The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part One”
““According to historians and archaeologists, 586 or 587 B.C.E. is generally accepted as the year of Jerusalem’s destruction.a Why do Jehovah’s Witnesses say that it was 607 B.C.E.? What is your basis for this date?””
The article opens by quoting a reader’s question and is introduced as “the first of two articles in consecutive issues of The Watchtower that discuss scholarly questions surrounding the date of the destruction of ancient Jerusalem”. Footnote a reads: “Both years are mentioned in secular sources. For simplicity, we will refer to 587 B.C.E. in this series. B.C.E. means ‘Before the Common Era.’”
Official source (opens in new tab)
Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part One
Confidence note. 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”).
Corroborated by. src-chr-o-w-2011-1101-thesis
Notes. This is the organisation’s own statement of the mainstream date, in its own words, before it answers.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-o-w-2011-1001-question