The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The Length of Reigns of the Neo-Babylonian Kings 121
inscriptions, as well as the figures of all the other evidence that is
yet to be presented below? Why should it be that, whatever type of
historical source is considered, the supposedly “missing” years
consistently amount to exactly twenty years? Why not a period of,
in one case, seventeen years, in another case thirteen, in yet another
seven years, or perhaps different isolated years distributed
throughout the Neo-Babylonian period?
Each year new quantities of dated tablets are unearthed, and
catalogues, transliterations, and translations of such texts are
frequently published, but the twenty missing years never turn up.
Even improbability has a limit 63
The importance of the economic-administrative and legal texts
for the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian period can hardly be
overestimated. The evidence provided by these dated texts is
simply overwhelming. The reigns of all the Neo-Babylonian kings
are copiously attested by tens of thousands of such documents, all
of which were written during this era. As shown by the table
below, these reigns are in full agreement with the Royal Canon and
the other documents discussed earlier.
TABLE 4: THE NEO-BABYLONIAN CHRONOLOGY ACCORDING
TO THE ECONOMIC-ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS
Nabopolassar 21 years (625 – 605 BCE)
Nebuchadnezzar 43 years (604 – 562 BCE)
Awel-Marduk 2 years (561 – 560 BCE)
Neriglissar 4 years (559 – 556 BCE)
Labashi-Marduk 2–3 months ( 556 BCE)
Nabonidus 17 years (555 – 539 BCE)
B-3: Prosopographical evidence
Prosopography (from the Greek word prósopon, meaning “face,
person”) may be defined as “the study of careers, especially of
individuals linked by family, economic, social, or political
relationships. ”64
63 As a matter of course, defenders of the Watch Tower Society’s chronology have
made great efforts to discredit the evidence provided by these enormous quantities
of dated cuneiform tablets. On perusing modern catalogues of documents dated to
the Neo-Babylonian era, they have found a few documents that seemingly give
longer reigns to some Babylonian kings than are shown by the Royal Canon and
other sources. A fresh check of the original tablets, however, has shown that most
of these odd dates simply are modern copying, transcription, or printing errors.
Some other odd dates are demonstrably scribal errors. For a detailed discussion of
these texts, see Appendix for chapter 3: “Some comments on copying, reading, and
scribal errors”
64 Webster’s New World Dictionary, 3rd college edition, eds. V. Neufeldt & D. B.
Guralnik (New York: Webster’s New World Dictionaries, 1988), p. 1080.