The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

532 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
Line 23: The year number is damaged, but it would logically be “43” as the next year is
dated to the “1 st year of Amēl-Marduk,” the successor of Nebuchadnezzar. Van
Driel/Nemet-Nejat have “43” in their transliteration and translation, but suggest a possible
“42” on page 54. Actually, the last part of the number, “3,” is still legible. Payne explains:
“This line is, indeed, badly damaged, but there are legible traces. Read: P[AB.M]A.ME {87
MU.43.KAM} (erasure … ) The text continues after the erasure as read by vD/NN. The ‘3
UDU’ they have in this line, however, is NOT there – it is the +3.KAM from the date.”
Thus “43” is undoubtedly the correct restoration of the original number.
Line 28: The year number on this line is read as “year 1” by van Driel, but Sack, followed by
Furuli, reads “year 2”. Elizabeth Payne, who collated the line on November 14, 2008,
explains:
“I would read this section of the text as ‘mu.1!.kam’, as there are traces of a
second ‘tail.’ It is, however, markedly different from line 31, where there are
clearly two vertical wedges (mu.2.kam). In my opinion, the interpretation of
vD [van Driel] and NN [Nemet-Nejat] is correct, but the copy omits these
traces.”
In conclusion, the tablet obviously gives an annual count of the herd, with no years missing.
Furuli’s claim (p. 248) that “we cannot know that the tablet represents accounts of
successive years” is nothing but wishful thinking. That the tablet gives annual reports is also
confirmed by the calculations, as summarized in the Table 1 above. As the “Grand total” of
the previous year is the same as the BF (balance brought forward) of the next year during
the whole ten-year period, it is impossible to add any “unknown kings” or “extra years” to
the period. The BF – CF totals tie each year directly to the next year without break. Any
insertion of “extra years” or “unknown kings” would immediately destroy these obvious
connections and require more annual increases.
This is also confirmed by the annual increase of the herd. Furuli discusses this on page 257,
but his calculation is invalid because he includes the 104 animals in line 27 in the annual
increase of the herd, while in fact it was added from an external source as shown above.
Zawadzki, on the other hand, who takes this into consideration, finds that “the average
yearly growth of the herd (excluding the addition of new animals in AmM 1) was about
18%.” (Zawadzki, pp. 104, 105)
Thus the tablet NBC 4897 does show, clearly, that Nebuchadnezzar ruled for 43 years, and
that his son and successor Amēl-Marduk ruled for 2 years and was succeeded by Neriglissar.
Part V: Were there unknown Neo-Babylonian kings?
[Note: The first edition of Rolf Furuli’s volume 2 was published in the autumn of 2007.
Later in that year Part I of my critical review was published on this website. It was
demonstrated that Furuli’s attempt (in chapter 6 and Appendix C) to redate the lunar
observations recorded in the astronomical diary VAT 4956 was untenable. Evidently due to
my criticism, Furuli rewrote parts of his discussion of VAT 4956 and quickly had a second
revised edition of his book published in May, 2008. He even reclaimed copies of the first
edition he had sent out about that time, telling the recipients that he would send them a
copy of the new edition.
An examination of Furuli’s revisions, however, shows them to be just another failed
attempt to get rid of the historical reality as attested by VAT 4956. Very few changes were
made in the rest of the book. Thus chapter 4 that is discussed in this part of my review is
the same in both editions, the only difference being that chapter 4 in the first edition is
found on pages 65-87 while it is found two pages later, on pages 67-89, in the second
edition. The page references below are to pages in the first edition.]
As stated in Part III of this review, there are only two ways of extending the Neo-
Babylonian period to include the 20 extra years required by the Watchtower Society’s