The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s First Book 429
Obv. I, 4’, which I failed to mention in my book, does not necessarily
imply the text has been copied–it could just be that the scribe who
compiled the text had reports of this eclipse from 2 different observers.)
If it is a copy, then I think it is a straight copy, with no attempt to change
or modify the text.
Because almost none of the diaries and other observational texts have
colophons, we can never be sure whether texts are copies or originals.”
In conclusion, the theory that Seleucid scholars worked out an erroneous
hypothetical chronology for earlier times that they systematically embodied into
the astronomical tablets they were copying cannot be supported by the available
facts. It is not based on historical reality and is a desperate attempt to save
cherished but false dates.
Chapter III - ”The languages and script of the original documents”
Linguistic pitfalls
In this chapter, Furuli says little about chronology. He starts by describing
some of the basic features of the Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Sumerian
languages, with a view to discussing “to which extent the signs and peculiarities
of a language may be the cause of some of the contradictory chronological
evidence that we find.” (p. 47) He gives Akkadian the most space and gives the
other three languages just a few paragraphs.
On pages 49-56, Furuli provides general information about Akkadian signs
for words, syllables, and numbers. In the middle of this discussion, on pages
52-54, he attempts to identify Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, as a
deification of Nimrod. This is an old theory suggested by Julius Wellhausen in
the late 19th century and subsequently picked up by many others, including
Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons (1916, 2nd ed. 1959, footnote on p. 44). It
was adopted for some time by the Watchtower Society, which presented it in
the book “Babylon the Great Has Fallen!” God’s Kingdom Rules! (1963, pp. 33, 34)
with arguments similar to those Furuli quotes from The International Standard
Bible Encyclopaedia, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Jewish Encyclopedia, and The
Two Babylons. The theory was included in the Watchtower Society’s Bible
dictionary Aid to Bible Understanding (1971, p. 668) but was dropped in the
revised 1988 edition, Insight on the Scriptures (Vol. 2, p. 974). It was still briefly
mentioned in The Watchtower magazine of April 1, 1999, on page 11.
On the modern reading and understanding of Akkadian, Furuli feels that,
although, generally speaking, “we can have confidence in the translations of
cuneiform tablets that have been published in English, German, French and
other languages … it is important to be aware of the pitfalls” (p. 56). The
pitfalls Furuli lists are: (1) the difficulty of piecing together broken tablets, (2)
the reconstruction of only partially legible signs, (3) the changed meaning of
some signs through time, (4) the confusion of similar signs, and (5) the
difficulty of correctly reading very small single signs. (p. 58)