Proposed Nephite Calendar
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 31
Proposed Nephite Calendar
John P. Pratt
John P. Pratt writes a monthly column for Meridian Magazine which provides an LDS
perspective on current science. He has a Ph.D. in astronomy and specializes in religious
chronology and ancient calendars. He has authored several articles in the Ensign and
professional journals. The text of his articles is available from his website, www.johnpratt.com,
or a bound volume is now available. His lovely wife Ruth has written books on family history.
They are the parents of five wonderful children.
It’s a pleasure to be here. I keep
changing the title of this talk. Supposedly, you
will all get a handout. It will have a different
title, even than this. On the handout, I call it
“Nephite Calendar Testifies of Christ,” which is
probably closer to what the talk turned into
when I finally finished putting it together.
I am not in archaeology, but I am always
excited about archaeology, and I am glad to
be invited to the conference. I do chronology,
but as far as I am concerned [on overhead]:
Chronology is in Time
What
Archaeology is in Space
History becomes much more real when it
can be pinpointed on a map.
History also becomes much more real
when you can pinpoint it in time.
To me, I have heard a lot of people ask,
“Why do they do all this Book of Mormon
geography? Aren’t we just supposed to have
faith and believe that it’s true?” Well, of
course you have faith and believe that it’s
true, but it’s so much more exciting when you
know where it actually happened. I remember
hearing the army song I think, where it says,
“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of
Tripoli.” I won’t tell you how many years I went
without knowing where Tripoli is. I don’t even
know how to say it. Tripoli. Think right now on
a map. Can you all picture where Tripoli is?
I’ll bet, for the ones of you who can picture
that, it is more real for them than it was
before.
I had an experience this week. I have
taught astronomy for 30 years. We talk about
Bernard’s star. It’s one of the fastest moving
stars. You know, I have never known where it
was. This week I saw on a map of the stars
where it is, and then it became much more
real when I could see it on a map.
I’ll do one more. We had a neighbor boy
over for Family Home Evening one time. We
were talking about Moses parting the Red
Sea. And so we tell the story: “And he raised
his staff and the Red Sea parted.”
The neighbor nodded his head, “Uh,
huh.”
“And they went over on dry ground.”
“Uh huh.”
He was going along, and he is a member
of the LDS Church, and he was seeming to
believe it, and then I opened an archaeology
book, and I said, “Here are the coral-covered
chariot wheels that they have found where
they crossed.”
The neighbor’s eyes got big, and he said,
“What! You mean this is true? You mean the
Red Sea really opened? And they really went
across?”
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And I said, “Yes, there is a shelf at 60
feet down that goes across.”
“Wow!”
You know, it made a lot of difference.
So, similarly, with time, we used to say,
“Once upon a time . . .” for fairy tales, but if
you don’t know when it happened in time, it
gets pretty fuzzy. When you talk about Jesus,
if you don’t know the date when He was born,
when He died, when He lived, then it’s all just
“once upon a time. It is important just to
believe in him. It’s all just once upon a time.”
I’m sorry, but for me, that doesn’t cut it.
It’s not good enough. We need to know when
the prophet stands and says that the most
important date in history is the date of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“Great. What was the date?”
It was the most important date in history.
Do we know when that is?
I think chronology is just as important in
its own way as archaeology is. They are both
counterparts. We want to know where it
happened and when it happened, so that we
can tie them together. When you put these
together, you learn things. For example, you
all know about Daniel. You’ve read the Book
of Daniel. We believe in Daniel. You’ve read
about Nephi, you believe in Nephi. They are
both at the same place at the same time.
They were probably schoolmates. Have you
ever thought about that? Daniel and Nephi
probably went to school together. Same time,
same place. I’m saying that it can help our
understanding as well as our belief.
Book of Mormon Anchor Dates
There are three dates in the Book of
Mormon that you can tie to Old World history.
