The New Jerusalem

Standing disclosure — KJV-overlap material. This page reports verbal correspondence with the King James text as textual fact, including where the correspondence follows the KJV’s English translation. What that correspondence implies about the origin of the Book of Mormon text — in any direction — is an external question outside this wiki’s scope.

The record’s fullest treatment of the New Jerusalem is a prophecy of Ether that Moroni records near the very end of the plates (Ether 13:2–11) — in the wider corpus, Revelation 21 treats the same city at greater length (mapped below). It names a holy city to be built “upon this land,” distinguishes it sharply from the old Jerusalem that Lehi left, and ties it to the remnant of the seed of Joseph. The risen Lord had already named the same city, first in reading order, at the temple in Bountiful (3 Nephi 20:22; 21:23–24). This page maps what the two texts say, pins the term’s exact distribution, and reports the one thing they verifiably share — the title itself — as a title-term connection, holding the larger claim that they are a single paired doctrine to a hedged interpretation.

Where this lands

The 3 Nephi build deferred the New Jerusalem’s full treatment to here. When the risen Lord named the city at Bountiful, Zion’s page noted that the term occurs nowhere earlier in the record and that its fuller counterpart is at Ether 13:3–10 — carried on this page. It does not restate 3 Nephi’s covenant mechanics (those remain on The Covenant of Israel); it maps the two-cities doctrine that Ether states most fully and that 3 Nephi names first.

Ether’s vision: a city for a chosen land (Ether 13:2–11)

Moroni opens his final movement by reporting the prophecies for which Ether was cast out. The land itself is the premise: “after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord” (Ether 13:2). Onto that chosen land the vision sets a city:

Ether 13:3: “And that it was the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven, and the holy sanctuary of the Lord.”

The text then fixes the prophet and his subject: “Behold, Ether saw the days of Christ, and he spake concerning a New Jerusalem upon this land” (Ether 13:4). The city is “built up upon this land, unto the remnant of the seed of Joseph, for which things there has been a type” (Ether 13:6) — the Joseph type is handled below. At the vision’s climax the city descends and its inhabitants are named: “And then cometh the New Jerusalem; and blessed are they who dwell therein, for it is they whose garments are white through the blood of the Lamb; and they are they who are numbered among the remnant of the seed of Joseph, who were of the house of Israel” (Ether 13:10).

The two Jerusalems (the vision’s spine)

The organizing move of Ether 13 is a deliberate distinction between two cities — and the text draws it in its own voice, not by a reader’s inference. Old Jerusalem, the city Lehi left, is not renamed; it is rebuilt:

Ether 13:5: “And he spake also concerning the house of Israel, and the Jerusalem from whence Lehi should come—after it should be destroyed it should be built up again, a holy city unto the Lord; wherefore, it could not be a new Jerusalem for it had been in a time of old; but it should be built up again, and become a holy city of the Lord; and it should be built unto the house of Israel—”

That clause — “it could not be a new Jerusalem for it had been in a time of old” (13:5) — is the text disqualifying the old city from the name on grounds of age, while still promising its restoration. The New Jerusalem, by contrast, is built “upon this land” for “the remnant of the seed of Joseph” (13:6), “like unto the Jerusalem of old” but distinct from it (13:8). The vision’s close then pairs the two, each with its own blessed inhabitants:

• The New Jerusalem (13:10): comes on “this land,” its dwellers “whose garments are white through the blood of the Lamb”, “numbered among the remnant of the seed of Joseph”.
• The Jerusalem of old (13:11): “then also cometh the Jerusalem of old”, its inhabitants “washed in the blood of the Lamb”, “scattered and gathered in from the four quarters of the earth… partakers of the fulfilling of the covenant which God made with their father, Abraham.”

Two cities on two lands, two gathered peoples, one cleansing “blood of the Lamb.” For the old city’s history in the record — Lehi’s departure, its destruction, its promised return — see Jerusalem.

The term across the corpus

The title “New Jerusalem” is rare and tightly clustered. A case-insensitive search of the frozen record returns eight verses, and no others:

Two facts fall out of the search, both reported as textual facts. First, seven of the eight carry the capitalized proper title; the eighth (Ether 13:5) is lowercase — and it is lowercase precisely because it is denying the old city the name (“it could not be a new Jerusalem”). Counting the term’s occurrences in Ether 13, then, gives five verses (13:3, 4, 5, 6, 10), of which four name the city and one refuses the name to another city. Second, the term’s first occurrence in the record, in reading order, is 3 Nephi 20:22 — where the risen Lord first names the future city — even though Ether’s is the older prophecy and the fuller exposition. Moroni records the older, fuller vision near the record’s end; the reader meets the name first at Bountiful.

