The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The Absolute Chronology of the Neo-Babylonian Era 185
Professor N. M. Swerdlow points out that, although the distances
of planets from normal stars could be predicted, “Conjunctions of
planets with the moon and other planets, with their distances,
could neither be calculated by the ephemerides nor predicted by
periodicities.” 63 With respect to lunar eclipses, the Babylonians
could predict and retrocalculate their occurrences, “but none of the
Babylonian methods could have allowed them to calculate
circumstances such as the direction of the eclipse shadow and the
visibility of planets during the eclipse.” 64
Thus, although the Babylonians were able to calculate certain
astronomical phenomena, the observational texts record a number
of details connected with the observations that they were unable to
predict or retrocalculate. This disproves conclusively the idea
proposed by some that the data may have been calculated
backwards from a later period.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
In the previous chapter the length of the Neo-Babylonian era was
firmly established by seven different lines of evidence. All of them
were based upon ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts such as
chronicles, kinglists, royal inscriptions, and tens of thousands of
economic, administrative, and legal documents from the Neo-
Babylonian period.
In this chapter another seven independent evidences have been
presented. All of these are based on ancient Babylonian astronomical
texts, which provide a whole string of absolute dates from the sixth
and seventh centuries B.C.E. These tablets establish—over and
over again—the absolute chronology of the Neo-Babylonian era:
63 N. M. Swerdlow, The Babylonian Theory of the Planets (Princeton University Press,
1998), pp. 23, 173.—The diaries also record a number of other phenomena that
could not be calculated, such as solar halos, river levels, and bad weather—clouds,
rain, fog, mist, hail, lightning, winds, etc. Some data in the diaries were computed
because of bad weather, but most are observations. This is also evident from the
Akkadian name of the diaries engraved at the end of their edges: natsaru sha ginê,
‘regular watching”.
64 Communication J. M. Steele-Jonsson, dated March 27, 2003. As pointed out in
footnote 45 above, there is also a clear difference of accuracy in the timings given
for observed and predicted eclipses.