That seems like the logical starting point to try
to track down when events happened in the
Book of Mormon.
The First year of Zedekiah. Right there in
Chapter 1 of 1 Nephi, he gives the year that
some prophets were called of God that his
father Lehi heard preach.
The Birth Date of Jesus Christ. Big
events happened. Light all night, major event.
The Crucifixion date. They give it
according to their calendar right to the very
day. So let’s look at all three of those dates
one at a time.
The First Year of Zedekiah
This is a winner. Nobody has any doubt
what day this is. This is wonderful. I wish it
were this way for all three dates, for this would
have been done long ago. I like to pronounce
his name with a “ch” because there was
another king at the time named Jehoiakim
that people often get confused with him. I am
just going to call him Jeconiah.
King Jehoiachin (Jeconiah) taken captive
Sat 10 Mar 597 BC (Gregorian). Jeconiah was
the king. Nebuchadnezzar comes and takes
him captive and replaces him with Zedekiah.
That date also turns out to be New Year’s Day
on the Hebrew calendar. We know that date
right down to the day for two reasons. One, is
that the Bible says that the year was just
turning, meaning it was New Year’s Day, so
they tell you the exact day if you know the
year.
This undisputed date was recorded in the
Bible and also in Babylonian Chronicles. The
second way -- and here is the wonderful thing.
It turns out that Daniel was over in Babylon. I
don’t know if it was his influence, but for some
reason in the Babylonian Chronicles of
Nebuchadnezzar, they give the exact day that
Jeconiah was taken captive. On their
calendar, it is the second day of the seventh
year of Nebuchadnezzar, I think. I am not
sure of the year, but it was the second of Adar,
I remember. You can look up what day it is in
Parker’s and Duberstein’s Standard Tables,
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and also, I do all my own calendar work. We
agree that it is Saturday, the 10th of March.
That is undisputed. That’s great. That one
was easy.
Two possibilities: Friday 5 Apr AD 30, Fri
1 Apr AD 33. I am going to do Crucifixion
before the Birth of Christ, so this slide is not
out of order. I do this because this is actually
very well established, and the Bible goes to
great pains to tell you exactly when the Savior
was crucified. By the way, I have whole
articles on almost every one of these slides. I
have two or three articles. They are all on the
internet. The references are at the end. I
have them published in the book I have
outside. I also have calendars, and I have all
my articles on CD-ROM, if you are interested,
for a nominal charge. It is cheap. But
basically, all scholars agree that there are only
two possible days for the Crucifixion of Christ.
It is either on Friday, the 5th of April, A.D. 30,
or Friday, the 1st of April AD 33. By the way, I
use only the Gregorian calendar, our modern
calendar. Historians use the Julian calendar.
That would have been fine around the time of
Julius Caesar. They use it for ancient dates
_____
Center of the Aztec Calendar, called the 20 Days of the Sacred Round.
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 34
like these, which makes no sense to me
because the poor calendar gets way off. Our
calendar is excellent. You can use it back to
Adam and forward it through the Millenium.
It’s great. They fixed it. I use our modern
calendar, so those days will be two days
different from what you read in history books,
for instance.
Both days are on Friday. Those days are
the only choices. Now really, the New
Testament makes it clear that it is the second
date. It is A.D. 33, but because of confusion
about the birth date of Christ, most scholars
believe it is the earlier one. We will get to His
birth in a second, but the second one really
does fit.
There are many reasons they pick the
second date. Turkish history records an
earthquake and the darkening of the sun for
several hours in AD 33. They have the exact
year, and they say that the sun was darkened,
and the stars came out. They mentioned that
the constellation of Orion was visible. That
means whoever wrote that knew enough to
know that Orion is usually a winter
constellation, and he is up here in April at
noon. I mean, when else did that happen in
history, that it is dark for three hours? A solar
eclipse is good for about two minutes, three
minutes, tops. But to have it dark with stars
coming out in the middle of the day and
roosters crowing, he said, and an earthquake
on the same day, and he gives the year 33
A.D.? I’m sorry, that to me is convincing right
there. It is A.D. 33.
