The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Appendix 377
king of Assyria, Assuruballit II, after the destruction of the capital
Nineveh in 612 BCE, retreated to the provincia1 capital Harran,
the last Assyrian stronghold, where he succeeded in holding out for
another three years, supported by Egypt. Veenhof writes:
It was to no advantage that Egypt supported Assyria; the Babylonian
and Median armies took the city in 610 B.C., and in the following year
[609] they warded off their last defensive attempt. Therewith a great
empire was dissolved. 105
The same historical information is given by Professor Jack
Finegan on page 252 (§430) in the new revised edition of his wellknown
Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Quoting Jeremiah 29:10 he
concludes:
The “seventy years . . . for Babylon,” of which Jeremiah speaks are
therefore the seventy years of Babylonian rule, and the return of Judah
from exile is contingent upon the end of that period. Since the final fall
of the Assyrian empire was in 609 B.C. (§430), and the New Babylonian
empire endured from then until Cyrus the Persian took Babylon in 539,
the period of Babylonian domination was in fact seventy years (609 —
539 = 70). 106
Certainly, no one acquainted with Neo-Babylonian history can
honestly claim that the 70 years “for Babylon” have a “fuzzy
meaning” because no particular events mark the beginning and end
of the period.
(D-4) Jeremiah 29:10: The Septuagint and Vulgate
versions
Furuli next points out that “the Septuagint has the dative form
babylôni” but with “the most natural meaning being ‘at Babylon’.”
The statement reveals a surprising ignorance of ancient Greek. As
every Greek scholar will point out, the natural meaning of the
dative form babylôni is “for Babylon.” It is an exact, literal
translation of the original Hebrew l e bâbel, which definitely means
“for Babel” in this text, as discussed on pp. 213, 214 above. True,
at Jeremiah 29:22 (LXX 36:22) the dative form babylôni is used in
the local sense, “in Babel,” but it gets this sense only because of the
preceding Greek preposition en, “in”:
And from them a malediction will certainly be taken on the part of
the entire body of exiles of Judah that is in Babylon (en babylôni)
Furuli further refers to the rendering of the Latin Vulgate, in
Babylon, which means, as he correctly explains, “in Babylon.” This
105 Klas R. Veenhof, Geschichte des Alten Orients bis zur Zeit Alexanders des Grossen
(Göttingen, 2001), pp. 275, 276. (Translated from German)
106 Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Publishers, 1998), p. 255.