The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

496 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
As the Saturn Tablet definitely blocks any change of this kind, it has to be reinterpreted in
some way. Furuli has realized that he cannot simply wave it away as unreliable, as he does
with so many other uncomfortable astronomical tablets.
To overcome this problem Furuli tries to argue that Nabopolassar and Kandalanu is one
and the same person. (Furuli, chapter 12, pp. 193-209) This idea will be discussed in some
detail at the end of this article, but one of the problems with it is that the first year of
Kandalanu is fixed to 647 BCE, not to 645 as is required by Furuli’s variant of the
Watchtower chronology (the “Oslo Chronology”). To “solve” this problem, Furuli argues
that there may have been not one but two years of interregnum before the reign of
Nabopolassar. He also speculates that “a scribe could have reckoned his first regnal year one
or two years before it actually started”! (Furuli, p. 340) He ends up lowering the first year of
Nabopolassar/Kandalanu one year, from 647 to 646, claiming that the observations on the
Saturn Tablet may be applied to this lowered reign. He believes his table E.2 on pp. 338-9
supports this. However, as will be demonstrated in the discussion below, there is no
evidence whatsoever in support of these peculiar ideas. His table bristles with serious
mistakes from beginning to end.
The Planet Saturn has a revolution of c. 29.46 years, which means that it returns to the same
place among the stars at the same time of the year after twice 29.46 or nearly 59 years. Due to
the revolution of the earth round the sun, Saturn disappears behind the sun for a few weeks
and reappears again at regular intervals of 378.09 days. This means that its last and first
visibility occurs only once a year at most, each year close to 13 days later in a solar year of
365.2422 days, and close to 24 days later in a lunar year of 354.3672 days (12 months of
29.5306 days), except, of course, in years with an intercalary month.
EXAMINATION OF THE ENTRIES FOR THE FIRST 7 YEARS (14
LINES)
On the above-mentioned tablet each year is covered by two lines, one for the last and one
for the first visibility of the planet. The tablet, then, contains 2 x 14 = 28 lines. As lines 3
and 4 are clearly dated to the 2 nd year, the damaged and illegible sign for the year number in
lines 1 and 2 obviously refers to the 1 st year of king Kandalanu.
The text of lines 1 and 2:
1´ [Year 1 of Kand]alanu, ´month´ […, day …, last appearance.]
2´ [Year 1, mont]h 4, day 24, in fro[nt of … the Crab, first appearance.]
Comments:
As is seen, the last and first visibility of Saturn is dated to year, month, and day in the lunar
calendar of the Babylonians. As the Babylonian lunar months began in the evening of the
first visibility of the moon after conjunction, there are two mutually independent cycles that
can be combined to test the correctness of the chronology: the lunar first visibility cycle of
29.53 days, and the Saturn visibility cycle of 378.09 days. 57 Saturn cycles of 378.09 days
make almost exactly 59 solar years. As explained by C. B. F. Walker, the translator of the
tablet:
“A complete cycle of Saturn phenomena in relation to the stars takes 59
years. But when that cycle has to be fitted to the lunar calendar of 29 or 30 days then
identical cycles recur at intervals of rather more than 17 centuries. Thus there is no
difficulty in determining the date of the present text.” – C. B. F. Walker,
“Babylonian Observations of Saturn during the Reign of Kandalanu,” in N.
M. Swerdlow (ed.), Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and London: 1999), p. 63. Emphasis added. (Walker’s article,
with picture, is available on the web:
http://www.caeno.org/_Eponym/pdf/Walker_Saturn%20in%20Kandalanu
%20reign.pdf.)