There is a new article out in Meridian
Magazine, just last week, on Daniel’s
prophesy of 490 years. That has not been a
well-understood prophesy, as far as I could
tell. He gives a prophesy that it will be 490
years from when the decree goes forth to
rebuild Jerusalem, 490 years until the
Messiah, the Prince, is cut off, and the Savior
is crucified. That prophesy comes out right to
the day. That article is out this month in the
Meridian Magazine. I’m saying that there
have been two choices. Two choices. 20
years ago, I published my paper, saying it’s
the second choice, and I have never deviated
from that. It is clearly the second choice.
The Birth Date of Christ
Has been uncertain to about a decade, 9
BC to 1 BC. His birth date has been totally
unknown. And just very quickly on this, all of
the clues that Luke put in to try and help --
there was an enrollment, and there was the
tax, the star of Bethlehem, who was governor,
all these details he has put in have been
under much dispute.
Often 6-4 BC (based on Josephus’ date
for Herod’s death), now about 2 BC. There are
people who believe everywhere from 9 B.C. to
1 B.C. The standard story is about 6 to 4 B.C.
– all of that is based on Josephus, almost
alone, one source, who gives the year of
Herod’s death, which he gives as 3 B.C., but
people don’t like that. They change it to 4
B.C., and Herod was alive when Christ was
born, so Christ must have been born 6 to 5
B.C. – in that ballpark. Well, sorry, now this is
where I am a physicist and an astronomer – I
don’t care if an historian makes a mistake. I
think historians – that’s all they have is
history, and they can’t go around saying that
this historian is wrong, but I have no problem
with that. I just say, “I’m sorry, Josephus
made a mistake.” I wrote a paper on this, and
I supplied exactly where he made the mistake.
He had two biographies, and he had to choose
between them. He chose poorly. He didn’t
blow up (that was a different film), but he sure
influenced everybody, because his is the only
biography of Herod that we have.
Olmec Sacred Round of 260 days
indicates 5 Apr 1 BC (1 Reed), after sunset.
The big clue on this, and I’m going to give you
something new, is the Olmec Sacred Round.
All my understanding says that the Sacred
Round calendar of the Native Americans,
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 35
which is used everywhere from Alaska to Chile
– this 260 day calendar – that really indicates
when the birth of Christ was. It was on 1
Reed. One of the names of Quetzalcoatl, the
white and bearded god that they had, was 1
Reed. Children were named from those
calendars according to their birth date. 1
Reed is a date on the Sacred Round. For
example, if his name was 1 Reed, it usually
means that his birthday is 1 Reed. It is at
least a serious consideration. His name could
also be something else like his baptism or
perhaps a rebirth, however, the
straightforward interpretation is that his name
is based on his birthday.
Needless to say, for the LDS people in
the audience, we have had three different
prophets in this dispensation, including
President Lee, President Kimball, and
President Hinckley, who have said that it was
on April 6. April 6 is actually the anniversary.
It actually occurred on the evening of April 5
after sundown, so I say that it occurred on the
evening preceeding April 6. It is like
Christmas now. The standard day to have
Christmas is December 25, but when do you
do the Nativity scene? You do it on the night
of the 24th, called Christmas Eve. That is
really when the baby is supposed to be born.
You have the party the next day. It is the
same thing here. He was born on the night of
April 5th. It has to be this time. It is after
sunset and before midnight, but you have a
party the next day.
I want to show you something new. Most
of what I am doing in this talk has been
published before, if only last week, but I
wanted to give you something new, just for
this conference. You pay your money, you
come out, and you want to hear cutting edge
stuff. All right, I am going to show you
_____
Codex Nuttall Mistec document.
