What Year Were the Jaredites Destroyed?

This post is part 14 of a series about Venus and the Jaredites. To start at the beginning, click here.

If you have read to this point in this blog series about correlating the Venus cycle with the Late Jaredites of Ether 12-15, congratulations! I’m sorry I’m so long winded… but it’s been fun, and I hope you’ve learned a few new things.

We’re not done yet though, folks. 

In this article–FINALLY–we will determine a date for when the timeline in Ether 12-15 began AND a date for the final battle! …. and we’ll use Venus to do it.

In previous posts I have used the Venus-Jaredite model and the text of the Book of Mormon to argue that the following five statements are true: 

• The time from first Venus rise (many rise up, Ether 13:15) to ninth Venus rise (Shiz is beheaded, Ether 15:31) must be about 13 years (read)
• The first Venus rise must be after 600 BC (read)
• The first Venus rise must be before Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 BC (read)
• The first year must begin between 73 and 145 days before the first Venus rise (read)
• The Late Jaredite new year started on July 26th (like the Mayans) (read)¹

Amazingly, when these five bullet points are used together and compared to the Venus cycle, there are only TWO possible candidate dates for the initial heliacal rise of Venus in the Ether 12-15 timeline. JUST TWO!

Here’s how we get there.

Using the Horizons System app from NASA, you can calculate when Venus would have been at inferior conjunction between the years 600 BC and 587 BC.² Adding 4 days onto each of these dates gives us (roughly) the days on which Venus would have risen as a new morning star. 

These dates are listed below:

• 29 September 600 BC
• 8 May 598 BC
• 11 December 597 BC
• 14 July 595 BC 
• 22 February 593 BC 
• 24 September 592 BC 
• 3 May 590 BC 
• 10 December 589 BC
• 12 July 587 BC 

Venus turned from Evening Star to Morning Star nine times between 600 BC and 587 BC. In order to determine which of these occurrences was the first one mentioned in Ether 13, we must calculate which dates were between 73 and 145 days after the preceding July 26th. The table below shows us the results of this calculation.³

Year (BC)	Venus Rise	Days after July 26
600	29 Sep	65
598	8 May	286
597	11 Dec	138
595	14 Jul	353
593	22 Feb	211
592	24 Sep	60
590	3 May	281
589	10 Dec	137
587	12 Jul	351

As you can see, after checking with the parameters I listed above, there are only TWO possible Venus rises for the one mentioned in Ether 13:15, and they are 

11 December 597 BC or 10 Dec 589 BC

This would then place Ether’s prophecy and ostracization from Late Jaredite society at either 25 September 597 BC or 24 September 589 BC (73 days before inferior conjunction, when Venus is at Maximum Elongation East). Either of these dates fits the requirements of Ether’s sermon well:

• Both are before Lehi probably arrived in the Americas (588-587 BC?)
• Both are before Jerusalem was destroyed (587 BC)

And it appears that both would most likely be AFTER Lehi left Jerusalem (which Ether 13:7 might suggest). Of course, we don’t know for sure when, but if, as some propose, Lehi left Jerusalem during Passover of the same year that Zedekiah became king, then he would have left around April 26–May 4 597 BC.⁴ 

This would be perfect timing for Ether’s chapter 13 sermon, which apparently takes place after Lehi (the righteous branch of Joseph) was brought out of Jerusalem, but before he arrived in the New World. Nephi writes that his family “sojourned in the wilderness” for 8 years (1 Nephi 17:4), and since sojourn means to tarry not travel–to stay in one spot–then it is most likely that they took at least 8 years to get to the promised land.⁵ If they left in April or May 597 BC and took more than 8 years to get to the new land, then we’re looking at around 588 BC at the EARLIEST.

But of course, what most people want to know is when the Jaredite final battle took place–or when the Jaredites were destroyed.

Looking at inferior conjunctions between 587 BC and 574 BC, we can find the two that happened 13 years after Ether’s prophecy (because the Venus-Jaredite model gives an Ether 12-15 timeline of 13 years). This means that, in this model, the final battle of the Jaredites ended, Shiz was decapitated, and Venus rose again above the carnage as morning star on one of the following possible days:

 22 September 584 BC or 20 September 576 BC

Now, both of these dates accord well with the arrival of the Mulekites. It appears that the Mulekites likely left Jerusalem right about when it was being destroyed in 587 BC. Obviously we know nothing about their route or how long it took them to get to the Americas, but they definitely could have made the voyage by late 584 BC or 576 BC… especially if they came by Phoenician boat, as many have suggested. The Phoenicians were right there, close to Jerusalem or Egypt and could have easily sailed from the Mediterranean into the Americas in 3 to 8 years. 

The question now is which one is best? When did it actually happen? Is a final battle in 584 BC or 576 BC better?

There are strengths and weaknesses to both, and I believe that both need to be examined and compared to determine which one is best. In a future post, I’ll do just that using various sources of information, including the following:

• Movements of other planets, such as Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, etc.
• Lunar phases
• Solar eclipses
• The Mayan 104-year “Venus Round” cycle

Putting all the Venus rises on a timeline adjacent with the events from Ether 12-15 gives us a fascinating picture of just how well the Venus-Jaredite Model fits the story… Of course, it’s just a hypothesis, but when you see that it seems to fit the text of Ether like a glove, it makes you wonder…

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

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Sources and Notes

1. http://www.mayacalendar.com/descripcion.html ↩︎
2. See Appendix 2*. My sincere thanks to Christian Andersen who kindly supplied me with a list of inferior conjunctions between 600 BC and 575 BC and taught me how to generate it myself. ↩︎
3. This table was calculated using the days of the year chart here: https://www.scp.byu.edu/docs/doychart.html ↩︎
4. See Don Bradley’s writings on the subject: “The Book of Mormon offers multiple clues for determining when Lehi’s warning and prophetic call occurred. The specific meaning of the phrase “in the commencement of the [nth] year” can be gleaned from its use elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, and, in fact, in one instance, the phrase is used in conjunction with an exact calendar date, enabling us to discern how literally “in the commencement” can be taken: Alma 56:1 narrows “the commencement of the . . . year” to a specific date — “the second day in the first month” (i.e., the second day of the entire calendar year) — suggesting that such phrasing is meant to be taken quite literally. When the narrative places Lehi’s calling and warning vision “in the commencement of” Zedekiah’s first year, this should be taken at face value: it means in the very first days of Zedekiah’s reign, which coincidentally were the very first days of the new calendar year (2 Chr. 36:10). Thus, coming “in the commencement” of that year, Lehi’s calling theophany should have occurred shortly before Passover, which began on the fourteenth of Nisan.” Don Bradley’s note on this paragraph reads: “Given the common dating of Zedekiah’s reign as commencing in 597 BC, the relevant Passover would have begun on April 26 of that year, placing the final day of Passover on May 3 or 4, 597 BC, depending on whether the celebration was ended on the biblical seventh day or a later traditional eighth day.” https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/a-passover-setting-for-lehis-exodus/  ↩︎
5. “SOJOURN, verb intransitive so’jurn. To dwell for a time; to dwell or live in a place as a temporary resident, or as a stranger, not considering the place as his permanent habitation. So Abram sojourned in Egypt. Genesis 12:10.” https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/sojourn ↩︎

Featured image from: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/book-of-mormon-stories/chapter-52-the-destruction-of-the-jaredites?lang=eng