The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Appendix 359
There are three principal sources with information regarding the
chronology of the New Babylonian and Persian kings, namely, Stem
Kambys 400, VAT 4956 and the Bible. The information in these three
sources cannot be harmonized. (p. 21)
Furuli knows, of course, that for the fixing of the absolute date
for the fall of Babylon to 539 B.C.E., at least one astronomical text
is needed. As the diary VAT 4956 is disastrous for his Oslo
Chronology, he is forced to choose Strm Kambys 400 for this
purpose, claiming that this is “the tablet that is most important for
Persian chronology” (p. 128) and “the only source on the basis of
which an absolute chronology can be made regarding the year
Cyrus conquered Babylon.” (p. 134)
The poor quality of this tablet has already been pointed out in
the present work. As was noticed already by F. X. Kugler in 1903,
it is probably the least reliable of all astronomical tablets. (See
above, pp. 84–88.) Modern scholars even question whether it
contains any observations at all. Dr. John M. Steele, for example,
explains:
It is also unwise to base any conclusions concerning the Babylonian
records on this tablet alone, since it does not fall into any of the common
categories of text. In particular, it is not certain whether this text contains
observations or calculations of the phenomena it records. At least some
of the data must be calculated. For instance, the full run of lunar six
timings for the 7th year of Cambyses cannot all have been measured;
clouds would surely have prevented their observation on at least some
occasions. The lunar six data must therefore have been either all
calculated, as suggested by Kugler (1907: 61–72), or be a mixture of
observation and calculation. There is also debate concerning whether the
two lunar eclipses were observed or calculated. 88
The fact is that the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian and
Persian eras is fixed by nearly 50 astronomical observational tablets
(diaries, eclipse texts, and planetary texts). Many of them are quite
extensive and detailed and serve as principal sources for the
absolute chronology of this period. Most of these tablets are
88 John M. Steele, Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers
(Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 98. C. B. F.
Walker refers, for example, to the inaccurate magnitude reported for one the two
eclipses in the text, “but,” he adds, “the Cambyses text is now understood to
contain a series of predictions rather than observations.” — Walker in John Curtis
(ed.), Mesopotamia in the Persian Period (London: The Trustees of the British
Museum, l997), p. 18.