Trying to nail down 612 BCE as the date of Nineveh's destruction

[Pudgy]

There are several iOS (Apple iPhone) Apps available that can provide dates for past astronomical events based on GPS coordinates. Apps like SkySafari, Star Walk, and Night Sky offer features that allow you to input your location and view past astronomical events such as eclipses, planetary alignments, and meteor showers. These apps typically have databases of historical astronomical data that can be accessed based on your location and desired time frame.

Make a hand drawn chart.

Pick six dates and separate the numbers in groups of 1 or 2. Ignore numbers over 65. Annotate the chart’s title with this sequence … example:

”52  27  3  61  63  12

Rearrange  the first five numbers from lowest to highest …. example:

3  27  52  61  63 and (12)

Examination of whatever numbers YOU CALCULATED (… don’t use the numbers shown), you will notice they make, or infer really great Lottery Numbers

Results may vary.

Remember, in the words of the Prophet and guitar picker Desert Pete (paraphrased) “You’ve got to prime the pump, ya gotta have faith and believe!  Ya gotta prime the pump, if that money you’d receive!”

Results may vary.

 

[Pudgy]

The practical value of the above method is particularly valuable to insomniacs, as you can guitar pick yourself into a coma.

[Srecko Sostar]

11 hours ago, George88 said:

You seem to be mixing up behavior and action. Let me give you a clear example. As an advocate, are you here to provide warnings or spread hate? Moreover, what is the significance of ex-witnesses and disgruntled witnesses who share similar thoughts?

My behavior in communication on the forum is subject to subjective (yours or someone else's) judgment because they observe my actions through their individual prism of judgment, which they acquired mainly under the influence of their religious affiliation.

[JW Insider]

4 hours ago, Pudgy said:

Apps like SkySafari, Star Walk, and Night Sky

Thanks. A couple of your posts above regarding these apps were moved to here where these types of apps were being discussed.

[Pudgy]

I am well aware that there are some here with no sense of humor, or sense of satire, who will say to themselves “what the hell is he talking about?”, But I’m hoping  enough will … to make the points I’m trying to make.

[xero]

Just checking in. I haven't had a lot of time to pursue this. I would like to know if there are any verifiable astronomical events which all agree tie in to any of these chronologies.

[JW Insider]

21 minutes ago, xero said:

I would like to know if there are any verifiable astronomical events which all agree tie in to any of these chronologies

Yes, there are several.

[xero]

https://biblearchaeology.org/about/abr-research-projects/the-daniel-9-24-27-project?amp;view=category&id=69&start=16

I'm using this thread to organize some things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Babylon

https://www.rcyoung.org/articles/Eclipse1.pdf

https://www.britannica.com/science/eclipse/Assyrian

[xero]

https://2001translation.com/587_or_607.htm

[xero]

@George88It looks to me like it's a judgment call on the part of people who imagine they can use astronomical data to nail down the time frame I'm interested in.  In reading this I get the idea that there's a lot of assumptions that people are making. https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2006JAHH....9..145S/0000145.000.html

There are some astronomical events that seem to be of some use, but if these people are disagreeing with the biblical text, I'll pick the biblical text over their sources. These are the same kinds of people who ridiculed the idea of Belshazzar's existence. https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/91785/did-scholars-doubt-belshazzars-existence-before-1854
https://www.cominguntrue.com/2021/06/after-fact.html

[JW Insider]

16 hours ago, xero said:

I'm using this thread to organize some things.

I really like the fact that you are trying to work it out for yourself.

Because I was always so skeptical of the accepted, secular chronology I thought it was important to "start from scratch" and work the whole thing out for myself. 

I think most Witnesses don't realize that ANY time we see a B.C.E. date in the WTS publications, it means that we are relying on SECULAR chronology.

Personally, I'm convinced that the Bible is sufficient on its own to keep us fully equipped, therefore without any need to rely on secular chronology, so I give no special credence or reliance to any specific years with a BCE date attached to them. Doesn't mean they can't be helpful in trying to figure out the order of events, but even here, those secular dates aren't necessary in order to understand the Bible, and figure out the order of Biblical events. 

