So my parents are Jehovah's witnesses and they strongly believe that Jerusalem fell in 607 BCE but that is because it supports their doctrine. I told them that a lot of historians disagree with 607, at which they replied that I had bad sources and real historians agree with 607 as the correct date. So confused right now.
The commonly agreed upon date for the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in both Biblical and ANE/Mesopotamian scholarship is 587/586 BCE. As far as I know, the reason the JW’s choose the date is due to attempting to pinpoint the date of the siege via the usage of internal biblical verification. They use the prophecy of 70 weeks in Daniel to verify this date. However, they do not account for the fact that Daniel is an absolute chronological disaster. It is by far the latest composed of the biblical books and mentions characters otherwise unknown to history (Darius the Mede).
I think it’s worth noting that, at least in my experience, I’ve never read a single Bible Scholar who sided with the date of 607 as the date for the fall of Jerusalem (or even entertained it as an idea). I’m also currently finishing up my second Master’s degree studying this time period and this part of the world, so I’ve read quite a bit on the topic. Even William Foxwell Albright, the “founder” of biblical archaeology as a discipline (who was constantly accused of trying to make evidence for the Bible rather than the reverse) proposed a date of 587 for the fall of Jerusalem.
I’m away from home so I can’t cite exact pages from memory. However, for thoroughly scholarly works on the fall of Jerusalem, see:
Baruch Halpern, “Why Manasseh is blamed for the Babylonian exile.”
Miller and Hayes, “a history of ancient Israel.” This is a wonderful (albeit slightly outdated) resource which works through biblical chronology and incorporates a large amount of ANE primary sources.
Carol Newsom’s commentary on Daniel discusses the prophecy of 70 weeks to a very in-depth degree.
In terms of primary sources, you can also check out the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle, which has been translated from Neo-Babylonian and should be available online for free.
Have your parents read this article: https://wol.jw.[b]org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2011810 (Take out the [b]) Then have them scroll down to this part: "Note: None of the secular experts quoted in this article hold that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E." Nuff said..
You should read ‘The Gentile Times Reconsidered’ by Carl Olof Josson - he has a cool story and was a JW who through 10 years of research wrote the above book and dismantled the JW doctrine. You can find it on Scribd ( true spelling ) and download the PDF. So worth t.