Berossus provided a second "witness" that agreed with the first. The publication at jw.org didn't mention the Uruk king list, but we also tested against that king list, and this provided a third witness that exactly agreed with the first two. Then the Nabonidus Harran Stele (NABON H 1, B) is mentioned and the jw.org publication admits: "The figures given for these three [Neb,E-M,Neriglissar] agree with those from Ptolemy’s Canon."  Therefore this becomes a fourth witness agreeing with the first three, and even agreeing not just on three kings mentioned but also the entire length of Nabopolassar and first of Nabonidus. The jw.org publication does not mention that the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8 ) also confirms the period from Nabopolassar 16th to Nabonidus' accession year, touching, again, on all the N-B kings. This becomes a fifth witness all in perfect agreement with the other four. Then the jw.org publication refers to the Business/Contract tablets admitting: "Thousands of contemporary Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found that record simple business transactions, stating the year of the Babylonian king when the transaction occurred. Tablets of this sort have been found for all the years of reign for the known Neo-Babylonian kings in the accepted chronology of the period." So these tablets provide a sixth witness agreeing with the previous five. In effect, they are actually providing a great crowd of additional witnesses, up to 10,000 more witnesses, so far, to the entire N-B timeline.
So, now that we have all these witnesses to the Neo-Babylonian timeline before us, we can present what the Babylonians would have used as their own timeline. So far, again, I have only put relative dates at the top for the 96 different years of data from the first year of Nabopolassar to the last year of Cyrus. (Wel'll fix that shortly.)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of two "witnesses" Royal King List and Berossus Entire N-B period confimed by agreement of 3rd witness: the Uruk King List N-B period confirmed by agreement with 4th witness: the Adad-Guppi' stele (Nabon H 1, B) thru Nabonidus 9th                                                                 N-B period confirmed with 5th witness: the Hillah stele (Nabon. No. 8.)                                                     Entire N-B period confirmed by 1000's of business tablets incl lengths & order of reigns, & all transitions between all kings. So in Babylon, If a person wanted to calculate someone's age, or the length of time from the beginning to the end of a specific business deal, or the length of time from a specific event that would have happened in the timeline, then all they needed was a chart like the above. All they needed was a king list that gave the order and lengths of reigns.
If it were currently the 4th year of Nabonidus and I had was explaining how I know I just turned 60 years old, I would say, for example, "I was born in the 14th year of Nabopolassar, so I lived 7 years under Nabopolassar, 43 years under Nebuchadnezzar, 2 years under Evil-Merodach, 4 years under Neriglissar, and these last 4 years under Nabonidus." (7+43+2+4+4=60.) 
Similarly, if I were a Jewish person exiled in Babylon and knew that a trustworthy prophet had claimed that nations would be under the yoke of Babylon for 70 years, and that this time period would end when Persia conquered Babylon, then I might use the same timeline or king list to measure back from the first year of Cyrus to get an idea of when these 70 years must have begun. If I started counting from the 2nd regnal year of Cyrus, I might come up with, for example, 1 year under Cyrus, 17 under Nabonidus, 4 under Neriglissar, 2 under Evil-Merodach, 43 under Nebuchadnezzar, and therefore the last 3 years under Nabopolassar -- which would gets me to about the 19th year of Nabopolassar. (1+17+4+2+43+3=70.) Living in those times, I would never think of dates like 605, 607, 609 etc. I would just have an idea that it was around the 19th year of Nabopolassar.
We now see that, according to all the evidence that has been available so far --including all the secular evidence presented at the jw.org link above-- the 19th year of Nabopolassar was about 607 BCE. (This is why I don't have a problem with 607 BCE as the start of the 70 years of Jeremiah, by the way. It's about right, or at least within a couple of years depending on when exactly you end the period, and how accurately you wish to count backwards.)

I'm not sure you noticed, but I saw your question to @Arauna about the festival of Akitu.  @Arauna has repeatedly berated me for not accepting the idea that Cyrus must have made his proclamation at the festival of Akitu in Nisan 538. I believe she has thought that this is a similar argument to the one "scholar JW" is making that somehow proves that the Jews must have arrived back on Tishri 537. I'm not sure most Witnesses realize that this is a year and half, between those two points, and yet the WTS is quite happy with the possibility that the proclamation could have happened a full year later leaving six months or less.

