JW Insider

I'm kidding about those dates being relevant to @scholar JW. These dates (587 and 586) have ALL the best evidence behind them for the Fall of Jerusalem, and 607 has absolutely NONE, imo. But no one who has invested so many years at the altar of 607 and its idolized celebrated scholars will very easily see the relevance of 587/6, because it's NOT relevant to 1914. But 607 is relevant to 1914. 587/586 is actually the good guy, but it's considered to be the feared, evil "nemesis" god that threatens to make the 607 idol fall on its fishy face, relegated to the "piles" of a Dagon day gone by. 

Let's break that down: You say 586 or 587 are being given for an event in Biblical history called the Fall of Jerusalem. Then you say these two regnal years of Nebuchadnezzar are irrelevant unless they are tied to an event in Biblical history such as the Fall of Jerusalem. 
Yeah!! I graciously accept your apology!! It took a while to convince you. Thank you for explicitly admitting that the years 586 or 587 are relevant! 

... continued...
Not according to the evidenced chronology, of course, but according to the WT chronology. 
(Jeremiah 52:27-30) . . .Thus Judah went into exile from its land. These are the people whom Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar took into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews.  In the 18th year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, 832 people were taken from Jerusalem. In the 23rd year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, Neb·uʹzar·adʹan the chief of the guard took Jews into exile, 745 people. In all, 4,600 people were taken into exile.
If you say the 18th year refers to 607, then the 7th year would be 618 BCE when the greater number were taken into exile.  In fact, as mentioned before, this number was two-thirds of the entire number of exiles, and the number exiled in the 18th year ("607") was only about one-sixth of the total number of exiles. 
Daniel said he was among a group of Judean exiles in an earlier group than "607." Jeremiah spoke of the exiles 10 years before "607." And Ezekiel goes so far as to use a new era of dating where each year was one of the "YEARS of OUR EXILE."  
(Ezekiel 33:21) . . .At length in the 12th year, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month of our exile, a man who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said: “The city has been struck down!”
So it really makes no sense to start claiming that something called "The Exile" (as if there were only one) MUST have started ONLY in the year of the smallest number of exiles, what you call 607. It also flies in the face of Ezekiel's use of the term "in the 12th year of our Exile" to refer to a time starting 10 years before "the Exile" that you are arguing for.
Why do you need to start "the Exile" a decade LATER than Ezekiel starts "the Exile"? 

