The timeline is a map. These pages are the text behind it. Every dated entry in the database is written out here in order, grouped into thirteen eras, so you can read it straight through or search it with your browser.
Each era below opens a page of dated entries in order, oldest first. Every entry carries its date, its place where one is recorded, the category it belongs to, and the account itself. Where a published source is linked, the link goes to it.
Longer eras run over several pages. If you would rather see the same material as a moving picture, open the timeline and drag it.
Creation to 1400 BC · 135 entries
The opening of the record: a garden, a flood, and a family called out of Ur. These entries follow Genesis and the book of Abraham, from the Creation through Adam and Eve, Enoch, Noah, and the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Dates this early are traditional rather than fixed, and the published chronologies disagree with one another; where they do, the entry says so.
1400 BC to 587 BC · 306 entries
Israel becomes a nation and then loses it. Moses leads the people out of Egypt, the law is given at Sinai, judges give way to kings, and the kingdom splits in two. Prophet after prophet warns both halves. The era closes with Jerusalem burned and the temple of Solomon pulled down.
586 BC to 5 BC · 216 entries
Judah is carried to Babylon, and a remnant comes home to rebuild. In the same century Lehi leaves Jerusalem, and the Book of Mormon record begins on the other side of the world. Between the last Old Testament prophet and the first page of the New Testament lie four hundred years that the Bible passes over in silence.
4 BC to AD 100 · 138 entries
The centre of the whole line. The birth at Bethlehem, the ministry in Galilee and Judea, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the visit to the Nephites. Then the apostles carry the message outward until, one by one, they are killed and the authority they held goes with them.
AD 101 to 1799 · 32 entries
The long middle. Councils settle creeds, the Bible is copied and later printed, reformers press for change, and translators are put to death for putting scripture into common speech. Latter-day Saints read these seventeen centuries as preparation: the printing press, the Reformation and a country founded on religious liberty all had to come first.
1800 to 1829 · 257 entries
A boy in western New York reads one verse in James and goes to a grove of trees to pray. What follows over the next nine years is the First Vision, the visits of Moroni, the recovery and translation of the plates, and the restoration of priesthood authority on the bank of the Susquehanna.
1830 to 1837 · 1,629 entries
Six members become thousands. The Church is organised in a farmhouse in Fayette, missionaries go out within weeks, and converts gather first to Kirtland in Ohio and then to Jackson County in Missouri. A temple rises in Kirtland and is dedicated, and in the same decade the Saints are driven out of Jackson County by force.
1838 to 1846 · 1,461 entries
The hardest nine years. An extermination order empties Missouri, and the Saints build a city out of swampland on a bend in the Mississippi. Nauvoo grows to rival Chicago, the Relief Society is organised, temple ordinances are given, and then Joseph and Hyrum Smith are killed at Carthage and the city is abandoned.
1847 to 1877 · 1,289 entries
Thirteen hundred miles west. Wagon companies and, for ten years, handcart companies cross the plains, and roughly four hundred settlements are planted across the Great Basin and beyond. Brigham Young leads for thirty years; the era ends with the St George temple finished and his death in the same year.
1878 to 1899 · 682 entries
Two decades of federal pressure. Anti-polygamy laws seize Church property and send men to prison, and in 1890 Wilford Woodruff issues the Manifesto ending the practice of plural marriage. Utah becomes a state in 1896, and the Salt Lake Temple, begun forty years earlier, is dedicated in 1893.
1900 to 1949 · 1,046 entries
The Church becomes an organisation as well as a people. Seminaries and institutes begin, the welfare programme is built during the Depression, general conference goes out by radio, and the first temples outside the continental United States are dedicated in Hawaii, Canada and Arizona. Two world wars run straight through the middle of it.
1950 to 1979 · 1,187 entries
Temples cross oceans. Switzerland, England, New Zealand and Japan all receive one, missionary work expands sharply, and correlation reshapes how the Church teaches and publishes. In 1978 Official Declaration 2 extends the priesthood and temple blessings to all worthy members without regard to race.
1980 to today · 1,519 entries
More members now live outside the United States than inside it. Small temples are built by the dozen, the Proclamation on the Family and The Living Christ are issued, worship moves toward the home, and the Church passes three hundred and fifty temples announced or in operation.
No fixed date · 104 entries
Some of the record carries no date. The book of Ether is the largest part of it: the Jaredites leave the tower of Babel, cross the sea in sealed barges, and rise and fall over many generations without a single year being given. Because no year can be put on them, these entries are listed by name rather than by date.
The entries are compiled from published chronologies, the standard works themselves, and the historical material published by the Church. Ancient dates are traditional, and not every source agrees on them. The sources page lists what was used and how conflicts were settled.