Aren't you confusing Carl Olof Jonsson's book, "GTR," with Raymond Franz' book "CC"?
Earlier you indicated that you had probably not read, or perhaps had never even seen Ann O'maly's October 2020 VAT 4956 paper on academia.edu, when you said:
The 20-some page paper which you called "the VAT attempt" is well-referenced, well footnoted, and well-written (meaning it's relatively easy even for me to understand). And it is most definitely not her 45-page translation of Neugebauer and Weidner. If you hadn't checked academia.edu in a while, then this is a very understandable mistake. No big deal. After all, that translation was also related to VAT 4956. But when this minor mistake was pointed out to you, you didn't even have the honesty to say: 'Oh that's right, I thought you meant the other paper.'  Instead you said:
Yet clearly you did confuse them. Your inability to admit such a simple and obvious mistake, apparent to almost everyone else here, makes it difficult for me to trust your motives. Sorry. It makes me realize that all your haughty expressions, and tendency to provoke and insult others, may not have any evidence backing any of it up. You appear to just be echoing the empty insults of those who have clearly never read nor understood the things they are trying to insult. 
I'll highlight at least one of your examples:
From your words here and elsewhere about the book, it seems you probably have not read it, nor understood what it is about. It seems obvious that you have not yet realized that this entire presentation has nothing to do with Carl Olof Jonsson. He is just one more person who took an interest in what specialists and experts have said about the astronomical diaries. These are not his dates. He is no more important to this presentation than the persons who wrote the five references you just quoted. And it sounds like all five of your references above would just happen to agree with Carl Olof Jonsson about these Diaries. All five of those references you offered may agree with what you and others have called "COJ's dates," but it doesn't mean these dates somehow belonged to your 5 resources.
Yet the WTS accepts the same methods of using secular evidence to determine the date 539. The WTS uses this date, never found in the Bible, which the WTS admits has been derived from astronomical diaries and king's lists and chronicles. So how "shameful" and "desperate" do you really think it is to make use of this same methodology that the WTS has accepted? Does looking to see if the Babylonian evidence might somehow falsify itself really have anything to do with accepting secular evidence over Bible chronology? Or is there perhaps just a fear that these dates actually support the Bible quite well. I get the feeling sometimes that the lack of substance behind your vague provocations is merely to create chaos. And when you do make a specific accusation, why is it almost always something that has already been shown to be untrue, but you merely repeat it without explaining any reason for repeating the falsehoods?
For example, you said that AlanF doesn't accept a 605 BCE deportation. AlanF has been promoting a 605 BCE deportation in every related discussion I have ever seen, and I see it goes back to discussions from very long ago. I wrote a post or two that corrected you on that specific point. You already responded to that correction of your claim with insults to me, so I know you must have read it. But then you just repeated that same falsehood again under this topic.
Therefore, if you have no actual data or evidence to present, then it would be better to move your posts that are full of insult and repeated falsehoods back over to the previous thread that spawned this one. 
So back to the topic . . .
I will maintain that you don't need to accept any secular evidence over Bible chronology at all. For one thing this exercise in this thread is specifically about the SECULAR evidence for the Neo-Babylonian chronology. We want to see how well it stacks up on its own before looking for OT synchronisms. We lose the entire point if we try to force it to fit our favorite synchronisms before checking whether it can stand on its own validity. Besides, I see how it actually helps to confirm the Bible record. It enhances my own appreciation for the Bible's accuracy. But it isn't necessary to accept this archaeological evidence from Babylonian. You can take it or leave it. Of course, if you leave it, you don't have the 539 BCE date any more. 
Yes. True. It's never wise to say we have a "complete" picture on secular evidence. So far, I'm guessing that no more than 30,000 of the over 100,000 business tablets have been published. Therefore, some historian/archaeologist could make himself or herself quite famous in the scholarly community if they discovered that even ONE of these 100,000 tended to falsify the currently presented timeline. I'm guessing that several thousand more of them have at least been scanned for this possibility.
That said, I do appreciate the perspectives on the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries that you provided. It's worth noting very carefully what these sources have said. The general points about the quality and accuracy of older king lists and diaries compared to the Neo-Babylonian period were things I had already learned by reading COJ's book and Furuli's books, but I thought the quotes were excellent.
I'm impressed by the fact that your sources make clear that we don't know much about the actual persons who created these diaries, nor even their exact titles. It's remarkable that persons had such expertise and yet didn't give the impression that they were out to make a name for themselves.
 

