The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s Second Book 495
Furuli’s date: Addaru 7 = 30 March 587 BCE:
Furuli’s date for Addaru 7 is 30 March 587 BCE. He states that Cancer in that night “was 4 o
above the moon and α Leonis was 13 o below the moon.” However, Cancer was not above
but in front of (west of) the moon, and α Leonis was not below but behind (east of) the moon.
But as this lunar position was nearly the same as on 20/21 March, 567 BCE, both positions
fit.
(13) ´Rev. line 16: “The 12 th , one god was seen with the other; sunrise to moonset: 1 o 30´ [6
minutes]; ….”
Addaru 12 = 25/26 March 567 BCE:
In 567 BCE the 12 th of Addaru fell on 25/26 March. According to the tablet sunrise
occurred 1 o 30´ – 6 minutes – before moonset, meaning that one “god” could be “seen with
the other” in the morning for six minutes. My astro-program shows that in the morning of
March 26 the sun rose at c. 06:08 and the moon set c. 06:11, that is, they could both be seen
at the same time above the horizon for about 3 minutes, which is close to the time given on
the tablet.
Furuli’s date: Addaru 12 = 4/5 April 587 BCE:
Furuli has misunderstood the kind of phenomenon referred to by the expression “one god
was seen with the other”. He explains on page 323: “To say that one god (the sun) was seen
with the other god (the moon) was one way to express that the moon was full.”
Although it is true that the moon was nearly full when it was seen with the sun, this is not
exactly what the expression refers to. As explained earlier, it refers to the situation when the
sun and the moon stand in opposition to each other – the sun in the east and the moon in
the west – and both can be seen simultaneously above the horizon for a short period of time. As Furuli
has not understood this, his comments on the text are mistaken and irrelevant.
Furuli’s date for the 12 th of Addaru is 4/5 April 587 BCE. In the morning of April 5 the sun
rose at c. 05:54. But the moon had already set at c. 05:13, i.e., about 41 minutes before
sunrise. Thus one “god” could not be seen “with the other” this morning. Furuli’s date,
then, is wrong. Only the 567 BCE date fits the statement on the tablet.
In summary, at least 10 of the 13 lunar positions examined fit the 568/567 BCE date quite
well, one (no. 10) is acceptable, while two (nos. 2 and 5) are acceptable only if the dates are
moved back one day. Of Furuli’s dates in 588/587 BCE only one (no. 12) fits, while 9 do
not fit at all. The fits of the remaining three (9, 10, and 11) are far from good but acceptable.
The conclusion is, that the observations were made in 568/567
BCE. The year 588/587 BCE is definitely out of the question.
Part II: The Saturn Tablet BM 76738 + BM 76813
The Saturn Tablet consists of two broken pieces, BM 76738 + BM 76813. It contains a list
of last and first appearances of Saturn for a period of 14 successive years, namely, the first
14 years of the Babylonian king Kandalanu, whose 22 years of reign is generally dated to 647
– 626 BCE. As the examination below will demonstrate, the Saturn Tablet alone is sufficient
for establishing the absolute chronology of the first 14 years of his reign. Every attempt by
the Watchtower Society and its apologists to add 20 years to the Neo-Babylonian
chronology is effectively blocked by this tablet.
The Watchtower apologist Rolf Furuli in Oslo, Norway, strains every nerve to get rid of the
evidence provided by this tablet in his new volume on chronology, Assyrian, Babylonian and
Egyptian Chronology (Oslo: Awatu Publishers, 2007). The Watchtower Society’s chronology,
renamed by Furuli the “Oslo Chronology”, requires that Nebuchadnezzar’s 18 th year, in
which he desolated Jerusalem, is dated to 607 instead of 587 BCE. This would also move his
father Nabopolassar’s 21-year reign 20 years backwards in time, from 625-605 to 645-625.