The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?-Part Two”
“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.
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Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?-Part Two
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