The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Appendix 321
For Chapter Three:
SOME COMMENTS ON COPYING, READING, AND SCRIBAL
ERRORS IN CUNEIFORM TABLETS
If twenty years are to be added to the Neo-Babylonian era,
considerable numbers of texts dated to each of these years should have
been found. It would never do to come up with one or two oddly
dated documents from the era. Like modern clerks, secretaries, and
bookkeepers, the Babylonian scribes now and then made errors in
writing. As the writing had to be done while the clay tablet was
soft, some of the errors could be corrected before the tablet dried
out. Many tablets bear traces of crossings-out and corrections.
Usually, the errors found on the tablets concern minor details,
repetitions, omissions, etc. Although the errors sometimes also
concern the date, it is remarkable that most of the odd dates found
in modern catalogues of Babylonian tablets turn out to be modern
reading, copying, or printing errors, including misreading or
misprinting of royal names.
In their attempts at defending the Watch Tower Society’s
chronology, some Witnesses, both in the United States and
Norway, have exploited not only such copying, reading, and scribal
errors in cuneiform texts, but also the dates on some documents
that seem to create overlaps of a few weeks or months between the
reigns of some of the Neo-Babylonian rulers. For this reason it
seems necessary to take a closer look at these problems.
Modern copying and reading errors
As Mr. C. B. F. Walker at the British Museum points out,
“modern readers frequently incorrectly read numbers and month
names on Babylonian tablets.” 20 Royal names, too, are sometimes
misread by modern scholars. Since dating within the Babylonian
period is based on regnal years (rather than an era dating) the name
of the king involved is obviously crucial.
Thus on one published text the translation referred to
Babylonian ruler “Labashi-Marduk’s 4th year. ”21 Later scholars
20 Letter Walker-Jonsson, October 1, 1987. This is also reflected in the CBT
catalogues on the Sippar collection at the British Museum, referred to in chapter
3, note 60, which list some 40,000 texts. Quite a number of the odd dates are just
printing errors, while many others on collation turn out to be reading errors. A list
with corrections and additions is kept at the museum by Mr. Walker.
21 R. Campbell Thompson, A Catalogue of the Late Babylonian Tablets in the Bodleian
Library, Oxford IV (London: Luzac and Co., 1927), tablet no. A 83.