The title-term connection

[Textual] — a shared title, rendered on the term. The one string Ether 13:3 and 3 Nephi 20:22 verifiably share is the two-word proper name “New Jerusalem” — a title, not a distinctive turn of phrase. The connection is registered on that title term, and on nothing larger:

• 3 Nephi 20:22: “this people will I establish in this land, unto the fulfilling of the covenant which I made with your father Jacob; and it shall be a New Jerusalem.”
• Ether 13:3: “it was the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven, and the holy sanctuary of the Lord.”

Both quotes are verbatim from their own verse. The name is the whole of the verifiable contact; whether the two discourses form a single paired doctrine is a separate, interpretive question, treated next.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. The two texts can be read as partner discourses — one prophecy in two witnesses — describing the same city. The evidence for the reading is real and stacks up: the same title (3 Nephi 20:22; Ether 13:3); the same location, “this land” / “upon this land” (3 Nephi 20:22; Ether 13:4, 6); the same recipient tied to the covenant with Jacob and the remnant of Joseph (3 Nephi 20:22; Ether 13:6, 10); the same Gentile-assisted building in 3 Nephi’s fuller form (“a city, which shall be called the New Jerusalem”, 3 Nephi 21:23–24); and the text’s own bridge — “Ether saw the days of Christ” (Ether 13:4) — placing Ether’s vision and Christ’s declaration on the same subject. Against over-reading: the verifiable shared string is only the title (see the record above), the two accounts differ in emphasis (Ether’s descends “out of heaven” and pairs it with the rebuilt old city; 3 Nephi’s is built up by a gathered, Gentile-assisted people), and neither text says it is glossing the other. That the name is shared and the referent is the same land and covenant are textual facts; that the two are one deliberately paired doctrine is the reading, offered to weigh.

The seed of Joseph, and its type

Ether roots the city’s people in a worked type: as Joseph brought his father into Egypt to preserve him, so “the Lord brought a remnant of the seed of Joseph out of the land of Jerusalem, that he might be merciful unto the seed of Joseph that they should perish not” (Ether 13:7), and “the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land” (13:8). The New Jerusalem’s inhabitants are then “numbered among the remnant of the seed of Joseph” (13:10).

This “remnant of the seed of Joseph” strand is a corpus-wide covenant chain, not a New-Jerusalem-only phrase; its home is The Covenant of Israel and Joseph of Egypt, where the type itself is registered — (Ether 13:7 ↔ Alma 46:23, on Joseph of Egypt) beside the older interpretive alma-remnant-of-joseph (Alma 46:23 ↔ 2 Nephi 9:53). It is cross-linked here, not re-registered on this page.

Correspondence with Revelation 21

Ether’s New-Jerusalem prophecy runs alongside Revelation at three points — two in the closing vision of chapter 21, one in the sealed multitude of chapter 7. Both are frozen corpus books; the correspondence is reported here as textual fact.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The city descends.

• Ether 13:3: “…it was the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven, and the holy sanctuary of the Lord.”
• Revelation 21:2: “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

New Jerusalem stands at twelve verses in the corpus — Ether 13:3, 13:4, 13:5, 13:6, 13:10; 3 Nephi 20:22, 21:23, 21:24; Moses 7:62; Articles of Faith 1:10; Revelation 3:12, 21:2 — and in the Bible only in Revelation (verified by a case-insensitive search of the corpus). Differences, reported and not graded: Revelation adds the bride simile, which Ether does not carry; Ether attaches the holy sanctuary of the Lord and locates the place “upon this land” (13:4, 13:6, 13:8), which Revelation does not; and Ether 13:5 distinguishes the new city from the Jerusalem of old, a distinction Revelation 21 does not draw.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The new heaven and the new earth, in the singular.