Yes, most of them are definitely independent. We have an established date, but not an established chronology. You can't reject the 99% of a NB "absolute" chronology and then come back and say you want only 1%, a tiny piece of it. As you know, the Watchtower writers do not even know yet where exactly where they intended to identify the point of rejection. They only say that it must be rejected somewhere, based apparently on evidence that hasn't shown up yet.
The Watchtower publications have already admitted that, currently, all the secular evidence is against them.
*** kc pp. 186-187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
Ptolemy’s Canon: Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer who lived in the second century C.E. His Canon, or list of kings, was connected with a work on astronomy that he produced. Most modern historians accept Ptolemy’s information about the Neo-Babylonian kings and the length of their reigns . . .. Evidently Ptolemy based his historical information on sources dating from the Seleucid period, which began more than 250 years after Cyrus captured Babylon. . . . .Ptolemy’s figures agree with those of Berossus, a Babylonian priest of the Seleucid period. Nabonidus Harran Stele (NABON H 1, B): This contemporary stele, or pillar with an inscription, was discovered in 1956. It mentions the reigns of the Neo-Babylonian kings Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar. The figures given for these three agree with those from Ptolemy’s Canon. VAT 4956: This is a cuneiform tablet that provides astronomical information datable to 568 B.C.E. It says that the observations were from Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year. This would correspond to the chronology that places his 18th regnal year in 587/6 B.C.E. . . . Business tablets: Thousands of contemporary Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found that record simple business transactions, stating the year of the Babylonian king when the transaction occurred. Tablets of this sort have been found for all the years of reign for the known Neo-Babylonian kings in the accepted chronology of the period. From a secular viewpoint, such lines of evidence might seem to establish the Neo-Babylonian chronology with Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year (and the destruction of Jerusalem) in 587/6 B.C.E. The Watchtower publications actually admit that they would be looking out for something new to be discovered that could falsify all this evidence that they admit goes against the current theory.
*** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
Or, even if the discovered evidence is accurate, it might be . . . incomplete so that yet undiscovered material could drastically alter the chronology of the period.

The Watchtower does not like the use of the term "absolute chronology" and will only mention the use of this term by astronomers/archaeologists in a pejorative sense. So the Watchtower does not dare to call it's chronology an "absolute" chronology. But the actual answer would be yes, if they had not rejected the same "absolute chronology." The reason that the Watchtower chronology is able to accept 539 as the accession year of Cyrus is because there is evidence for an absolute chronology that indicates Nabopolassar began the first year of his reign in 625 (accession 624), and Nebuchadnezzar began the first year of his reign in 604 (accession 605) and Cambyses began the first year of his reign in 629 (accession 630). A cherry-picked, eclectic chronology is an absolute misuse of an absolute chronology, and is therefore a pseudo-chronology.
It's obviously the exact same thing that would be true if the Watchtower had agreed that all the evidence pointed to 587/6 as the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar (which it does) and then said: Well, since Jerusalem must have fallen in 587/6, and we must interpret 70 years of exile beginning at that point until Cyrus, then we declare that Cyrus must have released the exiles  around 519/8 BCE to give the Jews time to get back home in 517/6 BCE.
There was exactly as much evidence (if not more) for the Watchtower to have chosen the 517 date for Cyrus as there was to choose the 607 date for the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar.
So if the Watchtower writers were currently claiming that the first year of Cyrus was therefore 519 or 518, then would you call it an absolute chronology? Obviously not. It should be called a pseudo-chronology. And yet, this is exactly what the Watchtower did by selecting only one tiny part of an absolute chronology and rejecting the greater part of the same absolute chronology.
Correct. And the Watchtower is right that is exactly how the astronomers/historians/archaeologists claim to use the term "absolute chronology." The Watchtower writers clearly realized how the term was being used by specialists in the field, but didn't like the implications of the word "absolute." The Watchtower writers know that the term "absolute chronology" sounds like it must mean "absolutely correct" even though this isn't exactly the way it is used by specialists.
An author I know was working on a book about a high school teacher who, while doing research, discovers that the U. S. Civil War never happened. It was all fake news, fake history. He has published other books, but I don't know if this one was ever published. It sounds like you are using the term "absolute" chronology in a sense like the Watchtower uses it, not the way that specialists claim the term should be used. The way you have used the term, I would agree, it's all a matter of the degree of evidence. This is why I don't think a matter should be considered settled except at the mouth of multiple independent witnesses. We definitely have that for the relative chronology. But I don't think many people have really considered the multiple independent witnesses for the turning that relative chronology into an absolute chronology one that we can tie in some way to the dating system of our own era (BCE/CE/AM).
Easy. By finding some unresolved contradictions in the relative chronology. That's what has been the methodology all along in testing a relative timeline for this topic. Every new piece of independent evidence is tested to see if it can in any way falsify the evidence from the first two "witnesses" to the timeline. So far, we have nothing that would falsify it, which also means that each of the additional pieces of evidences has only strengthened the solidity of the relative timeline.
Further attempts to find evidence to falsify the relative timeline need not have anything to do with BCE dates, or about claims of what events happened in what year of any particular king, although there is a way that it could.
At this point it the discussion it should mostly be about finding evidence that the beginning and ending (relative) dates of any particular king is wrong, or that the order of the kings we have listed is wrong (which is effectively the same thing). Possible ways to do that would be to find evidence that proves there was another king (or kings) we didn't know about who should have had his own distinct listing, not merely as a co-regent. Or that one or more of the kings already shown in the list was a co-regent, overlapping his reign with another king already on the list, and therefore should not have been listed out with a completely separate reign.
Also, if business/contract tablets or inscriptions were found with dates outside the range indicated by the currently known tens of thousands that would create contradictions that might be unresolvable.
Another way to falsify the NB Chronology would be to look at all the evidence from the astronomical diaries. If there are any diaries that with unresolvable readings that are tied to a specific relative date, but which contradict another diary then we could end up with an unresolvable contradiction. For example, let's say there was an eclipse or planetary configuration at a certain date and time that matches a certain year, perhaps Nebuchadnezzar 37. But another diary says a certain identifiable eclipse or planetary configuration happened in Nebuchadnezzar 35, but we know from the calculations (in astronomy software) that this particular configuration was not possible two years earlier.
I offered to walk you through the same process that I used the last time we communicated on this forum (2017?). But I'm sure you would prefer to think that the person teaching you did not have a preconceived bias. I would have been just as happy if you had found an opportunity to get someone in say, Oslo, Norway, to walk you through the process. Probably too late for the particular person I was thinking of.

