The Electronic Journal of Jaredite Studies

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The Definitive Electronic Jaredite Bibliography
This is an ongoing project. Return to this post for regular updates.

Primary Sources
Smith, Joseph. (1830). The Book of Mormon. Palmyra: E. B. Grandin.

Secondary Sources
Nibley, Hugh W. (1951-1952). "The World of the Jaredites." Seven Parts. The Improvement Era. Salt Lake City.

http://www.boap.org/LDS/Hugh-Nibley/The_World_of_the_Jaredites.html


Ephemera
Anonymous. "Cain as Bigfoot, or Cain "Translated."" FAIRMormon.

http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormon_urban_legends_or_folklore/Cain_as_Bigfoot

Anonymous. (October 20, 2011). "Graveyards of Giant Human Jaredite Skeletons in New York; Evidence of Great Battles."

http://gianthumanskeletons.blogspot.com/2011/10/graveyards-of-giant-human-skeletons-in.html

Christensen, Doug. "Of Jaredites and Olmecs." Ancient America Foundation.

http://www.ancientamerica.org/library/media/HTML/1pz46v0v/11%20OF%20JAREDITES%20AND%20OLMECS.htm?n=0

Deep Shadow. "Were the Mulekites actually Jaredites?"

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/general-religious-debates/17628-were-mulekites-actually-jaredite-descendants.html

Del. (November 15, 2011). "The Stature of the Jaredites."

http://nephicode.blogspot.com/2011/11/stature-of-jaredites-part-i.html

Potter, George D. (2000). "An Alternative Model for the Jaredite Trail." The Nephi Project.

http://www.nephiproject.com/an_alternative_model_for_the_jar.htm

Smith, Daymon. (May 8, 2012). "A Non-Biblical Dating For The Jaredite Migration."

http://daymonsmith.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/a-non-biblical-dating-for-the-jaredite-migration/

Warr, James Lee. "Neo-Jaredites."

http://www.mormongeography.com/neo-jaredites.html

Related Items
de Lapouge, G. V. (1890). "Le Gėant Fossile de Castelnau." La Nature 888:11-12.

Dewhurst, Richard J. (2013). The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America:The Missing Skeletons and the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up. Bear & Co.

Hancock, Graham. (2005). Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. Disinformation Books.

Hinson, William A. (2013). Discovering Giants: Evidence of the Existence of Ancient Human Giants. Seaburn Books.

Martinez, Susan B. (2013). The Mysterious Origins of Hybrid Man: Crossbreeding and the Unexpected Family Tree of Humanity. Bear & Co.

von Daniken, Erich. (1970). Chariot of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. New York: Putnam.

Zimmerman, Fritz. (2010). The Nephilim Chronicles: Fallen Angels in the Ohio Valley. CreateSpace.

[_Kishkumen]

One of the most revolutionary pieces of Jaredite scholarship in our generation is the recent contribution of anthropologist Daymon Smith (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) who proposes pushing back the dating of the Jaredite migration to at least the twelfth millennium Before Present. We at EJJS are pleased by this development, as it accords with the theories of the editor.

Here is a taste:

Let me propose a very tentative alternative: The Jaredites migrated no later than 11,000 years Before Present (BP), during the end of “the Wisconsin” Ice Age; possibly as early as 250,000 BP (!). The early date has problems, obviously. No archaeology accepted by the profession justifies it, although the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. The later date seems less troublesome, except that this land was preserved for the righteous, and not simply any roaming band or raft that happened this way (and evidence of humans even 20,000 BP is now accepted by most archaeologists). Also, they wouldn’t have needed ships to arrive here during certain spans, if they came during a glaciation; sea levels dropped enough to bridge continents together. Maybe 50,000 BP, just for a nice round date? Whenever they came, the people endured storms and floods, a clearly different geography with many lakes, and brought records of an even more ancient race of men “of reknown”, long since destroyed.