And from a purely Biblical perspective we aren't going to get any definite mentions of an eclipse or some other astronomical event that is tied to a specific month and day and year of a specific king. Therefore there can be no BCE dates calculated from the Bible. 

In my opinion, there are two main stumbling blocks that always hamper any chronology discussion, and they are related:

1. Witnesses are told that we are defending Biblical chronology based on a pivotal ('absolute') date of 539 BCE and the Biblical 70 years. 
2. When arguing with Witnesses, Non-Witnesses don't (or won't) admit that the most logical and common-sense understanding of the 70 years favors the WTS viewpoint. 

[JW Insider]

8 hours ago, xero said:

It looks to me like it's a judgment call on the part of people who imagine they can use astronomical data to nail down the time frame I'm interested in.  

This might be true to a very small extent, but if true, it means that the WTS has no right to claim that 539 BCE was some kind of absolute, pivotal year. 539 is based wholly, 100% on these judgment calls and assumptions. Besides, the date of 587 BCE for the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar is at least 10 times better documented than the 539 BCE date (for the accession year of Cyrus). 

8 hours ago, xero said:

In reading this I get the idea that there's a lot of assumptions that people are making. https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2006JAHH....9..145S/0000145.000.html

There are some assumptions used, it's true. But these adjustments or "calibrations" to account for the slowing down of the earth have been known about for a long time. And if we were to use calculations from astronomy today and didn't know about the rate of slowing, we would only be off by about 6 hours going back more than 2700 years. 

That means that the eclipses recorded by Neo-Babylonian/Persian/Greek scholars would still have happened on the same day, but the background stars which were also reported in these records would have passed them up 6 hours earlier. The article you point to is admitting the same thing as this article:

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-eclipses-show-earth-s-rotation-slowing

Overall, Earth's spin has slowed by about 6 hours in the past 2740 years, 

 

----- and here comes the tldr; part to ignore ----------

Even without this data we already knew that the earth's day was getting longer just from satellite data from year to year. Even though the day lengthens by only microseconds at a time, it adds up to hundreds of seconds of difference when you go back several centuries. And when you go back 2,700 years (27 centuries) it's a difference that approaches 20,000 seconds (5.5 hours).

That means that when you look for an eclipse, even if you had a good record of the observation for 685 BCE, trying to calculate it without knowing about the earth's slower rotation, would be about 5.75 hours off from the time you expected. That doesn't seem like much time to be off, but it means that the eclipse will likely be seen on the correctly calculated day, but against a background of stars that are nearly half-way across the sky.

The Babylonian "scholars" recorded those stars in the background, so it makes the eclipse seem like it doesn't match any eclipses in the year given.  That is, until you notice that the same pattern holds for ALL the eclipses and that they make a much better fit for the observation when you realize the earth rotated just a wee bit faster back then.

But it's pretty consistent throughout this period:

• Near 700 BCE observations hovered around 20,000 seconds off, or 5.5 hours
• Near 600 BCE observations hovered around 19,000 seconds off or 5.25 hours
• Near 500 BCE observations hovered around 18,000 seconds off, or 5 hours
• Near 400 BCE observations hovered around 17,000 seconds off, or 4.75 hours
• Near 300 BCE observations hovered around 16,000 seconds off, or 4.5 hours

Although I'm rounding to the nearest thousand and relying on the article's regression-line analysis to "average" out the anomalies, you can easily see the pattern. And by the time you reach AD/CE readings you would expect closer to 3 hours off, and that's right where the readings end up.

But those lunar eclipse readings can be double-checked by the half-dozen solar readings during the period from 350 to 150 BCE and these line up even closer to the regression line, helping to confirm the same calculations of "delta-T" [change in time].

The point is that this slowdown of the earth's rotation is only a few hours, not days, but when these calibrations are added to the observations and predictions already observed and recorded in ancient Assyria/Babylon/Persia you can now set a specific formula to account for that curve (parabola). That formula is built into all the major astronomy applications which is why they all give the same results. And it turns out that when you do this, the calculations are further confirmed by making an excellent accounting not just of both the lunar and solar data, but also various planetary calculations that the Babylonians also recorded.