A Timeline for the Book of Ether

As I continue to work on a single timeline integrating all the scriptures of the LDS Church, I’m still worried about how to split up Ether and match it with the Old Testament. In my draft from last year, I have the Jaredite character Lib congruent with King David, and the end of the Jaredite record running well into the Nephite timeline.

Today, I started over on that. My basis for this revision is to start with the very popular and well-supported theory that the Jaredite city of Lib (and the king its named for) is actually the historical Olmec city of San Lorenzo. San Lorenzo flourished from about 1400-1200 BC.

Also, the Book of Omni is actually unclear about how long the Mulekites were established in the Western hemisphere before they met Coriantumr.

For the sake of convenience, I’m dating the meeting of Coriantumr at about 550 BC, and, based on the San Lorenzo theory (and also for convenience), dating Lib at abut 1350.

(There will be lots of estimating and rounding here, since none of this can be precise, and since the splitting and mixing of Ether into the Old Testament will have to still consider creating a coherent narrative. Take all of this with a grain of salt–this is much more speculation than science, after all.)

That creates an 800-year span from Lib to the end. I broke that down into an average for each ruler and used the same average for the whole timeline. (Again, this kind of rough justice is necessary, as some kings ruled for many years, some had very short reigns, and the record rarely gives precise years for each, so it’s likely a wash, anyway.)

The resulting totals agree well with this timeline from the Church, and creates a timeline that naturally splits Ether into about a dozen pieces to be spread out over the Old Testament. (The OT names and dates here are pretty universally accepted estimates.)

The biggest thing that strikes me about Ether already, looking at it this way, is that the first several and the last few chapters all cover just a generation or two, while Ether chapters 9 and 10 together cover nearly a thousand years, or the same span of time covered by the entire Book of Mormon before the Book of Ether.

Adjusting my chronology accordingly, continuing to read, and will report more as revisions proceed.

(NOTE: The chart above is just notes on my conjectures, based on this classic chart from FARMS.)

 

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