Thanks, lol.
I have no problem accepting a possible 605 BCE deportation. The Babylonian Chronicles provide some evidence that heavy tribute of some kind from near the area would have happened in Nebuchadnezzar's accession year. Berossus and others also indicate that this heavy tribute from an area relatively near to Judea included a deportation/exile at that time. So 605 makes sense, because the combined evidence of all the archaeological findings point to 605 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar's accession year.
Yes, I agree. It's unfortunate that the Watchtower uses the date 625 for Nebuchadnezzar's accession year instead of 605. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but this must be why the Watchtower goes to great lengths to avoid discussing any possible deportation in 625, or even 605 for that matter.
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but the relative chronology of the timeline appears to be solidly correct. And no one here has come up with any evidence that it isn't. This means that if someone could turn the solid relative chronology into an absolute chronology with a date, like 538 for the first year of Cyrus, then we could see where 625 falls on the timeline. In order to do this one would have to extend farther back into the past to the beginning of the reign of Nabopolassar.
If it formats correctly, you should see those BCE dates on the top row.

625 624 623 622 621 620 619 618 617 616 615 614 613 612 611 610 609 608 607 606 605 604 603 602 601 600 599 598 597 596 595 594 593 592 591 590 589 588 587 586 585 584 583 582 581 580 579 578 577 576 575 574 573 572 571 570 569 568 567 566 565 564 563 562 561 560 559 558 557 556 555 554 553 552 551 550 549 548 547 546 545 544 543 542 541 540 539 538 537 536 535 534 533 532 531 530 N A B O P O L A S S A R (21 years) N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S (17) C Y R U S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I put a darker blue mark at 625, 605, and also at the range from 539-537. It seems that even many Witnesses don't usually realize that if 539 is correct, then the Watchtower's date for the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne, actually lands all the way back in the first year of Nabopolassar. And even dates like 607 and 605 also occur at the end of the reign of Nabopolassar.

That's fine with me, so I will include them. I won't use their military nature as an excuse to ignore them. I just hadn't made use of them yet, because it should be pretty obvious that the timeline is already pretty solid without them. But from what I understand they also help to solidify the timeline even further. It sounds like you were not able to find any good reason to dismiss the Chronicles yourself, so I'll look at them more closely to see what they can tell us about the solidity or weakness of the timeline.
As I said, I'm glad to hear your conclusions about where the data and evidence is relevant to the timeline. If you have no evidence to share in this regard, I'll accept that fact, too.
Everything is potentially relevant to this matter if it is evidence that can affect the timeline. I don't think anyone really believes that every bit of information from past records is always relevant. For some days in a Babylonian diary, the tablets might only say that a wolf came into the city and killed a couple of dogs, or perhaps a diseased fox got in. Furuli, COJ, WTS, myself and others would admit that this is not relevant to pinpointing either a relative or an absolute chronology.
On the issue of two supposedly different kings who are really the same king going by two different names, that's a different matter. It could affect a part of the evidence that was used in support of the relative chronology. For example, what if one was able to show that every tablet made out for the "first year of Nabopolassar" is really just another version of saying the "first year of Nebuchadnezzar," and that this held all the way up to year 21, when suddenly Nebuchadnezzar tablets continue to appear in about the same quantities beginning in year 22, and Nabopolassar tablets for year 22 suddenly drop to zero. Fortunately there is plenty of direct evidence that this was not the case, and that Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar were distinct kings with distinct records. And although we have to Babylonian Chronicles to help verify this, we also have enough additional evidence.
So if you had a specific pair of king's names in mind, I've already see enough evidence to show how easy it would be to refute the idea that these were the same king. And that goes for anywhere in the timeline given above. So if you have something in this regard to share, I'd love to hear it. Else I will assume there was nothing with any evidence behind it
You offered a bit of commentary that indicates that the timeline I provided earlier is correct. Thanks for the support, but this is merely from a modern commentary. I can't just accept a modern commentary as if it were a piece of independent secular evidence. Just because someone accepts the timeline I gave is not evidence that it is true. So there is no contradiction. In fact, it's one of the reasons I spent so little time, so far, making use of records of military campaigns commented upon in the Babylonian Chronicles. Most of that is just commentary about one event after another. It happens to provide support for the timeline, but it is mostly about events that occurred along the timeline.
OK. When you said it was her latest paper, I assumed you meant October 2020. It's the latest one I found there. (And from that VAT paper, it certainly seems like she knows the Saros and Metonic cycles way better than I do.)
Aren't you confusing her VAT paper: https://www.academia.edu/44227088/Fact_checking_VAT4956_com
 ...with her translation paper? https://www.academia.edu/1649244/English_translation_of_Ein_astronomischer_Beobachtungstext_aus_dem_37_Jahre_Nebukadnezars_II_567_66_by_Paul_V_Neugebauer_and_Ernst_F_Weidner_1915_
So, this is the paper, from June 2016: https://www.academia.edu/26085025/Can_two_eclipses_on_BM_32234_be_dated_to_475_BCE_instead_of_the_conventional_year_465_BCE
 

