Near the close of Enos’ record he states:
And it came to pass that I began to be old, and an hundred and seventy and nine years had passed away from the time that our father Lehi left Jerusalem.
Enos 1:25
He is supposedly the grandson of Lehi, Jacob being his father. Some have supposed that perhaps this Enos is actually the son of another Enos who we don’t have a record of, but Enos being the son of Jacob is absolutely possible and I’ll explain how.
First off, there’s actually a story from 2018 that talks about two men who are the grandsons of a man born in 1790; that’s a 228-year span!
It sounds crazy , but there is a man alive today whose grandfather was born in 1790, just one year after the US Constitution was ratified.
John Tyler was the first vice president elevated to the presidency on the death of the chief executive and the first president to marry in the White House. Nearly 175 years later, two of his grandchildren are still around.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler, 89, is one of two living grandsons of President John Tyler, who was born in 1790, one year after George Washington was sworn in as president.
Just three generations — President Tyler, his son Lyon Tyler, and grandson Harrison — span almost the entire history of the United States. […]
Here’s how it happened. John Tyler became president in 1841. He had eight children with his first wife, who died while he was in office. At 52, he married 22-year-old Julia Gardiner. They had seven children, for a total of 15 — the most of any president. He was 63 when son Lyon Tyler was born, whose first wife also died. Lyon also had a very young second wife, and was 75 years old when Harrison Tyler was born in 1928.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-two-of-president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive/
Jacob was born in the wilderness which means that his birth occurred between 600-592 B.C. Enos was writing 179 years after Lehi left Jerusalem, not his own birth. This gives us a window of about 171-179 years.
Strom Thurman, Mick Jagger, and Charlie Chaplin all became fathers at 73. In 1951 James E. Smith became a father of twins at age 101. [Source]
If you split the difference from 171 – 179 years you get 85.5 – 89.5 years.
So if Jacob’s first wife died and he remarried later on and had a child when he 85.5 (or 89.5), then Enos could have been writing his record at age 85.5; (or 89.5) after all, he mentioned being close to death at the time of his writing.
Another way of looking at it is if you make Jacob a slightly younger father at 75, then that puts Enos at 96 at the time of his final words. Alma the elder lived 82 years (Mosiah 29:45) so putting Enos or Jacob in their 80s or even 90s is certainly plausible.
The strangest part of the whole idea is Jacob being a very old father, something that is rather uncommon but not unheard of especially in the scriptures when you have other examples like Abraham and Zechariah.