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 36
something, and there are people who are
more expert than me here on this
subject.[Displays a round Mesoamerican
artifact] It may be difficult to see, but this is
the center of the Aztec calendar. The circle of
the famous Aztec calendar is on everything
you have ever bought from Mexico. If you’ve
purchased a wallet, if you have a briefcase,
gone to a restaurant – you’ve seen this. But I
have only cut out the center. There is a circle
of 20 pictures around here, and those are the
20 Days of the Sacred Round. This doesn’t
have numbers on it that I am aware of, but
you count each picture, one at a time, as you
go around. It starts on 1 Light, 2 Wind, 3
Temple, 4 Dragon, 5 Serpent, 6 Skull, 7 Deer,
8 Rabbit, 9 Water, 10 Dog, 11 Monkey, 12
Grass, and 13 Reed. You count up to 13, and
then you start over and count to 20. 1 Jaguar,
2 Eagle, 3 Condor, 4 Quake, 5 Flint, 6 Storm,
and 7 Flower, 8 Light. You count to 13 and
then to 20 until you come out even, which
won’t happen until you count to 260 days. So
those are the 260 Days of the Sacred Round.
All of my research says that this is one of the
most fundamental calendars. It is as
important as a 7-day week. This thing came
straight from Heaven. This is the Sacred
Round. The universe was designed according
to this calendar. [Nods his head in respect.]
Anyway, it is important. What I want to
show you is that when this comes up to 1
Reed, that will be the Savior’s birthday.
[Displays another Mesoamerican artifact]
Let me show you another slide. I want to
show you how they draw these pictures. This
is the Codex Nuttall Mistec document. Notice
the skull here with all these little balls
attached. The skull is one of the 20 pictures
on the Sacred Round. You count all the little
balls attached, and they do it in all kinds of
designs here. 10 Skull is a date here. Now, I
am not an expert on this part, but some of you
may know more. I am assuming that this
picture here is the fellow’s birthday or it is the
date that something happened that is being
depicted. Whatever it is, it is a date.
Now I want to show you something new.
I want to show you just how they draw these
arrows and shields. Now, what I am about to
tell you I have never told anybody. This is
new, and yet it has been right in front of you
for those who have seen this, but, – drum roll
please – I am trying to give you something
new. See how they draw a shield round? See
these two little feathers here? These are
arrows. There are two arrows, with two points
and two feathers, behind a shield.
[Goes back to the Sacred Round and
traces pictures on the inside of the round.] If
you take the little picture for Quake and draw
it big, that’s what this portion of the round is.
And there are four circles on the calendar
[outlines them for people to see]. This
represents an important date. 4 Quake, or 4
Movement. There are different translations.
These are the words that I have chosen, partly
because they are the best I could do, looking
at 50 different translations, and partly
because they are short, quake is a shorter
word, and it will fit around the circle with the
other words. Also, it is better. It is the
shaking motion that it is about. Anyway, that
is supposed to be the date of the big fifth
world age. OK, everybody knows that.
What about this circle down here? There
is a fifth circle down at the bottom that is just
sitting by itself. It looks like it is part of a date,
and I pondered about that for a long time.
One day I saw it. Now, I will just propose this,
and I have to say it quickly because I have to
move on. This is just a quickie freebie thrown
in. I am just going to say what it looks like to
me. I am not an expert in this area, but that
circle in the center there looks a lot like the
shield that we just saw. The five things there
look exactly like the feathers on the arrows.
This up here, this point, is not really part of the
quake. Sometimes it is drawn that way, and
sometimes it’s not. I would suggest that it is
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 37
not part of the quake glyph. I will say that this
is an arrow point, and these are the feathers
behind the shield, just like in that other
picture, and this is a date: 1 Reed.
Oh. I didn’t tell you that those arrows are
symbols for reeds. They made their arrows
out of reeds. So, it is that kind of reed. So it
is a date. 1 Reed. It has been in front of us
all these years. Whether that is right or wrong,
it doesn’t matter. They had temples named 1
Reed, and that was the Savior’s name. And
let’s go on. I just wanted to show you
something new.