I think the idea IS to have plans. But personally I don't think we should need plans as God can save anyone anywhere at any time regardless where they are.
Only the ones who "worship" the organization might panic.
I think at that time supernatural things WILL happen, because after all, Armageddon will be from a supernatural source, and to survive it, will have to involve miracles.

The reason I included the kings from the Uruk King List going back a bit further is because our next "witness" is easier to understand if one goes back before Nabopolassar, into the time of the Assyrian kings.
This next one is the Adad-Guppi’ inscription, also known as Nabon. No. 24 (Nabon H 1, B.). It was for a kind of funeral/grave inscription for Nabonidus' mother (Queen Adad-guppi) who lived to be about 102. So part of this inscription includes various events from her long life, and it includes a list of all the kings she lived through. You can find a translation here: https://www.academia.edu/38585121/MOTHER_OF_HER_SON_THE_LITERARY_SCHEME_OF_THE_ADAD_GUPPI_STELE
From the 20th year of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, that I was born (in), until the 42nd year of Ashurbanipal, the 3rd year of Aššur-etilu-ili, his son, the 21st year of Nabopolassar, the 43rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, the 2nd year of EvilMerodach, the 4th year of Neriglissar – for 95 years, Sîn, king of the gods of heaven and earth, (in) which I sought after the shrines of his great godhead, (for) my good doings he looked upon me with a smile, he heard my prayers (Adadguppi Stele I:29–36) (Note that there are no differences in the Uruk King List, Adad-Guppi, and Royal "Ptolemy" King List in any of the Neo-Babylonian kings. But the Assyrian Kings are not listed in the Babylonian records except where they were simultaneously kings of Babylon.)
Another part (of the Adad-guppi' inscription) says she died in the 9th year of Nabonidus, which would indicate at least an age of 102, and the Nabonidus Chronicle (B.M. 35382) confirms the same information.
So here's what this new piece of evidence gives us. And remember it's a "stone witness" that is both contemporary and independent of the others.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 Nabopo-lassar N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S C Y R U S 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Timeline above confirmed by Berossus Timeline above confirmed by Royal Canon ("Ptolemy's") Nabopo-lassar N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S C Y R U S 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Timeline above exactly confirmed by the Uruk King List Nabopo-lassar N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S   16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9                                   Timeline above exactly confirmed by the Adad-Guppi' inscription (although it only goes to Nabonidus 9)  

So far, we've used two "witnesses" to the timeline of Babylonian kings:
Berossus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berossus Royal Canon, sometimes called "Ptolemy's Canon" (a "king list" going back to the 8th century BC, and updated by various persons over the next centuries as they added successive new kings and their reigns to it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Kings It may also be of interest to note that scholars believe these two sources are independent of each other.
There is another famous king list, the Uruk King List which can be found translated into English here: Uruk King List - Livius and several other places. It completely covers the portion of kings in the chart below and then some additional kings, both before and after the ones shown below. It includes kings much further back into the Assyrian period. I'll list them below the chart, as copied from Livius. But first, this is what it does to our chart. It's another independent witness to the exact same evidence. It's in perfect harmony with Berossus and "Ptolemy."
 
