The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

406 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
versions of the list are dated in 1990 and 1996.)
On page 27, Furuli mentions another example of an oddly dated tablet—a
double-dated text from the accession year of Artaxerxes’ successor, Darius II.
The tablet dates itself to “year 51, month XII, day 20, accession year of Darius,
king of lands.” Furuli refers to this and the earlier text dated to Artaxerxes’ year
50 as examples of how scholars “have been reluctant to publish tablets that seemed to
contradict the traditional chronology.”
But the very opposite is true. The above-mentioned reluctance of T. G.
Pinches to publish the text dated to Cambyses’ 11th year was an exception. The
typical scholarly reaction to dates that conflict with the traditional chronology is
interest and attention, not suppression and reluctance to publish. When thenunpublished
lunar eclipse tablets dated to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II were
brought up in an interview in 1968, Professor Abraham J. Sachs indicated how
scholars would react to such oddly dated texts (they are now published in ADT
V). Pointing out that these eclipse tablets all confirm the traditional chronology,
he said:
“I mean if they didn’t fit it would be worth publishing immediately. I mean
dropping everything and saying this whole thing is a mess and there’s
something wrong here. But they do fit.” (Transcript, p. 12, of an
interview held with Professor A. J. Sachs at the Brown University,
Providence, R. I., on June 24, 1968, by R. V. Franz and C. Ploeger, at
that time members of the Watchtower headquarters’ Writing
Department in Brooklyn, New York; emphasis added.)
The tablet dated to year 50 of Artaxerxes I is listed by E. Leichty and A. K.
Grayson in CBT VII, p. 153, and the tablet dated to his year 51 was published
back in 1908 by A. T. Clay, in both cases evidently without any reluctance. As
noted above, the latter text is doubled-dated. There are, in fact, 10 such texts
with double dates, nine of which show that the accession year of Darius II
corresponded to Artaxerxes’ year 41. That year 51 on the above-mentioned text
is an error for year 41, therefore, cannot be seriously questioned.
On pages 27 and 28, Furuli argues that, because there were three (actually
four!) Persian kings named Artaxerxes, it is often difficult to know whether a
tablet refers to king number I, II, or III. He claims that scholars, in trying to get
the dates to tally with the traditional chronology, tend to give themselves up to
circular reasoning.
This situation, though, is not as bad as Furuli paints it. This is shown in Part
Three of this review, in which I discuss in detail the reign of Artaxerxes I.
Potential “sources of errors” in the Babylonian astronomical tablets:
Furuli is well aware that the most damaging evidence against his Oslo
Chronology is provided by the astronomical cuneiform tablets. For this reason,
it is important that he tries to weaken the reliability of these texts. Thus, on
pages 29-37, he describes nine “potential sources of error” that might
undermine the trustworthiness of the astronomical tablets. Unfortunately,
Furuli fails to draw a clear conclusion about these sources of error. Although it
is true that errors exist with respect to various aspects of ancient tablets, Furuli