Bible scholars, in what year did we first prove that Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586/587 B.C.E.?
Any additional details, such as who made that discovery, would be greatly appreciated.
Any additional details, such as who made that discovery, would be greatly appreciated.
Anonymous
"Turn to every encyclopaedia or archaeological text on the subject and you will find that Jerusalem fell between 586 and 587 B.C. The Watchtower uses 607 B.C. by claiming all historical evidence we have on the subject is wrong. Yet to make such a claim opens a paradox - if archaeology is unreliable for 587 B.C., and this same information is being used to determine 607 B.C., then 607 must be equally unreliable.
There are numerous ways used to determine that Jerusalem fell in 587 B.C. This includes Ptolemy's Canon, the Nabonidus Chronicle, Harran, Hillah stele and synchronization with Egyptian chronology. The Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology, page 274 states "Archaeological evidence for the destruction of the kingdom in 586 B.C. comes from Jerusalem, Lachish, Tell Beit Mirsim, and other sites." Tens of thousands of detailed economic-administrative and legal documents have been unearthed outlining daily, monthly and yearly occurrences during the reign of the Babylonian kings." http://jehovah.net.au/607.html
I don't know in what year it was first proved that Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586/587 B.C. but I'm still looking... Here we are:
As early as 1929 Raymond Philip Dougherty's Nabonidus and Belshazzar, Yale University Press p.10 showed that the knowledge of the reign of these kings "is based upon more than two thousand dated cuneiform documents. It must therefore be accepted as the ultimate criterion in the determination of Neo-Babylonian chronological questions."
In agreement with archaeological sources Josephus states that Jerusalem was desolate for 50 years:
"Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth year of his reign, laid our temple desolate, and so it lay in that state of obscurity for fifty years; but that in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its foundations were laid, and it was finished again in the second year of Darius." (Against Apion Book I, Chapter 21)
At the bottom of the article in the second link below are links to the sources of information given.