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Running into the fountain of all righteousness (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments, ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

What did "cut off from the presence of the Lord" mean to Nephi? (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Later Nephite understanding of being "cut off from the presence of the Lord" (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

The question of Lehi's ethnicity (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Who was the "angel" who appeared to Laman and Lemuel? (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

You, Lady, are the Tree (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Moses and the Exodus: Where the Book of Mormon parts ways with the Torah (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

The snail on the roof, the Lincoln Memorial, and the translation of the Book of Mormon (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Thoughts on the murder of Laban (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

The purpose of plates: A hypothesis (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Thoughts on the Astronaut Nephi theory (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Tight like unto a saucer? (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Does this one verse in the Book of Mormon imply reincarnation? (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

The polygamy escape clause (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Malachi, and the Small Plates as Nephite pseudepigrapha (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

A closer look at Malachi material in the Small Plates (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Zenos was quoted by Joel, Nephi, Alma, Malachi, and Paul (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

Yes, the Book of Mormon does quote Joshua -- but the Church is covering it up! (Wm Jas Tychonievich)

It's plausible that Joel quoted (and inverted) Zenos (Wm Jas Tychonievich)


Sunday, October 1st 2023

Running into the fountain of all righteousness

Wm Jas Tychonievich

4 min read (1,100 words)

Judging by how often they are quoted elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, some of the most famous sayings of Lehi among his descendants were his exhortations to his sons Laman and Lemuel, after whom he had just named a river and a valley:

And it came to pass that he called the name of the river, Laman, and it emptied into the Red Sea; and the valley was in the borders near the mouth thereof. And when my father saw that the waters of the river emptied into the fountain of the Red Sea, he spake unto Laman, saying:

O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness!

And he also spake unto Lemuel:

O that thou mightest be like unto this valley, firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord!

Now this he spake because of the stiffneckedness of Laman and Lemuel . . . . And it came to pass that my father did speak unto them in the valley of Lemuel (1 Ne. 2:8-11, 14).

The language introduced here (and no, it isn’t biblical) later shows up in Mosiah 5:15, Alma 1:25, 3 Ne. 6:14, Ether 12:28, and Moro. 8:26. In Ether, the quotation is put in the mouth of no less a personage than “the Lord,” who explicitly identifies himself as the referent of one of Lehi’s metaphors: “me, the fountain of all righteousness.”

No similar expressions occur in the other scriptures produced by Joseph Smith (e.g. the Doctrine & Covenants), so I think the repeated language represents actual quotation and is not an artifact of translation.

I’d tried to start a post on these sayings a few times but was stymied by my confusion over what Lehi was trying to say. Running into the fountain? A fountain is a source of water, not something rivers run into. And what did he mean by calling the Red Sea a fountain? As Lehi himself had just observed, the Red Sea is something rivers empty into, not their source.

(There are fountains in the Red Sea. In fact — apologists take note! — it was in the Red Sea that the first hydrothermal vents were discovered, just decades after the time of Joseph Smith. But in context, “the fountain of the Red Sea” is clearly an expression like “the city of Albuquerque” or “the sin of pride,” and means that the Red Sea is itself a fountain.)

I didn’t want to publish a post that just said, “Look, here’s a metaphor that doesn’t make sense!” So an abortive draft of this post gathered dust for a week or so.

Today I started thinking about it again, thinking that the “fountain” thing must mean something. Lehi understood how rivers work; Joseph Smith understood how rivers work; it’s not just an ignorant mistake. It occurred to me that, in the water cycle as we understand it today, the seas into which the rivers empty are also the primary source, or “fountain,” of the rain which creates the rivers in the first place.

Was the water cycle understood in Lehi’s time? Well, they likely had some concept of a water cycle. Ecclesiastes was probably written a century or two after Lehi, but it hardly presents it as a revolutionary new hypothesis:

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again (Eccl. 1:7).

Isn’t that pretty close to Lehi’s language? The sea into which the rivers run is also “the place from whence the rivers come,” i.e. their fountainhead. I don’t know how the ancient Hebrews explained the details of that process, or how close it was to our modern understanding, but they clearly grasped the basic logic: The rivers never run out of water, and the sea never fills up; therefore, it’s a cycle.

After that little breakthrough, I felt like I was ready to tackle the post again. I still had a few minutes before I would have access to my computer, though, so I picked up Joshua Cutchin’s Ecology of Souls (not a religious book, but one about the connection between UFOs and death) and read a few pages while I waited. Imagine my surprise — or rather how surprised I would have been if I weren’t already used to my life being one synchronicity after another — when one of the things I read on those few pages was this:

Everything has a soul, all derived from the same source. As this constitutes an animistic perspective, an animist analogy seems best. Like rain we fall to Earth, joining others in the river of life to flow untold miles toward the sea where all becomes one before evaporating to begin anew.

The context of this “animist analogy” — Cutchin’s discussion of the possibility that aliens may sometimes reincarnate as humans and vice versa — is far removed from the world of Lehi, but my reading of the analogy itself was perfectly timed.