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 Nabopo-lassar N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S C Y R U S 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Timeline above confirmed by Berossus Timeline above confirmed by Royal Canon ("Ptolemy's") Nabopo-lassar N E B U C H A D N E Z Z A R II (reigned for 43 years) E-M Nerig- lissar N A B O N I D U S C Y R U S 16 17 18 19 20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Timeline above exactly confirmed by the Uruk King List As copied from Livius.org below. The other side of this inscription continues beyond Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, etc.):
1'note /MU 21\ [mAššur-bâni-apli] Aššurbanipal 21 years 668-631 2' ša-niš /m\Šamaš-šuma-ukîn Šamaš-šuma-ukîn at the same time 667-648 3' MU 21 mK[an-da]-la-an Kandalanu 21 years 647-627 4' MU 1 m dSîn2-šumu-lîšir2 Sin-šumliširnote 1 year 626 5' u m dSîn2-šarra-iš-ku-un and Sin-šar-iškûn Id. Id 6' MU 21 m dNabû-apla-usur Nabopolassar 21 years 626note-605 7' [M]U 43 m dNabû-kuddurî-usur Nebuchadnezzar [II] 43 years 604-562 8' [M]U 2 mAmîl-dMarduk Amel-Marduk 2 years 561-560 9' [MU] /3\ 8 ITI m dNergal2-šarra-usur Neriglissar 3 years, 8 months 559-556 10' [(...)]note 3 ITI mLa-ba-ši-dMarduk Labaši-Marduk [accession year] 3 months 556 11' [MU] /17?\ m dNabû-nâ'id Nabonidus 17? years 555-539 12' [MU x mK]ur-aš Cyrus [the Great] [x years] 539-530 13' [MU x mKambu-z]i-i Cambyses [II] [x years] 530-522 14' [MU x mDaria-m]uš Darius [the Great] [x years] 522-486  

When he sticks to that, yes, it's a great idea and works well. Unfortunately, he doesn't stick to that.
 
His idea is to make the reader believe that cuneiform writing is open to interpretation - except when it conforms to his conclusions. If it doesn't conform to his conclusions, he changes the reading/meaning of the logograms. 

@Ann O'Maly Thanks for joining and thanks for the correction.
I should not have said: "The site that Ann O'maly refers to is vat4956.com, and the translation information is excellent there, too."
The specific lines I checked out appeared to be exactly as I recalled them from other sources. But I just started looking at that site yesterday for the first time, and although I had not read any of their translations carefully yet,  I love that they break down each and every line the way they do. They put a picture of the line, a transliteration, and the official Neugebauer-Weidner/Hunger translation.
After just now reading your statement, I picked another line at random. Front - Line 17. I agree it looks unfinished and rushed, but I still love the method of showing information for each line one at a time and displaying literal meanings.
www.vat4956.com/thetablet.php?frontline17
  Transliteration for 588 & 568 BC:
[xxx] x 15 DINGIR KI DINGIR IGI 7. 30 ┌NA AN. MI sin ša2 DIB┐ [...]  
Translation for 568 BC that also fits the year 588 BC- by P.V. Neugebauer and E. F. Weidner (1915) edited by Hermann Hunger (1988)
The 15th, one god was seen with the other; sunrise to moonset: 7°30'. A lunar eclipse which passed by [...]
---------------
Looking further down the page, I liked these charted out lines, and I assumed there would be more clarity here. I see that some symbols were given no translation, and some were given the possible meanings that would only work in other contexts.

@Ann O'Maly Thanks for joining and thanks for the correction.
I should not have said: "The site that Ann O'maly refers to is vat4956.com, and the translation information is excellent there, too."
The specific lines I checked out appeared to be exactly as I recalled them from other sources. But I just started looking at that site yesterday for the first time, and although I had not read any of their translations carefully yet,  I love that they break down each and every line the way they do. They put a picture of the line, a transliteration, and the official Neugebauer-Weidner/Hunger translation.
After just now reading your statement, I picked another line at random. Front - Line 17. I agree it looks unfinished and rushed, but I still love the method of showing information for each line one at a time and displaying literal meanings.
www.vat4956.com/thetablet.php?frontline17
  Transliteration for 588 & 568 BC:
[xxx] x 15 DINGIR KI DINGIR IGI 7. 30 ┌NA AN. MI sin ša2 DIB┐ [...]  
Translation for 568 BC that also fits the year 588 BC- by P.V. Neugebauer and E. F. Weidner (1915) edited by Hermann Hunger (1988)
The 15th, one god was seen with the other; sunrise to moonset: 7°30'. A lunar eclipse which passed by [...]
---------------
Looking further down the page, I liked these charted out lines, and I assumed there would be more clarity here. I see that some symbols were given no translation, and some were given the possible meanings that would only work in other contexts.