If only Jeremiah's prophecy had made the 70 years of Babylon's domination commensurate with the Fall of Jerusalem and the deportation of the populace as exiles. But instead Jeremiah merely says that Babylon will have 70 years of dominance so that all the nations around will serve them. Here are some of the problems with that theory:
1. Jeremiah NEVER says the 70 years are for Judah, the prophecy says those 70 years are for Babylon and about Babylon.
2. Jeremiah says that many nations will come under this servitude of Babylon. Note:
(Jeremiah 25:9-26) . . .I am sending for all the families of the north,” declares Jehovah, “sending for King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and something to whistle at and a perpetual ruin. . . . And all this land will be reduced to ruins and will become an object of horror, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon for 70 years.”’  “‘But when 70 years have been fulfilled, I will call to account the king of Babylon and that nation for their error,’ declares Jehovah, ‘and I will make the land of the Chal·deʹans a desolate wasteland for all time. I will bring on that land all my words that I have spoken against it, all that is written in this book that Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.   . . . So I took the cup out of the hand of Jehovah and made all the nations to whom Jehovah sent me drink: starting with Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, her kings and her princes, to make them a ruin, . . .  then Pharʹaoh king of Egypt . . .Uz;. . . the Phi·lisʹtines, Ashʹke·lon, Gazʹa, Ekʹron, . . . Ashʹdod;  Eʹdom, Moʹab,. . . Amʹmon·ites; . . .Tyre, . . .Siʹdon,. . . Deʹdan, Teʹma, Buz, . . . the Arabians . . .Zimʹri, . . . Eʹlam, . . .the Medes; . . . the kings of the north near and far, one after the other, and all the other kingdoms of the earth that are on the surface of the ground; and the king of Sheʹshach will drink after them.
So it's pretty obvious that the devastating effects of Babylonian domination will come upon all the known lands around them "ALL these surrounding nations." Not just Judah. So the 70 years were about a Babylonian domination that would END after 70 years. True, it was Jehovah's purpose that Judea and Jerusalem will be desolated through that domination, seemingly in a worse way than any of the other nations, but after those 70 years FOR BABYLON their domination would end, and it would be Babylon's turn for desolation.
Now it was mentioned before that Isaiah uses an expression about Babylon and 70 years, too. The expression in the prophecy against Tyre was that she:
"will be forgotten for for 70 years, the same as the lifetime of one king.  . . . At the end of 70 years, Jehovah will turn his attention to Tyre, and she will return to her hire and prostitute herself with all the world’s kingdoms on the face of the earth. But her profit and her hire will become something holy to Jehovah. . . . Look! Jehovah is emptying the land and making it desolate. He turns it upside down and scatters its inhabitants.  It will be the same for everyone:. . .
The WT publications say that this "70 years" expression means "70 years, the same as the lifespan given to one KINGDOM, Babylon" who will desolate the prostitute, Tyre, but that after the 70 years are over, Tyre will prostitute herself again with all the nations. As you know, the WTS explains it more fully this way:
*** ip-1 chap. 19 p. 253 par. 21 Jehovah Profanes the Pride of Tyre ***
Jehovah, through Jeremiah, includes Tyre among the nations that will be singled out to drink the wine of His rage. He says: “These nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” (Jeremiah 25:8-17, 22, 27) True, the island-city of Tyre is not subject to Babylon for a full 70 years, since the Babylonian Empire falls in 539 B.C.E. Evidently, the 70 years represents the period of Babylonia’s greatest domination—when the Babylonian royal dynasty boasts of having lifted its throne even above “the stars of God.” (Isaiah 14:13) Different nations come under that domination at different times. But at the end of 70 years, that domination will crumble.
 
If this is true then the 70 years do not need to be associated directly with Judea's and Jerusalem's fall. It's the other way around, those 70 years for Babylon's domination would ultimately bring on a devastating effect in Judea and Jerusalem. It didn't need to be for the full 70 years that Babylon was given to begin it's period of greatest domination. So it also makes sense that we do not need to look for a specific date, exactly 70 years prior to October 539 BCE, or some arbitrarily chosen date within the first year of Cyrus. In fact most of Judea fell into exile a decade or more before Babylon tried to take the walled city of Jerusalem. (Jeremiah 52)
But think about this: Tyre didn't come under the domination of Babylon for a full 70 years. In fact some of those nations in Jeremiah's list appeared to hardly come under domination at all. Some nations that once paid tribute to Egypt or Assyria would simply transfer that tribute over to Babylon. That's probably what Jeremiah had in mind for Judea when he said to just put yourself under the yoke of Babylon without rebellion and you'll save yourselves.
So it makes sense that Babylon has control for 70 years but not all nations need to come under their thumb instantly, or all at once. But what if Tyre had come under their control earlier in Nebuchadnezzar's reign and had been in servitude to Babylon for, say, 75, 80 or 85 years. Would the 70 year prophecy make sense if it were really 80 years for example?
I think you'll see what I'm getting at. The fact that Babylon was given 70 years to dominate would make no sense if some of those nations that came under the 70 years were actually dominated for 80 or even 85 years.
Yet this is what MOST of the Judeans were -- MOST were exiled for 80 or even 85 years according to the WTS chronology. 
continued in next post  . . . 
 
 

I was surprised that you would say it's better to use a pivotal date tied to the Judean monarchy and then you still go right on and defend the ONE date in all of this discussion that is NOT tied to the Judean monarchy. The Nebuchadnezzar dates are explicitly tied to the Judean monarchy.

