The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

A theory of desperation
Furuli’s First Book 425
If the entries on the observational tablets—diaries, and lunar and planetary
tablets—record mostly demonstrably genuine observations, and if the
Babylonian astronomers were unable to compute and retrocalculate many of
the astronomical and other data reported, how, then, is it possible for anyone to
wriggle out of the evidence provided by these tablets?
Because the tablets often contain so many detailed observations dated to
specific regnal years that they can be safely fixed to particular Julian years, the
only escape is to question the authenticity of the regnal year numbers found on the
tablets.
This is what Furuli does. He imagines that “a scribe could sit down in the
2nd century and make a tablet partly of some phenomena covering many years,
partly on the basis of theory (the three schemes) and partly on the basis of
tablets from a library” that might show real observations. Then, upon discovery
that the dates on the library tablets conflicted with the theoretical data, “these
erroneous data could be used to ‘correct’ the correct data of his library tablet, to
the effect that the tablet he was making would contain wrong data of regnal
years.” (Furuli, p. 41)
Furuli indicates that not only the dates on the lunar and planetary tablets but
also the dates on the diaries might have been tampered with by the Seleucid
scholars in the same way. Referring again to the fact that the earliest extant
diaries are copies, he says:
“But what about the regnal year(s) of a king that are written on such
tablets? Have they been calibrated to fit an incorrect theoretical
chronological scheme, or have they been copied correctly?” (Furuli, p.
42)
Furuli realizes, of course, that his Oslo Chronology is thoroughly
contradicted by the Babylonian astronomical tablets. That is the reason he
proposes, as a last resort, the theory that these tablets might have been redated
by Seleucid scholars to bring them into agreement with their own supposed
theoretical chronology for earlier times. Is this scenario likely? What does it
imply?
The scale of the supposed Seleucid chronological revisions
To what extent does Furuli’s Oslo Chronology differ from the traditional
chronology? In a chronological table on pages 219-225 covering the 208 years
of the Persian era (539–331 BCE), Furuli shows, reign by reign, the difference
between his chronology and the traditional one. It turns out that the only
agreement between the two are the dating of the reigns of Cyrus and
Cambyses—the period from the fall of Babylon (539 BCE) to 523/2 BCE, a
period of 17 years. By giving Bardiya one full year of reign after Cambyses,
Furuli moves the whole 36-year reign of Darius I one year forward, as
mentioned earlier. Then he moves the reigns of Darius’ successors Xerxes and
Artaxerxes I 10 years backward by adding 10 years to the reign of the latter,
creating a coregency of 11 years between Darius I and Xerxes.