Book of Mormon Bull’s-eye
Now, we’ve got those three dates of
Zedekiah’s reign, the birth of Christ, and the
death of Christ. How does the Book of
Mormon fit that?
Orson Pratt proposed 365-day
Egyptian/Mesoamerican calendar as that
used by the Nephites. Let’s start out with the
good news. There’s one perfect bulls-eye. If
you assume, as Orson Pratt did, that the
Nephites used the 365-day calendar like the
Egyptian calendar and like the Mesoamerican
calendar – that doesn’t have any leap days –
_____
Nephite Calendar as proposed by Pratt.
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 38
just straight 365 days – and it is very logical
that Lehi might have used that – then you find
a perfect fit for the life of Christ.
Perfect Fit on Christ’s Life: if Day 1 was
Thu 6 Apr, then 4 One 34 = Fri 1 Apr 33. They
said they re-started their calendar at the sign
of his birth. If you count the sign of his birth
as day 1 of the calendar, named Day 1 of
Month 1 of Year 1, they say that the
Crucifixion happened on Day 4 of the month
One, in the 34th year, which would be 33
years later. That comes out exactly to the day
on Friday, the 1st of April, A.D. 33, one of the
two possible dates for the Crucifixion of Christ.
That precision is strong evidence of
accuracy of both birth and death dates of
Jesus Christ. So there is another bingo. It’s
just a bull’s-eye. It’s right on. It’s a big vote
for the 365-day calendar after the coming of
Christ. Most researchers in this area, I think,
agree on this part, so that is a strong evidence
for both.
[Displays a proposed Nephite calendar] I
have a picture of the Nephite calendar. This
will be the model. There are 12 months. They
each have 30 days. I just named the months
First through Twelfth because I am not very
creative, and then there are five days that are
just tagged on at the end. (They tend to be
unlucky days, but the Book of Mormon doesn’t
say that. In the Egyptian calendar, they were
unlucky days.) That’s the model. Very simple.
The key thing is that there are no February
29ths or leap days ever put in to make it even
with the years. So you just kind of drift
through the year a little bit, but that was the
Egyptian model and that is the model that I
am proposing for the Nephite model.
Book of Mormon Apparent Conflicts
Now, here is the bad news. To me, there
were three very serious problems. I believe I
am the only person who has addressed all
three of these problems. Other authors have
focused on just one. Mostly, they focus the
first one of these problems, sometimes a little
on the second. There are three serious issues
with the Book of Mormon that need to be
solved. I call them problems, because I solve
problems. Let’s look at them one at a time.
Lehi’s 600-year prophecy. There is more
detail on this in your notes, so I am just going
to cheat and give you them here. There are
only 596 years between the date from
Zedekiah’s first year and even as late as 1
B.C. for the birthday of Christ. If you believe in
an earlier 4 or 5 B.C. year for the birth of
Christ, it is even worse. There is a prophecy
by an angel, and they tend to be really
accurate on time. I have noticed this. I don’t
know of any angelic prophecy that is off by a
day. It is quarter-day accuracy on all of them.
And he says it’s going to be 600 years from
the time that his father leaves --not when he
gets ready, you know. They give a precise
time from when he leaves to when Christ
comes -- 600 years. And at first, you think it
is 6 centuries, but then you find out that the
Nephites were counting it very seriously, and
they said whoa, 600 years came and went,
and nothing happened and they were about to
kill the believers, and quite a bit of time went
past 600 years. How can that be that there
are only 596 years at the most between the
two events?
