The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part Two”
“Biblical and secular history agree that this exile in Babylon ended after Cyrus conquered Babylon and freed the Jews, who returned to Jerusalem in 537 B.C.E. Since the Bible explicitly says that the exile lasted for 70 years, it must have begun in 607 B.C.E.”
The article opens by restating Part One’s four conclusions in a bulleted box, then sets out the arithmetic in a single sentence. The following paragraph notes that “most scholars date the destruction of Jerusalem at 587 B.C.E. This allows for only a 50-year exile.”
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Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part Two
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-2011-1001-count-back
Notes. The clearest one-sentence statement of the organisation’s argument.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-o-w-2011-1101-thesis