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Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

In a footnote the same article concedes that business tablets exist for every year traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian kings, and that totalling those reigns back from Nabonidus yields 587 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction.

Claim ID claim-chronology-business-tablets-concessionConcerns 1 November 2011Explicit statement
Explicit statement · 1 November 2011 Verified

In a footnote the same article concedes that business tablets exist for every year traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian kings, and that totalling those reigns back from Nabonidus yields 587 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction. The Watchtower, 1 November 2011

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The footnote adds the organisation’s qualification: ‘However, this method of dating works only if each king followed the other in the same year, without any breaks in between.’

Show the evidence (1 source)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part Two”

1 November 2011 · p.24 · footnote e · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Business tablets exist for all the years traditionally attributed to the Neo-Babylonian kings. When the years that these kings ruled are totaled and a calculation is made back from the last Neo-Babylonian king, Nabonidus, the date reached for the destruction of Jerusalem is 587 B.C.E. However, this method of dating works only if each king followed the other in the same year, without any breaks in between.”

A footnote attached to the paragraph that dismisses the chronicles and business tablets. It is the organisation’s own statement that the contemporaneous dated documents form a complete year-by-year series for the period.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Full document fetched from the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; the quotation was confirmed word for word against the article text.The Watchtower Online Library prints the footnote block at the end of the document, after the last page marker, so the page recorded here is the page carrying the footnote's reference marker in the body text, read from the page marker immediately before it.

Corroborated by. src-chr-o-w-2011-1101-business-tablets

Notes. The most significant concession in the series and easy to miss: it concedes that the dated contemporaneous record is continuous, and rests the 20-year gap entirely on the possibility of unattested breaks between reigns.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-o-w-2011-1101-ftn-e

Claim page

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