The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part One”
“But if the evidence from the inspired Scriptures clearly points to 607 B.C.E. for Jerusalem’s destruction, why do many authorities hold to the date 587 B.C.E.? They lean on two sources of information—the writings of classical historians and the canon of Ptolemy. Are these sources more reliable than the Scriptures? Let us see.”
The article then examines Berossus, giving three errors it says Babylonian documents contradict (Sennacherib’s succession, Esarhaddon’s 8 rather than 12 years, Shamash-shuma-ukin’s 21 rather than 20), and quotes S. M. Burstein: “Even in its present fragmentary state the Babyloniaca contains a number of surprising errors of simple fact . . . In a historian such flaws would be damning, but then Berossus’ purpose was not historical.”
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Note de provenance et de vérification for The Watchtower, When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part One
Note sur la fiabilité. Full document fetched from the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; the quotation, the paragraph and the page were confirmed against the article text and its embedded page markers (span class=“pageNum”).
Notes. The article frames the mainstream case as resting on only two pillars, classical historians and Ptolemy’s canon. Its own Part Two then treats the cuneiform record separately.
Date de consultation. 19 septembre 2026 · Identifiant de la source. src-chr-o-w-2011-1001-classical-historians