*****

The bestiary in Ether gives us Elephants, Curoloms, Cumoms (the more useful and domesticated ones), and horses and asses as well (apparently not as useful, nor entirely domesticated?). Among the beasts rendered extinct around 6000 to 10,000 BP are the horse (to the anti-Book of Mormon reader’s delight), mammoth, gomphothere, mastodon, camel, giant sloth, giant bear, paleo-llama, giant armedillo, and a host of other “megafauna“.

Rather than insist on the truth of the Bible, in the face of physical proofs that the book is faulty at best, we ought to shift our Jaredite chronology significantly backward. There would be real gains made in knowledge: for example, if we could identify candidates for “curolom” (gomphothere?) and “cumom” (camel?) we could begin to map out the possible expanse of Jaredite civilization. Such a sketch could help with the Nephite-Lamanite geography, which I think is clearly not to be found in the Yucatan (for reasons I’ll not go into here).

This article is a "must read" for all aspiring young scholars of Jaredite Studies.

See http://daymonsmith.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/a-non-biblical-dating-for-the-jaredite-migration/

[_Kishkumen]

The editor of EJJS is thrilled to announce the arrival of a new tome of Jaredite scripture from Jaredite scholar Daymon Smith, PhD:

Words of the Faithful: As if it were from the Dead

As promised in the Book of Mormon, these are words of the Faithful, as if it were from the dead. Yet something strange has come, for these words tell of Izilba and Zhera' (Jared), and of their sorrow and restoration, during what Tolkien calls "the Second Age," the couple fleeing from the island of Numenor; that land having falling into evil, its "mighty men" plotting an assault upon the Gods abiding in Aman.

Daymon Smith is a genius. Just as Grendel was a descendant of Cain, so too does the Jaredite World belong with Tolkien and the Bible.

[_Kishkumen]

Our competitor, the Mormon Interpreter, has published important new research, arguing that Gazelem was a Jaredite seer. In his "Gazelem the Jaredite," Elliot Jolley is breaking new ground and expanding the borders of Jaredite knowledge.

See https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/gazelem-the-jaredite/

Kudos to Mr. Jolley!

[_Kishkumen]

I would be truly remiss if I did not republish the exciting research of our own zeezrom on Jaredite origins:

See http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=895698#p895698

I see evidence from the words of Ether in the Book of Mormon that the Jaredites traveled north from Babylon to the east coast of the Black Sea in modern Georgia. From there, they drifted in sealed barges to the strait at Byzantium then on to Greece, where they eventually settled into the land around Argos. Here is my backup:

Ether Ch 1:

42 And when thou hast done this thou shalt go at the head of them down into the valley which is northward. And there will I meet thee, and I will go before thee into a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth.

Ether Ch 2:

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.

Bold is mine.

The "Land of Nimrod" is used as a synonym for Assyria.

Micah 5:6:

And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

Assyria is north of Babylon.

Ether Ch 2:

5 And it came to pass that the Lord commanded them that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been.

The early Georgian tribes are thought to have started growing in population around 1000 BC. Putting the date of the Tower of Babel at around 3000 BC, we can argue that the land of Georgia (even further north of Assyria) was uninhabited as yet. It makes sense that the Jaredites continued in a northward direction after having received direction from Jesus to travel into the wilderness with their fish and honeybees.

Ether Ch 2:

6 And it came to pass that they did travel in the wilderness, and did build barges,...

39% of the country of Georgia is covered in forest (http://www.illegal-logging.information/regions/georgia). It makes sense that they would travel to a place with so many trees to build their barges with. Ancient Greeks obtained much of their ship-building wood from Thrace, which being just to the west of Georgia seems to fit well with the idea that Jaredites sought wood from a similar location.

As seen in chapter 6, the Jaredites had access to a wide array of animals. The wildlife in Georgia and Turkey is much more plentiful than that of Saudi Arabia and therefore makes sense that the Jaredites could obtain animals in this location.

Ether Ch. 6:

4 And it came to pass that when they had prepared all manner of food, that thereby they might subsist upon the water, and also food for their flocks and herds, and whatsoever beast or animal or fowl that they should carry with them—and it came to pass that when they had done all these things they got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God.

Ether Ch 2:

6 And it came to pass that they did travel in the wilderness, and did build barges, in which they did cross many waters, being directed continually by the hand of the Lord.

The term "many waters" can be interpreted in many ways. Odysseus says, "I have been shamefully broken in many waters..." (Book VIII of Homer's Odyssey). Obviously, Homer does not mean that Odysseus spent time in any of the major oceans but rather that he was surrounded by water. This can easily be applied to the Jaredites as they were forced to drift slowly rather make better use of the wind using sails. Also, if you look at a map of water currents in the Black Sea, you will see there are 2 main circular currents (http://www.blacksea-commission.org/imag ... age006.gif) on the east and west halves of the sea. It is entirely possible that the drifting barges may have been caught in one or both of these circular currents for 344 days, all the time being surrounded by many waters.

Ether Ch 6:

5 And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind.

6 And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind.

Some critics might argue that, according to Ch 6, verse 8, the barges did not travel in a circular motion.

8 And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind.

But I would take caution in your interpretation of this verse, dear critics! For the straight path is not necessarily straight to the Lord.


Ether Ch 2:

7 And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people.

The Lord did not intend for the Jaredites to populate the lands around the Black Sea. Rather, his intention was for them to "come forth" or emerge from this sea. What better way to emerge than through the strait at Byzantium (Bosphorus)? You might even think of this emergence as a sort of rebirth like a baby emerges from its mother's womb.

It makes sense that God considered the land of Mycenae choice above all others at the time. This land was strategically positioned and surrounded by farmland. The "choiceness" of the land can also be determined by evaluating the treasures buried there. As you all are aware, the treasures of Mycenae are great indeed. The treasures found by archeologists in this region corroborate well with the scriptures:

Ether 10:

12 And it came to pass that Morianton built up many cities, and the people became exceedingly rich under his reign, both in buildings, and in gold and silver, and in raising grain, and in flocks, and herds, and such things which had been restored unto them.

After the Jaredites settled the land, they chose Orihah to be their king.
Ether Ch 6:

27 And it came to pass that neither would the sons of Jared, even all save it were one; and Orihah was anointed to be king over the people.

28 And he began to reign, and the people began to prosper; and they became exceedingly rich.

I find it very likely that this name is a translation of Orestes, son of Agamemnon. Well, this must certainly lead us to the surprising conclusion that Jared is non other than Agamemnon! I will let you digest this information and wait for it to sink in.

Some historians attribute the fall of the Mycenaeans to the introduction of irons and the subsequent collapse of the bronze age. ( Pisa University Press, "On the Traces of the Dorians." 2009). My theory is that Shule (son of Kib) joined forces with the Dorians of the north and armed themselves with the superior metal, which such deposits had been ignored by the local people before that time (A.N. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece, 1989).

Ether 7:

9 Wherefore, he [Shule] came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor, and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

The fall of Mycenae is currently thought to be dated at around 1100 BC. I haven't yet been able to reconcile this with the apparent dating found in the Book of Mormon, which puts their fall at around 600 to 300 BC. If you have any thoughts that might solve this contradiction, please let me know.

Another criticism might be the fact that at least one of the Jaredite kings built many prisons and yet we don't necessarily have archeological evidence of prisons in Mycenae.

Ether 10:

6 And he did erect him an exceedingly beautiful throne; and he did build many prisons, and whoso would not be subject unto taxes he did cast into prison; and whoso was not able to pay taxes he did cast into prison; and he did cause that they should labor continually for their support; and whoso refused to labor he did cause to be put to death.

But according to Sir William Gell, treasuries were also used as prisons. Any of the treasuries found at Agamemnon's palace might easily have been used for the purpose of imprisoning Jaredite traitors.

