Raymond Franz

Raymond Victor Franz (1922–2010) was a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses [1, p. 257], appointed on October 20, 1971.

On May 22, 1980, Franz was ousted from the Governing Body [2] [3], and then in November 1981 he was subsequently 'disfellowshipped' (excommunicated) for sharing a meal in a restaurant 'with a person disassociated from the congregation'; his employer and landlord Peter Gregerson [4, pp. 355–376]. This occurred just weeks after the release of a Watchtower article setting out this new policy [5, p. 24]. Later in 1983, he released the first edition of Crisis of Conscience describing his experiences [4].

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Interestingly, prior to joining the Governing Body, Franz had worked in the writing department at Brooklyn Bethel (Watch Tower headquarters), where he was one of the main authors of the Watch Tower's Bible dictionary Aid to Bible Understanding released in 1971 (the predecessor to the Insight on the Scriptures series) [6]. In his book Franz describes the research that went into writing the 'Chronology' entry for the Aid book [4, pp. 29–31]:

Months of research were spent on this one subject of “Chronology” and it resulted in the longest article in the Aid publication. Much of the time was spent endeavoring to find some proof, some backing in history, for the 607 B.C.E. date so crucial to our calculations for 1914. Charles Ploeger, a member of the headquarters staff, was at that time serving as a secretary for me and he searched through the libraries of the New York city area for anything that might substantiate that date historically.

We found absolutely nothing in support of 607 B.C.E. All historians pointed to a date twenty years later. Before preparing the Aid material on “Archaeology” I had not realized that the number of baked-clay cuneiform tablets found in the Mesopotamian area and dating back to the time of ancient Babylon numbered into the tens of thousands. In all of these there was nothing to indicate that the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (in which period Nebuchadnezzar’s reign figured) was of the necessary length to fit our 607 B.C.E. date for the destruction of Jerusalem. Everything pointed to a period twenty years shorter than our published chronology claimed.

Though I found this disquieting, I wanted to believe that our chronology was right in spite of all the contrary evidence, that such evidence was somehow in error. Thus, in preparing the material for the Aid book, much of the time and space was spent in trying to weaken the credibility of the archeological and historical evidence that would make erroneous our 607 B.C.E. date and give a different starting point for our calculations and therefore an ending date different from 1914.

Charles Ploeger and I made a trip to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, to interview Professor Abraham Sachs, a specialist in ancient cuneiform texts, particularly those containing astronomical data. We wanted to see if we could obtain any information that would indicate any flaw or weakness whatsoever in the astronomical data presented in many of the texts, data that indicated our 607 B.C.E. date was incorrect. In the end, it became evident that it would have taken a virtual conspiracy on the part of the ancient scribes—with no conceivable motive for doing so—to misrepresent the facts if, indeed, our figure was to be the right one. Again, like an attorney faced with evidence he cannot overcome, my effort was to discredit or weaken confidence in the witnesses from ancient times who presented such evidence, the evidence of historical texts relating to the Neo-Babylonian Empire. In themselves, the arguments I presented were honest ones, but I know that their intent was to uphold a date for which there was no historical support.

Jonsson

It was during Franz' tenure on the Governing Body, that the Watch Tower received Jonsson's letters concerning chronology [4, p. 176]:

Then, in 1977, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sweden, named Carl Olof Jonsson, sent to the Brooklyn headquarters a massive amount of research he had done on Biblically related chronology and on chronological speculation. Jonsson was an elder and had been actively associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses for some twenty years.

Having had experience researching chronology myself, I was impressed by how deeply he had gone into the matter, also by the completeness and factualness of his presentation. Basically he sought to draw the Governing Body’s attention to the weakness in the Society’s chronological reckonings leading to the 1914 date as the end point of the “Gentile Times,” referred to by Jesus at Luke, chapter twenty-one, verse 24 (called “the appointed times of the nations” in the New World Translation).

It was from Jonsson's work that Franz first learnt that the 'seven times' prophetic interpretation did not originate with Russell [4, pp. 177, 179]

Most of Jehovah’s Witnesses for many decades believed that this explanation leading to 1914 was more or less unique with their organization, that it was initially understood and published by the Society’s first president, Pastor Russell.
...
This is what I had thought, until the material from the Swedish elder came in to the world headquarters. Then I realized how many facts had been either ignored or glossed over by the Society’s publications.
...
I was totally unaware of this before reading the material sent to the Society from Sweden. There was nothing in any of the Watch Tower Society’s publications that acknowledged these facts. There was no mention at all of John Aquila Brown.

Carl Olof Jonsson finally published his material in 1983. Ten years after Jonsson’s book appeared the Watch Tower Society for the first time acknowledged the actual origin of the 2,520-year-calculation by John Aquila Brown—made in 1823, 50 years before Russell appeared on the scene.

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