Struggle for Power
[Repetitive Cycle from Unity to Conflict to Extinction]
[Most Motivating is the Seeking for Power and Gain
[Historically the Point of Ether is that it is Highly Unoriginal]
255 So we have Jaredite society, and this is what it is. Just to save us some trouble here, we’ll read some passages. You read your book of Ether and you’ll find the whole history is a tale of fierce and unrelenting struggle for power. It’s dark with intrigue and violence, particularly of the Asiatic brand. When the rival for the kingdom is bested, he goes off by himself in the wilderness, bides his time, and gathers an army of outcasts. This is done by drawing off men to himself, by bestowing lavish gifts and bribes. There’s a nice summary of the whole thing here. I might read it to show you what utter nonsense is going on and how completely authentic it is. You may say you can’t believe this, but just wait a minute. This is the normal course of history, I assure you. It’s absolutely outlandish, but it’s the thing we’re coming into today. We’re the only people who are in for it, but we’re determined to do it. We get into this rat race.
256 Ether 7:4 A grand cycle running from unity of the nation to division, and conflict, and hence to paralysis or extinction is repeated at least a dozen times. The sorry round begins when one Corihor, the great-grandson of the original Jared, rebelled against his father the king, moved out of the land, and “drew away many people after him” (Ether 7:4), until he had an army that was able to beat the king and take him captive. The king was a captive, and this army of Corihor took over. Corihor was now what he wanted to be—Number One—until his brother Shule beat him and restored the kingdom to the father, again Number One. Then Corihor does a surprising thing—he repents—and Shule gives him a share of the kingdoms; that is the first time around. Each cycle ends with repentance.
256,257 Ether 7:15-19 Later Corihor’s sons rebelled “and drew away Cohor his brother, and also his brethren and many of the people” (Ether 7:15), whereupon he captured Shule and became Number One again until the sons of Shule conspired and murdered him, and Shule became Number One for the third time. (At least we’ve got rid of Corihor now. How many times has he been back and forth?) Under Shule’s rule there came prophets telling the people to repent or be destroyed. The people did repent—and prospered.
257 Ether 8:2,15,16 Years later one Jared “did flatter many people ... until he had gained half of the kingdom” (Ether 8:2) from his father Omer, whose other sons beat Jared, though, and reinstated Omer as Number One. To get back the kingdom, though, Jared formed secret combinations bound by oaths. The oaths .. . were given by them of old who also sought power to gain power. See, this is the archaic system. When the Jaredites came over here, they already represented an ancient civilization. (Don’t try to fool around with chronology here.) “The oaths were given by them of old who also sought power ... to help such as sought power to gain power” (Ether 8:15-16). Notice that is the thing everybody’s after here. I like this power business.
257 Ether 9:11,12,26,28; Ether 10:9 Then Jared was killed by his son-in-law Akish; then Akish, wary of his own son, starved him to death, whereupon another son left the country and joined the deposed king Omer and his followers. Akish was a hard man to beat because he had “won the hearts of the people” by knowing just what they wanted. ‘The people of Akish were desirous for gain, even Akish was desirous for power” (Ether 9:11), a fair exchange. But his sons could also play the game, and with money “they drew away the more part of the people after them” (Ether 9:11). The war that ensued encompassed “the destruction of nearly all the people of the kingdom (Ether 9:12). When it was fairly well restored, then we come to Heth who “began to embrace again the secret plans of old, to destroy his father” (Ether 9:26). “He slew him with his own sword, and he did reign in his stead” (Ether 9:27). And the prophets enter again and say the “people should be destroyed if they didn’t repent” (Ether 9:28). There was a terrible drought and famine that brought repentance until one “Morianton . . . gathered together an army of outcasts” (Ether 10:9). This is the thing to notice, this is the standard Asiatic procedure. After the long war “he did gain power over all the land, and did establish himself king over all the land” (Ether 10:9).
257 Ether 10:32; Ether 11:5 Morianton was a very good king, surprisingly; his son and successor Kirn was captured by his brother, who became Number One, but Kim’s son Levi made war against him and thus became Number One. Levi was also a good king—surprise, surprise. Then Com, whose father had lost the kingdom and had been imprisoned for twenty-four years, “drew away half the kingdom, and after forty years challenged the king of the other half, Amgid, to a duel. Following a long war, Com “obtained power over the remainder of the kingdom” (Ether 10:32). His son Shiblom (which means young lion) slew the prophets, who had again stated the preposition that the people must repent or be utterly destroyed (Ether 11:5). So there you are.
257 Ether 11:13; Ether 13:15,22,25 Well, this is not through yet. We’re in Ether 11:13 now. From that time on, it was all downhill. A mighty man led a revolt against the king and kept half the kingdom for many years until the king overcame him and became Number One again. Then another mighty man took him captive. Again many prophets came and said they would be destroyed. Then the thing became a free-for-all, with “many who rose up, who were mighty men” (Ether 13:15), all zeroing in on King Coriantumr. But he was a great survivor—he knew how to handle things like that. “And the war ceased not” (Ether 13:22). Shared put Coriantumr in captivity. Coriantumr is the king, but he’s now in captivity, clever as he is. Shared becomes Number One until Coriantumr’s son freed and restored Coriantumr to that glorious position. By then there was a complete breakdown of all government, with “every man with his band fighting for that which he desired” (Ether 13:25).
257,258 Ether 14:7,18-20 Coriantumr and Shared became obsessed with the necessity of ridding the world of each other. When Shared defeated one of Coriantumr’s armies, he raced to the capital and put himself on the man’s throne. But the process of polarization then began in earnest. Coriantumr gathered “great strength to his army” (Ether 14:7) for the space of two years, while Gilead, the brother and successor of Shared, was doing the same, assisted by secret combinations. They were dangerous associates, however, for they soon murdered Gilead and then liquidated his murderer, while a giant by the name of Lib (you still have the giants there) became king. He was killed fighting Coriantumr, but his brother continued the feud—he was the famous Shiz. So it’s now Shiz versus Coriantumr. The people began to flock together in armies throughout all the face of the land. And they were divided; and a part of them fled to the army of Shiz, and a part of them fled to the army of Coriantumr” (Ether 14:18-20). Always this steady, progressive process of polarization goes on.
258 Ether 14:28; Ether 15:3,5 Then, suggesting the formal set battles of epic literature and the Middle Ages, like a chess game, Shiz retreated. He swept off the inhabitants before him, all them who would not join him. That’s the way you do it. Meanwhile, “Coriantumr did gather his armies together upon the hill Comner, and did sound a trumpet unto the armies of Shiz to invite them forth to battle” (Ether 14:28). All this is formal, all this is exactly the way things had been done for thousands of years. After losing millions of people in battles, Coriantumr “began to repent” and wrote to Shiz, “desiring him that he would spare the people” (Ether 15:3). Shiz agreed, if Coriantumr “would give himself up, that he might slay him with his own sword” (Ether 15:5). Pharaoh does that—we have the earliest pharaohs cutting off the head of the rival prince. Well, you get the beautiful picture here.
259 Ether 9:11 Not only is the Jaredite practice to draw on one’s side the followers of a rival while building up an army in the wilderness in the best Asiatic tradition, the method of doing it is likewise accepted tradition. Thus Akish bound his followers. Now this thing about Akish is very much worth noticing. You know the story of Akish. This is the way it goes. He bound his followers around the nucleus of his family by lavish gifts, for “the people of Akish were desirous for gain, even as Akish was desirous for power; wherefore the sons of Akish did offer them money by which means he drew away the more part of the people after them” (Ether 9:11).
259 It was the sons of Genghis Khan who did most of his campaigning for him, the same way as Akish, and from the very beginning the secret of his power was the huge heaps of precious things that always stood near his throne and from which, after a memorial custom of the steppes, he rewarded all who joined him.
259 The pattern of steppe imperialism according to Vernadsky, who wrote the standard work on the primitive Russian empire, begins with accumulated wealth in the hands of some able chieftain, which enables him to expand his popularity among neighboring clans. And they all talk about the dedicated zeal with which the men of the steppes devoted themselves to two objects: power and gain. You may have heard that formula before in the Book of Mormon. They’re inseparable, of course. That quality is peculiar to Jaredite society, it appears, from the fact that the twin motives of power and gain receive far more attention in the book of Ether than anywhere else in the Book of Mormon.
259,260 Ether 8:13-16: “And it came to pass that Akish gathered in unto the house of Jared all his kinsfolk, and said unto them: Will ye swear unto me that ye will be faithful unto me in the thing which I shall desire of you?” All the authorities note this, too. How can you bind a person to you who’s riding a horse and is free to gallop off in any direction he wants, in the night or any other time? You have to bind him by something, and it can’t be by putting guards over him. You can’t watch people. What you do is you swear them by oaths, these terrible oaths. That’s why from central Asia came these most awful and frightful oaths, because that’s the only way you can bind a person to you. So it says here: “Will ye swear unto me that ye will be faithful unto me in the thing which I shall desire of you? [How can he count on them?] And it came to pass that they all sware unto him, by the god of heaven, and also by the heavens [Genghis Khan calls himself ‘the god of the blue heaven’ swears his oaths by the blue heaven, by the god of heaven], and also by the earth, and by their heads, that whoso should vary from the assistance which Akish desired should lose his head. . . . And Akish did administer unto them the oaths which were given by them of old who also sought power, which had been handed down even from Cain.” This is the normal course of history. Alas to say that.
261 I think this is what Arab Shaw writes. “If the neighboring province to that which they invade will not aid them, says an eyewitness of the Tartar technique, they waste it and with the inhabitants whom they take with them they proceed to fight against other provinces.” That’s the way they sweep them and build up their armies. They place their captives in the front of the battle, and if they fight not courageously, put them to the sword. In such a way the Asiatic warlords from the beginning swept the earth before them, like Shiz. The hordes of our own day did that, forcing all that lay in their path to become part of them. “I counted them among my people,” says the Assyrian conqueror of one nation after another. This ancient formula goes back to our old friend Nimrod. We are told that Genghis Khan, like Nimrod, became a mighty hunter. He learned to steal men and to take them for prey. He ranged into other countries, taking as many captives as he could and joining them to himself to build his army. He bound them, as Nimrod had done, by awful oaths, this system of sweeping the earth, and the SCHRECKLICHKEIT we mentioned.
261 Ether 14:17-18 Coriantumr “did slay both women and children, and he did burn the cities. And there went a fear of Shiz throughout all the land; yea, a cry went forth throughout the land—Who can stand before the army of Shiz? Behold, he sweepeth the earth before him!” That’s the policy of Schrecklichkeit, which the Germans cultivated very deliberately. When Coriantumr gained the victory, it was his turn to be the terror of the earth, and the people began to be frightened and began to flee before the army of Coriantumr.
261 Then the influence of the robber bands. Remember, Mormon said, finally there is no one left in the land except Lamanites and robbers. Well, what happens? All who won’t join the great armies are put to death. But what of those who escape? You’re not going to stay and wait for that. They’re naturally outlaws and have no allegiance to any king, hence no rights or claims to protection. To survive they band themselves together, since all are deserters whose heads are forfeit. Their behavior becomes very dangerous. Asia has at all times swarmed with robber bands, exactly as did this continent under the Jaredites. From time to time these robber bands have formed coalitions strong enough to ruin states and overturn thrones.
262 Notice, there was wonderful contention. Remember, Mormon says, there were wonderful contentions. The whole face of the land was one complete revolution, everywhere. The same condition [prevailed] with the Nephites. The only thing is that the Ether story goes back earlier and covers more. It’s neat packaging; it shows the system at work in one package. The Nephites and Lamanites were more civilized, remember. They didn’t like war too much, we’re told. They were very reluctant on both sides during the long war.
262 Ether 14: 1-2; Ether 15:22 This is what happened [with the Jaredites]. This typical and recurrent state of things vividly recalls the awful days of the Jaredite robbers, when every man slept on his sword to guard his property from every other man—and still had it stolen (Ether 14:1-2).. Well, there were the pathological aspects—the hideous disguises, the bloody oaths, the insane yells. “They were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine,” says Ether 15:22. One thing is the custom of collecting scalps, which came from there. The Indians didn’t originate it. Well it was Hamilton the hair-buyer who financed it in the French and Indian Wars here, but it came from Asia. As a custom you find it everywhere.
262 Ether 9:12 The insane wars led to complete annihilation on both sides, with the kings the last to go. We’ve mentioned that before. The same thing had happened earlier in the days of Akish when the population was reduced to thirty people (Ether 9:12). This all seems improbable to us, but two circumstances peculiar to Asiatic warfare explain the phenomenon which is parallel everywhere. First, every war is strictly a personal contest between kings. It must continue until one of the kings has fallen or is taken. Second, things are so arranged that the king must be the very last to fall, so in that case, there’s going to be extermination. The whole army exists for the sole purpose of defending his person—the shield wall that you read about in the Eddas. This is clearly seen in the game of chess, as we mentioned before. All the pieces are expendable except the king who can never be taken. Moghadam, a Hindu expert on chess, says, “The shah in chess is not killed and does not die. The game is terminated when the shah is pressed into a position from which he cannot escape [SHAH MAT means ‘the chief is dead’]. This is in line with all good traditions of chess playing, and back of it the tradition of capturing the king in war rather than slaying him whenever this could be accomplished.”
262 Ether 15:26 You’ll recall the many instances in the book of Ether in which kings were kept in prison for many years but not killed. This is the code of medieval chivalry. Even so, Shiz was willing to spare all of Coriantumr’s subjects if he could only behead Coriantumr. That was chess. That was typical. In Ether 15:26, Ether says “they were large and mighty men as the strength of men” that fought around their kings to the last man.
263 Ether 14:21 Now about these bones littering the land. What the Jaredites left behind them was a land littered with bones, for “so swift and speedy was the war, that the whole face of the land was covered with the bodies of the dead” (Ether 14:21). And a generation later, their bones lay scattered in the land northward, we read in Omni back in the Book of Mormon earlier.
263 Ether 8:2,3 Oh, I wanted to mention the daughter of Jared, the succession here. We should mention this here, too—this Salome episode, the story of Jared’s daughter. This was a later Jared who rebelled against his father and “did flatter many people, because of his cunning words, until he had gained half the kingdom, . . . and he did carry away his father into captivity [after defeating him in battle] and did make him serve in captivity” (Ether 8:2-3). This happens again and again in the book of Ether. In captivity the king raised other sons who finally turned the tables on their faithless brother and beat his forces in a night skirmish. It was a palace coup. There’s a marvelous description of that in Egyptian. They spared his life with his promise to give up the kingdom, but they failed to count on Jared’s daughter, an ambitious girl who had read, or at least asked her father if he had “not read the record which our fathers brought across the great deep?” All this was consciously carrying on the traditions of the Old World. She said have you read in the books we have brought with us of our fathers “across the great deep,” a very instructive account of those devices by which men of old got “kingdoms and great glory.”
264 Ether 8:9 See, this was the process. “Hath he not read the record which our fathers brought across the great deep? Behold, is there not an account concerning them of old, that they by their secret plans did obtain kingdoms and great glory? [Ether 8:9. This is the law of succession they followed] And now, therefore, let my father send for Akish, the son of Kimnor; and behold, I am fair, and I will dance before him, and I will please him, that he will desire me to wife; wherefore if he shall desire of thee that ye shall give unto him me to wife.”
264 Ether 9:5; Ether 8:17 Historically, the whole point of this story is that it’s highly unoriginal. It’s supposed to be. The damsel asks her father if he has read “the record” and refers to how they of old did this thing. It dealt with a pattern, and this is basic. What she tells him to do and what Akish carries out is the very essence of what they called “patternism” in Cambridge in the 1930s (that’s when I grew up). This is the pattern in which the princess dances. Well, there have been some good novels written about it—Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, for example. There are some wonderful things about it. Patternism is the pattern of royal succession that was followed, weird as it seems. It dealt with a pattern of action in which a princess dances before a romantic stranger, wins his heart, and induces him to behead the ruling king, marry her, and mount the throne. The sinister daughter of Jared works the plan for all it is worth. Having got her grandfather beheaded and her father on the throne, she proceeds to marry the murderer Akish. She wants him to be king now, so she gets her father murdered next. Akish, who presently having “sworn by the oath of the ancients [the old system again] . . . obtained the head of his father-in-law as he sat upon the throne” (Ether 9:5). And who put him up to the new crime? “It was the daughter of Jared who put it into his heart to search up these things of old, and Jared put it into the heart of Akish” (Ether 8:17). At first she influenced Akish through her father Jared, but after Akish became her husband, he would of course act directly under her influence to dispatch her next rival according to the ancient pattern. Ether insists this all goes back to “the ancients.”
264 Ether 9:12, 26,27 Now, what comes next? Akish, as soon as his successor became apparent, would be marked as the next victim, and he was. Surely enough, we find him so suspicious of his son that he locks him up in prison and starves him to death. But there were other sons, and so “there began to be a war.” This is the Mother Goddess who is permanent there, you see. As I said, it has been written up best by Mary Renault in some of her novels. She’s done a good job of it. “There began to be a war between the sons of Akish and Akish,” ending in the complete ruin of the kingdom (Ether 9:12). Many years later the old evil was revived by Heth who “began to embrace the secret plans again of old to destroy his father. ... He did dethrone his father, for he slew him with his own sword, and did reign in his stead” (Ether 9:26-27).
264 You notice how the book of Ether starts out, “... an account of those ancient inhabitants who were destroyed upon the face of this north country.” Nephi starts his story with the destruction of Jerusalem. Moroni ends his, of course, with destruction. It’s pretty sad. It has lessons for us here. I don’t think the Book of Mormon is fooling around.