The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

398 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
all the reigns of the Babylonian kings given in the Canon, from
Nabonassar (747–734 BC) to Nabonidus (555–539 BC), were in
complete agreement with these older sources. (This study was later
expanded and published in a British journal for interdisciplinarty
studies, the British forum for the discussion of the catastrophe
theories of Immanuel Velikovsky and others: Chronology &
Catastrophism Review, Vol. IX, 1987, pp. 14–23.) I asked Professor
Newton: ”How is it possible that Ptolemy’s astronomical data are
wrong, and yet the king list, to which they are attached, is correct?”
In his answer, dated August 11, 1978, Newton said: ”I am not
ready to be convinced that Ptolemy’s king list is accurate before
Nabopolassar [= before 625 BC], although I have high confidence
that it is rather accurate for Nabopolassar and later kings.” He also
pointed out: ”The basic point is that Ptolemy calculated the
circumstances of the eclipses in the Syntaxis from his theories, and
he then pretended that his calculated values were values that had
been observed in Babylon. His theories are accurate enough to give the
correct day of an eclipse, but he missed the hour and the magnitude.”
Thus Ptolemy’s ”adjustments” of the eclipse observations were
too small to affect the year, the month, and the day of an eclipse.
Only the hour and the magnitude were affected. Ptolemy’s
supposed ”adjustments” of the records of the ancient Babylonian
eclipses, then, didn’t change the BCE dates that had been
established for these observations. They did not change the chronology!
Further, Professor Newton was convinced that the king list was
accurate from Nabopolassar and onwards. In other words, he was
convinced that the whole Neo-Babylonian chronology from Nabopolassar
through Nabonidus (625–539 BC) was accurate! Why?
The reason was that Newton had made a very thorough study
of some of the ancient Babylonian astronomical records that were
independent of ”Ptolemy’s Canon”, including the two astronomical
cuneiform texts designated VAT 4956 and Strm. Kambys. 400.
From his examination of these two records, he had established that
the first text referred to the year 568/67 BC and the second one to
523 BC. He concluded: ”Thus we have quite strong confirmation
that Ptolemy’s list is correct for Nebuchadrezzar, and reasonable
confirmation for Kambyses.” (The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, 1977, p.
375) These findings were further emphasized in his next work, The
Moon’s Acceleration and Its Physical Origins, vol. 1, published in 1979,
where he concludes on page 49: ”Nebuchadrezzar’s first year