Ether 11

#Ether Chapter 11

1 And there came also in the days of Com many prophets, and prophesied of the destruction of that great people except they should repent, and turn unto the Lord, and forsake their murders and wickedness.

2 And it came to pass that the prophets were rejected by the people, and they fled unto Com for protection, for the people sought to destroy them.

3 And they prophesied unto Com many things; and he was blessed in all the remainder of his days.

4 And he lived to a good old age, and begat Shiblom; and Shiblom reigned in his stead. And the brother of Shiblom rebelled against him, and there began to be an exceedingly great war in all the land.

5 And it came to pass that the brother of Shiblom caused that all the prophets who prophesied of the destruction of the people should be put to death;

6 And there was great calamity in all the land, for they had testified that a great curse should come upon the land, and also upon the people, and that there should be a great destruction among them, such an one as never had been upon the face of the earth, and their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness.

7 And they hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord, because of their wicked combinations; wherefore, there began to be wars and contentions in all the land, and also many famines and pestilences, insomuch that there was a great destruction, such an one as never had been known upon the face of the earth; and all this came to pass in the days of Shiblom.

verse 7 “a great destruction, such an one as never had been known upon the face of the earth . . . in the days of Shiblom” It has been speculated by at least one investigator (Joseph L. Allen, Exploring the Lands of the Book of Mormon, 64) that this great destruction might have been a particularly destructive hurricane in 1399 BC written of by the 17th-century historian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl.

8 And the people began to repent of their iniquity; and inasmuch as they did the Lord did have mercy on them.

9 And it came to pass that Shiblom was slain, and Seth was brought into captivity, and did dwell in captivity all his days.

10 And it came to pass that Ahah, his son, did obtain the kingdom; and he did reign over the people all his days. And he did do all manner of iniquity in his days, by which he did cause the shedding of much blood; and few were his days. 11 And Ethem, being a descendant of Ahah, did obtain the kingdom; and he also did do that which was wicked in his days.

12 And it came to pass that in the days of Ethem there came many prophets, and prophesied again unto the people; yea, they did prophesy that the Lord would utterly destroy them from off the face of the earth except they repented of their iniquities.

13 And it came to pass that the people hardened their hearts, and would not hearken unto their words; and the prophets mourned and withdrew from among the people.

14 And it came to pass that Ethem did execute judgment in wickedness all his days; and he begat Moron. And it came to pass that Moron did reign in his stead; and Moron did that which was wicked before the Lord.

15 And it came to pass that there arose a rebellion among the people, because of that secret combination which was built up to get power and gain; and there arose a mighty man among them in iniquity, and gave battle unto Moron, in which he did overthrow the half of the kingdom; and he did maintain the half of the kingdom for many years.

16 And it came to pass that Moron did overthrow him, and did obtain the kingdom again.

17 And it came to pass that there arose another mighty man; and he was a descendant of the brother of Jared.

18 And it came to pass that he did overthrow Moron and obtain the kingdom; wherefore, Moron dwelt in captivity all the remainder of his days; and he begat Coriantor.

#19 And it came to pass that Coriantor dwelt in captivity all his days.

20 And in the days of Coriantor there also came many prophets, and prophesied of great and marvelous things, and cried repentance unto the people, and except they should repent the Lord God would execute judgment against them to their utter destruction;

21 And that the Lord God would send or bring forth another people to possess the land, by his power, after the manner by which he brought their fathers.

verses 20-21 These verses imply that the peoples of Zarahemla and of Lehi had not yet reached the promised land in America at this time which is just before Ether, the last Jaredite prophet, was born. Dr. John L. Sorenson has found these verses helpful in attempting to date the great final battle of the Jaredites which he places at about 580 BC (“The Years of the Jaredites,” BYU Today, September 1968, 18-24).

Though typically thought of as a Nephite record, as you know, the Book of Mormon actually describes the rise and fall of two peoples. It begins with Lehi in Jerusalem, follows his family’s journey to the promised land, and the remainder of the book primarily chronicles the history of their descendants.

Then there is a small part that describes the rise and fall of an earlier people, the Jaredites, whose prophets had warned them here in these verses that unless they repented, “the Lord God would execute judgment against them to their utter destruction” and then “bring forth another people to possess the land” (Ether 11:20–21).

The history of Mesoamerica also shows the rise and fall of two major cultures during parallel time periods (see chart below) (Chart from John E. Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 2, 2005: 48; John E. Clark, “Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins,” in The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress, ed. John W. Welch, Provo, UT: BYU Press, 2006, 91. For the most thorough correlation made to datof the rise and fall of the Olmec and preclassic Maya with Jaredites and Nephites, see John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book, Salt

Scholarship, 2013, 499–695. See also John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1985, 108–137; John L. Sorenson, Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life, Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999, 192–217. Note that Sorenson’s Jaredite chronology differs from Clark’s.). John E. Clark, a Latter-day Saint and prominent Mesoamerican archaeologist, noted, “The two-civilizations requirement used to be a problem for the Book of Mormon, but it no longer is now that modern archaeology is catching up” (Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” 48).

#Book of Mormon

Zarahemla

#Cities

City of Nephi

Jaredite Cities

era of destruction and decline

1500 1000 500 BC 0 AD 500

Olmec

Highland Maya Cities

#Mesoamerican

Lowland Maya Cities

#Cities

Scholars refer to the first civilization as the Olmec, which arose in the mid-second 1millennium BC and collapsed around 400 BC (See Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” 48. Joel W. Polka, “Olmec,” in The A to Z of Ancient Mesoamerica, Lenham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010, 92–93 dates the Olmec to 1750– 400 BC. Richard E. W. Adams, Prehistoric Mesoamerica, third edition, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 2005, 55–56 discusses Olmec chronology and periodization, ca. 1600–300 BC.). According to Clark, “the earliest developments of Jaredites and Olmecs are hazy, but from about 1500 BC onward their histories are remarkably parallel.” From there, “The alternations between city building and population declines, described for the Jaredites, correspond quite well with lowland Olmec developments” (Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” 48. Clark, “Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins,” 93: “The Olmec population grows and falls in respectable parallel to that of the Jaredites’ reported increase and demise.” Brant A. Gardner, Traditions of the Fathers: The Book of Mormon as History, Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2015, 406, agreed: “The Olmec and the Jaredites overlap in time depth and geography.” However, Gardner used a different chronology for the Jaredites, shifting them a few hundred years forward in time to ca. 1100–200 BC. See Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols., Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007, 6:146–149. On his later dating of the collapse of the Jaredites, Gardner pointed out, “a [Olmec] related late tradition called the epi-Olmec lasting through 200 BC”[Gardner, Traditions of the Fathers, 395]. Gardner thus reasoned that “the devastating wars of annihilation in Ether” were part of “the aftermath of the Olmec political collapse” [Gardner, Second Witness, 147]).

Clark has further noted, “In eastern Mesoamerica, Olmec civilization was replaced by the lowland Maya, who began building cities in the jungles of Guatemala about 500 to 400 BC” (Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” 48. Adams, Prehistoric Mesoamerica, 104–109, 132–133 mentions the rise of several regional centers, pyramids, and monumental architecture between 550–400 BC). The preclassic Maya “experienced peaks and troughs of development, with a mini-collapse about AD 200” (Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” 48). While the final Nephite battles are fought in the fourth century AD, the beginnings of their fall are sown ca. AD 200–210, when after reaching the height of prosperity, religious corruption and social stratification again sets in and proves to be divisive (4 Nephi 1:24– 29).

John L. Sorenson has pointed out that, corresponding with the annihilation of the Nephites, many Mesoamerican cities were abandoned, destroyed, then rebuilt by invaders in the fourth century AD (Sorenson, Images of Ancient America, 210. See also Sorenson, Ancient American Setting, 131–137; Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 666–695. Adams, Prehistoric Mesoamerica, 210–211 discusses the fall of certain preclassic sites and increased militarization in the late-4th century AD.). This led Sorenson to conclude, “The picture derived from archaeology thus agrees basically with the Book of Mormon story of the Nephites’ retreat” (Sorenson, Images of Ancient America, 210. Converging with the picture painted by Clark and Sorenson, Francisco Estrada-Belli argued, “By 500 BC the Lowland Maya had developed a sophisticated civilization. It reached its peak around AD 100, after which time it underwent a political reorganization, and some centers were abandoned.” Francisco Estrada-Belli, The First Maya Civilization: Ritual and Power Before the Classic Period, New York, NY: Routledge, 2011, back cover. Estrada-Belli pointed out defensive earthworks which suggest “civil unrest and endemic warfare” plagued declining cities in the centuries after AD 100 [p. 65], culminating in the 3rd and 4th centuries when many preclassic sites were completely abandoned or show evidence of militarized takeover [pp. 127–137]. Specifically, Estrada-Belli suggested that El Mirador, after centuries of decline, was fatally attacked sometime around or after AD 300, after which it was rapidly abandoned once and for all [pp. 127–128]. He likewise proposed that Cival was under attack around the same time, with its final abandonment occurring around AD 300 [pp. 131–134]. Holmul, on the other hand, did not experience total abandonment, but rather underwent a militarized take over from Teotihuacan documented in inscriptions from the late 4th to early 5th centuries AD [pp. 133–137]).

While the geography of the Book of Mormon is not known with certainty, “the correspondences between the Book of Mormon and cycles of Mesoamerican civilization are striking” (Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” 48). It would be a mistake to assume that the Jaredites are the Olmec and that the Nephites / Lamanites are the Maya. Rather, the consistency in their cycles of civilization suggests that Jaredite and Nephite history could have unfolded within the broader context of Mesoamerican history (Gardner, Traditions of the Fathers, 406–407).

Significantly, “The Olmecs . . . were not identified as a real culture until 1942, and archaeologists did not know their true age until 1967” (Clark, “Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins,” 91). Lacking awareness of early Mesoamerican civilizations and their chronologies, early critics naturally criticized the Book of Mormon’s presentation of twofold civilization (Clark, “Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins,” 89–90). But as Clark rightly argued, “If early critics cannot be faulted for failing to predict these discoveries, the Book of Mormon should not be denigrated for getting them right” (Clark, “Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins,” 91).

By telling the stories of both Nephite and Jaredite societies and their destructions, the Book of Mormon drives home its powerful warning for modern readers. As Steven C. Walker observed, “It is because what happened to the Jaredites happens to the Nephites,” that, “more presciently, we sense its potential for ourselves” (Steven C. Walker, “Last Words,” in The Reader’s Book of Mormon, 7 vols., ed. Robert A. Rees and Eugene England, Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2008, 7:xiii). The Book of Mormon is a divinely appointed warning for the modern day, twice illustrating the downfall that awaits societies that succumb to wickedness and corruption.

Whether or not Book of Mormon peoples were in Mesoamerica or somewhere else, the archaeology of the Olmec and preclassic Maya confirms that the collapse of civilization is more than just a cautionary tale. This is further affirmed with the rise and fall of post-Book of Mormon Mesoamerican civilizations like Teotihuacan (On the collapse of Teotihuacan, see Jeffrey R. Parsons and Yoko Sugira Y., “Teotihuacan and the Epiclassic in Central Mexico,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, ed. Deborah L. Nichols and Christopher A. Pool, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012, 309–323), the Classic Maya (On the collapse of the Classic Maya, see David Webster, The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse, New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 2002; David Webster, “The Classic Maya Collapse,” in Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, 324– 334), the postclassic Maya, and the Aztec (The postclassic Maya and the Aztec empire fell at the hands of the Spanish and their native allies. See Michel R. Oudijk, “The Conquest of Mexico,” Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, 459–467).

The kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the great empires that once conquered them—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome—all testify of the same fate. Archaeology and history literally the world over attest to the rise and fall of great civilizations, providing a second witness alongside the Book of Mormon, assuring modern readers “that complete deterioration of civilization, and even utter annihilation, are possibilities for even the seemingly invincible United States” and other world powers of the modern age (Walker, “Last Words,” 7:xiii).

Yet while the history of the world is filled with seemingly invincible civilizations that subsequently became ancient history, only the Book of Mormon diagnoses the root of the problem, and only the Book of Mormon has the antidote. Many factors can contribute to the rise and fall of civilizations, but only adherence to the principles taught by Jesus Christ, as found in 3 Nephi and elsewhere in scripture, can stem the tide of social decay and stave off destruction (See the commentary for 4 Nephi 1:16).

22 And they did reject all the words of the prophets, because of their secret society and wicked abominations.

23 And it came to pass that Coriantor begat Ether, and he died, having dwelt in captivity all his days.

verse 23 We are introduced to the prophet Ether, the author of the twenty-four Jaredite plates from which the book of Ether was translated. He was a descendant of Jared and the grandson of a deposed king. His grandfather had been unrighteous, but we know nothing of the righteousness or unrighteousness of his father. He may have lived part of his life with his father in captivity.