When was Jerusalem destroyed? There
are two different scriptures for these that are
listed on your handout. It was destroyed
immediately after Lehi’s departure (2 Nephi
25:10). In another place (1 Nep. 17:43, 2
Nephi 1:4), you find out that they wandered
through the desert for eight years, they build a
boat, they go over to America – it was
something like 10 years after they leave, a
revelation comes to Lehi, and he says, “I’ve
had a revelation that Jerusalem has been
destroyed,” and it is clear that it happened
then because in another place, Nephi says, “I
know it will be destroyed. But Nephi says that
the destruction has not happened yet. It looks
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like Nephi is confused. In the one place, he
says it happened immediately after he left,
and in the other, it is going to happen.
How many captives would be taken? The
third problem I think is the most serious. How
many captives are going to be taken? Lehi
starts prophesying with Jeremiah and the
others that many captives will be taken (1
Nephi 1:13). He tells his children, and Laman
and Lemuel laugh and say that nothing could
ever happen to Jerusalem. That’s one
prophesy. In another place, Nephi says, and
this is the same place that is referred to in the
other reference, he says that very few people
will be taken (1 Nephi 17:43).
After Zedekiah began to reign, nobody in
the Old Testament said that many captives will
be taken. Ezekiel said that there would be
very few. What happened? The captives had
already been taken. The serious problem is
that Zedekiah starts after the captivity is all
over. Nebuchadnezzar had already come in
and had taken 3,000 captives before
Jeconiah was put in, and he takes at least
10,000 more captives. The Book of Kings
says, all of the rich, all of the wealthy were
taken. All Jerusalem was taken captive. Only
the poor were left (2 Kings 24:14; Ezekiel 5:1-
12; Jeremiah 21:7, 24:1-10). Then they put
Zedekiah over the poor. You can’t have Lehi
starting to preach and saying, “People, you’re
going to be taken captive,” and you can’t even
have him be wealthy or even being there still.
It doesn’t fit.
Something is wrong with this picture.
The captivity was over. Jeremiah says, and
you may remember this prophesy, “All the
good figs have already been taken.” The only
ones left here are rotten figs, and
Nebuchadnezzar is not taking captives next
time; he is going to kill them.
The Lord tells Ezekiel to lie on the ground
for several days (about a year) and grow a
beard, and then cut the beard. Burn part of it,
blow part of it away, and then chop part of it
up with a knife. The Lord said that is what will
happen to the people who stay in Jerusalem.
Nobody will be taken captive. That is a huge
discrepancy in the Nephite story.
Proposed resolution of all conflicts
The two statements listed here solve all
the chronology problems in the Book of
Mormon.
Nephi referred to Jehoiakim by the name
“Zedekiah.” I propose that Nephi was talking
about the former King Jehoiakim, when he
referred to Zedekiah. I didn’t put together a
nice timeline for you, but I have it in my book.
Jehoiakim starts in 608 B.C., and
Nebuchadnezzar didn’t start until later, in 605
B.C. The Bible specifically says that Jeremiah
was called in the first year of Jehoiakim. He
went around preaching that Jerusalem would
be destroyed. Now, they were currently with
Necho of Egypt, and they thought they were
invincible. Egypt was the largest power, and
the people of Jerusalem were in an alliance
with them. Jeremiah was mocked, and he was
attacked. Another man named Urijah was
called to be a prophet, and he was killed.
They met exactly the same fate that Nephi
describes. Exactly. No one would believe it
because Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t even on the
scene yet. That fits perfectly with the Book of
Mormon story, and that’s what I am going to
say happened.
In 605 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar comes in
and takes the first captives, of which Daniel
was part. He only takes a few in which he
trained to become princes. Nebuchadnezzar
knew what he was doing. He would take
princes from each of the countries and we
even have the date of this, right to the day, of
when this happened. He trained Daniel to
become a ruler, and that’s what he became.
