The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s Second Book 487
Earth’s Rotation (Cambridge, 1997). The program used, therefore, maintains high accuracy far
into the past, which is not true of many other modern astronomy programs.
About a year before Furuli’s book had been published in the autumn of 2007 I had
examined his claim (which he had published officially in advance) and found that none of
the lunar positions fit the year 588/587 BCE. I shared the first half of my results with some
of my correspondents. I did not know at that time that Furuli not only moves the 37 th year
of Nebuchadnezzar 20 years back to 588/587 BCE, but that he also moves the 37 th year
about one extra month forward in the Julian calendar, which actually makes it fall too late in
that year. The reason for this is the following:
On the obverse, line 17, VAT 4956 states that on day 15 of month III (Simanu) there was a
“lunar eclipse that was omitted.” The phrase refers to an eclipse that had been calculated in
advance to be invisible from the Babylonian horizon.
On page 126 Furuli explains that he has used this eclipse record as the “point of departure”
for mapping “the regnal years, the intercalary months, and the beginning of each month in
the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, both from the point of view that 568/67 and 588/87
B.C.E. represent his year 37.”
In the traditional date for the 37 th year of Nebuchadnezzar, this eclipse can easily be
identified with the eclipse of July 4, 568 (Julian calendar). Thus the Babylonian date, the 15 th
of month III, corresponds to July 4, 568 BCE. From that date we may count backward to
the 1st of month III, which must have been June 20/21 (sunset to sunset), 568. As the
tablet further shows that the preceding Month II (Ayyaru) had 29 days and Month I
(Nisannu) 30 days, it is easy to figure out that the 1 st of Ayyaru fell on May 22/23, 568, and
the 1 st of Nisannu (i.e., the 1 st day of year 37) on April 22/23, 568 BCE.
On moving back 20 years to 588/87 BCE – the 37 th year of Nebuchadnezzar in Furuli’s
alternative “Oslo Chronology” – we find that in this year, too, there was a lunar eclipse that
could not be seen from the Babylonian horizon. It took place on July 15, 588 BCE.
According to Furuli this is the eclipse that VAT 4956 dates to the 15 th of month III
(Simanu). Reckoning backwards from July 15, Furuli dates the 1 st of month III to June 30,
588; the 1 st of month II (Ayyaru) to June 1, 588, and the 1 st of month I (Nisannu) to May 1.
(In his discussions and/or calculations he is inconsistently alternating between May 1, May
2, and May 3).
There are a number of problems with Furuli’s dates. The first one is that the first day of the
Babylonian year, Nisannu 1, never began as late as in May! As shown by the tables on pages
27-47 in R. A. Parker & W. H. Dubberstein’s Babylonian Chronology (Brown University Press,
1956), the 1 st of Nisannu never once in the 700-year period covered (626 BCE – CE 75)
began as late as in May. The same holds true of the subsequent months: the 1 st of Ayyaru
never began as late as on June 1, and the 1 st of Simanu never began as late as on June 30.
For this reason alone the lunar eclipse that VAT 4956 dates to the 15 th of month III cannot
be that of July 15, 588 BCE! This eclipse must have fallen in the middle of month IV in the
Babylonian calendar. Furuli’s “point of departure” for his “Oslo Chronology,” therefore, is
quite clearly wrong.
Very interestingly, the lunar eclipse of July 15, 588 BCE was recorded by the Babylonians on
another cuneiform tablet, BM 38462, No. 1420 in A. Sachs’ LBAT catalogue, and No. 6 in
H. Hunger’s Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia (ADT), Vol. V (Wien, 2001).
I discussed this tablet on pages 180-182 of my book, The Gentile Times Reconsidered (3 rd ed.
1998, 4 th ed. 2004). The chronological strength of this tablet is just as decisive as that of
VAT 4956. It contains annual lunar eclipse reports dating from the 1 st to at least the 29 th
regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar (604/603 – 576/575 BCE). The preserved parts of the tablet
contain as many as 37 records of eclipses, 22 of which were predicted, 14 observed, and one
that is uncertain.
The entry containing the record of the July 15, 588 BCE eclipse (obverse, lines 16-18) is
dated to year 17, not year 37, of Nebuchadnezzar! This entry reports two lunar eclipses in this