Book of Mormon/Anachronisms/Animals/Story of Jaredites added to explain presence of animals in New World

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Criticism

• Critics charge the the story of the Jaredites, as described in the Book of Ether, was added by Joseph Smith as an "afterthought" in order to account for the variety of animals present in the New World at the time of arrival of Lehi's group.

Source(s) of the criticism

• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 70–71. ( Index of claims )
  • Simon Southerton, Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2004) 30. ( Index of claims ) (Sources: not attributed, but most likely Brodie)

Response

Background

Critics suggest that the Book of Ether was simply an "afterthought" added by Joseph Smith to the Book of Mormon in order to explain the presence of a wide variety of animals in the New World at the time of the arrival of Lehi's party. The verses used by critics to support this assertion are Ether 2:1-3:

1 And it came to pass that Jared and his brother, and their families, and also the friends of Jared and his brother and their families, went down into the valley which was northward, (and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter) with their flocks which they had gathered together, male and female, of every kind.

2 And they did also lay snares and catch fowls of the air; and they did also prepare a vessel, in which they did carry with them the fish of the waters.

3 And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind. (Ether 2꞉1-3)

Critic Fawn Brodie postulated in her biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History, that "[t]his little detail regarding cargo, flung casually into the story, partly settled the question of how animals had come to America, a problem men had puzzled over for three centuries."^[1]

What animals did the Jaredites bring to the New World?

Hugh Nibley offered his opinion on Brodie's assertion:

Again, the barges of the Jaredites "contained everything which the settlers might need on the new continent," like any Chinese junk, Viking ship, or the Mayflower itself; in fact, ships have a way of carrying with them whatever the personnel will need. Brodie, however, knows that the whole thing is a dishonest adaptation of Noah's ark. ^[2]

The verses in Ether are sufficiently vague that it is really not possible to pin down exactly which animals the Jaredites brought with them to the New World. Brodie goes on to claim that "Joseph did not trouble to explain the presence of wild animals in America, and he was careless in his choice of domestic beasts. He had the Jaredites bring horses, swine, sheep, cattle, and asses..."^[3] Brodie is referring to the belief that the animals mentioned were not present in the pre-Columbian New World, which is addressed in a separate article: Book of Mormon anachronisms. The issue that we address here, however, is whether or not it is valid to claim that the story of the Jaredites was added simply to explain the presence of animals in the New World.

In Ether 9:19 we find,

And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms.Ether 9꞉19

Contrary to Brodie's claim, the Book of Mormon does not say that the Jaredites brought horses, swine, sheep, cattle and asses with them. Some of these domestic animals no doubt were brought with them, however the book only specifies that they brought "their flocks," without indentifying specifically what the "flocks" were comprised of. For example, it is not specified whether the Jaredites brought horses with them or whether the horses mentioned in Ether 9:19 were already present in the New World. More to the point, one would not reasonably expect the Jaredites to have brought elephants with them on their boats.

How is the Book of Ether integrated with the complete Book of Mormon narrative?

Brodie claims that at some point during the process of producing the Book of Mormon, that Joseph felt the need to add the story of the Jaredites in order to clean up some unanswered questions. The question is: Is this a reasonable assumption? This raises two questions:

1. How intricately are elements from the Book of Ether woven into the rest of the Book of Mormon narrative?
2. Does the order in which the books were translated have any bearing on this?

The first indication of the Jaredites in the Book of Mormon occurs in Mosiah 8꞉8-9:

8 And they were lost in the wilderness for the space of many days, yet they were diligent, and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel.

9 And for a testimony that the things that they had said are true they have brought twenty-four plates which are filled with engravings, and they are of pure gold.

If the books in the Book of Mormon were translated in a linear fashion, as indicated by witnesses, then the claim that the Book of Ether was added as an afterthought becomes difficult to explain. The Book of Ether wasn't something that could simply be appended to the end of the record to tie up some loose ends. Even if one takes the position that the translation continued from Mosiah after the loss of the 116 pages of manuscript and then finished with the books of Nephi through the Words of Mormon, the reference to the Jaredites still occurs in the early part of the translation timeline.

There are other indications of integration between the two narratives as well. For example, the name "Moroni" appears to be related to the name of the Jaredite city "Moron." The name "Moroni" appears many time in the Book of Mormon, beginning in the book of Alma. The name "Moron" only appears in the Book of Ether. It is, of course, possible to assume that Joseph simply created a Jaredite city name based upon the name of one of his earlier characters, but this assumes that Joseph was trying to "explain" something in the Book of Ether that didn't really require an explanation. It is more reasonable to assume that traces of Jaredite influence survived to be integrated into Nephite culture. If one subscribes to the theory that the Nephites and Lamanites are related to the Maya and Olmec, this fits well with the known influence of Olmec culture on that of the Maya.

Conclusion

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Endnotes

1. [note] Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, 2nd Edition, (New York: Knopf, 1971), p. 71.
2. [note]  Hugh W. Nibley, Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass: The Art of Telling Tales About Joseph Smith and Brigham Young (Vol. 11 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by David J. Whittaker, (Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company ; Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1991),3–52. ISBN 0875795161. GL direct link

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide: