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Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

Insight on the Scriptures accepts that a combination of lunar and planetary positions of the kind recorded in the astronomical diaries ‘would not be duplicated again in thousands of years’ and that the diaries agree with Ptolemy’s canon, but answers that ‘accuracy in astronomy does not prove accuracy in history’ because the regnal years attached to the observations may be a later scribe’s error.

Claim ID claim-chronology-astronomy-not-historyConcerns 1988Organisation's explanation
Organisation's explanation · 1988 Verified

Insight on the Scriptures accepts that a combination of lunar and planetary positions of the kind recorded in the astronomical diaries ‘would not be duplicated again in thousands of years’ and that the diaries agree with Ptolemy’s canon, but answers that ‘accuracy in astronomy does not prove accuracy in history’ because the regnal years attached to the observations may be a later scribe’s error. Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988

Show the evidence (1 source)
Primary JW publication Verified

Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, “Chronology”

1988 · p.456 · under “Astronomical Calculations” · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Simply stated, accuracy in astronomy does not prove accuracy in history.”

The principle is illustrated with a worked example: an ancient scribe might correctly record a celestial event that modern computation confirms for 465 B.C.E., yet be “entirely wrong” in calling that year the 21st year of King Xerxes. The same section acknowledges that a combination of lunar and planetary positions “would not be duplicated again in thousands of years”, and that the astronomical diaries “appear to coincide with the figures given in Ptolemy’s canon”.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Full article fetched from the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026; the quotation and the page were confirmed against the text and its embedded page markers. Insight on the Scriptures is undated on the Online Library; the 1988 publication year is the work’s own imprint date.

Notes. The concession that the diaries’ positions are effectively unique to a single year, and agree with the conventional chronology, is made in the organisation’s own reference work.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-o-it1-chronology-astronomy

Claim page

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