4 Nephi 1

(December 8, 2015)

                I may have mentioned this before, but there are those who attempt to make a great deal of hay out of the chronology of Amos in this chapter.  They attempt to use his apparent age to discredit the entire Book of Mormon, and thus weaponize it.

                There are explanations for this, and I think I have included them in the past (if my memory is correct).  But rather than focus on the general, I think I will focus on one idea I had when I was reading this time.

                We know that Mormon was an editor, and included things that others had written.  And we know it was not uncommon to name parents after children (in this chapter, we already have Amos son of Amos).  So all that would be needed would be for Mormon to have missed the death of an Amos, or the record to not be correctly written, or something happening to damage the record where Amos’s death was mentioned.  Simple things – Mormon couldn’t mention the death and the succession of the new Amos if he didn’t have the details.

                Can you imagine the loss of a record from 200 years ago?  The record of a single death?  And that is with our modern capacity to catalog.  If you can, then the chronology of this chapter should not be a problem.