I've mentioned this before, but it is worth noting again. The narrow neck of land mentioned in Ether 10 can easily be associated with the narrow neck of land just north of Mycenae (i.e. near Corinth).

Ether 10:

20 And they built a great city by the narrow neck of land, by the place where the sea divides the land.

If we use this reference for geographical setting of the later Jaredite peoples, then it only makes sense that the mention of the southern lands being waste while the north is populated:

Ether 10:

21 And they did preserve the land southward for a wilderness, to get game. And the whole face of the land northward was covered with inhabitants.

This verse is likely talking about the Dorian takeover and the beginnings of the rise of Attica after the fall of Mycenae.

There are many other comparisons we can make with the people of Jared to place them in the promised land of Ancient Greece. But I think the one statement that makes this clear above all others is this:
Ether 10:

22 And they were exceedingly industrious, and they did buy and sell and traffic one with another, that they might get gain.

For this is what made this people a great people. It was their power of the trade routes in this region and subsequent dominance in commerce. This only leads us to the history of the Nephites (Dorians), which I leave for a later post. Next time you read about Zerahemla, think Athens.

Zee.

[_Kishkumen]

From time to time, the Electronic Journal of Jaredite Studies does its part to promote Jaredite education. To that end, we seek to make pedagogical materials about Jaredite history, religion, and language more widely available. Today, we are providing our readers access to BYU Studies' Chronology of Jaredite Kings. Take note that it is available in .pdf so that you can print it off for your students, place it in an overhead projector, or blow up the image to create a poster suitable for classroom display.

https://byustudies.byu.edu/charts/31-jaredite-kings

[_Kishkumen]

Friend of the board Clark Goble has published an exciting new article on Jaredite barges at the blog Times and Seasons:

See http://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2017/02/some-thoughts-on-jaredites-barges/

Excerpt:

The typical view of the Jaredite voyage comes from art. As we’ve discussed before art for scriptural narratives more frequently distorts the text and history than illuminates it. Which wouldn’t be such a problem except that people tend to base their conceptions on the art rather than the text. You see this with say how Arnold Friberg’s painting determine how people think of Lamanites and Nephites in ways that are pretty dubious.[1] The art for the Jaredite barges seems primarily based upon traditional (non-Mormon) art for Noah’s ark.

It’s not quite clear why Joseph chose the word “barge” to describe the vessel. (Nor really for many word choices in the Book of Mormon) My guess is that it was tied to the barges on the canals near where he lived. This was before widespread railways in the United States so companies dug canals to transport goods by water. These barges were often pulled by horses that were on the side of the canal. Barges could often reach 78 feet in length and hold 70 people although most were much smaller than that. It’s worth noting though that these canal barges don’t fit the description we have in the Book of Mormon anymore than miniature Noah’s arks do. While I don’t want to dismiss the word choice entirely, I think it leads us astray more than it informs given the text.

[_Kishkumen]

We at the Electronic Journal of Jaredite Studies express our deepest gratitude to the Maxwell Institute for making Hugh Nibley's seminal works on the Jaredites widely available online. Surely the great scholars of the Maxwell Institute were inspired by EJJS's trailblazing efforts to promote Jaredite scholarship on the web.

Without further ado, we present you with a link to Hugh Nibley's The World of the Jaredites:

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1106&index=10

[_Kishkumen]

The North American hypothesis is understandably controversial inasmuch as it tends to attract the attention of crypto-white nationalists in the LDS Church who want to deny the role of Central and South America in Book of Mormon prophecy through narrow readings of the Book of Mormon.

That said, the North American hypothesis does have its virtues. For one thing, the North American geography precludes the need for fabricating a second Cumorah.

In any case, despite my serious reservations regarding the publication of anti-Mesoamericanist matierial out of concern that it may come from authors who have a disturbing political agenda, I am linking to a post on the preservation of bones from Jaredite wars and how that bears on Book of Mormon chronology.

The blogpost is entitled, "The Story of Coriantumr and the End of the Jaredite Nation," and it is written by "DEL."

See http://nephicode.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-story-of-coriantumr-and-end-of_4.html

The money quote for me:

As has been stated many times, any effort to try and pinpoint dates for the Jaredite nation is fraught with difficulty, since the record is not that complete, and the events not always that clear, but mostly because it covers a 1500+ year period with no additional information anywhere to compare it against. Nor can we invent another people and claim they were there, etc. Only the few scriptural references to a time (such as in Ether 13), and a laborious effort to log each and every event of Jaredite timing, compare it with Genesis and Abraham, and the Book of Mormon itself, is any possibility of obtaining a remotely significant Jaredite time frame possible.

[_Kishkumen]

As our readers know, the Electronic Journal of Jaredite Studies has a policy of openness to a variety of views coming from a wide range of fora. We are happy to host research on the Jaredites from skeptics and critics, as well as Restorationists of all stripes.

Today we are bringing to you a skeptical view on the presence of steel among the technologies of the Jaredites from our friend Runtu as published at MDDB:

See http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/32358-jaredite-steel/

I've known a long time about Nephi's using metallurgy to create steel objects, such as swords and a bow. I have heard it said that for some reason the technology wasn't used by the Nephites, hence the last mention of steel comes somewhat early on in Jarom, which the current edition of the Book of Mormon places between 399 and 365 BCE. This inexplicable disappearance of steel technology is said to explain the lack of evidence of metallurgy in proposed Book of Mormon locations. But for some reason I missed this from the Book of Ether:

Quote
Ether 7: 9 Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor, and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.
This is more problematic. John Sorenson dates the Jaredite civilization between "about 3100 B.C." and "not earlier, and not much later, than 580 B.C" (see The Years of the Jaredites).

But metallurgy was not known among even the later Mayans corresponding to Nephite/Lamanites timelines: "There are certain things about the Maya landscape, about life in the tropics, and about the kind of â??technologyâ? available to the ancient Maya that help people of the twentieth century to understand a little better what their lives were really like. They were, first of all, a stone age people, without metal of any kind until several centuries before the Conquest. All they accomplished was done by means of stone tools, utilizing human beings as their beasts of burden" (Linda Schele, Forest of Kings, 60).

Not only that, but steel is not known anywhere in the world at this early stage. The earliest steel appears to date from about 1700 B.C: "Early sub-Saharan Africans developed metallurgy at a very early stage, possibly even before other peoples. Around 1400 BC, East Africans began producing steel in carbon furnaces (steel was invented in the west in the eighteenth century). The Iron Age itself came very early to Africa, probably around the sixth century BC, in Ethiopia, the Great Lakes region, Tanzania, and Nigeria. Iron technology, however, only spread slowly across Africa; it wasn't until the first century AD that the smelting of iron began to rapidly diffuse throughout the continent" (Richard Hooker, "Civilizations in Africa: The Iron Age South of the Sahara" Washington State University, 2004).

Here we have Jaredites using Iron Age technology independent of the Old World Iron Age (beginning roughly in the 12th century BCE), and they used it to make weapons of war, enough weapons to kill "many thousands" of people (Ether 14:4). Yet again, no evidence whatsoever remains of this apparently fairly widely used technology.

What we do see in Mesoamerica is the use of ochre/hematite as a coloring and naturally occurring metal outcroppings hammered or cut. We do not see metallurgy (smelting of ores) until "quite late in Maya history. ... Copper objects, predominantly from West Mexico, began appearing at Lamanai via trade networks that included the New River sometime in the 12th century A.D. ... Utilitarian tools such as axes, chisels, and fish hooks have been recovered, mainly from Late Postclassic Period (c. AD 1250-1500) and Spanish Colonial Period (AD 1500-1700) residential contexts" (Scott Simmons, "The Lamanai Archeological Project," Archeology Abroad, 2007).

How do you explain the presence of steel smelting so early in Mesoamerican history?