True, Nebuchadnezzar's years are only slightly better, not equal. LOL.
But putting faith in the secular date 539, although it isn't necessary for Bible students, doesn't cause any real trouble because it is validated by the same evidence that validates Nisan 1, 586 BCE as the first day of the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year of reign. And this also perfectly fits the words of Jeremiah about Nebuchadnezzar being there at the start of the 70 years of Babylonian domination because it puts his accession year back in 605.   

And the problem with that is that you are putting faith in 539, then adjusting it as necessary to 537, and pretending that it is somehow better attested than 537 for the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar.
I don't mind starting a Jewish Exile beginning around 607, because we know that Daniel claimed to be one of several exiles as early as Nebuchadnezzar's first or accession year, which is evidenced to be 605/4. So a period of Exile could well have matched the period of greatest domination of the Babylonian Empire. The Watchtower publications tell us that this period was the 70 years ending 539 and that different nations came under that yoke at different times. Same could be said for different parts of Judea and Jerusalem which also came under that domination and exile at different times during the 70 year period of their domination.
So clearly, according to the Watchtower's own publications, this particular 70 year period can remain intact without proposing that an event for Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year (which you call "607") actually happened BEFORE his own accession year, which all evidence shows was exactly in 605 BCE.

There you go again with that specious argument that goes:
So it must be either 586 or 587 so since we don't know which of those two years is certain, we must dismiss them both and go with a year that's 20 years off, which forces us to pretend there must be an unidentified 20 year gap.
And we don't even know where that gap might fit correctly. We can't put it in Nebuchadnezzar's reign. And we make use of a 17-year Nabonidus reign. That leaves only a place where we have mundane business documents for a total of 4 years. So we must think that this period was actually 24 years and even though business documents have shown up for EVERY SINGLE known year of every king's reign, including those 4 years, but now we suddenly have 20 extra years in that "4-year" period where no business was transacted, and every single Babylonian lost their memory for those 20 years, and all the astronomical lunar and metonic cycles stopped, and the stars and planets also stopped moving, yet caught up instantly after the 20-year "gap" was completed.
We must sound like complete idiots to the same people we treat as experts when we quote from them about anything else in the "Insight" book.   

OK. Now we might be getting somewhere. Yes, the regnal years are better documented in the Babylonian record than the Biblical record. But you can still trust the Bible when it says that the 18-20-month+ events surrounding the city of Jerusalem happened in the 18th and 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar. It doesn't matter whether the Bible used Spring-to-Spring counting of new years or Fall-to-Fall counting of each newly counted year. We know we are in the right time period (within just a few months) if we use the well-documented Babylonian record for the way THEY calculated each year, which was consistent based on all their records, and supported by astronomical records, and their exact Nisan-to-Nisan method, and accession year method is supported by literally tens of thousands of always-consistent mundane business records. Furthermore, mundane business records have no religious agendas.  
The regnal years of Cyrus are not so well documented in the Biblical record and not quite as well documented in the secular record as Nebuchadnezzar's. But they are perfectly consistent with the method used by the Babylonians.

You just keep making up the same false statement. Yet you contradict yourself because you have already admitted that "most if not all" reference works give the same years for EVERY year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign. Turned out that even your own Professor (Oded Lipschits) used the same years for Nebuchadnezzar, in spite of your original claim that he didn't. .

... continued...
Not according to the evidenced chronology, of course, but according to the WT chronology. 
(Jeremiah 52:27-30) . . .Thus Judah went into exile from its land. These are the people whom Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar took into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews.  In the 18th year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, 832 people were taken from Jerusalem. In the 23rd year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, Neb·uʹzar·adʹan the chief of the guard took Jews into exile, 745 people. In all, 4,600 people were taken into exile.
If you say the 18th year refers to 607, then the 7th year would be 618 BCE when the greater number were taken into exile.  In fact, as mentioned before, this number was two-thirds of the entire number of exiles, and the number exiled in the 18th year ("607") was only about one-sixth of the total number of exiles. 
Daniel said he was among a group of Judean exiles in an earlier group than "607." Jeremiah spoke of the exiles 10 years before "607." And Ezekiel goes so far as to use a new era of dating where each year was one of the "YEARS of OUR EXILE."  
(Ezekiel 33:21) . . .At length in the 12th year, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month of our exile, a man who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said: “The city has been struck down!”
So it really makes no sense to start claiming that something called "The Exile" (as if there were only one) MUST have started ONLY in the year of the smallest number of exiles, what you call 607. It also flies in the face of Ezekiel's use of the term "in the 12th year of our Exile" to refer to a time starting 10 years before "the Exile" that you are arguing for.
Why do you need to start "the Exile" a decade LATER than Ezekiel starts "the Exile"? 