Anyway, this completely gets rid of the
problem of the 600 years. Now you can have
Lehi leaving exactly 600 years before the birth
of Christ. My proposal is that he left to the
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day, to the quarter-day, on the evening
preceding the day of Passover, 600 years
before Christ was born, 5 April, after sunset
601 B.C.
It was also Passover when Lehi and his
family left Jerusalem. That is something that I
usually put in footnotes, which no one has
ever said, to my knowledge. Astronomers
know about a 600-year cycle. Josephus
talked about it. He said that the ancients
knew that there was a cycle of 600 years.
Well, I knew about it too. When I heard about
a 600-year prophesy, the first thing I thought
about was “Whoa! It’s a 600-year cycle!”
What is that cycle? It’s when the Hebrew
calendar’s Passover comes on the same day
as April 6 on the solar calendar. So the day he
leaves is April 6 Passover, and the day Christ
is born is April 6 Passover. Lehi’s leaving was
like a Passover event. Alma talks about it,
and he compares Lehi to Moses, and he said
that when Lehi left it was like the Passover.
Going into the wilderness is the standard thing
to do at Passover.
There were two destructions of
Jerusalem. That has been overlooked. It is
not just speculation. It is in the Bible; we just
never read it. In 2 Kings 24:1-2, it tells the
story. Jehoiakim started in 608 B.C.
Nebuchadnezzar comes in 605 B.C., and
Jehoiakim paid tribute for three years. We
have the record of this in the Babylonian
Chronicles. He paid tribute in 604, 603, and
602 B.C. in November. The tribute, or taxes,
was due once a year.
Then after three years, in 601 B.C., he
rebelled. In the Babylonian Chronicles, it says
that he didn’t pay his dues that year. In the
Bible, it says that he rebelled. In November
601 B.C., it is recorded that there was a big
war, not just with Judah, which wouldn’t be a
very big war, but also with Egypt. In addition,
the Bible says that the vassal states, including
Edom and Syria, united and beat up on Judah.
Judah is destroyed.
In those two verses, it says, Judah was
destroyed so that the prophecies of the
prophets would be fulfilled. What prophets?
Lehi, Urijah, and Jeremiah. As far as the writer
of that verse was concerned, Jerusalem was
destroyed so badly that it fulfilled that
prophesy. Now, Jerusalem goes on after that.
But I’m just saying that we have totally
overlooked that. Jerusalem was destroyed in
November of 601 B.C., and I will say that
that’s immediately after Lehi left in April of
601 B.C.
That was the first destruction, and after
that, many people were taken captive at
different times. Not right then, but in 598 B.C.
and in 597 B.C., basically everyone was taken
captive. Then after Zedekiah – you could call
him Zedekiah II in order to distinguish the two,
but I am going to do what the Bible writers did.
I’m not going to add to the confusion that
happened with Nephi. Jehoiakin was his
name. Jehoiakin was executed by
Nebuchadnezzar in front of everyone. They
put in his son, Jeconiah; then they decided it
would be just as bad with his son, so they take
the son out. Then they put in the one that we
all call Zedekiah. After Zedekiah is in his 11th
year, Jerusalem is again destroyed, and that is
when Nephi is over in the New World, and Lehi
has the vision that they have all been
destroyed. The destruction of 587 B.C. is the
one that everyone knows about.
Nebuchadnezzar would have almost
certainly changed Jehoiakim’s name in 605
B.C. to Zedekiah at that time. The name that
Nephi knew was Zedekiah. If he didn’t change
it, for whatever reason, Nephi knew him as
Zedekiah. It was a family name. There was
another son listed in the Chronicles who was
named that. There is another place in
Jeremiah where they mix up the two names,
Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. But Lehi prophesied
before they were all taken.
Nephi mentioned that Jeremiah was in
prison at this time, and the Bible makes it
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 41
clear that Jeremiah was in prison in 588 B.C.
It would not shock me if they had imprisoned
Jeremiah twice or many times. So I propose
that Jeremiah was also in prison in 601 B.C.
