Seeing the Underlying Record of Ether as an Epic

It appears that the Jaredite story was originally told and written in the manner of an epic. Epics, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, were a very early style of poetic literature, singing “of gods and of men.” Richard D. Rust, in his book, Feasting on the Word: The Literary Testimony of the Book of Mormon, discusses the many types and styles of writing in the Book of Mormon, and categorizes the Jaredite story as a classic epic.

In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M. H. Abrams explains that most epics are in poetry; however, durable and persuasive epics may also be written in prose. He defines characteristics of literary epics as follows (the examples from Jaredite literature are added):

• The hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance. In The Iliad, he is the Greek warrior Achilles, the son of the sea nymph Thetis. Sometimes there are two brothers who stand in contrast with each other. In the story of the Jaredite origins, there were two brothers, Jared and his brother, rather like Romulus and Remus, or other such pairs.
• The setting is ample and even huge in scale, possibly even cosmic. With help from the gods, Odysseus sails or wanders over the Mediterranean basin, the whole of the known world. The Jaredites, with divine assistance, cross a huge ocean to an unknown land.
• The action involves superhuman deeds either in battle, as in The Iliad, or long arduous journeys, as in The Odyssey. The Jaredite journey was certainly arduous, dangerous, and long.
• In these great actions, the gods or other supernatural beings take an interest or an active part. The Olympian Gods are involved in Homer’s epics. Jehovah, the Son of God who will come to Earth, provides guidance for the Jaredite journey.
• An epic is a ceremonial performance narrated in a ceremonial style, not given in normal speech. The text of the brother of Jared, who goes up into a high mountain where he sees not only the finger but also the face of God, is extraordinary, and it beckons to its readers to also strive to find an opening through the heavenly veil.

This last point does not mean that epics are, of necessity, only fictional literature and not historical. For many years people believed all components of The Iliad, including the siege of Troy, were mythological. The Homeric epics were validated when in in 1868, Heinrich Schliemann discovered the city of Troy, now well excavated at the archaeological site of Hisarlik. The excavation demonstrated the existence of many levels of occupation, city gates, and city walls, many of the things that Homer described are there. Indeed, history and human experience fundamentally precede poetry and theology.

The purpose of an epic was not simply entertainment. Epics were crucial in the reflection of essential needs and in the formation of the particular culture. There are no extant Olmec epics, but there are Maya creation epics such as the Popol Vuh. Those stories tell of the origin of their civilization, as seven ships sail across the sea and arrive in Central America. In addition, the great Israelite epic is the exodus from Egypt. The liberation, the plagues, the wandering in the wilderness, crossing the Red Sea, and acquiring their land contribute to their becoming a people.

And coming right from Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, about the same time as the Jaredite departure, were the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Epic of Nergal and Erishkegal, the Enuma Elish and other sagas, reflecting a twilight world of kings, mighty warriors, dispersions, migrations, boats, feasts, rebellions, underground oppositions, jails, chaos, violence and savage reprisals, with the involvement of gods and battles to the death of all involved, as Hugh Nibley thoroughly introduced to LDS readers back in the 1950s and as John Thompson developed further in the 1990s.

Seen against this background, the book of Ether adheres in style and content to the typical configuration of an ancient epic. Its conclusion had a tragic, but didactically valuable, ending. Rather than showing only the foundation of a great culture, or the success of one political group over another, the record of Ether demonstrates the crumbling of one, initially strong civilization, and provides sober warnings for future cultures to avoid the same fate.

Further Reading

Book of Mormon Central, “Why Is the Book of Ether an Epic? (Ether 7:9),” KnoWhy 241 (November 29, 2016).

Richard Dilworth Rust, Feasting on the Word: The Literary Testimony of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Co: 1997).

M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms–Edition 11 (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2014).

Heinrich Schliemann, Troy and Its Remains: A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries Made on the Site of Ilium, and in the Trojan Plain, ed. Philip Smith., trans. Dora Schmitz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Hugh W. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; the World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites, CWHN 5, ed. John W. Welch, with Darrell L. Matthews and Stephen R. Callister (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988, esp. 172–263, 285–307, 350–379. This material is conveniently summarized in Hugh Nibley’s, “Some Test Cases from the Book of Ether,” in An Approach to the Book of Mormon (Provo and Salt Lake City, UT: FARMS and Deseret Book, 1988).

John S. Thompson, “The Jaredite Exodus: A Literary Perspective of a Historical Narrative,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 3, no. 1 (1994): 104–112.