Last Oct I proposed a unique reading of Ether 4 wherein God says this about the Gentiles:

They [the “interpreters” through which one may read “the very things which the Brother of Jared saw”] shall not go forth unto the gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord.

And in that day that they shall exercise faith in me, saith the Lord, even as the Brother of Jared did, that they may become sanctified in me, then will I manifest unto them the things which the Brother of Jared saw, even to the unfolding unto them all my revelations,

My proposed reading is that the Gentiles will someday do exactly what the BoJ did in climbing the Endless Stair of Moria. In so doing, they “shall exercise faith…even as the Brother of Jared did”. At that time, I posited that at the top of the Stair they would encounter God just as the BoJ and Gandalf did. At the very least, I think they will find the interpreters that were sealed up through which one may read the record that tells the things that the BoJ saw. Moroni tells us:

Behold, I have written upon these plates the very things which the Brother of Jared saw.  And there never were greater things made manifest than those which were made manifest unto the Brother of Jared. Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them. And I have written them.  And he commanded me that I should seal them up. And he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof. Wherefore I have sealed up the interpreters according to the commandment of the Lord.

The interpreters are the last thing mentioned before Moroni continues to say the first quote I posted above, meaning that the interpreters are the “they” when Moroni says “they shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until…”

As mentioned on this blog before, I am convinced that the Gentiles are the Dwarves of Tolkien’s world and it is they who will one day re-enter Moria and fulfill the promises of Moroni 4. I also suspect that they will do this as reborn Mormons. In this post I’ll build out this lore a little more.

Moria is a huge deal to dwarves. It is the place where Durin the 1st, upon awakening, traveled to establish a domain for his people. This is considered something akin to a homeland for the Longbeard dwarves. I’d wager it is just as important to dwarves as a place like Gondolin or Tirion is to certain elves.

In fact, after the dwarves were driven from Moria by Durin’s Bane, it was always a chief objective to some day retake it. There were attempts over the years that all failed, but the dwarves had no doubt that someday Moria would be theirs again. In fact, near the end of the 3rd Age, there is a prophecy about that very event found in The History of Middle Earth:

“It was prophesied (by the Dwarves), when Dain Ironfoot took the kingship in Third Age 2941 (after the Battle of Five Armies), that in his direct line there would one day appear a Durin VII – but he would be the last.”

Indeed, this Durin VII is even listed in the dwarvish genealogy that appears in the LoTR appendices as authoritatively set down by Gimli to Aragorn:

Take note: the line from Thorin III to Durin VII is not a single line but two vertical dots; and also his name is in parentheses and there is no date for his birth. The assumption is all of that indicates that Durin VII had as yet not come forth and while his future appearance was considered inevitable and important enough to be included in the genealogy, the timing was unknown.

As for the fate of the dwarves after the 3rd Age, Tolkien leaves us a few notes that the dwarves eventually dwindle and are “ended”. In one version he says:

“And the line of Dain and the wealth and renown of the kingship endured in Erebor until the world grew old, and the days of the Dwarves were ended.”

A second version emends as follows:

“And the line of Dain prospered, and the wealth and renown of the kingship was renewed, until there arose again for the last time an heir of that House that bore the name of Durin, and he returned to Moria; and there was light again in deep places, and the ringing of hammers and the harping of harps, until the world grew old and the Dwarves failed and the days of Durin’s race were ended.”

The key difference between the two is the appearance of Durin VII and his resettling of Moria. Like I said, it’s a really big deal to reclaim that homeland and restore it so the dwarvish history, to be resolved, must include this event.

But in another part of HoME, Samwise gives us a very interesting tidbit through a conversation he had with his daughter Elanor. It’s part of an odd bit of writing where Samwise is recording a Q&A based on questions his children have about various topics. Elanor asks:

Q. Dwarves, etc. Frodo-lad says he likes them best. What happened to Gimli? Have the Mines of Moria been opened again? Are there any Orcs left?

Samwise responds:

A. Gimli: he came back to work for the King, as he said, and he brought many of his folk from the North, and they worked in Gondor so long that they got used to it, and they settled there, up in the White Mountains not far from the City. Gimli goes once a year to the Glittering Caves. How do I know? Information from Mr. Peregrin, who often goes back to Minas Tirith, where he is very highly thought of. Moria: I have heard no news. Maybe the foretelling about Durin is not for our time. Dark places still need a lot of cleaning up. I guess it will take a lot of trouble and daring deeds yet to root out the evil creatures from the halls of Moria. For there are certainly plenty of Orcs left in such places. It is not likely that we shall ever get quite rid of them.

Before we analyze that nugget, let’s remember Sam’s experience as the Fellowship flees Moria. Bereft of Gandalf by now and in need of haste to get far from pursuing orcs, Gimli insists that they pause to admire the Mirrormere, Kheled-zaram:

‘That is Durin’s Stone!’ cried Gimli. ‘I cannot pass without turning aside for a moment to look at the wonder of the dale!’

