Etymology of Ether

This post is part 2 of a series about Venus and the Jaredites. To start at the beginning, click here.

Ether is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting and amazing names in all of scripture.

The name Ether is puzzling for sure. It doesn’t sound particularly Book-of-Mormonish like Lehonti, Pacumeni, and Nephihah do…. It really sounds kind of English, actually.

If you thought so too, it may be because the word ether does indeed exist in the English language. Here’s Webster’s 1828:

E’THER, noun [Latin oether; Gr. to burn, to shine; Eng. weather.]

1. A thin, subtil matter, much finer and rarer than air, which, some philosophers suppose, begins from the limits of the atmosphere and occupies the heavenly space. (1)

Upon first glance of this word and its definition, it’s hard to see it screaming Ether, the last Jaredite prophet. It seems to have something to do with outer space, yet this man in the Book of Mormon was not an astronaut… that we know of (cue the ‘Ancient Aliens wrote the Book of Mormon’ people!).

Apparently up until just a few decades ago, people (our ancestors), thought that the moon, Sun, stars, etc floated around in a tangible substance called the ether. It was kind of like the atmosphere of space. Around 1905, following Einstein’s blockbuster Special Theory of Relativity, physicists began to accept the truth that the “luminiferous ether” doesn’t exist. Don’t ask me the details or math of how this realization came to be (I didn’t do so hot in college physics), but suffice it to say that it’s not a real thing in space (2). But it is interesting to think that the first readers of the Book of Mormon actually believed that there was a thing called ether, and that this may have contributed meaning to their view of the prophet Ether.

But anyway!–Since it’s been proven ether doesn’t exist, and Joseph Smith gave a character in his book the name of Ether, it means that the whole Book of Mormon is a hoax, right?!

Haha. Oh people, there’s so much more to this name. Keep reading.

I propose that Ether’s name has deep, important meaning, and it can even be a clue about the Late Jaredite timeline, culture, society, and beliefs.

Here are some more potential meanings or sources for his name:

• aither: Greek for “upper air; bright, purer air; the sky”; from aithein “to burn, shine,” from PIE *aidh- “to burn” (3) 
• Aether (also spelled Ether): A primordial Greek god who was “the personification of the bright upper sky” (4) 
• ater: Latin for “black” or “dark”; “gloomy” or “sad” (5) 
• Eita: The Etruscan name for Hades, the Greek god of the underworld (6)
• esther: from the Hebrew root s-t-r meaning “hidden”. Possibly a derivative of the name Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess associated with Venus. May also be from Old Persian setara. (7)
• setara: Old Persian for “star” (7)
• octaeteris: (Greek) an eight-year period–specifically describes aspects of the cycles of Venus and the Moon (8)
• tetraeteris: (Greek) a four-year period–specifically describes the cycle of the star Sirius (9)

You may be sensing a theme here by now since this is a blog series about the Jaredites and the planet Venus…

I believe that Ether’s name is what it is precisely because the Late Jaredites of his day were obsessed with the stars, specifically the Morning/Evening star, Venus. His name is a giant piece of evidence to support the hypothesis that the military leaders that ruled his people timed their battles to coincide with the motions of the planet Venus. Even if the Venus-Jaredite theory is complete rubbish, at the very least his name is an indicator that there’s something important about the sky in the book of Ether.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

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Sources and Notes

1. https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/ether
2. https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/light/a-new-view-of-light
3. https://www.etymonline.com/word/ether
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(mythology)
5. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ater#Latin
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aita
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_(given_name)
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octaeteris; https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octaeteris#English
9. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tetraeteris; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sothic_cycle

Featured image found here: https://www.viator.com/tours/Scottsdale/Desert-Sunset-Tour-After-Dark-and-Navigating-the-Night-Sky/d38685-89837P5