Babel to Bones
A reader's companion to The Last Jaredite and Gideon's Forty and Three

Babel to Bones

The research behind the novels: the Jaredite timeline from the tower to the bones, the lands of the two stories, and the scriptures they rest on.

248 BCThe last Jaredite battle at Ramah, in the Late model the study argues for.
127 yearsHow long the bones had lain on the ground when Limhi's 43 found them in 121 BC.
~340 yearsHow long the Jaredite, Mulekite and Nephite nations overlapped.
Ether & MosiahLikely contemporaries; Ether may have carried the interpreters to Mosiah I.
Read

The Study

Babel to Bones in full, with the Kings List king by king, and two companion papers.

 See

Timeline

Every king's life from Jared to Ether, Late and Early models side by side, with the Nephite record keepers.

 Explore

Map of the Lands

Every place in both novels: what the text says, what the story says, and where it is proposed to be.

 Look up

Scripture

Any Book of Mormon verse by reference or word, and every verse the novels quote.

 Follow

The Novels

Chapter by chapter: dates, places, scripture, with a link into the read-along.
Reference dates. The years used here come from the research. The Jaredites did not count years this way; the dates let the two stories and the Nephite record be read on one line.
Proposals, not certainties. Apart from the Hill Cumorah, every identification of a place is a proposal made for the novels, built on the text of the Book of Mormon.
Scripture references are underlined with dots everywhere on this site. Tap one to read the verse.
Jared to Ether, and the Nephites beside them

Timeline of the Kings

Each bar is one life, birth to death. Switch models to see where the 312 years between them come from. Tap a bar for that king's dated events and the verses behind them.

The geography of the two stories

Map of the Lands

Drag to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom. Tap a pin, a route or a name in the register below. Places with a hollow mark are described but not pinned.

The two keys, and open questions in the map model

Register of places

The Book of Mormon

Scripture Lookup

Type a reference such as Ether 15:33, Mosiah 8:7-11 or Omni 1, or any word or phrase to search the whole book.

Quoted in the novels

The Last Jaredite and the Forty and Three

The Novels, Chapter by Chapter

Dates, places and scripture for every chapter. “Read” opens the chapter in the read-along.