The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Sham Scholarship 459
Actually, RF’s entire argumentation in this part of the chapter rests on a
falsehood, a sly deception: His statement on page 76 that it ‘turns the matter
upside down’ to begin with what he calls the ‘ambiguous words’ of Jeremiah
25:10, is all wrong! Things are just the other way around: the one turning
matters topsy-turvy is RF by his claiming that Jeremiah’s inspired words are
‘ambiguous’, which they are not - indeed, there is absolutely nothing
‘ambiguous’ or erroneous in the prophecies of Jeremiah about the fate of Judah
and Jerusalem at the hand of the Babylonians. Apparently, RF has invented this
postulate as an excuse for seeking a different explanation of these matters.
Moreover, here he also shows that he is aware of the problems he is creating
for himself, because after claiming falsely that the land was desolate for 70 years he
says, ‘Whereas we at first glance do not understand Jeremiah 25:11 this way,
there need not be any problem here.’ No, in this he is right, for all problems
disappear if we ignore his attempts to twist the truth of God’s Word. This will
be further elucidated in the analysis to be set forth here.
No ambiguity in God’s Word
Nonetheless, he persists in his false claims: after his quotations from 2
Chronicles and Daniel he claims that the words of these two writers are
‘unambiguous’ and since they ‘lived after the exile was terminated, ... they knew
the real length of it.’ This is correct, of course, only it does not prove his
contention for, as stated, Jeremiah’s words are as unambiguous as theirs, and
since he received his prophetic message from Jehovah God by inspiration, it
was utterly correct in all details. The entire argumentation found in this
paragraph and the next two is false to the core: while it is true that in certain
uninspired writings it may be possible to explain ambiguous passages by means
of unambiguous ones dealing with the same subject matter, this principle is not
applicable here, since none of the inspired scriptures dealt with are ambiguous!
The only reason why the author claims that (thus far with no evidence at all) is
that he clearly has an axe to grind, namely to gain support for the age-old claims
of certain sectarian expositions made long ago by people who knew altogether
far too little about the ancient history of Israel and her neighbouring countries
and of the chronology of that period to deal correctly and scholarly with such
matters. Even today their successors haven’t learned to do it properly but stick
stubbornly to their ancient falsehoods!
At this stage a few words may be said about these early sectarian matters, about
which even RF may know too little: When young Charles Taze Russell, the
founder of the movement of the Watchtower people (to whom RF belongs),
known since the 1870’s as the Bible Students, but since 1931 as the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, published his dogma about the ‘Gentile Times’ of Luke 21:24 as
being a period of 2,520 years, counting from 606 BCE (much later tacitly
‘corrected’ to 607!) to 1914 CE, he based this dating on an incorrect chronology
used by certain small Adventist groups with which he had been associated for
some time and from whom he had learned most of his views about ‘the last
days’ and the beginning of ‘the millennium’, and evidently he did not try to
find out what real scholars had to say about these subjects. Indeed, if he had
done so, he might have learned that even before he was born historians had
figured out a better chronology for Judah and the Neo-Babylonian empire, as