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Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

The organisation concedes in print that dated business tablets exist for every year traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian kings, and that adding those reigns up from Nabonidus backwards gives 587 BCE for the destruction of Jerusalem. Its answer is that an unrecorded king might have reigned between two of them.

Claim ID claim-chronology-org-concedes-tablets-give-587Concerns 1 November 2011Organisation's explanation
Organisation's explanation · 1 November 2011 Verified

The organisation concedes in print that dated business tablets exist for every year traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian kings, and that adding those reigns up from Nabonidus backwards gives 587 BCE for the destruction of Jerusalem. Its answer is that an unrecorded king might have reigned between two of them. The Watchtower, 1 November 2011The Watchtower, 1 November 2011

The organisation’s position or later explanation: 'However, this method of dating works only if each king followed the other in the same year, without any breaks in between.'

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?-Part Two, footnote e”

1 November 2011 · p.24 · footnote e · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Business tablets exist for all the years traditionally attributed to the Neo-Babylonian kings. When the years that these kings ruled are totaled and a calculation is made back from the last Neo-Babylonian king, Nabonidus, the date reached for the destruction of Jerusalem is 587 B.C.E. However, this method of dating works only if each king followed the other in the same year, without any breaks in between.”

A footnote in which the organisation concedes that the dated business tablets cover every year of the Neo-Babylonian period and, added up, give 587 BCE. Its answer is that an unrecorded king might have reigned between two of them.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the Watchtower Online Library text of the article on 19 September 2026 in the [Footnotes] section. The Online Library prints all footnotes together at the end of the article, so the page is taken from the position of the footnote’s reference marker in the body: the marker for note e falls between the page markers for pages 24 and 25.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-pd-1942-p9-10-transitions, src-chr-e-oracc-adadguppi-i29

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-w11-1101-footnote-e

Primary JW publication Verified

The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?-Part Two”

1 November 2011 · pp.22-28 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Clearly, much of the astronomical data in VAT 4956 fits the year 588 B.C.E. as the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar II. This, therefore, supports the date of 607 B.C.E. for Jerusalem's destruction-just as the Bible indicates.”

The organisation's positive case from the cuneiform record. It argues that the Babylonian chronicles are incomplete, that business tablets show discrepancies at reign transitions, and that thirteen sets of lunar positions on VAT 4956 match 588/587 BCE.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The whole article was fetched from the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read with page markers intact; the quotation is on page 27.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-w11-1001-part-one

Notes. Note 21, the authority for the claim that the lunar position in line 3 matches Nisanu 9 of 588 BCE, is present in the Online Library text and reads: “VAT 4956 reads on line three: ‘The moon stood 1 cubit [or 2 degrees] in front of ß Virginis.’ The previously mentioned analysis concluded that on Nisanu 9, the moon was 2°04ʹ in front of and 0° below the star ß Virginis. It was considered an exact match.” It names no external authority: “the previously mentioned analysis” is the organisation’s own, described in note 19 as having been made with the software TheSky6, the freeware Cartes du Ciel / Sky Charts and a US Naval Observatory date converter. No astronomer, publication or independent calculation is cited for it.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-w11-1101-part-two

Claim page

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