@scholar JW, I just read what AlanF wrote, and he's right. The most difficult part would be the translation, which I never tried. But Furuli can be trusted to provide the right "Akkadian" translation, which is basically an exact copy from other sources, anyway. Learning the "jargon" on the tablets would be very difficult. The site that Ann O'maly refers to is vat4956.com, and the translation information is excellent there, too. [Edited to acknowledge the correction made below that only the translations from primary sources are excellent but that the site's attempts to overcome these translations are sloppy.] You can also get some experience by looking at translations of other astronomical diaries, where you are neutral about the date being presented in the diary. Only a small bit of the jargon changed over a few centuries. 

Not at all! He has used the terms correctly. It is supported by the title of that chapter. COJ not only used the terms correctly, he also explained them correctly as I quoted above. He explained these terms in the same way that a paper you once recommeded to this forum explained it, as I recall. It is also the same way that Furuli explains it. And, in fact, our Insight book quotes a resource that indicates that this is exactly the way it is used by historians/archaeologists, too.
*** it-1 p. 454 Chronology ***
The claim is made that “astronomical confirmations can convert a relative chronology [one that merely establishes the sequence of events] into an absolute chronology, specifically, a system of dates related to our calendar.” (The Old Testament World, by Martin Noth, 1966, p. 272)
True but he makes no valid points against the others, and he completely leaves out various astronomical records that help to create an absolute chronology out of this whole period. You will see this clearly when we discuss just a few of those records.
Fortunately, you will see the evidence that each of them not only stands alone in support of the timeline given above, they also give the same results holistically, taken all together. You can use the exact same methodology for all of them.
Yes. Furuli certainly demonstrated the need for caution. Also, you can probably dismiss as many of them as you don't like, and you will still have many more all the way up into the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. Even if you decided to get rid of all but one or two, you'd still get the same "absolute" result from them, but you'd have to complete a solid relative chronology to that point first. I stopped at Cyrus to save time.
We shouldn't be worried about the purpose or relative importance, only whether the evidence they provide corroborates or forces us to question the solid basis of the relative timeline. The purpose could have been to praise false gods, discover omens, or play a game to see who had the best eyesight. At this point wer're probably ready to just look for any differences that can't be easily explained. To see if that timeline is really solid, we should really be trying to "falsify" the above timeline if we can, with any evidence we can find.
Exactly. That's why we should look at the evidence, test it, and see how it stacks up. If you find out all her evidence is reported correctly, then it doesn't really matter as much what her agenda was. Same with you or me.
I think you'll find them to be pretty easy once you get started. And there are excellent explanations and tutorials all around. Also, a lot of this software is only intimidating at first because it has so many features you won't use. (telescope adjustments, etc.) Once you find the single function you will use, and way to set it to a location and start scrolling back in time in fast motion, you end up catching on to new things you might not have thought of. I like setting to a specific day and scrolling back one year at a time from that date. Every "night" you see the movements of the planets, and you see what looks like some planets take a tiny extra jump forward every four years, but not when divisible by 100, except when divisible by 400, and you realize what just happened for every leap year.
Then you might set it to scroll by new moons, or full moons, or eclipses, and in a few minutes you will start to catch on to the basic lunar cycles that would have taken ancient astronomers hundreds of years to put together.
That's why you should check it out for yourself. It sounds like you will be surprised at what you learn about biases. Also, there might be someone in your congregation who already knows how to use this software. If you know any nearby, trusted Witnesses who already know how to use the software, they are probably already aware of the issues surrounding Furuli's scholarship anyway, but you should pick someone who won't be stumbled over any surprises.
I would certainly hope that it would be independent lines of in-house NB evidence that could solidly establish the relative NB chronology. As it turns out there will also be a lot of help in the in-house astronomical records to help establish an absolute chronology.
So far, I have only really discussed independent witnesses to the relative chronology. Astronomical observations will be able to provide additional independent witnesses to several points for which one could claim an absolute chronology. I'm sure you are aware that this is exactly how BM 33066 aka LBAT 1477 aka Strm Kambys 400 had been explained in past WTS publications for "establishing" an absolute date based on the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses.

COJ used the terms correctly. He speaks of the relative chronology just as discussed above, and he speaks of absolute chronology just as was discussed above:
In this chapter it will be demonstrated that the whole NeoBabylonian period, including the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, may be established as an absolute chronology by the aid of astronomical cuneiform documents found in Mesopotamia.

I went through all the same readings Furuli did using "TheSky" and "Stellarium" software and I would have to agree that he made several obvious mistakes with the readings. There is no question about it, and you can prove it for yourself by downloading free versions of the software, setting the location to Iraq, and scrolling back through history. (Sky uses negative dates instead of BCE dates which are correct but you need to add -1 to a negative date to turn it to BCE.) Otherwise it's simple to double-check Furuli. See what you come up with.

