Insight on the News

Digging Up the Valley of Hinnom

● This past summer, bulldozers lowered the hillock outside the western city wall of Jerusalem exposing ancient walls of an earlier time. The digging is of interest to Bible students because it confirms the previous use made of this area, formerly a valley, outside the city walls. “Old City residents for centuries would cast their debris over the city wall into the deeps of the Hinnom Vale,” reports “The Jerusalem Post.” It continues: “In clearing the slope, tons of old ceramics have been uncovered, as well as bones of camels, goats and sheep.”

This illustrates the fact that when Jesus used the Greek word “Gehenna” (often translated “hell”) to describe the punishment of the wicked, he was drawing on this fitting local symbol of destruction, as noted in the appendix to the interlinear Greek-English “Emphatic Diaglott.”

“Into this place were cast all kinds of filth, with the carcasses of beasts, and the unburied bodies of criminals who had been executed. Continual fires were kept to consume these. . . . ‘Gehenna,’ then, as occurring in the New Testament, . . . in no place signifies a place of eternal torment.”​—Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33.

Claudius Ptolemy​—a Fraud

● How certain can we be of the presently accepted chronology of the ancient Babylonian Empire? For many years, chronologists have put heavy reliance on the king list of Claudius Ptolemy, a second-century Greek scholar often considered the greatest astronomer of antiquity.

However, in his new book “The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy,” the noted physicist Robert R. Newton of Johns Hopkins University offers proof that many of Ptolemy’s astronomical observations were “deliberately fabricated” to agree with his preconceived theories “so that he could claim that the observations prove the validity of his theories.”

In its comments on Newton’s book, “Scientific American” magazine notes: “Ptolemy’s forgery may have extended to inventing the length of reigns of Babylonian kings. Since much modern reconstruction of Babylonian chronology has been based on a list of kings that Ptolemy used to pinpoint the dates of alleged Babylonian observations, according to Newton ‘all relevant chronology must now be reviewed and all dependence upon Ptolemy’s [king] list must be removed.’”​—October 1977, p. 80.

These findings illustrate why secular history and chronological reckoning cannot be relied upon when they conflict with the Bible. Unlike secular historians, the Bible writers had nothing to gain by misrepresenting the facts. Also, what they wrote became part of “all Scripture” that “is inspired of God.”​—2 Tim. 3:16.

Was Jeremiah Wrong?

● “Amman Stands​—Jeremiah Was Wrong” reads the headline of an article in Georgia’s “Atlanta Journal and Constitution.” The article goes on to state that “Jeremiah predicted ancient Amman [now the capital of Jordan] would become a ‘desolate heap.’ Ezekiel said it would be made a stable for camels and occupied by Bedouins.”​—See Jeremiah 49:2; Ezekiel 25:4, 5.

Was Jeremiah wrong? Modern-day Amman, Jordan, is not desolate, notes the Atlanta paper, so Jeremiah must have been wrong. But these hasty critics failed to note that nowhere did Jeremiah say the desolation of ancient Ammon would be PERMANENT, as prophets had done in other cases such as that of Babylon, which is desolate to this day.​—Isa. 13:19, 20.

In fact, Jeremiah’s prophecy actually allowed for later habitation of Ammon, saying, just a few verses after the forecast of desolation: “Yet after this I will restore the fortunes of Ammon. This is the very word of the Lord.”​—Jer 49:6, “New English Bible.”

However, before this occurred, the desolation prophecy was indeed fulfilled in detail, as noted by “The Biblical Archaeologist Reader”: “Archaeological explorations have shown that sedentary occupation in the land of Ammon virtually ceased before the middle of the 6th century B.C. . . . the bedouin hordes from the desert . . . brought to an end the semi-autonomous Ammonite state.”​—Vol. II, pp. 87, 88.