The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part One”
“Though the classical historians and the canon of Ptolemy disagree with this date, valid questions can be raised about the accuracy of their writings. Really, those two lines of evidence hardly provide enough proof to overturn the Bible’s chronology.”
The summing-up of Part One. The accompanying box “A QUICK SUMMARY” on the same page reads: “Secular historians usually say that Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 B.C.E. ▪ Bible chronology strongly indicates that the destruction occurred in 607 B.C.E. ▪ Secular historians mainly base their conclusions on the writings of classical historians and on the canon of Ptolemy. ▪ The writings of classical historians contain significant errors and are not always consistent with the records on clay tablets.”
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Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?—Part One
Confidence note. Full document fetched from the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; the quotation, the paragraph and the page were confirmed against the article text and its embedded page markers (span class=“pageNum”).
Corroborated by. src-chr-o-w-2011-1101-why-trust-bible
Notes. The burden of proof is expressly placed on the secular evidence: it must be enough “to overturn the Bible’s chronology”.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-o-w-2011-1001-conclusion