Question
Dear Gramps.
Why does the Book of Mormon skip around in its dates going from A.D. to B.C. and vice versa, instead of just going in order?
Melanie and Shelly
Answer
Dear Melanie & Shelly,
The Book or Mormon is an account of the family of Lehi, who left Jerusalem for the promised land in 600 B.C., and his descendants. After some time his descendants divided into two groups–the Nephites and the Lamanites. About 470 years after their arrival, the Nephites living in Zarahemla discovered a man by the name of Coriantumr, “and he did dwell with them for the space of nine moons” (Omni 1:21). Coriantumr was a descendant of the Jaredites, who migrated to the promised land from the Tower of Babel after the confounding of tongues about 2247 B.C.
The record of the Jaredite people was discovered by Ammon and his group while on an excursion to learn about the people living in the land of Nephi-Lehi, from which they had previously emigrated. Several years before Ammon’s excursion a man by the name of Zeniff took a number of people with him and returned to Nephi-Lehi to live. Ammon found his descendants there, living as captors of the Lamanites.
The prophet Mormon, born about 311 A.D., abridged the records that had been kept by the kings and prophets of the Nephites since the time of Nephi. He also added his own record to the account. However, he was killed in battle before the work was complete, and his son, Moroni, finished his father’s record, then made an abridgement of the record of the Jaredites, and finally added is own account, called the Book of Moroni.
This is just the briefest of thumbnail sketches of the thousand-year history of the these two great nations. Now, think of a historian of our day writing the history of England and its people including their migrations and conquests beginning at 1000 A.D. Do you think such a historian could write that complicated account without going back and forth in time as he chronicled one group and then another that had come out of Briton? In the same way the Book of Mormon account cannot be strictly chronological because it follows the accounts of different groups of contemporary people.