‘Be swift then!’ said Aragorn, …

Beside the standing stone Gimli halted and looked up. It was cracked and weather-worn, and the faint runes upon its side could not be read. ‘This pillar marks the spot where Durin first looked in the Mirrormere,’ said the dwarf. ‘Let us look ourselves once, ere we go!’

They stooped over the dark water. At first they could see nothing. Then slowly they saw the forms of the encircling mountains mirrored in a profound blue, and the peaks were like plumes of white flame above them; beyond there was a space of sky. There like jewels sunk in the deep shone glinting stars, though sunlight was in the sky above. Of their own stooping forms no shadow could be seen.

‘O Kheled-zâram fair and wonderful!’ said Gimli. ‘There lies the Crown of Durin till he wakes. Farewell!’ He bowed, and turned away, and hastened back up the greensward to the road again.

‘What did you see?’ said Pippin to Sam, but Sam was too deep in thought to answer.

It could be that Sam was merely too impressed by the beauty of what he saw to speak but I think the tale suggests he saw something more than a starry reflection during the day and that he perhaps has some connection to that place and to the dwarves. This is me freestyling here, obviously. But I like that connection to Sam’s reply to Elanor because the fate of the dwarves and specifically their return to Moria is something he cares about and has put thought into as evidenced by his knowledge of the prophecy regarding Durin VII returning there someday. Sam posits that Durin’s return is perhaps “not for our time” and that there are still many orcs that will need rooting out to make it possible.

As a result of all this information, I now see Durin’s final appearance in two possible ways. Look back at what I quoted earlier about what became of Erebor and Dain’s kingdom resulting in Durin VII’s return. It could be that has already happened and from our perspective, it is in the long ago past. Or, I could read it more like prophecy or supposition of what even today HAS YET to occur rather than a recounting of what has already transpired.

If it has already happened, then I suspect Durin VII’s chief goal in doing so was to achieve what Samwise says: “a lot of cleaning up” of the dark halls of Moria by rooting out the orcs and making it a place to inhabit again. This fits with another statement about what those 4th Age dwarves were up to. Apparently they spent a lot of time and energy looking for every orc hideout they could find and cleaning them out. But even there, the story strongly implies they did not find all of them, only that the ones they did find were cleaned out. If Durin VII achieved this for Moria, I would further posit that he repaired the Stair and Tower that was destroyed during Gandalf’s battle with the balrog. After that labor, the dwarves “were ended”. Even so, they will yet return to Moria and there find those “interpreters” mentioned by Moroni.

The other way to view it is that Durin VII’s return is still a future event. In fact, I could see Durin VII showing up in our day to lead those Gentile-Mormons to do what they need to do as prophesied in the BoM. You might say that’s not possible since the Durins were reborn dwarves and the dwarves “were ended” per Tolkien. But I’ll let you in on a lesser known tidbit about how Durin can return:

The Dwarves add that at that time Aule gained them also this privilege that distinguished them from Elves and Men: that the spirit of each of the Fathers (such as Durin) should, at the end of the long span of life allotted to Dwarves, fall asleep, but then lie in a tomb of his own body, at rest, and there its weariness and any hurts that had befallen it should be amended. Then after long years he should arise and take up his kingship again. The second version is very much briefer, and on the question of the ‘rebirth’ of the Fathers says only: ‘… the reappearance, at long intervals, of the person of one of the Dwarf-fathers, in the lines of their kings – e.g. especially Durin – is not when examined probably one of rebirth, but of the preservation of the body of a former King Durin (say) to which at intervals his spirit would return.

The above quote appears to be mutually exclusive with what was highlighted before since Durin VII was prophesied to come forth as a reborn dwarf through Dain’s direct line, and indeed, the canon version of Durin’s lives is actually one of rebirth rather than reawakening. HoME presents this as Tolkien exploring different ways to get Durin to come back 7 times. But I think it’s actually two different mechanisms for the same purpose. Meaning, Durins 2-7 were indeed reborn into a new dwarvish body, but that, unlike Durins 1-6, Durin 7 did not die but merely laid down to “sleep” and he will take up his body again “after long years”. He perhaps sleeps even now in Moria and I could see the Gentiles going there to wake him or I could see him coming forth to lead them there himself.

Either way, I don’t think the world has seen the last of Durin the Deathless.

But the key takeaway from this post is that I am more convinced than ever that what the Gentiles must do to receive the sealed record of the BoJ is to re-enter the same gates of Moria that he did and there find the interpreters with which they can read Moroni’s sealed record.

I’ll tie in some of Bill’s lore here since we have a call out to “Elanor”, Samwise’s daughter, and that word is a pretty central theme to his storytelling. I will surely botch this but I believe Bill has a connection with “Elanor” to the sun stone of Nauvoo temple fame:

El-anor translates pretty well to sun-star and I believe Bill views this as a magic stone of sorts that contains a record and goes hand in hand with a partnered Moon stone. The Nauvoo temple also featured Moon stones:

I’ll go ahead and apologize now for that woefully inadequate explanation of Bill’s ideas but for now, I am mostly interested in its connection to what Joseph Smith was trying to do in Nauvoo. Keep in mind that in the Kirtland temple dedicatory prayer he said that those Mormons were “identified with the Gentiles”. And as I covered in my post about The Great Tower, Joseph Smith was adamant that the Mormons had to build a temple to meet God. He said it was a requirement for the “rich” to build an edifice even though the early Mormons were anything but rich, at least in this life.

It’s the same reason I believe Durin built his Stair and Tower, as a dwarvish Meneltarma or a temple through which his people could encounter God. Only, I think they refused and would not go up and it is for that reason the dwarves received the curse (a balrog) rather than the blessing (God’s presence).

Joseph Smith couldn’t get those Gentile-Mormons to Moria so he tried to replicate what Durin did in the form of a Mormon temple. That attempt obviously failed.

I found an unlikely source for some external validation of the ideas in this post. I remembered today that when Daymon Smith got started on all this crazy Tolkien-Mormon lore, the very first word he received was “Azanulbizar” which is the name of the valley outside the gates of Moria. I just checked and his entire first phrase was “Azanulbizar kutaerbo kutaernu Azanulkizar Meneltermo”. I just now noticed that “Meneltarmo” is part of the phrase, and recall that before today I have compared Durin’s Tower to the Meneltarma of Numenor.

Daymon translates all of that as this:

“The valley of shadows (‘znlbzr), it is directly onward, it is straight below the shadow of your king’s Pillar of Heaven.”

I realize this is pretty cheeky and borderline rude, but I’ll take a stab at my own translation of Daymon’s words and instead of placing these words in the tale of Zhera and Izilba, I’ll place them in reference to this story I am working on in this post. Let’s go word by word before putting it all together:

Azanulbizar – I think Daymon tried a little too hard here by attempting to translate this into something other than a proper noun. So that makes this one very easy. Azanulbizar is actually just Azanulbizar, or the Dimrill Dale outside the gates of Moria.

kutaerbo – This one could be sliced and diced so many different ways and made to mean a million things. However, I try to follow the path of least resistance which means using the biggest word chunks I can. In this case, that meant breaking it down as kut/aer/bo. Using “kut” instead of “ku” was lucky for me since there is a “kut” which means “lump, ball” and in this post we are talking about a stone or ball. It also makes the rest of the word pretty easy since “aer” is “Holy”. The suffix -bo is not, I think, actually -bo but instead just the suffix -o where a b sound is inserted to give a cleaner transition for the -o suffix, which indicates a noun. So all that said, I’m going with “Holy Ball” for this one.

kutaernu – For this one I’ll break it up as ku/taer/nu. (I guess I could follow the same breakdown as the prior word and use kut/aer/nu but then we get repetitive with “Holy Ball” which doesn’t make much sense.) The word “ku” or “cu” is bow/crescent moon/arch. [Incidentally, the very first elvish word I was taught happened in a dream and it was pronounced cu-eez.] The word “taer” is “high/lofty”. The word “nu” down/under/beneath. Taken all together, this could easily be a reference to the doors of Moria, which feature a very prominent arch:

So maybe “the lofty arch of below” which does accurately describe these doors.

Azanulkizar – I think what we have here is a play on words by the speaker given that the b of Azanulbizar is swapped out for a k and there is no “kizar” or really anything close to it in the secret dwarvish language of Khuzdul (of which there is very little that was ever known by anyone but the dwarves). From that I must surmise that we keep “azanul” as is, which is a Khuzdul word meaning “shadows”. And for “kizar” we have no choice but to switch to elvish. Azanul / ki / zar is the only way I see to break that up. Ki can be “you” or “maybe” or “this by me”. Zar is probably best viewed as sar which can be a small stone or something about writing. I’m going with “this by me written in shadow” but I think this is ALSO a second Azanulbizar reference as you’ll see in my final translation.

Meneltermo – this I think is a reference to a Pillar of Heaven, but not THE Pillar of Heaven from Numenor. Instead I think it references Durin’s Tower as the dwarvish version.

Putting it all together I think we have something like this:

“By Azanulbizar’s Holy Ball and the Lofty Arch below, this by me written in the shadow of Azanulbizar’s pillar of Heaven [Durin’s Tower]”

Call me crazy, but I think that could very well be the first sentence of the Brother of Jared’s sealed record.