Six
hundred years. If, as is quite commonly
supposed, our Lord was born four years before the beginning of our era,
the exodus of Lehi from Jerusalem would have taken place in what in our
chronology would be the year 604 B.C., or the year after the battle at
Carchemish, where the Egyptians were defeated by the Chaldeans. That would,
from an historical point of view, have been the logical time for the laying of
the foundations of a new dispensation, in another part of the world, because
from now on Palestine was to be the battle ground of the great world powers for
supremacy. (George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of
Mormon, 7 vols. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Press, 1976], 1:70, emphasis in bold
added)