The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

360 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
published in volumes I and V of Sachs & Hunger’s ADT. 89 For
example, there are about 25 diaries from the reign of Artaxerxes II
(404–358 BCE), 11 of which have the royal name and regnal dates
preserved. Most, if not all, of these appear to be, not later copies,
but original compilations from the 46-year reign of Artaxerxes II. 90
Therefore, to fix the absolute chronology of the reign of
Artaxerxes II or any other Persian king, Strm Kambys 400 is needless
and irrelevant. Nor is it needed to fix the reigns of Cambyses and
Cyrus, which can be more securely fixed by other texts.
(B-2) Potential “sources of errors” in the Babylonian
astronomical tablets
Attempting to further weaken the reliability of the astronomical
texts, Furuli, on pages 29–37, describes nine “potential sources of
error” that might undermine the trustworthiness of tablets that
conflict with his Oslo Chronology, such as VAT 4956. On closer
inspection, however, the supposed “sources of error” turn out to
be either (a) trivial and immaterial, (b) not applicable to the tablets
used for fixing the Neo-Babylonian and Persian chronology and
therefore irrelevant, or (c) mere figments of imagination. All of
Furuli’s “potential sources of errors” fall into one of these three
categories. Some examples are given below.
(B-2a) Trivial and immaterial sources of error:
An example of (a) is Furuli’s description of “the process of
writing down the data.” His discussion of this focuses on the
astronomical diary VAT 4956, dated to the 37th year of the reign
of Nebuchadnezzar. Furuli explains:
The tablet itself is a copy made a long time after the original was
made, but even the original was not made at the time the observations
were made. The tablet covers a whole year, and because clay hardly can
be kept moist for 12 months, the observations must have been written
down on quite a lot of smaller tablets, which were copied when the
original was made. (pp. 30, 31)
As far as the copying and compilation procedure is concerned,
Furuli’s description is correct and well known to Assyriologists.
Copying errors do exist, but they usually create few problems in
tablets that are fairly well preserved and detailed enough to be
89 ADT = Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia.
90 Communication H. Hunger to C. O. Jonsson, dated January 26, 2001.