The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

448 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
Furuli adds:
“As a linguist I know by experience that language is ambiguous. But
the words of Daniel 9:2 and 2 Chronicles 36:21 are remarkably clear and
unambiguous.”
It is difficult to see how this is true even of Furuli’s retranslation and
reconstruction of the verse. As stated earlier, his analysis of verse 21 ignores the
contextual connection with verse 20, in which we find the same preposition ad
used in the clause “until (ad) the royalty of Persia began to reign.” Because both
clauses with ad are aimed at explaining when the servitude ended, the
translation of ad as “until” is the most natural in both verses. To render ad as
“while” in verse 20, for example, would make it say that the Jewish remnant
became servants of the king of Babylon “while the royalty of Persia began to
reign,” a statement that is not only historically false but nonsensical.
Most translations, therefore, render the preposition ad as “until” in both
clauses. There are none, as far as I know, that render it “while” in the passage.
The reason is not only that this is excluded by the context but also by the fact
that ad seldom takes the meaning “while.” (The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius
Hebrew and English Lexicon,1978, p. 725)
Furuli’s attempt to assign the meaning “while” to ad is a case of the fallacies
of argumentation known as “special pleading” and “assuming the conclusion.”
For his argument to work, he needs ad to mean “while;” otherwise his entire
Oslo chronology falls apart.
Jeremiah 25:9-12: 70 years of servitude—for whom?
In his discussion of Jeremiah 25:9-12, Furuli focuses on verse 11, which
says:
“And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of
astonishment, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”—
Jer. 25:11 (NIV)
As was pointed out earlier, Furuli starts his discussion of the 70-year
prophecy by admitting that Jeremiah applies the 70 years to Babylon, not to
Jerusalem. As he states on page 75:
“If we make a grammatical analysis in 25:11, we find that ‘these
nations’ is the grammatical subject, and in 29:10, ‘Babylon’ is the patient,
that is, the nation that should experience the period of 70 years.”
Having concluded (falsely, as has been shown above) that Daniel 9:2 and 2
Chronicles 36:21 unambiguously state that Judah and Jerusalem lay desolate for
70 years, Furuli realizes that the meaning of Jeremiah 25:11 has to be changed
to be brought into agreement with his conclusion.