Argument of Ignorance II: Setting a Clock to the Fall of Jerusalem

Another post about Jeremiah since I was jsut reading from that book.

Jeremiah described a battle on the river Euphrates where Pharaoh Necho's army was struck down by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim. Babylon kept a running record of every year on small clay tablets. One of them tells the same story. The crown prince Nebuchadnezzar crossed the river, beat the Egyptian army, and chased them south until not one man escaped home. That summer his father passed away, and he rushed back to be crowned. Same battle, same river, same year. They are synonymous.

Jeremiah 46:1-6 This is the word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations. Concerning Egypt: This is the message against the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt, which was defeated at Carchemish on the Euphrates River by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah:“Prepare your shields, both large and small, and march out for battle! Harness the horses, mount the steeds! Take your positions with helmets on! Polish your spears put on your armor! What do I see? They are terrified, they are retreating, and their warriors are defeated. They flee in haste without looking back, and there is terror on every side, “declares the Lord. “The swift cannot flee nor the strong escape. In the north by the River Euphrates they stumble and fall.

Skeptics have routinely criticized Jeremiah’s account as being inaccurate. They’ve said Jeremiah's dates are guesswork. Very few times do the critics pay attention to what is called the superscription in the beginning of a Bible passage where it explicitly dates the prophet’s prophecies to the exact year of a specific king’s reign. In this case the fourth year of King Jehoiakim. By doing this, the prophet, therefore the Bible dates the otherwise obscure man to the definitive reign of a known king as chronological validation.

Furthermore, Babylon's own record has the same battle, the same year. The Babylonian Chronicle for the early years of Nebuchadnezzar. These are in the British Museum referred to as British Museum Tablet BM 21946 (ABC 5) -The Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle. They record that in the 21st year of Nabopolassar (605 BC) the crown prince Nebuchadnezzar marched to Carchemish on the Euphrates, crossed the river against the Egyptian army, defeated it, and pursued the survivors to the district of Hamah, so that not a single man escaped. In the same year Nabopolassar passed away, and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon to take the throne.

Jeremiah dates the battle to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which was also 605 BC. This tablet ironically is the same exact tablet that documents the first siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC. The subsequent destruction and exile recorded in the Bible that will take place ten years later are not covered in the chronicles or elsewhere in the archaeological record as the document was etched ten years prior to that event. 

A decade later, Zedekiah would launch another ill-advised rebellion (against Jeremiah’s protest) against the Babylonians, which was brutally crushed by Nebuchadnezzar II. In 587 BC, this second siege of Jerusalem culminated in the destruction of the city and Solomon's Temple, bringing an end to the Kingdom of Judah. 

This would thereby drive the Jews into the Diaspora. The accuracy of the prophecy was to the exact year of the first siege that would inevitably lead to the second siege and the eventual Fall of Jerusalem and the First Temple. You could’ve set you clock and calendar to the timing.