The 4th Nephi Generations

Yes, long lived, but wasn’t there three Amos’s?

CRTL+F ‘Amos’ only turns up the two.

Are you sure it’s the same Nephi throughout?
Mormon tells us that everybody had died who was there during Christ’s visit, except the three. Then ten years later he records that Nephi died.

Never mind, it doesn’t say that. I must have been misremembering something – perhaps some speculation based on the ‘age of man’ that the disciples were going to live to was three score and ten.

I’ve often said that in addition to maps, I’d like a genealogical chart and a visual guide for the Book of Mormon. Maybe someday I can access the heavenly library.

Whenever I read these things about crazy long years I wonder if we’re just working with different reference points. We’re the prophet historians of the BoM also astrologists? I realize some cultures had very advanced calendars, but did the common man reference that? Were they accessible to the BoM authors?

Imagine the plains Indian of the Americas. How did they track years? Would it have been that different from the average person?

My assumption is years were most easily tracked with simple things like winter coming. So an early winter, little ice age period, changes in seasons based on volcano activities etc would have had an effect on the number of years.

But still the dudes much have been old. Or it’s likely all of that with some math errors that get handed down in the game of tablet telephone.

@ Sute,
I’m not disagreeing with you about possible differences in calendar, but I feel like it’s pretty clear throughout the Book of Mormon that they followed a Jewish (lunar) calendar at least until the advent of Christ, and also there are references to an understanding that it’s the earth that moves, not the sun.
There are some pretty solid indications that most of the time the Nephite/Lamanite civilization was a pretty mathematically advanced civilization. Of course they may have had a very different calendar than we imagine, but if you’re going off ancient Native Americans, they, too, had buildings and even entire complexes that tell stories using the different positions of the sun throughout the lunar year.
I may, of course, be totally wrong in my assumptions there, but it seems quite likely that their years roughly corresponded with astrological movement and not weather events.

I get it that some specialized aspects of various cultures had very developed calendars. I’m just saying I suspect that to most of them it wasn’t lived on a daily basis. Perhaps.

Google Chief John Smith. Some claim he was 137 years old. Heck, sometimes I forget how old I am and we live by a calendar every day.

There’s no doubt in my mind that they weren’t the best with dates in the minutae even if they might have been (or some sect in their culture) very aware of certain dates and astrological events tied to big events.

When I see one age being old and one being a lot older in scripture I just view them that way. This guy was old, and this other guy was really old. He was like 150 years! Ancient! And then it gets handed down that way.