The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The 20 th Year of Artaxerxes 391
All these nine texts agree in showing that Darius II acceded to the
throne in the 41st year of his predecessor. The tablets clearly show
that Artaxerxes I cannot have ruled for more than 41 years. As
stated above, the text published by Albert Clay in 1908, the only
one quoted by the Watch Tower Society, belongs to the same
category of doubled-dated texts as those quoted above, the only
difference being that it gives the predecessor of Darius a reign of
51 years instead of 41. It is quite clear that the number ”51” on that
tablet contains a scribal error. This is the only reasonable
conclusion to draw, as the only alternative is to claim that the
figure ”41” on all the other nine tablets listed above are errors.
It is difficult to believe that the Watch Tower Society’s writers were
completely ignorant of the existence of several double-dated tablets
from the accession-year of Darius. To quote only the two tablets
with scribal errors (years ”50” and ”51”) and keep silent about all
the double-dated texts that equate Darius’ accession-year with year
”41” of his predecessor is far from honest.
Albert T. Clay, who published the tablet with the erroneous figure
”51” on it, was well aware that it was a scribal error. To the right of
the erroneous figure in his published copy of the text he pointed
out that ”51” was a ”mistake for 41”:
Tablet ”CBM 12803”, published by Albert T. Clay as
No. 127 in The Babylonian Expedition of the
University of Pennsylvania, Series A: Cuneiform
Texts, Vol. VIII (Philadelphia, 1908), P1. 57.