The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

188 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
(7) The lunar eclipse tablet LBAT 1421
LBAT 1421 records two eclipses dated in the sixth and twelfth
months of year “42”, evidently of Nebuchadnezzar, generally dated
to 563/62 B.CE. And both eclipses are also actually found in these
months of that year. But no eclipses of the type recorded in the
text occurred in 583/82 B.CE.―the date of Nebuchadnezzar’s
forty-second year in the chronology of the Watch Tower Society.
This tablet, therefore, provides an additional proof of the falsity of
that chronology.
(8-11) Another four astronomical tablets
The seven astronomical texts discussed above provide more than
enough evidence against the Watch Tower Society’s 607 B .C.E.
date. And yet this is not all. Another four texts have recently been
published that will be described only briefly here. Translations of
three of these are published in Hunger, ADT V (2001).
The first is LBAT 1415 which, as mentioned on page 174 above,
is part of the same tablet as LBAT 1417. It records lunar eclipses
dated to year 1 of Bel-ibni (702 B.C.E.), year 5, evidently of
Sennacherib (684 B.C.E.), and year 2, evidently of Shamash-shumukin
(666 B.C.E).
The second is lunar eclipse text no. 5 in Hunger, ADT V. It is
badly damaged and the royal name is missing, but some historical
remarks in the text shows it is from the reign of Nabopolassar.
One of the eclipses described is dated to year 16 and may be
identified with the eclipse of September 15, 610 B.C.E.
The third is text no. 52 in Hunger, ADT V. This is a planetary
text containing over a dozen legible records of the positions of
Saturn, Mars, and Mercury dated to years 14, 17, and 19 of
Shamash-shum-ukin (654, 651, and 649 B.C.E), years 1, 12, and 16
of Kandalanu (647, 636, and 632 B.C.E.), and years 7, 12, 13, and
14 of Nabopolassar (619, 614, 613, and 612 B.C.E.). Like some of
the previous texts discussed above, these three texts effectively
prevent all attempts at lengthening the chronology of the Neo-
Babylonian period.
The fourth is a planetary tablet, SBTU IV 171, which records
first and last appearances and stationary points of Saturn in years
28, 29, 30, and 31 of an unknown king. 66 However, as Professor
Hermann Hunger has demonstrated, the year numbers combined
with the position of Saturn in the constellation of Pabilsag (roughly
Sagittarius) exclude all alternatives in the first millennium B.C.E.
66 Hermann Hunger, “Saturn beobachtungen aus der Zeit Nebukadnezars II.,”
Assyriologica et Semitica (=AOAT, Band 252), (Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000), pp.
189–192.