Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, “Chronology”
“Simply stated, accuracy in astronomy does not prove accuracy in history.”
The principle is illustrated with a worked example: an ancient scribe might correctly record a celestial event that modern computation confirms for 465 B.C.E., yet be “entirely wrong” in calling that year the 21st year of King Xerxes. The same section acknowledges that a combination of lunar and planetary positions “would not be duplicated again in thousands of years”, and that the astronomical diaries “appear to coincide with the figures given in Ptolemy’s canon”.
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Provenance and verification note for Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, Chronology
Confidence note. Full article fetched from the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026; the quotation and the page were confirmed against the text and its embedded page markers. Insight on the Scriptures is undated on the Online Library; the 1988 publication year is the work’s own imprint date.
Notes. The concession that the diaries’ positions are effectively unique to a single year, and agree with the conventional chronology, is made in the organisation’s own reference work.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-o-it1-chronology-astronomy