There you go again with that specious argument that goes:
So it must be either 586 or 587 so since we don't know which of those two years is certain, we must dismiss them both and go with a year that's 20 years off, which forces us to pretend there must be an unidentified 20 year gap.
And we don't even know where that gap might fit correctly. We can't put it in Nebuchadnezzar's reign. And we make use of a 17-year Nabonidus reign. That leaves only a place where we have mundane business documents for a total of 4 years. So we must think that this period was actually 24 years and even though business documents have shown up for EVERY SINGLE known year of every king's reign, including those 4 years, but now we suddenly have 20 extra years in that "4-year" period where no business was transacted, and every single Babylonian lost their memory for those 20 years, and all the astronomical lunar and metonic cycles stopped, and the stars and planets also stopped moving, yet caught up instantly after the 20-year "gap" was completed.
We must sound like complete idiots to the same people we treat as experts when we quote from them about anything else in the "Insight" book.   

I attended 2 mega churches for several years, this type of music is nice to listen to but being in that concert type environment week after week gets old. Knowing what goes on behind the music also makes it out as just a show. Followed up by a regurgitated topical teaching that may use a scripture. And I found most people who go to mega churches are biblically illiterate. Even a pastor once said they were there to entertain people.

I also think this is much bigger than most people know. On a recent trip to California I visited a brother who had been involved in many of the scholarly efforts with people like Greg Stafford and many of the names that Juan Rivera mentioned some time ago. In fact, I had to double-check that this brother was not using the name "Juan Rivera" here on this forum. Years ago, a few of these names had contacts going up to HQ (Bethel), although HQ began cracking down (again) on any further scholarly groups, and finally was able to effectively get rid of them. This crackdown had also been tried in the early 1980's for obvious reasons too.
Maybe the WTS was right to crack down because, when I met with this brother in California, he listed so many of the names of all these brothers who had finally left the Witnesses, including more famous names like Rolf Furuli and Greg Stafford, and even a scholarly member of the late 1980's Writing Dept, kicked out of Writing, but possibly still a JW as far as he knew. 
I might be wrong, but I think sunlight is still the best disinfectant. People who are curious enough to go venture online "on their own" are going to hear all these things sooner or later anyway, so why not prepare them. Even when someone mentions Ray Franz' books, we can say:
"Imagine, Ray Franz already knew firsthand about all of that stuff he reports and yet he still did his best to stay within the brotherhood, the organization. Even after he resigned from the Governing Body, and was no longer allowed to be an elder, he STILL tried his best to remain a member in good standing with  his congregation in Alabama."  
Going around saying these things never happened, or that they are all lies doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse for those who end up believing that and trying to defend the WTS against what turns out to be true. We end up looking uninformed, or haughty, naive, or worse yet, like liars ourselves.

A lot of great points brought up by several people on ths topic. Wish I had more time to go through and consider them more carefully. Unfortunately for me I need to take another couple of weeks off from commenting. Carry on! Till we meet again to "chew the fat" as it were. (I might just go to France to take in some Paris-sites.)  

