Tuesday, June 14, 2022

George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl: "All Jaredites Not Slain"

  

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)