The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

150 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
been composed with the help of the information given in the
astronomical “diaries” has been strongly argued against by other
scholars. 114
This possible interdependence of some of these sources,
however, does not nullify their conclusive power. As the ancient
royal inscriptions preserve chronological information that is
contemporary with the Neo-Babylonian era itself, we have every
reason to accept it as factual and true information. This would be
true even if this information was based upon contemporary
Babylonian chronicles. For, although the chronology of these
chronicles is preserved only in a few fragmentary copies, in a late
kinglist, and by Berossus and the Royal Canon, the agreement
between these later sources and the ancient royal inscriptions is
striking. This agreement confirms that the figures of the original
Neo-Babylonian chronicles have been correctly preserved in these
later sources.
There remain four lines of evidence which have sound claim to
independence.
(4) Economic-administrative and legal documents
Tens of thousands of economic, administrative and legal texts,
dated to the year, month, and the day of the reigning king, have
come down to us from the Neo-Babylonian period. A large
number of dated tablets are extant from each year during this whole
period. The length of reign of each king may, then, be established
by these documents, sometimes almost to the day.
The results arrived at are in good agreement with the figures
given by Berossus, the Royal Canon, the chronicles, and the
contemporary royal inscriptions from the reign of Nabonidus.
The twenty years demanded by the chronology of the Watch
Tower Society are totally missing.
The business and administrative documents are original
documents, contemporary with the Neo-Babylonian era itself, which
makes this line of evidence exceedingly strong. These documents
definitely point to 587/86 B.C.E. as Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth
regnal year, when he desolated Jerusalem.
(5) Prosopographical evidence
The prosopographical study of the cuneiform tablets provides
various checks on the accuracy of the Neo-Babylonian chronology.
114 Ibid.,p. 174. Cf. John M. Steele, Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by
Early Astronomers (Dordrecht, etc: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 127,
128. The astronomical observations recorded in these diaries must anyway be
treated as separate and independent lines of evidence.