I think it's important to be able to see the fallacy of relying so much on secular chronology and pretending it's Bible chronology. It's important to see that it's a mistake for Christians to think they have pretentious insight to know about the "times and seasons." If we can see that our supposed Biblical chronology is actually a man-made idol -- a pseudo-chronology -- then we wouldn't keep using it as a means for "bragging rights" about having supposedly predicted something the Watchtower never actually predicted. We wouldn't keep using it as a way to brag about how our special insight into the "times and seasons" proves we have Jehovah's spirit and backing and have had it for over 100 to 150 years. 
For me, I think we need to shift our "bragging rights" away from having made Palestine-Zionist-Times-Rulership vs Gentile-Times-Rulership predictions in advance of 1914, and focus on our real Christian progress in terms of teaching and promoting conduct in response to Jehovah's love, the ransom, and the good news of the kingdom:
(2 Corinthians 1:12) . . .For the thing we boast of is this, our conscience bears witness that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with holiness and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but with God’s undeserved kindness. 
(2 Corinthians 10:3-5) . . .For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage warfare according to what we are in the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful by God for overturning strongly entrenched things. For we are overturning reasonings and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, . .

I think that’s why everyone leaves me alone, more or less, because I don’t go to Bethel and tell everyone what to do.

In the sequel, Dorothy follows the yellow brick road as instructed. ‘Ah crap!’ she says at movie’s end. ‘California!’

I think it's important to be able to see the fallacy of relying so much on secular chronology and pretending it's Bible chronology. It's important to see that it's a mistake for Christians to think they have pretentious insight to know about the "times and seasons." If we can see that our supposed Biblical chronology is actually a man-made idol -- a pseudo-chronology -- then we wouldn't keep using it as a means for "bragging rights" about having supposedly predicted something the Watchtower never actually predicted. We wouldn't keep using it as a way to brag about how our special insight into the "times and seasons" proves we have Jehovah's spirit and backing and have had it for over 100 to 150 years. 
For me, I think we need to shift our "bragging rights" away from having made Palestine-Zionist-Times-Rulership vs Gentile-Times-Rulership predictions in advance of 1914, and focus on our real Christian progress in terms of teaching and promoting conduct in response to Jehovah's love, the ransom, and the good news of the kingdom:
(2 Corinthians 1:12) . . .For the thing we boast of is this, our conscience bears witness that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with holiness and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but with God’s undeserved kindness. 
(2 Corinthians 10:3-5) . . .For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage warfare according to what we are in the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful by God for overturning strongly entrenched things. For we are overturning reasonings and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, . .

I also think this is much bigger than most people know. On a recent trip to California I visited a brother who had been involved in many of the scholarly efforts with people like Greg Stafford and many of the names that Juan Rivera mentioned some time ago. In fact, I had to double-check that this brother was not using the name "Juan Rivera" here on this forum. Years ago, a few of these names had contacts going up to HQ (Bethel), although HQ began cracking down (again) on any further scholarly groups, and finally was able to effectively get rid of them. This crackdown had also been tried in the early 1980's for obvious reasons too.
Maybe the WTS was right to crack down because, when I met with this brother in California, he listed so many of the names of all these brothers who had finally left the Witnesses, including more famous names like Rolf Furuli and Greg Stafford, and even a scholarly member of the late 1980's Writing Dept, kicked out of Writing, but possibly still a JW as far as he knew. 
I might be wrong, but I think sunlight is still the best disinfectant. People who are curious enough to go venture online "on their own" are going to hear all these things sooner or later anyway, so why not prepare them. Even when someone mentions Ray Franz' books, we can say:
"Imagine, Ray Franz already knew firsthand about all of that stuff he reports and yet he still did his best to stay within the brotherhood, the organization. Even after he resigned from the Governing Body, and was no longer allowed to be an elder, he STILL tried his best to remain a member in good standing with  his congregation in Alabama."  
Going around saying these things never happened, or that they are all lies doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse for those who end up believing that and trying to defend the WTS against what turns out to be true. We end up looking uninformed, or haughty, naive, or worse yet, like liars ourselves.

