Right about now in Gospel Doctrine classes, everyone should nearing the Divided Kingdom stories, when Jereboam breaks off and takes 10 tribes with him, and we get two Israelite kingdoms (Israel and Judah) with two Israelite kings (Reheboam and Jereboam.)

And coincidentally  right about now, it gets darn hard to keep everyone straight. Instead of one  story, we’re now switching back and forth between narrative of the northern kingdom and narrative of the southern kingdom, like in Lord of the Rings where you have multiple groups to keep track of. Worse, actually, because kings get replaced left and right, there’s a series of prophets with odd names in the north and south, and frankly even for Bible nerds and academics, it’s hard to maintain a good mental picture of who’s who and when. And frankly, I’m not going to try on the Israelite side. (Here’s a chart of the kings, dates and passages from the Institute manual. Here’s one with more data and colorized according to empire, not sure where I got this from.) [Read more...]

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