This post is part 6 of a series about Venus and the Jaredites. To start at the beginning, click here.
We’ve previously discussed how the end of the Jaredite story appears to align amazingly well with a Venusian superior conjunction, an inferior conjunction, and an entire morning star phase (9 lunar cycles). In order to talk about the rest of the correlations between the Jaredite final wars and the Venus cycle, we need to establish a timeline for the events described in Ether 12-15. These events start with Ether prophesying to the people (beginning in Ether 12:2), they include a slew of campaigns against Coriantumr (in Ether 13-15), and they end with Coriantumr decapitating Shiz after the final battle (Ether 15:30-31).
Coriantumr’s last 9 moons of life occur after this (as recorded in Omni 1:21), but in this post let’s focus just on estimating the time that elapsed between Ether’s first prophecy and the death of Shiz.
Surprisingly, the text that Moroni gave us in Ether 12-15 actually provides a fairly good amount of information to allow an estimation of HOW LONG the time period was.
First, we are told of events that happen during four consecutive years:
- Year 1: “… in the first year that Ether dwelt in the cavity of a rock…” (13:18)
- Year 2: “… in the second year the word of the Lord came to Ether…” (13:20)
- Year 3: “… in the third year he [Shared] did bring him [Coriantumr] into captivity.” (13:23)
- Year 4: “… the sons of Coriantumr, in the fourth year, did beat Shared…” (13:24)
This tells us that the timeline begins with a period of about 4 years.
Secondly, Moroni tells us of three later time periods of defined length. They are as follows:
First 2-year block:
13:31 And Shared wounded Coriantumr in his thigh, that he did not go to battle again for the space of two years…(see also Ether 14:3 describing the same 2-year period)
Second 2-year block:
14:7 And it came to pass that Coriantumr dwelt with his army in the wilderness for the space of two years, in which he did receive great strength to his army.
4-year block:
15:13 … the people who were for Coriantumr were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and the people who were for Shiz were gathered together to the army of Shiz. 14 Wherefore, they were for the space of four years gathering together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face of the land…
Simply adding the 4 initial years and these three time periods results in 12 years (4 + 2 + 2 + 4 = 12). However, we do not know if the first 2-year period began in the 4th or 5th year. To be conservative, we will say it began sometime in the 4th year. Therefore we can say that the Ether 12-15 must be at least 11 years in length.
See the diagram below for a visual representation of this timeline. Some of the major events have been included in their relative positions using the text:
We’ve found the minimum—now a good question would be, what’s the maximum? Those three unknown time periods marked with question marks in the diagram above can act like accordions, stretching into many years or compressing into a few months or weeks. In context, these acordion periods are:
- the time between the liberation of Coriantumr and the death of Shared;
- the time between Gilead challenging Coriantumr and Coriantumr losing part of his men in the wilderness; and
- the time between Coriantumr returning to the land of Moron for battle and the start of the 4-year gathering period.
From the information provided thus far, we can’t know for certain how long each of these accordion periods were. But, as an experiment, if we assume that there was a one-year break between each battle that occurred in an accordion period, then that would make a total of 11 additional years in the question mark areas. Adding these 11 years to the minimum 11 years results in an estimated maximum length of 22 years…
… and that max actually seems pretty reasonable. I mean, how many good fighting years do you think a battered man like Coriantumr would have in him? And if you read Ether 12-15, you’ll see there really is no sense at all that long stretches of time occur anywhere in the timeline, much less the accordion places. The events seem to happen in somewhat quick succession.
Obviously, we cannot know from the information in the text exactly how long the timeline is—it could have been 50 years for all we know, but I think it is pretty clear that it could not have been less than 11 years.
Interestingly, these last 4 chapters are some of the few places in Moroni’s abridgement of the book of Ether where he specifies in what year things are happening. It could be that he decided to get oddly specific as he neared the end of the book… OR it could be that he was dropping hints to allow us to make connections between the story in the text (which is named for a guy whose name evokes “luminiferous ether”) and the cycle of the heavenly planet Venus. I propose that he was doing the latter. In fact, in the next post, we will discuss several more fascinating clues that I believe Moroni intentionally hid in his narrative so future readers could tie the wars of Ether 12-15 to Venus.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
Science Is True and the Church Is Too 