It's curious to me that this is not the first time you have mentioned "counting backward from 568 BC." You should know that ZERO of the dates you listed are discovered by calculating backward from 568.
For readers who wonder what this question is all about it comes from the mistaken idea that a certain tablet called VAT 4956 is somehow all-important to those who argue for Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year as 586 BCE.
That particular tablet refers to Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year, and even Rolf Furuli says that all the planetary references on this tablet definitely refer to 568/7 and no other year as NEB 37- which puts Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year (NEB 18) in 587 BCE, which would destroy the WT claim of 607. Rolf Furuli is confident that the tablet contains information that MUST refer to 568 and NO OTHER possible year, which is what scholars have been saying all along.
He goes so far as to say that the correct information must have been spliced onto the incorrect information and that someone might have forged parts of it, but not all of it, or faked some of the markings on it, or even potentially used saws and sanders to create it -- all things that are obviously impossible when you look at it.
 But he also (inexplicably) claims that the LUNAR positions on that tablet refer to a different year, 20 years later, in support of the WT Chronology. Furuli spent so much time on this ridiculous SPLIT theory that it makes VAT 4956 seem more important than it is. He attempts to create confusion over the LUNAR positions (and makes embarrassingly amateur errors in doing so.) But no one seems to remember that he could NOT create any confusion about the PLANETARY positions. He admits that the planetary positions ultimately support 587/586 as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year, invalidating the WT claim. 
All this craziness about 568 can make some less-informed Witnesses believe that this particular tablet must be so important that those who still support 586 for Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year must have used this "NEB 37" tablet and simply counted backwards to "NEB 19".
Those who think that way probably don't realize that you can actually just toss out this particular tablet VAT 4956 that Furuli focused on, and still find that other independent evidence supports ALL those other years mentioned in the list. Counting backward from 568 was not done for ANY of them. 

It's curious to me that this is not the first time you have mentioned "counting backward from 568 BC." You should know that ZERO of the dates you listed are discovered by calculating backward from 568.
For readers who wonder what this question is all about it comes from the mistaken idea that a certain tablet called VAT 4956 is somehow all-important to those who argue for Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year as 586 BCE.
That particular tablet refers to Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year, and even Rolf Furuli says that all the planetary references on this tablet definitely refer to 568/7 and no other year as NEB 37- which puts Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year (NEB 18) in 587 BCE, which would destroy the WT claim of 607. Rolf Furuli is confident that the tablet contains information that MUST refer to 568 and NO OTHER possible year, which is what scholars have been saying all along.
He goes so far as to say that the correct information must have been spliced onto the incorrect information and that someone might have forged parts of it, but not all of it, or faked some of the markings on it, or even potentially used saws and sanders to create it -- all things that are obviously impossible when you look at it.
 But he also (inexplicably) claims that the LUNAR positions on that tablet refer to a different year, 20 years later, in support of the WT Chronology. Furuli spent so much time on this ridiculous SPLIT theory that it makes VAT 4956 seem more important than it is. He attempts to create confusion over the LUNAR positions (and makes embarrassingly amateur errors in doing so.) But no one seems to remember that he could NOT create any confusion about the PLANETARY positions. He admits that the planetary positions ultimately support 587/586 as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year, invalidating the WT claim. 
All this craziness about 568 can make some less-informed Witnesses believe that this particular tablet must be so important that those who still support 586 for Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year must have used this "NEB 37" tablet and simply counted backwards to "NEB 19".
Those who think that way probably don't realize that you can actually just toss out this particular tablet VAT 4956 that Furuli focused on, and still find that other independent evidence supports ALL those other years mentioned in the list. Counting backward from 568 was not done for ANY of them. 

