In order
Timelines
Dates in the ancient world are estimates, and pretending otherwise is the fastest way to lose a careful reader. Anything before the divided monarchy is given as a range; the Restoration is dated to the day, because for that period we have the documents.
The Old Testament
From the patriarchs to the return from exile — the spine of Israel's history, with the prophets placed against the kings they actually spoke to.
Patriarchal dates are traditional and widely disputed; from the divided monarchy onward, Assyrian and Babylonian records let dates be fixed within a year or two.
c. 2000–1800 BC
Abraham
Called out of Ur, then out of Haran. The covenant is given in three instalments — land, seed, and blessing to all nations — and is renewed with Isaac and Jacob. The Book of Abraham adds the vision of the intelligences and the council.
Genesis 12:1–3 · Genesis 17:1–8 · Abraham 2:9–11 · Abraham 3:22–23
c. 1900–1700 BC
Jacob and Joseph; Israel goes down into Egypt
Jacob is renamed Israel after wrestling at Peniel. Joseph is sold into Egypt and rises to administer it, and the family of seventy settles in Goshen — the beginning of four centuries the Bible passes over almost in silence.
c. 1450 or c. 1250 BC
The Exodus
The two candidate dates correspond to two readings of 1 Kings 6:1 and of Egyptian archaeology; the Church takes no position. Passover, Sinai, the law, the tabernacle, and forty years in the wilderness follow.
c. 1010–970 BC
David
Jerusalem taken and made the capital; the ark brought up; the dynastic promise given through Nathan. The messianic hope from here on is a hope about David's house.
c. 970–931 BC
Solomon and the first temple
The temple built and dedicated. On his death the kingdom divides: Israel in the north under Jeroboam, Judah in the south under Rehoboam.
c. 740–700 BC
Isaiah in Jerusalem
Called in the year King Uzziah died. He counsels Ahaz and Hezekiah through the Assyrian crisis, and gives the Immanuel sign, the child born, and — in chapters 40–55 — the Servant Songs.
722 BC
Samaria falls; the northern kingdom is scattered
Assyria deports the ten tribes. Their loss and eventual return becomes one of scripture's long unfinished threads, and an article of faith.
c. 626–586 BC
Jeremiah, and the last years of Judah
Jeremiah preaches through the reigns of Josiah's successors and the final siege. Lehi is among the prophets of this moment — 1 Nephi opens in the first year of Zedekiah.
c. 600 BC
Lehi leaves Jerusalem
The Book of Mormon record begins. Lehi's family departs into the wilderness with the brass plates; Nephi's vision of the tree of life follows within a few years.
586 BC
Jerusalem destroyed; the exile begins
Babylon burns the temple and deports the population. Ezekiel prophesies among the exiles — including the two sticks that become one in the hand.
538 BC
Cyrus's decree; the return
The Persians permit the exiles home. The second temple is finished about 516 BC — smaller, and without the ark.
c. 430 BC
Malachi
The last prophet of the Hebrew canon: tithing, and the promise of Elijah before the great and dreadful day. Moroni quoted these verses to Joseph Smith with a slight but significant variation.
Malachi 3:8–10 · Malachi 4:5–6 · Joseph Smith—History 1:36–39
Sources
- Bible Dictionary, 'Chronology' — The Church's own summary of the dating problems
- Old Testament Seminary Teacher Manual
The life and ministry of Jesus Christ
Birth to ascension, with the Bountiful ministry in its place — arranged by event rather than by Gospel, since no one Gospel gives the whole sequence.
Herod the Great died in 4 BC, which places the Nativity around 5–4 BC; the calendar we use was calculated in the sixth century and is off by a few years. The length of the ministry — one year or three — depends on how many Passovers John records.
c. 5–4 BC
The Nativity
Announced to shepherds; and, on the other side of the world, marked by a day and a night and a day with no darkness, exactly as Samuel the Lamanite had said five years before.
c. AD 8
In the temple at twelve
The only episode we have between infancy and the ministry. 'Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' — the first recorded words, and already an identity claim.
c. AD 29
Baptism and the wilderness
Baptized by John in Jordan, with the Father's voice and the Spirit as a dove — one of the clearest scriptural demonstrations that the Godhead is three persons. Then forty days, and three temptations.
c. AD 29–30
The Galilean ministry
The Twelve called; the Sermon on the Mount; the parables of the kingdom; the feeding of the five thousand and the Bread of Life discourse that emptied the crowd out.
c. AD 30
Caesarea Philippi and the Transfiguration
Peter's confession and the promise of the keys; then the mount, where Moses and Elias appear and the keys are given — the same pattern that would repeat in Kirtland eighteen centuries later.
Passover, c. AD 30–33
The last week
The triumphal entry; the temple cleansed; the Last Supper and the sacrament instituted; Gethsemane; the trials; Golgotha; the tomb. The Atonement is not a single moment in this sequence but spans the garden and the cross.
Third day
The Resurrection
Mary Magdalene first; then Emmaus; then the upper room, where He asks for food to prove He is not a spirit; then Thomas; then the shore of Galilee; then five hundred at once.
Forty days later
The Ascension
Forty days of teaching 'the things pertaining to the kingdom of God,' the great commission, and then two men in white apparel with a promise about the manner of His return.
Later that year
Bountiful
After the destruction and three days of darkness, the voice, and then the descent. About twenty-five hundred people come forward one by one. He teaches for the better part of three days, gives the sacrament, blesses the children, and calls twelve disciples.
The Book of Mormon
A thousand years of Nephite and Lamanite history, plus the Jaredite record that runs underneath it, with the doctrinal set pieces marked.
