History of the Watch Tower Chronology

As explained in the section Significance to Jehovah’s Witnesses the date of Jerusalem's destruction is significant within Jehovah's Witness eschatology as the basis of their 'Gentile Times' belief derived from Daniel Chapter 4's 'seven times'.

According to the Proclaimers book the first known interpretation of the 'seven times' in Daniel 4 as a prophetic period was published in 1823 by John Aquila Brown in The Even-Tide [1, p. 134]:

As early as 1823, John A. Brown, whose work was published in London, England, calculated the “seven times” of Daniel chapter 4 to be 2,520 years in length. But he did not clearly discern the date with which the prophetic time period began or when it would end. He did, however, connect these “seven times” with the Gentile Times of Luke 21:24.

Brown applied the 2520-year period starting from Nebuchadnezzar's first year (604 BC) to 1917 AD [2, p. 135]:

Commencing, therefore, the calculation of the “seven times,” from the first year of Nebuchadnezzar A.C. 604, whose kingdom is the golden head of the image, and is represented by the towering and palmy “tree,” previously to its desolation, the termination of these 2520 years will fall out in the year 1917.

Brown did not actually link the 'seven times' of Daniel 4 to Luke 21:24 as claimed in Proclaimers, instead he identified the 'Gentile Times' with the ‘time, times, and a half’ of Daniel [2, p. XI]:

The “times of the Gentiles,” during which Jerusalem is to be trodden down of the Gentiles, as declared by Christ, and by the Apostle Paul, as well as by the Prophet John, in his vision of the two witnesses, are therefore unquestionably the “time, times, and a half,” predicted by the Prophet Daniel, when your desolation is to cease; and he defines these times to be twelve hundred and sixty days or years.

The Even Tide was the first of many publications throughout the 19th century to apply a 2520-year prophetic period to a variety of different starting points and chronologies. A number of these interpretations terminated in 1914, the first of which was published in 1844 by E B Elliott [3, p. 265], long before Jehovah's Witnesses began to use this date:

And 1st, on the seven times of Nebuchadnezzar's insanity and state of bestialism. These, calculated after the year-day system, on the hypothesis of the Babylonish king's insanity figuring that of the great empires which he then headed, in their state of heathen aberration from God, (an hypothesis on the truth of which I do not myself entertain much doubt,) terminate, —if dated from the time, B.C. 727, when the Assyrians under Shalmanezer first acted the wild beast's part against Israel,—about the year 1793; that is, at the epoch of the French Revolution, and the coincident going forth of the gospel-message to evangelize the heathen: doubtless a very remarkable synchronism: especially considering that the bisecting point of these seven times is then A.D. 533; the very commencing epoch, with Justinian's Decree, of the three and a half times of the Papal Antichrist. Of course if calculated from Nebuchadnezzar's own accession and invasion of Judah, B.C. 606, the end is much later, being A.D. 1914; just one half century, or jubilean period, from our probable date of the opening of the Millennium.

This section will now track how the Watch Tower's interpretation of the 'Gentile Times' prophecy developed and changed over time, starting with Charles Taze Russell's publications in the late 19th century.

References