• Ether 13:9: “And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new.”
• Revelation 21:1: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away…”

The singular formula stands at exactly two verses in the corpus (verified by a search of the corpus). The plural — new heavens and a new earth — stands at Isaiah 65:17 and 2 Peter 3:13, and Isaiah 66:22 has “the new heavens and the new earth”; so the singular pairing is confined to Ether 13:9 and Revelation 21:1. Both attach a passing-away clause. Reported and not graded: Ether’s “all things have become new” (13:9) is matched not at Revelation 21:1 but at 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new” — a comparable clause standing also at 2 Corinthians 5:17.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () Who dwells in the city.

• Ether 13:10: “And then cometh the New Jerusalem; and blessed are they who dwell therein, for it is they whose garments are white through the blood of the Lamb…”
• Revelation 7:14: “…have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The compound blood of the Lamb is confined within the corpus to the Book of Mormon and Revelation (1 Nephi 12:11, Alma 13:11, 34:36, Ether 13:10, 13:11, Mormon 9:6, Revelation 7:14, 12:11; verified by a search of the corpus). Reported and not graded: Ether reads “through the blood”, Revelation “in the blood”; Ether names garments, Revelation robes; Ether’s clause is a beatitude on the city’s dwellers, Revelation’s an angel’s identification of those who “came out of great tribulation”. Revelation attaches its own beatitude to entering the city at 22:14.

Diction familiar from beyond the record

One phrase in the vision echoes the wording of a New-Testament passage that this page does not register:

• “there are they who were first, who shall be last; and there are they who were last, who shall be first” (Ether 13:12), which the verse itself flags as “the scripture which saith” — a first/last saying familiar from Matthew 19:30.

Where the vision breaks off

Moroni carries Ether’s New-Jerusalem prophecy to verse 12 and then halts, in his own editorial voice: “And I was about to write more, but I am forbidden” (Ether 13:13). What follows is not more of the vision but its aftermath — Ether “esteemed… as naught, and cast… out,” hiding “in the cavity of a rock by day” to watch the destruction come (13:13). The New-Jerusalem material is thus, by the record’s own testimony, a deliberately truncated disclosure: the fullest treatment the record gives is also expressly cut short (the corpus’s other extended New-Jerusalem vision, Revelation 21, is not similarly truncated). Ether the prophet, the cavity of the rock, and the destruction he watches belong to Ether.

Key references / appearances

Related

Concepts / places: Zion (the term’s nearest neighbor; New Jerusalem is Zion’s record-first sibling) · Jerusalem (the old city, its destruction and promised rebuilding) · The Covenant of Israel (3 Nephi’s covenant mechanics; the seed-of-Joseph chain) · Joseph of Egypt (the remnant-of-Joseph type)

People: Ether (the prophet of the vision) · Moroni (its abridger, who cuts it short) · Messiah (the risen Lord who names the city at Bountiful)

Connections: · · ·

Pages: Index · Connections

Sources

The Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 20–21; Ether 13) supplies the page’s core quotations. In the section Correspondence with Revelation 21 the page also quotes verbatim, for side-by-side display, Revelation 21:1, 21:2 and 21:5, Revelation 7:14, and Isaiah 66:22, and cites by name Moses 7:62, Articles of Faith 1:10, Revelation 3:12 / 12:11 / 22:14, Isaiah 65:17, 2 Peter 3:13, 2 Corinthians 5:17, and (within the record) 1 Nephi 12:11, Alma 13:11 / 34:36, and Mormon 9:6. All double-quoted spans are drawn verbatim from the frozen source text. The first/last saying named in the section Diction familiar from beyond the record (Matthew 19:30) is cited by name only, is not quoted, and has no connection registered to it on this page (registering that parallel is future lane work).

Every quote on this page is taken verbatim from the source text (3 Nephi 20, 3 Nephi 21, Ether 13, Revelation 21, Revelation 7, Isaiah 66), each checked against the frozen source. This page registers exactly one connection (), and it is deliberately narrow: the verifiable contact between Ether 13 and 3 Nephi 20–21 is the shared title “New Jerusalem,” so the record is rendered on that title term and nothing larger. The claim that the two are a single paired doctrine is set apart as a ⚖️ interpretation, offered to weigh. The seed-of-Joseph type is hosted on The Covenant of Israel / Joseph of Egypt and cross-linked, not re-registered. The New-Testament diction of Ether 13:9, 12 is named as a fact about wording and asserts nothing; external, real-world questions about any such city are out of scope.