I doubt that COJ would call the relative chronology an absolute chronology until various astronomical diaries and records of dated eclipses are added into the mix. I'll check out chapter 4 to see. 
I have communicated with Rolf Furuli about his first two books on chronology, which he sent me as I've discussed before. His attempts were focused against just one important witness to the chronology: VAT 4956. It's an important witness to the absolute chronology, but you could throw it out and you'd still end up with the same timeline. You would also end up with the same absolute chronology from dozens of other astronomical records from NB. Also, since the timeline reaches just as accurately as a relative timeline, far into the future from NB times, you actually have thousands of astronomical positions to make use of in testing how well the relative chronology can become an absolute chronology. But even that is not necessary. It will be easy to show that you don't even need to go outside the timeline to start pegging separate --and independent-- "absolute" points along the timeline that all coincide and corroborate with the currently proposed timeline.
Besides, Rolf Furuli actually only showed that VAT 4956, if you ignored the planetary positions, then with its current copyist typos, it had only about a 20% chance of pointing to 588/587 while the exact same data showed about an 80% chance of pointing to 568/567. This is not what he claimed of course; he claimed it was pretty much the reverse of that. But this is exactly what his methodology showed. And as you have said before, methodology is important in chronology. Also, he admitted that the planetary readings only pointed away from his theory, and to 568/567.
There is, of course, a chance that certain lunar positions will be repeated every 18 years (Saros) or every 19 years (Metonic) and sometimes every 20 years, or even random years. But for the planetary positions, Furuli admits that they only fit 568, against his own theory. These planetary positions only repeat every several hundred years or more, so they should be weighted as evidence about 100 times greater than the lunar data. But even if we only weighed them "linearly" or "even" with the lunar data, the tablet points to about a 10% chance of meeting Furuli's theeory and a 90% chance that it is a match to all the other astronomical tablets. Also, I'll predict that if you merely correct the most obvious copyist errors, and also allow for a 1.5 degree accuracy instead of a stricter 1 degree accuracy in the readings, you move it to much less than 5% in favor of Furuli's theory, and higher than 95% in favor of all the other astronomical diaries. And all this conjecture is most likely based on some very correctable copyist errors. Also there were some major inconsistencies in the way that Furuli tried to make some readings "possible" by breaking the known rules, making "Furuli-only" exceptions to the Babylonian calendar. But he only invoked these exceptions when they helped, even though these exceptions would have ruined others of his "possible" readings if he had been consistent with these mistakes.
A very similar attempt to Furuli's was referenced above. The link is here: https://www.academia.edu/44227088/Fact_checking_VAT4956_com
 

Why do you claim they are missing? There is no problem positing that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in his 18th year if you wish. There is no problem if you wish to posit that any 7 of these years were years of madness. Or if you have evidence that it changes the timeline, just show the evidence where you think the timeline should be adjusted.
Of course, trying to tie Biblical evidence into this timeline is not necessary. If one thinks the timeline is not solid, then you coudn't make any use of it anyway. We need to confirm the solidity of the relative timeline before trying to make it an absolute timeline. Also, many issues with Biblical evidence are based on interpretations. Even the claim that there must have been 7 years of madness is not found in the Bible except through a specific interpretation. It is known that the Aramaic for "times" (iddan) can refer to periods of time that are not years, perhaps even seasons, fortnights, months, weeks, etc.
Independent witnesses in this case are pieces of evidence that are not known to have been dependent on each other, or from the same person. For example, if you found a 16th birthday card addressed to Elizabeth in 2016, you have a piece of evidence that someone named Elizabeth was born in the year 2000 or at least within a matter of months. If you find another birthday card to the same address to Elizabeth for a 20th birthday in 2020, you now have two pieces of independent evidence that someone named Elizabeth at this address was born around the year 2000. But this doesn't mean the person was right. Someone might be mistaken. And if it was the same person sending both cards, the mistake might have been compounded. Or perhaps Elizabeth was actually younger and gave out a wrong birth year because she wanted to be seen as older, or vice versa. Or perhaps there are two Elizabeths at this address and the sender was mixed up about which one was born in 2000 and which one was born some other year.
Independent evidence isn't the same as absolute proof, but the more you have the more likely the conclusion is solid. That's why we are fortunate to have several independent sets of business tablets that are unrelated to each other. Thousands from one temple, thousands from another, and thousands from various business houses, and thousands of others that are unrelated to one another.

Yes. I'm saying that these events do not necessarily matter at all in confirming the reign of kings. The king could have done nothing at all throughout his reign, or could have fought many major military campaigns. The king could even have lied about all his supposed accomplishments and even lied about the length of time between one event and the next. It's only when any one of the claims creates a contradiction in the order of the kings and their length of reign that it becomes relevant to the timeline.
All of the claims in that Isaiah commentary that relate to the timeline presented above are perfectly aligned with the relevant portion of the timeline. But this is not the same as offering secular evidence that the timeline is right.