Dates are the ones the record gives itself, keyed first to the departure from Jerusalem, then to the sign of Christ's birth. The Jaredite chronology is not given in years at all and can only be placed relative to the Tower.
c. 600 BC
Lehi's family leaves Jerusalem
The vision of the tree of life follows in the wilderness, and Nephi's interpretation of it — in which the tree is identified with the condescension and love of God.
c. 588–570 BC
The land of promise; Lehi's last sermon
2 Nephi 2 — opposition in all things, the Fall as a step forward, and agency defined. The densest single chapter of doctrine in the volume.
c. 148–120 BC
Abinadi, Alma, and the waters of Mormon
Abinadi expounds Isaiah 53 before King Noah's court and is burned; Alma believes, flees, and baptizes at Mormon — where the baptismal covenant is stated in terms of what you owe other people.
c. 124 BC
King Benjamin's address
Delivered from a tower at the temple in Zarahemla, with the people in tents facing their doors toward it. The natural man, the beggar, and a covenant that gives the people a new name.
c. 74 BC
Alma among the Zoramites
Alma 32, on the hill Onidah, to people turned out of their own synagogues for being poor. Faith as an experiment, and the word as a seed.
c. 74 BC
Amulek and Alma on the Atonement
Alma 34 on the infinite and eternal sacrifice; Alma 40–42 to Corianton on the resurrection, restoration, and how mercy can operate without robbing justice.
c. 6 BC
Samuel the Lamanite on the wall
Five years' notice of the sign of the birth, and a description of the signs of the death. Also the plainest Book of Mormon statement that agency requires knowledge.
AD 34
The destruction, and the visit at Bountiful
Three hours of tempest, three days of darkness, and then the small voice heard three times. Christ descends, and about twenty-five hundred people each touch the wounds.
AD 34–201
Two centuries with no contention
Four verses cover a hundred and seventy years of peace — 'there were no contentions and disputations among them' — and then the account of the decline resumes.
c. AD 385–421
Cumorah, and Moroni alone
Mormon abridges the record and writes the letters on faith, hope and charity that his son preserves. Moroni finishes the Jaredite record, adds his own book, and seals it up with a promise.
Sources
- Book of Mormon chronological summary — Dates as given in the text's own footers
The Restoration
1820 to 1846, day by day where the documents allow it — which, for this period, is most of the time.
These dates come from contemporary documents published in the Joseph Smith Papers. Where an account was written years afterward, that is noted.
Spring 1820
The First Vision
Joseph Smith, fourteen, goes into the woods after reading James 1:5. Four primary accounts survive — 1832, 1835, 1838–39 (the canonised one), and 1842 — each written for a different audience, and each adding something.
21–22 September 1823
Moroni's visits
Three times in the night and once the next day. Moroni quotes Malachi with a variation, Isaiah 11, Joel 2 and Acts 3 — placing the whole errand inside prophecy already on the books.
22 September 1827
The plates received
After four annual visits to the hill. Translation begins in earnest in 1828 with Martin Harris — and stops when the 116 pages are lost.
7 April – June 1829
The translation
Oliver Cowdery arrives as scribe and the bulk of the Book of Mormon is dictated in roughly sixty-five working days. D&C 9 comes out of Oliver's own failed attempt to translate.
15 May 1829
The Aaronic Priesthood restored
John the Baptist, on the bank of the Susquehanna near Harmony, Pennsylvania. His words are preserved verbatim as D&C 13. The Melchizedek Priesthood follows within weeks, from Peter, James and John.
June 1829
The witnesses
Three witnesses see the plates with an angel; eight handle them without one. All eleven had reasons to recant later — several left the Church — and not one of them did.
The Testimony of Three Witnesses · The Testimony of Eight Witnesses · 2 Nephi 27:12
26 March 1830
The Book of Mormon published
Five thousand copies from E. B. Grandin's press in Palmyra, paid for by Martin Harris's mortgaged farm.
6 April 1830
The Church organised
Fayette, New York, with six members of record. D&C 20 and 21 are given the same day — including the Lord's instruction on how the members are to receive a prophet's word.
16 February 1832
The Vision
Given to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon at Hiram, Ohio, while revising John 5:29. Twelve or so men watched them for hours. What became D&C 76 replaced a two-outcome heaven with three degrees of glory.
27–28 December 1832 and 3 January 1833
The Olive Leaf
D&C 88, on the light that proceeds from God to fill immensity, the law by which all things are governed, and the command to establish a house of learning.
27 February 1833
The Word of Wisdom
Given in Kirtland, 'not by commandment or constraint,' in a period when temperance societies were common and tobacco use in the School of the Prophets was a practical problem.
3 April 1836
Keys restored in the Kirtland Temple
One week after the dedication, and probably on Passover. Moses, Elias and Elijah deliver the keys of the gathering, of the Abrahamic covenant, and of sealing — which is what makes temple work possible at all.
20 March 1839
Liberty Jail
Four and a half months in a basement cell in Missouri, after an extermination order. The letter Joseph wrote from it becomes D&C 121–123 — including the harshest statement in the canon about unrighteous dominion.
27 June 1844
Carthage
Joseph and Hyrum Smith killed by a mob at the jail. John Taylor, wounded in the same room, wrote what became D&C 135.
February 1846
The exodus west
The Saints leave Nauvoo across the frozen Mississippi, after endowing as many as possible in a temple they knew they were about to abandon.
Sources
- The Joseph Smith Papers — The documentary record, in full
- Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth
- Gospel Topics Essay, 'First Vision Accounts'