Of Jaredites and Sumerians

Last updated on: September 18, 2026 at 3:24 pm by Dan Peterson

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Of Jaredites and Sumerians 2026-09-18T15:24:31-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Washington National Cathedral. Officially called the “Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington,” this is the most prominent Episcopal church in the United States. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo by iclifford)

Perhaps you’ve already had the chance to listen to the remarks that President Dallin H. Oaks delivered in Washington DC on Wednesday last. Despite my best intentions, I missed them. That is why it’s such good news that his speech is available online for your viewing and listening, and for mine: “President Oaks: Constitution ‘Compels’ Peacemaking, Protects Religious Freedom: The prophet speaks at Washington National Cathedral on the eve of Constitution Day”

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about Sir Winston Churchill, a personal hero of mine.

Following Churchill’s passing in January 1965, former President Dwight Eisenhower (who had, of course, come to know Churchill well during his tenure as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in the Second World War (and who later served as the thirty-fourth president of the United States) recalled a conversation in which Churchill had spoken about his own American heritage. “My mother was American and my ancestors were officers in Washington’s army. I am myself an English-speaking union,” Churchill reportedly said.

On 26 December 1941, addressing a joint session of Congress and the Supreme Court less than three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack, he observed that, “If my father had been an American, and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own. In that case, this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice.”

In his History of the English-Speaking Peoples as in several other places, Sir Winston, who, as some will no doubt remember, was no mere armchair historian, wrote at some length about the Constitution of the United States, for which he had enormous respect.

“A prime object of the Constitution,” he said, “was to be conservative; it was to guard the principles and machinery of state from capricious and ill-considered alteration.” In 1953, Churchill told an audience back at Westminster, in England at Westminster, including the Commonwealth’s new Queen, Elizabeth II, that “We must be very careful nowadays — I perhaps all the more because of my American forbears — in what we say about the American Constitution. I will therefore content myself with the observation that no better Constitution was ever better written in English.”

“Both here and across the ocean, over the generations and the centuries the idea of the division of power has lain at the root of our development. We do not want to live under a system dominated either by one man or one theme.”

A map of the ancient Middle East at about BC 2400. The “Sumerian city states” are shaded in purple. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Noel Hudson has published a new article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 70 (2026) : 25-40: “Were the Jaredites Sumerians or Influenced by Them? Evidence from the Oath of Akish”:

Abstract: This paper explores the oath sworn by Akish and his followers in Ether 8:13–15 as a possible remnant of ancient Sumerian legal and religious tradition. It draws on comparative evidence from early Mesopotamian oath formulae, including the Vulture Stele of Lagash and other Sumerian contractual texts. The study proposes that the structure of the oath sworn “by the God of heaven, and also by the heavens, and also by the earth” reflects a triadic invocation pattern consistent with Sumerian invocations of An, Enlil, and Ki. Modern commentators have noted Moroni’s interpretive Christianization of the Jaredite record. This analysis suggests that, beneath that redaction, the oath preserves linguistic and theological elements traceable to a Mesopotamian origin. The comparison illuminates both the antiquity of Jaredite culture and the deep continuity between Near Eastern oath traditions and Book of Mormon narrative patterns visible in the first recorded formation of a secret combination.

Detail of a Sumerian inscription from the twenty-sixth century before Christ (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Noel Hudson’s article is accompanied online by “Interpreting Interpreter: Akish’s Sumerian Oath,” which was written by Kyler Rasmussen:

This post is a summary of the article “ Were the Jaredites Sumerians or Influenced by Them? Evidence from the Oath of Akish” by Noel Hudson in Volume 70 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https:/interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.

A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://youtube.com/shorts/nT2lp_oJVa4.

The Takeaway: Hudson argues that Akish’s oath in Ether 8 follows a specific form found in oaths from ancient Sumeria, with Akish potentially invoking the Sumerian gods of heaven and earth (a triumvirate that in some ways mirrors the Godhead) to enforce his conspiratorial pledge.

This photograph of the Tuacahn stage actually doesn’t do justice to the red sandstone cliff that’s out of the picture to the left. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I was pleased to see that Michael Paulson, theater reporter for the New York Times, was recently at Tuacahn, near St. George, Utah, for a performance of Les Misérables: See this, and also, if you can, this.

Les Misérables is, of course, a great musical and (in my judgment) a very significant one. But I’m particularly delighted to see Tuacahn receiving such national attention. It’s one of Utah’s remarkable treasures, not as well known beyond my adopted home state and our region as I think it ought to be, and I wish every success for it.

Alfred Russel Wallace, shown in roughly 1895 (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

I’ve finally finished reading Michael A. Flannery, Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2018). And I must say that I found it much more interesting and much more important than I had expected it to be. I commend it to the notice of anybody who has an interest in evolutionary biology, the history (and nature) of science, the relationship of religion and science, or Victorian and Edwardian England. I come away from the book not only with a greater understanding of the life and thought of Alfred Russel Wallace but with a conviction that he is more significant and more enduringly relevant than I would ever have guessed.

I’ve already shared some passages from Nature’s Prophet here. I’ll be sharing more over the next few days and weeks. I don’t want to overdo it, but I marked a lot of them.

The Manila Philippines Temple was the first to be built in the country. (LDS Media Library). Since its dedication many more have been built or are under construction.

So that you needn’t spend so much time on it yourself, I make it my solemn and unpleasant duty to visit the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ from time to time and to share some of its unappealing — nay, downright infuriating and disgusting — contents with you. Here are two recent items of which you should probably be aware: