Bible Contradiction? How long was the Babylonian Captivity?

 

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: How long was the Babylonian Captivity?

Here are the answers which the skeptic believes indicate a Bible contradiction:

70 years

“For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.” (Jeremiah 29:10)

Seven generations

“And when you are come into Babylon, you shall be there many years, and for a long time, even to seven generations: and after that I will bring you away from thence with peace.” (Baruch 6:2; quoted from Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

1. When dealing with skeptics’ claim of Bible contradictions it seems one can never be reminded enough of what exactly is a contradiction.  A contradiction occurs when two or more claims conflict with one another so that they cannot simultaneously be true in the same sense and at the same time.  To put it another way, a Bible contradiction exists when there are claims within the Bible that are mutually exclusive in the same sense and at the same time.
2. One should be skeptical of whether this is a Bible contradiction given the Skeptic Annotated Bible’s track record of inaccurately handling the Bible.  See the many examples of their error which we have responded to in this post: Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.  Of course that does not take away the need to respond to this claim of a contradiction, which is what the remainder of this post will do.  But this observation should caution us to slow down and look more closely at the passages cited by the Skeptic Annotated Bible to see if they interpreted the passages properly to support their conclusion that it is a Bible contradiction.
3. The skeptic tries to pit Jeremiah 29:10 as affirming the claim “The Babylonian Captivity was seventy years” against Baruch 6:2 as affirming “The Babylonian Captivity was seven generations.”
4. One must always ask if the skeptics properly interpreted the verses.
   1. Jeremiah 29:10 does affirm the claim “The Babylonian Captivity was seventy years.”
   2. Baruch 6:2 does affirm “The Babylonian Captivity was seven generations.”
5. However Baruch 6:2 is not part of the Bible.
   1. It was never part of the Jewish Canon.
   2. Jewish Rabbis never cited, quoted, or use the book (Sean Adams, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, 18).
   3. Nor was this quoted anywhere in the New Testament (Sean Adams, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, 18).
   4. Chapter 6 of Baruch is actually the non-Canonical Epistle of Jeremiah.
6. Obviously if Baruch is not part of the Bible there is no Bible contradiction here even if there is a logical contradiction between these two statements.
7. It took me some time to track down the Greek text of Baruch 6:2.  Baruch 6:2 does say in the Greek “until the seventh generation.”  The word “ἕως” is interpreted as “until” and it is a Greek particle marking a limit, that is, a temporal point of termination.
8. Interestingly nowhere else in the Bible does it affirm the claim found in Baruch 6:2 that “The Babylonian Captivity was seven generations.”
9. However we do see elsewhere in the Bible it affirm Jeremiah 29:10’s claim that “The Babylonian Captivity was seventy years.”  Jeremiah 25:11 states “This whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”  See also Jeremiah 25:12.
10. Also the expectation was seventy years for the exiles to return since one sees this interpretation lead Daniel to eagerly long for the seventy year milestone as seen in Daniel 9:2.
11. One of the reason to doubt Baruch 6:2 is actually written by Jeremiah and to believe it was written much later is that the Book of Jeremiah talks about the remnant will begin returning within 70 years and yet Baruch 6:2 state the return will be within 7 generations which seems to excuse those who were Jewish reading this book that never did went back to Jerusalem for many generations but continued living outside Jerusalem.  Fascinating as well is the fact that this book was written in Greek and not in Hebrew which indicate the likely audience was the Jewish Diaspora.
12. A Jewish generation was about 30 years and if you think of 7 generations that is about 210 years.  The exile from Jerusalem began in 586 BC.  So 210 years later it would land on 376 BC.  But way before then the Jews have already made big caravan trips back to Jerusalem which took place in the 6th to 5th Century BC (see the book of Ezra and Nehemiah).  There’s no specific migration that stood out in the 300s BC.
13. Thus there is no contradiction here.  Seems the skeptic needs to learn of How to Handle Bible Contradictions.
14. We shouldn’t miss that worldviews are at play even with the skeptic’s objection to Christianity.  The worldview of the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible actually doesn’t even allow for such a thing as the law of non-contradiction to be meaningful and intelligible.  In other words for him to try to disprove the Bible by pointing out that there’s a Bible contradiction doesn’t even make sense within his own worldview.  Check out our post “Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview.”