All Jaredites Not Slain.
The general understanding, we believe, is that the entire Jaredite race was exterminated
in this sanguinary battle, with the exception of Coriantumr. It is, of course,
possible that the narrative is to be so understood, but the probability is that
the prophet only refers to the annihilation of the two armies and the end of
the monarchial form of government.
At the time of the battle of Ramah
there must have been probably millions of Jaredites in this hemisphere; that is
evident from the fact that two million souls had perished four years before
that battle. But it would be absurd to suppose that every Jaredite, man, woman,
and child, old and young, sick, and cripples, as well as strong and
well-informed individuals, were enlisted in the armies and encamped around the
hill. It would, furthermore, be contrary to human experience to suppose that
there were no desertions from the armies during the long and deadly encounters.
It is much more probable that some escaped and, when missing, were counted as
dead. Again, is it improbable that some of the wounded recovered and survived,
without any record being made of their recovery? We know, from Ether 9:32, that
some Jaredites escaped into the "land southward," during the famine
in the days of King Heth, and they must also have become numerous, and,
possibly, were not directly interested in the war between Shiz and Coriantumr.
It is very customary to speak of
an entire nation when we mean only the more important part of it. We say, for
instance, that the kingdom of Judah was carried away into captivity, when, as a
matter of fact, only a small portion, though an important one, was transported
to Babylon. Thus, in the first captivity, 598 B.C., the Babylonians carried
away 3,023 souls, leaving the common people in their homes. Ten years later,
832 captives, and in 584 B.C., 745 more were expatriated—4,600 in all; (Flinders
Petri, Egypt and Israel, p. 81) or, if these figures give only the
number of men, say 15,000, including women and children. In the same way we
speak of the return of the captives, when, as a matter of fact, only half of
them, 31,629, according to one estimate, and 42,360, according to another, left
the land of captivity. ()
Ezra 2:6-65; Nehemiah 7:6-67)
Furthermore, it seems to me that
some Indian traditions regarding the migration of their forefathers, some of
their religious ideas, especially the place of the heavenly bodies and the
serpents in their symbolism, and many linguistic peculiarities point to a
Jaredite origin, which cannot be explained on the supposition that the entire
race perished.
Destruction does not always mean
extermination. We speak of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jews (1 Nephi
10:3), but they still exist. Compare 2 Nephi 25:9 where the Jews are said to
have been destroyed "from generation to generation."
If we set Bishop Usher's chronol[o]gy
aside as too short, (Short correctly observes that the authors of the Bible do
not profess to give a complete chronol[o]gy or even to furnish data for an
infallible system. Their accounts are condensed. In their genealogies they
leave out several generations, which can be seen if we compare the genealogy of
our Lord as given in the Gospels with those of the Old Testament. Their purpose
was not to give a complete list of descendants, but to prove descent through a
certain line, and their condensed lines serve that purpose only. [See Short’s North
Americans of Antiquity, p. 199) and assume that the building of the Tower
and the dispersion took place about 2,500 B.C., and if the battle of Ramah took
place not long after the arrival of the Mulekites in America, the history of
the Jaredites in the book of Ether covers a period of about nineteen centuries.
During all that time the people built cities, cultivated the ground, engaged in
arts, industries, and trade; they lived, loved, and died, until, because of
moral degeneration, their governments were broken up and their countries made
desolate, through famine, pestilence, and war. (George Reynolds and Janne M.
Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 7 vols. [Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book Company, 1977], 4:175-76)