We don’t have much of Jeremiah’s life. We
just have a few of his prophecies sort of put
together and sort of in random order. We
don’t have his whole life, so I propose that he
was imprisoned twice.
We have already talked about how the
Nephite calendar had no leap days. I want to
talk very quickly about two confirmations, and
then I want to leave a little bit of time for
questions. A note on seasonal warfare. I
really liked the work of John Sorenson, Bill
Hamblin, and others on seasonal warfare.
They produced papers that said, hey, the Book
of Mormon talks about how they only had wars
in certain seasons. Among the Mayans today,
they only have war in certain seasons, and you
can tie those together. It looks like the first
day of the first month of the first year
happened in December. The first day started
when Lehi left, in April 6, but because they
didn’t do leap days, you are going to get a day
off every four years. That is quite a bit. In
600 years, you’re going to get 150 days early.
By the time Christ is born, their year is going to
start in November. The wars happened
starting around 70 B.C. It would have been in
December of that time. It is a perfect fit. And
then the explanation for the delay at the time
of Christ, they thought 600 years was up in
November, and nothing happens. Samuel’s
prophesy came and went, and nothing
happens. They had plenty of time to get
upset. They had about five months there, so
on their calendar, it was 600 years and five
months before Christ was born.
For those who know my work, I have
discovered nine different sacred calendars.
Angels tend to appear on holy days on what I
call the Lord’s sacred calendars. There are
several precise dates given in the Book of
Mormon. For example, Helaman would say, “I
got a letter, and it was dated on this day, and
we did this on this day.” None of those days
are meant to be anything special. I have
checked them all. None of them are anything
special.
However, there are two dates when
angels appear. Amulek records the date that
an angel came to him and commanded him to
return to his house because he was going to
feed a prophet of the Lord, a holy man (Alma
10:6-7). The day that the angel came was a
triple holy day. It was the Feast of First Fruits
on the Hebrew calendar, and also on the
Enoch calendar. It was also the day 1
Malchijah on the Priest Cycle.
King Benjamin gave a marvelous talk,
and at the end, he says that an angel wrote it
for him and gave it to him (Mosiah 3:2), and
he records the day that the angel came.
Because of the work of Jack Welch and other
scholars, we figured out that it was the Feast
of the Tabernacles. From that I could look up
when the Tabernacles were held that year.
The day that this occurred was a quadruple
holy day. It is Tabernacles on two different
calendars, and it was something that was only
once a year on two of the other calendars.
The two angel days work on the calendar
that I developed; therefore, I propose that this
calendar work for all of their days. And I will
close there.
[Applause]
[Question from the audience] If angels
only come on holy days, then can you predict
when the Savior is going to come? [Laughter]
[Pratt] I’m sorry, I’ve just been told that
there’s no time for questions. No -- that is the
standard question. When is the Savior going
to come? I will tell you that I have an answer
to that, finally, because of course, the answer
is I don’t know. But I realized that what I can
do is publish future dates. I don’t know what
is going to happen on those days, but I can
publish a calendar that says, in the next year,
here are the double holy days, and here are
BMAF 2004 Fall Conference 42
the triple holy days. I have done that, and at
that little table out there, I can sell you a
calendar that says when the holy days are
going to be. But, I have no clue what is going
to happen on any of them. My idea is that
you’ll say, “Oh, look! It happened on that
day!”
For example, last year two apostles
passed away. If you look on the calendar, they
passed away during the closing week of the
harvest. I don’t know if that is meaningful or
not -- I’m just saying that apostles tend to be
born and tend to die on these days, the
prophets for sure, a lot of them. I mean, I
don’t understand all things, but sacred things
tend to happen on these days. Other things
don’t. I looked up George Washington, the
Constitution, all of those things. I couldn’t find
anything special. Prophets and angels tend to
be on those days. So I have published them
ahead, but I have no idea when the Savior is
coming.
_____
Copyright 2005, Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, a non-profit organization. Salt Lake City, Utah.