The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

354 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
The hidden agenda
Furuli published this book at his own expense. On the back
cover of the book he presents himself this way:
Rolf Furuli is a lecturer in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo.
He is working on a doctoral thesis which suggests a new understanding
of the verbal system of Classical Hebrew. He has for many years worked
with translation theory, and has published two books on Bible
translation; he also has experience as a translator. The present volume is
a result of his study of the chronology of the Ancient world for more
than two decades.
Furuli does not mention that he is a Jehovah’s Witness, and that
for a long time he has produced apologetic texts defending
Watchtower exegesis against criticism. His two books on Bible
translation are nothing more than defenses of the Witnesses’ New
World Translation of the Bible. He fails to mention that for many
years he has tried to defend Watchtower chronology and that his
revised chronology is essentially a defense of the Watchtower
Society’s traditional chronology. (See above, pages 308, 309.) He
describes his chronology as “a new chronology,” which he calls
“the Oslo Chronology,” (p. 14) when in fact the 607 B.C.E. date
for the destruction of Jerusalem is the chronological foundation for
the claims and apocalyptic messages of the Watchtower
organization, and the 455 B.C.E. date for the 20th year of
Artaxerxes I is its traditional starting point for its calculation of the
“seventy weeks” of Daniel 9:24–27.
Despite these facts, Furuli nowhere mentions the Watchtower
Society or its chronology. Nor does he mention my detailed
refutation of this chronology in various editions of the present
work, The Gentile Times Reconsidered (GTR), first published in 1983,
despite the fact that in circulated “organized collections of notes”
he has tried to refute the conclusions presented in its earlier
editions. Furuli’s silence on GTR is noteworthy because he
discusses R. E. Winkle’s 1987 study of the Biblical 70-year period
which presents mostly the same arguments and conclusions as are
found in the first edition of GTR (1983). (See above, p. 235, note
57.) As a Jehovah’s Witness, Furuli is forbidden to interact with
former members of his organization. If this is the reason for his
feigned ignorance of my study, he is acting as a loyal Witness —
not as a scholar.
Clearly, Furuli has an agenda, and he is hiding it.