I also think this is much bigger than most people know. On a recent trip to California I visited a brother who had been involved in many of the scholarly efforts with people like Greg Stafford and many of the names that Juan Rivera mentioned some time ago. In fact, I had to double-check that this brother was not using the name "Juan Rivera" here on this forum. Years ago, a few of these names had contacts going up to HQ (Bethel), although HQ began cracking down (again) on any further scholarly groups, and finally was able to effectively get rid of them. This crackdown had also been tried in the early 1980's for obvious reasons too.
Maybe the WTS was right to crack down because, when I met with this brother in California, he listed so many of the names of all these brothers who had finally left the Witnesses, including more famous names like Rolf Furuli and Greg Stafford, and even a scholarly member of the late 1980's Writing Dept, kicked out of Writing, but possibly still a JW as far as he knew. 
I might be wrong, but I think sunlight is still the best disinfectant. People who are curious enough to go venture online "on their own" are going to hear all these things sooner or later anyway, so why not prepare them. Even when someone mentions Ray Franz' books, we can say:
"Imagine, Ray Franz already knew firsthand about all of that stuff he reports and yet he still did his best to stay within the brotherhood, the organization. Even after he resigned from the Governing Body, and was no longer allowed to be an elder, he STILL tried his best to remain a member in good standing with  his congregation in Alabama."  
Going around saying these things never happened, or that they are all lies doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse for those who end up believing that and trying to defend the WTS against what turns out to be true. We end up looking uninformed, or haughty, naive, or worse yet, like liars ourselves.

I also think this is much bigger than most people know. On a recent trip to California I visited a brother who had been involved in many of the scholarly efforts with people like Greg Stafford and many of the names that Juan Rivera mentioned some time ago. In fact, I had to double-check that this brother was not using the name "Juan Rivera" here on this forum. Years ago, a few of these names had contacts going up to HQ (Bethel), although HQ began cracking down (again) on any further scholarly groups, and finally was able to effectively get rid of them. This crackdown had also been tried in the early 1980's for obvious reasons too.
Maybe the WTS was right to crack down because, when I met with this brother in California, he listed so many of the names of all these brothers who had finally left the Witnesses, including more famous names like Rolf Furuli and Greg Stafford, and even a scholarly member of the late 1980's Writing Dept, kicked out of Writing, but possibly still a JW as far as he knew. 
I might be wrong, but I think sunlight is still the best disinfectant. People who are curious enough to go venture online "on their own" are going to hear all these things sooner or later anyway, so why not prepare them. Even when someone mentions Ray Franz' books, we can say:
"Imagine, Ray Franz already knew firsthand about all of that stuff he reports and yet he still did his best to stay within the brotherhood, the organization. Even after he resigned from the Governing Body, and was no longer allowed to be an elder, he STILL tried his best to remain a member in good standing with  his congregation in Alabama."  
Going around saying these things never happened, or that they are all lies doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse for those who end up believing that and trying to defend the WTS against what turns out to be true. We end up looking uninformed, or haughty, naive, or worse yet, like liars ourselves.

Sure. It's not just one tablet. Several different tablets independently validate different years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign with the moon, planets, and/or star positions we can now identify with the particular BCE years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign. 
Rather than redo all the work again, as I get time I'll probably copy some of my old posts over to here which identify the tablets I used for the calculations.
As I've pointed out before, there are no extant tablets that we know of explicitly mentioning Jerusalem's destruction in the 18th/19th year of Nebuchadnezzar. Rather, I am relying on another source of information: It's the Bible that speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem occurring in the 18th and 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar. 
(Jeremiah 32:1, 2) . . .that is, the 18th year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar.  At that time the armies of the king of Babylon were besieging Jerusalem. . .
 (2 Kings 25:8-10) . . .in the 19th year of King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar the king of Babylon, Neb·uʹzar·adʹan . . . came to Jerusalem. He burned down the house of Jehovah, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; he also burned down the house of every prominent man. And the walls surrounding Jerusalem were pulled down . . .
If you believe the Bible, then you don't need an explicit mention on a Babylonian tablet. You merely need to believe this happened around the 18th and/or 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar. I believe the Bible's information is sufficient, and I'm happy with it. However, if you wish to also put a BCE date on those years, then you would just need evidence from recorded sun, moon, planet or star positions for ANY particular year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign.
If you can discover the BCE year for any ONE year of his reign this way, then you also know his 18th year and his 19th year.