What follows in the next 15 chapters is a detailed account of the history of the Jaredite nation, complete with war, intrigue, murder, a description of their secret combinations, and finally their utter destruction. This account is interrupted 5 times (three short and two long interruptions) by Moroni.
In addition, during the accounts of various kings and usurpers, approximately 30 additional names are mentioned as either place names or other actors in the narrative. I call these "mingling names". I am not counting the 12 names associated with the narrative of the first king, nor am I including the 28 names that appear as part of the narrative of the last in the lineage.
Here's a fun set of challenges:
- See if you can read Ether 1 and then recite back the names in order. If you succeed, you have a better memory than I do.
- Now try it backwards, which is how we encounter them in the text.
- If all of that is too easy for you, add in 30 other unusual names in between each member of the list.
- Still not challenged? Make sure several of the additional names you include reference parts of the Nephite history.
* (Names in italics are mentioned within an interjection)
** Chapter 1 states this person was a descendant of the previous name.
** Notice that Ether 1 mentions “Shiblon” and Ether 11 mentions “Shiblom”.
A few notes worth mentioning:
A few notes worth mentioning:
- The "Shiblon/Shiblom" inconsistency needs to be explained. In the divine model, this seems very clearly to be an error that crept in through handwriting and recopying by someone who was unfamiliar with the earlier reference in Ether 1. In other words, Oliver perhaps didn't reference Ether 1 as he was copying Ether 11. In a naturalistic explanation, you could argue the same thing, I suppose, but it seems like the kind of thing you would notice if you had carefully planned out and/or memorized the text in advance.
- I do not believe that it is reasonable to conclude that Joseph Smith spontaneously dictated a text as complex as this without either divine power (as he claimed) or careful notes. There is no evidence that he referenced notes during the miraculously rapid dictation of the text. The interjections by Moroni are very different in tone and content than the rest of the narrative account. This is complicated writing.
- It seems that Moroni was completing a task that had been started by his father, and could not restrain himself from interjecting doctrine and prophecies.
- Unlike most of the rest of the Book of Mormon, the Jaredite account in the Book of Ether has very few references to Jesus Christ. In fact, aside from the interjections by Moroni and the vision of the brother of Jared, there are no references to Jesus Christ in these 15 chapters.