The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

158 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
The extant datable astronomical diaries
The earliest diary is from 652/51 B.C.E. Then follows VAT 4956
from 568/67 B.C.E. Most cover the period from 385 to 61
B.C.E., containing astronomical information from about 180 of
these years. — The chart is reproduced from A. J. Sachs,
"Babylonian observational astronomy," in F. R Hodson (ed.), The
Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World (London: Oxford University
Press, 1974), p. 47.
Among the many observed positions recorded on VAT 4956,
there are about thirty which are so exactly described that modern
astronomers can easily fix the precise dates when they were seen.
By doing so they have been able to show that all these observations
(of the moon and the five then known planets) must have been
made during the year 568/67 B.C.E.
If Nebuchadnezzar’s thirty-seventh regnal year was 568/67
B.C.E., then it follows that his first year must have been 604/03
B..C.E., and his eighteenth year, during which he desolated