“They Became Exceedingly Rich”

Brant Gardner

This part of the cultural catalog is not significantly different from the Nephite catalog. What we see here is silks and fine linens as we did in the Nephite list. In fact, the formulation of the list, and the similarity of context, (that of demonstrating wealth) is so parallel as to suggest that this may have been a Nephite description of prosperity applied by Mosiah to the Jaredites:

Alma 1:29

29 And now, because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich, having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need—an abundance of flocks and herds, and fatlings of every kind, and also abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely cloth.

“Many Other Kinds of Animals”

This is such a collection of the Old World domesticated animal set that it is hard to see it as anything but that set. While there is an outside chance that the Jaredite barges carried sufficient breeding populations of these large animals, we are far enough in to the time in the New World (and really far into the New World based on the backwards chronology) that any such animals that were brought over would have become a major food source for the entire area, or they would have died out.

The fact is that these animals did not comprise the Mesoamerican catalog of food animals. There is currently no evidence that any of these animals was ever here. As discussed for the Nephite record, the passages listing these animals is best seen as an interpolation by Joseph Smith. His catalog of comestible animals simply replaced whatever was on the record. He used what he was familiar with rather than what the text said.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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