10:4), which was periodically repeated by Nephi (see 1 Ne.
This was due primarily to three factors: (1) his determination that Jesus had been born in April of the year 1 BC, published in his 1915 book, Jesus the Christ 3 (2) the prophecy of Lehi that the Messiah would be raised up “600 years from the time that (Lehi) left Jerusalem” (1 Ne. Talmage, who was charged in his day to prepare a new 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon, having “double column pages, with chapter headings, chronological data, revised foot-note references, pronouncing vocabulary, and index.” 2 Elder Talmage settled upon the year 600 BC as the zero-date in his chronology of Book of Mormon events. That notation, and all the other chronological notations found at the bottoms of the pages in the pre-2013 authorized editions of the Book of Mormon, were the contribution of Elder James E. A brief explanation of the origin of the “600 BC” notation seems warranted. A distinct, and I believe quite significant, change was made in 1 Nephi 2: the bottom-of-page note “600 BC” was moved to the chapter heading and revised to “About 600 BC.” This slight equivocation-from exactly 600 BC to “about” 600 BC-invites us to inquire where the dating schema originated and why it merited change.
The 600 BC Notation-a Modern Additionīeginning with the 2013 English edition of the Book of Mormon, all date notations were moved from the bottom of every right-hand page (except for the book of Ether) to the end of each chapter heading. Although it may appear, at times, that I am hopping around between different and unrelated subjects, by the end of this study all of the evidence will combine to support the proposed dating of Lehi’s departure in late 605 BC.
TEMPLE OF ASCENDING FLAME INTRODUCTORY COURSE PART 1 PROFESSIONAL
At the outset, it will be important to review a sampling of other approaches to dating Lehi’s departure, both by professional scholars and other interested commentators, and to demonstrate why those approaches do not satisfy the contextual demands of the Book of Mormon. 1 This is the first time this particular proposal has been thoroughly explained and supported with contextual references from Nephi’s text as well as historical, archaeological, and geographical information from the Land of Israel and the ancient Near East. The 605 BC proposal has previously been only briefly outlined in footnotes and endnotes of a few of my academic articles. And, as is the case in any study of ancient society and chronology, a great deal of data must be introduced from various sources and fields to address all of the issues that arise from a text as complicated as that of 1 Nephi. Knowing this land and its history is vital in attempting a study such as this. This dating, I argue, makes the best sense of two principal data points: (1) the birth of Jesus in late 5 BC and the death of King Herod in the early spring of 4 BC and (2) the prophecy that Jesus would be born six hundred years from the time of Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem.Īs I write and refine this study, I find myself in “the land of Jerusalem,” at Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, with its valuable library of rigorous sources, in my thirty-fifth year of professional research and archaeological work here. In what may come as a surprise to many readers, I suggest that Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem occurred sometime in November 605 BC. This study will propose an earlier date for the event, within a quite narrow window of time. But these suggestions, as well as the 600 BC notation itself, are all chronologically too late to accommodate the complicated contextual factors present in the text of First Nephi. However, a number of studies over the last forty years have suggested that 600 BC cannot have been the correct date of Lehi’s departure, preferring later dates anywhere from 597 to 587 BC. This is largely due to the presence of an asterisk in 1 Nephi 2:4, present in every official edition of the Book of Mormon from 1920 to 2012, which alerts readers to a “600 BC” chronological notation at the bottom of the page. Most Latter-day Saints would agree that the prophet Lehi and his family left their home in Jerusalem and departed into the wilderness in the year 600 BC.
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