Scripture: The referent for “he” is the God of Israel (v. 7). In Nephi’s understanding, the Messiah is Yahweh, the God of Israel. In spite of changes in the 1837 edition clarifying the distinction between the Father and the Son, that distinction was not part of the Book of Mormon’s theology. For the Nephites, Yahweh was God, and Yahweh would become Jesus. (See “Excursus: The Nephite Understanding of God,” following 1 Nephi 11.)
Text: As Nephi begins his new section after the inserted comment about the plates, he begins by discussing the Savior. This is the same pattern noted for our current chapter 9 and the introduction of the material on the Savior in chapter 10. In particular, this statement of the 600-year prophecy parallels that of 1 Nephi 10:4. Both after the discussion of the small plates in chapter 9 and again here in chapter 19, Nephi follows that information with a discussion of the coming Messiah, both times giving the prophecy that he would come in six hundred years from the time the family left Jerusalem.
History: For more information on the chronology constructed from this 600-year prophecy, see the commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 10:4. Randall P. Spackman has suggested that the Nephites followed a lunar calendar, which allows for precisely 600 “years” between the departure from Jerusalem and the birth of Christ. Perhaps they continued using a lunar calendar in the New World because it was already familiar there. The Maya used several types of calendars, but one closely approximated the length of the lunar year. The dating of the origin of this calendar is unknown, though it is contemporary with the carved texts. The earliest currently known date from a Maya inscription is 36 B.C. from Chiapa de Corzo. The expectation is that it existed for a long time prior to the time of the first remaining written texts from the Maya. John Sorenson comments:
Both by prophecy (1 Ne. 10:4, 19:8; 2 Ne. 25:19) and by Nephite historical reckoning (3 Ne. 1:1), the American scripture allots “600 years” for the interval between Lehi’s departure in Zedekiah’s first year and the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet secular historical records allow no more than about 593 years (597 B.C. to 4 B.C.) between these events. Although there appears to be a problem, an interesting solution exists. To grasp it we must suppose that Nephite time-keeping would have followed the principles of the calendar that was widespread in southern Mesoamerica in the time and place that the scriptural account was written. All the material in this book to this point supports that important relationship.
Note that the word “year” has several meanings in different civilizations. Various definitions of “years” are recognized, each used for a different purpose. An unabridged English language dictionary reveals that even we have several different counts for which we use the one word. Among the lowland Maya, whose calendar is the one we know best in southern Mesoamerica, at least three kinds of “years” were calculated: (1) the tzolkin or sacred year of 260 days (thirteen months of twenty days each), (2) the haab, which was 365 days long (eighteen months of twenty days each, plus a closing “month” of five “unlucky” days), (3) the tun of 360 days. The tun was used for most calendrical calculations, apparently serving as an approximation to the haab, having the special merit that it could be divided and multiplied far more conveniently (360 is divisible by many numbers, 365 by very few). The Mayan calendar specialists loved to “play around” with dates that went ahead millions of years and back as far as 400 million years! The Mayan counting system adapted to calendrical matters, then, went like this:
1 day = 1 kin
20 days = 1 uinal (“month”)
360 days = 1 tun (“year”)
20 tuns = 1 katun
20 katuns = baktun (“cycle”)
Let us not suppose that this recognition of several types of “year” units indicates any confusion on the part of the ancients about astronomical realities. The experts in the Mesoamerican societies knew with great precision how long it took the earth to go around the sun and how this cycle correlated with the moon in its motions, with Venus and Saturn cycles, and no doubt with other information on the heavenly bodies (in the Book of Mormon, compare Alma 30:44, Hel. 12:14–15). Use of the 360-day tun year was a conscious compromise of convenience, no more. Suppose the Nephites used the same system of counting time as the Maya. The prophesied “six hundred years” in that reckoning would constitute precisely one and one half baktuns (thirty katuns), a neat total of 216,000 days. But this count of 600 tun “years” would be about 3,156 days shorter than the total using our sidereal year today (approximately 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.54 seconds long). In other words, “600 years” by the Maya tun method of calculating time would turn out 8.64 years shorter than “600 years” in today’s conventional sense. If we mark off 600 tun years from Zedekiah’s first year, 597–596 B.C., 216,000 days brings us into the year overlapping 5–4 B.C., an acceptable date for Christ’s birth.
Whether the Nephites use the lunar calendar continuously or adopted a Mesoamerican calendar with approximately the same length of year, there is ample precedent for a year-calendar that fits the six-hundred-year prophecy precisely into the fixed dates available from the Old World history. John E. Clark finds indications that the larger cycles in Mesoamerican time might be represented in the Book of Mormon:
A correspondence that has always impressed me involves the prophecies in 400-year blocks. The Maya were obsessed with time, and they carved precise dates on their stone monuments that began with the count of 400 years, an interval called a baktun. Each baktun was made up of 20 katuns, an extremely important 20-year interval. If you permit me some liberties with the text, Samuel the Lamanite warned the Nephites that one baktun “shall not pass away before… they [would] be smitten” (Hel. 13:9). Nephi and Alma uttered the same baktun prophecy, and Moroni recorded its fulfillment. Moroni bids us farewell just after the first katun of this final baktun, or 420 years since the “sign was given of the coming of Christ” (Moro. 10:1).