Monday, September 23, 2019

Ether 3:1 and Ancient Knowledge of Glass


The Book of Mormon teaches that knowledge of glass was known to the Jaredites (well before the exilic period):

And it came to pass that the brother of Jared, (now the number of the vessels which had been prepared was eight) went forth unto the mount, which they called the mount Shelem, because of its exceeding height, and did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass; and he did carry them in his hands upon the top of the mount, and cried again unto the Lord, saying: (Ether 3:1)

While some may believe that this is an anachronism, knowledge of glass and glassworking was known at this time period. In their book on the history of glass, Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd noted:

Since the Bronze Age, about 3000 BC, glass has been used for making various kinds of objects. It was first made from a mixture of silica (from sand), lime and an alkali such as soda or potash, and these remained the basic ingredients of glass unto the development of lead glass in the seventeen century. When heated, the mixture becomes soft and malleable, and can be formed by various techniques into a vast array of shapes and sizes. The homogenous mass thus formed by melting then cools to create glass, but in contrast to most materials formed in this way (metals, for instance), glass lacks the crystalline structure normally associated with solids, and instead retains the random molecular structure of a liquid. In effect, as glass cools, it progressively stiffens until rigid, but does so without setting up a network of interlocking crystals customarily associated with that process. This is why glass shatters so easily when dealt a sudden blow, why glass deteriorates over time (a process call devitrification), especially when exposed to moisture, and why glassware must be slowly annealed (reheated and uniformly cooled) after manufacture to release internal stresses by uneven cooling. (Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd, The History of Glass [Tiger Books, 1997], 9)

Elsewhere we read:

The Late Bronze Age

Although the place and time of the discovery of glass is uncertain, the earliest known industry Bronze Age by the middle of the third millennium BC. This industry, first founded in western Asia, probably in the Mitannian or Hurrian region of Mesopotamia, was the natural outgrowth of experimentation with vitreous glazes, used to embellish pottery, tiles and other objects, or with faience. The earliest archaeologically datable objects are beads, seals, inlays and plaques. Vessels appeared later, probably by the close of the sixteenth century BC. Shortly afterwards, knowledge of the manufacture of glass spread quickly to northern Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, and the late Aegean, where the palace-dominated civilizations of the Late Bronze Age used glass as a semi-precious material. (Ibid., 14)

On the Jaredite stones themselves, see the following from Book of Mormon Central: