The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s Second Book 527
Concerning the claim that the mistakes for the most part “occur in the totals”, the most
serious of these according to van Driel/Nemet-Nejat’s translation are found in lines 31 and
35, where the numbers of sheep (rams + ewes + male lambs + young ewes) are summarized
as follows:
Line 31: 170 + 390 + 66 + 193 = total: 759.
Line 35: 5 + 198 + 14 + 51 = total: 198.
As van Driel/Nemet-Nejat observed (pp. 53, 57), the numbers they have read in line 31 add
up to 819, not 759, and those in line 35 add up to 268, not 198.
With respect to line 31, however, Zawadzki notes that, “Van Driel reads mistakenly 193
lambs while the copy gives clearly 133. The horizontal total of 759 is correct. Thus his
calculations in JCS 46, [page] 57 from point (3) to the end of the article [i.e., the whole last
page of the article] are wrong.” (Zawadzki, p. 104, note 23)
Line 35 contains two further misreadings: The number 198 is a misreading for 138
(Zawadzki, p. 104, n. 25) and number 51 is a misreading for 41. Paul-Alain Beaulieu, who
collated the original tablet at Yale, comments, “The tablet has a clear 41, indeed, but the
scribe has written 51 and then erased one of the Winkelhaken to make 41.” (Zawadzki, p.
104, n. 26) The horizontal total of 198 in line 35, therefore, is also correct.
Thus there are no errors “in the crucial final section” of the tablets. When the individual
figures have been correctly read, copied and translated, and the procedure used by the
accountant to arrive at the “totals” and the “Grand totals” is correctly understood, the
calculations of the accountant turn out to be surprisingly free from serious errors. At only
two places the “Grand totals” contains errors, and these are very small. For the 37 th year
(line 5) the “Grand total” shows 176 animals instead of 174, and for the 40 th year (line 14) it
shows 303 animals instead of 306. For all the other eight years the calculations are correct!
In view of this, it is remarkable that Rolf Furuli in his attempt to undermine the
chronological impact of NBC 4897 has devoted so little attention to Zawadzki’s careful
analysis of the ledger that he has failed to notice that his quotation from van Driel/Nemet-
Nejat about the supposed numerical mistakes on the tablet has been refuted by Zawadzki!
Table 1 below, which is based on Zawadzki’s study, summarizes the calculations in the
ledger, demonstrating that the Neo-Babylonian accountant usually did an excellent job and
that the few mistakes he did in his calculations of the annual increase of the herd were of
very small consequence. In the table “BF” means “brought forward” and “CF” means
“carried forward.” “Nbk” means Nebuchadnezzar, “AmM” Amēl-Marduk, and “Ngl”
Neriglissar. The regnal year numbers in the first column includes some emendations or
reconstructions by van Driel and Zawadzki. (Zawadzki, page 100, note 9) See further Table
2 below.