Joseph Smith, when translating
the abridged record of Ether, came across the following sentence:
"And they also had
horses, and asses, and there were elephants and xxxxxxx and yyyyyyy; all of
which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and xxxxxx and
yyyyyyy” (Ether 9:19). Why did Joseph Smith not fill in the names of these two
animals? They were not some minor animal of the time, for they were as
important unto man as the elephant. It is also not that Joseph would not have
know much about animals—he was a farmer, around 24 years of age at the time of
translation, having worked on his father’s farms. His father, Joseph Smith,
Sr., was married at the age of 25 in 1796, where he settled on one of the family
farms in Tunbridge. Born in 1771, Joseph
Sr. was 25 when he married Lucy Mack, was over six feet tall and powerfully
built, as had been his father, Asael.
Five generations of
Smith’s lived in Topsfield, a small township about 20 miles north of Boston,
Massachusetts. Five generations, beginning with Joseph’s
third-great-grandfather, Robert, who had emigrated from England in 1638, while
still in his teens. Robert’s son, Samuel, was listed as a “gentleman,” and
apparently held a public office. He and his wife, Rebecca Curtis, had nine
children, with one of their sons, Samuel, Jr., a distinguished community leader
and a promoter of the American War of Independence. Samuel, Jr., married Priscilla Gould, one of
Topsfield Massachusetts’ founders, and their son, Aesel, born in 1744, was
Joseph Smith’s grandfather.
Joseph Smith was born in a farm house (left) in Sharon, Vermont, in 1805. The farm house has been
replaced in this photo and the granite memorial to the right erected to
commemorate the area
Aesel married Mary
Duty of Rowley, Massachusetts, but later moved back to Topsfield and worked for
five years to liquidate the debts his father had been unable to pay before his
death. They remained in Topsfield until 1791, when Asael, Mary, and their
eleven children moved briefly to Ipswich, Massachusetts, and then on to
Tunbridge, Vermont, in quest of inexspensive, virgin land. There Asael held
public office and served the community in almost every elective office.
Joseph’s father,
Joseph Sr., and Lucy Mack lived on a family farm in Tunbridge, but later moved
to Randolph in 1802 where they opened a mercantile establishment. He sold his
farm to pay off a debt, then moved to Sharon, Vermont, where he farmed in the
summer and taught school in the winter. During Joseph Jr’s early years, his
parents moved frequently, looking for fertile soil for farming or some other way to earn a
livelihood.
Joseph Jr. was tall
and athletic, and when they moved to Norwich, the family began to farm on the
property of Esquire Murdock. With several crop
failures, and killing frosts, numerous people left Vermont, including the
Smiths, and settled on available lands in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, that
were said to be “well-timbered, well-watered, easily accessible and undeniably
fertile—all to be had on long-term payments for only two or three dollars an
acre.”
Joseph Smith, Sr.,
after settling his accounts, moved his family to Palmyra, New York. At Palmyra,
Joseph again took up farming and Joseph Jr. once again worked on the family
farm (left) in Palmyra, New York, adjacent to the Sacred Grove.
As a result, we see
that during the vast majority of Joseph’s young life, he lived on a farm and
worked as a farmer. This would have placed him in direct contact with plants,
grains, herbs, and fruits, as well as all the animals known in his day that
would have been helpful to man, such as beasts of burden like riding, draught
or draft horses, donkeys, mules, oxen, bulls, bullocks, and other animals
needed for farming, planting, harvesting, hauling, transportation, etc. Thus we come back to
the question of why did Joseph Smith, in translating the Ether record, not know
what animals were being described that were so necessary and beneficial to the
Jaredites. Not only would he have known about the farm animals mentioned above,
but also animals used for food that were raised for such (cows, steers, goats,
sheep, and pigs), but also hunted, such as deer, moose, elk, fowl, etc. It is
also unlikely he would have known or heard about such animals as water
buffalo, carabaos, tamaraw (dwarf buffalo), yak, or other animals of the
Eastern Hemisphere, though it is likely he would have heard of the western
buffalo (bison) and probably the camel.
Joseph was living in
the frame home on this farm when he received the plates from the Angel Moroni
in 1827
So in the translation process,
Joseph came across these two names listed in Ether 9:19 and ran through his
repertoire of animals he knew or had heard about, but the Spirit did not
acknowledge any of them—so he had to use the names that appeared in the
original record.
So what possible animal could
that have been written about in the Ether record that could be described as
more useful to man than the horse or donkey (ass)?
It is interesting in the list of
such helpful animals, along with the elephant, is the camel. And a type of
camelid (camelidae) that is also listed that is very helpful to man are the two
animals: Llama and Alpaca, domestic descendants of the wild vicuña and guanaco.
So when Joseph came to cureloms
and cumoms, he did not know to insert Llama and Alpaca, two names that were
unknown in the United States in 1830, and little known anywhere in the world outside of Andean South America, and certainly not by the names the
Jaredites and Nephites would have known them.
To early man, the llama and alpaca in Andean South America were to them what the horse, donkey, and cattle were to the people of North America
So how would the
Jaredites have known about these two animals? The answer is quite simple, since
they would lived in agrarian times and themselves would have been herdsmen for
the Lord to tell them to “gather together thy flocks, both male and female”
(Ether 1:41), and they went down into the Valley of Nimrod “with their flocks
which they had gathered together, male and female, of every kind” (Ether 2:1).
We also know they still had their flocks and herds a thousand years later or
more (Ether 9:31; 10:12), and thus capable of breeding the camelids that
became indigenous after the Flood in the Land of Promise, i.e., Andean Peru.
Thus, the verse: “And
they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and
cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants
and cureloms and cumoms” (Ether 9:19); could have been accurately rendered: “And
they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and Llamas and
Alpacas; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants
and Llamas and Alpacas” (Ether 9:19).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment