Today's Favorite Verse: Ether 5:1

Today's Favorite Verse: Ether 5:1
"And now I, Moroni, have written the words which were commanded me, according to my memory; and I have told you the things which I have sealed up; therefore touch them not in order that ye may translate; for that thing is forbidden you, except by and by it shall be wisdom in God."

I wondered what was according to Moroni's memory? It must be what he was commanded to write. Was it everything in the Book of Ether? The parts he could include and what not to?

In Ether 4:4 he says he has written the very things which the brother of Jared saw.

"Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them; and I have written them. And he commanded me that I should seal them up; and he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof; wherefore I have sealed up the interpreters, according to the commandment of the Lord."
(Ether 4:5)

It sounds like Moroni wrote on the plates what the brother of Jared saw, then sealed them. The book of Ether itself must be from his memory. That is a lot of generations and names to remember. That is how oral histories have been handed down for generations.

As I was trying to research this idea I found that Hugh Nibley pointed out the book of Ether has many similarities with epic poetry from all over the world. "Epics are long poems that stem from oral tradition that are about heroic figures or the history of a nation, and Nibley argued that the book of Ether was originally an epic." "Modern archaeological evidence suggests that writings spread across Mesoamerica between 900 and 500 BC, meaning that there may not have been a written history of the Jaredite kings until late Jaredite times. If this is correct, that would mean that Ether was originally composed orally, and was only written down later. This would explained why, as Nibley has argued, the book of Ether is similar to other orally-composed epic poetry—because the author was using the kinds of conventions common in many oral cultures. These conventions would have been preserved in the text when Ether finally wrote the work down, but Moroni’s abridgement left the modern reader with only glimpses of this oral style."
(Scripture Central, "Why Is The Book of Ether an Epic?", Aug 20, 2020)

Day 3568