So, with that long preamble out of the way, what do I think Lehi was getting at?

One fairly straightforward reading would be that he alludes to God as what Aristotle would later call a “final cause,” but the reader will understand my reluctance to read Greek philosophy into the Book of Mormon.

How far should the analogy be pressed? The deepest meaning of the water cycle is that neither river nor sea has a privileged position as “the source.” Each is the source of the other. This chicken-and-egg relationship between God and man is something we associate with “Mormon” theology, even though we find it mainly in Joseph Smith’s later work and not (we tend to think) in the Book of Mormon itself. The idea in some form is surely older than Joseph Smith, though. The Fourth Gospel tells us that the man Jesus knew “that he was come from God, and went to God” (John 13:3). Athanasius of Alexandria famously wrote that “God became man that man might become God.” Did Lehi have any such concept in mind when he exhorted Laman to flow into the fountain of all righteousness? Perhaps. Anyway, it’s something to keep in the back of my mind as I proceed with the book.

3 Comments:

Rozy Lass said...

Really interesting thoughts. My grandpa used to say that an evidence of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon was the phrase "river of water" (1 Ne 2:6). Where Joseph Smith lived all rivers had water in them; but Lehi and his family lived in a semi-arid or desert area where some riverbeds didn't have any water in them continuously and were dry at certain times and seasons. Always more to learn, line upon line and precept upon precept. Thanks for sharing.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Well, "rivers of water" occurs multiple times in the King James Bible, so I don't think it's very strong evidence of anything one way or the other. The expression could appear in the Book of Mormon because Lehi and Nephi came from a desert area just like the biblical prophets did, or it could be because Joseph Smith was influenced by biblical language.

In support of your grandpa's interpretation, "river of water" is used only by Lehi and Nephi, who grew up in Jerusalem. Later Nephites, who like Joseph Smith apparently lived in a non-desert environment where the expression would be redundant, didn't use it.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Sync wink:

Today I was cleaning out my phone, deleting apps I don't use. I noticed that I have two different voice recorder apps, so I opened one of them up to see if it had any important recordings I wouldn't want to delete. There, in a list with files with such enlightening names as "Recording 1," "Recording 2," etc., was one called "Ocean empties into river." It was a recording I made in the early hours of April 26 this year, summarizing a dream from which I had just awoken.

It took me a few minutes to remember that I had actually blogged about that dream before:

https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2023/04/nego-negation-of-ego.html


Thursday, October 5th 2023

Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments, ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord.

Wm Jas Tychonievich

5.5 min read (1,600 words)

Note: Updated to include some references I had missed. Thank you, Rozy!

If anything counts as a Nephite cliché, this does. It occurs in the Book of Mormon, in whole or in part, with very minor variations, 15 times, written or spoken by six different people (Nephi, Lehi, Jarom, King Benjamin, Alma the Younger, and Mormon).


Where does this saying originally come from? It isn't biblical, nor is it found in the other writings of Joseph Smith. It appears to be either (a) something that was revealed to Nephi and later recast by Lehi in more epigrammatic form or (b) something that was independently revealed, in slightly different form, to both Lehi and Nephi.

The earliest instance we have is from Nephi. He believes in his father's dreams and visions, and prays for his brothers Laman and Lemuel, who do not. In response the Lord speaks to him. It is not clear if this was a literal voice or something else, but in any case it is presented a Nephi's first recorded revelation. Among the things the Lord says is this:

Blessed art thou, Nephi . . . . And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands. And inasmuch as thy brethren shall rebel against thee, they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And inasmuch as thou shalt keep my commandments, thou shalt be made a ruler and a teacher over thy brethren (1 Ne. 2:19-22).

Although this is the earliest instance of the saying, it is also the least typical. It includes "ye shall prosper" followed by a reference to "land," but not in the otherwise invariant form "ye shall prosper in the land." (Nephi later cites this revelation, in 1 Ne. 4:14, but condenses it to "prosper in the land of promise.") Its first and second halves refer to different groups of people: "ye" (a plural pronoun, including Nephi and unspecified others) vs. "thy brethren" (excluding Nephi). The most significant difference is that the second conditional clause is not about failing to keep God's commandments but rather about rebelling against Nephi.

In this form, the saying is too specific -- too anchored to Laman, Lemuel, and Nephi as individuals -- to have become proverbial until it was (I think) recast by Lehi.

Lehi later reports that he has "obtained a promise" -- meaning a direct revelation? -- which parallels Nephi's revelation in a general way but is even longer and less quotable.

Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever.

But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord -- having a knowledge of the creation of the earth, and all men, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the world; having power given them to do all things by faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into this precious land of promise -- behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold, the judgments of him that is just shall rest upon them. Yea, he will bring other nations unto them, and he will give unto them power, and he will take away from them the lands of their possessions, and he will cause them to be scattered and smitten. Yea, as one generation passeth to another there shall be bloodsheds, and great visitations among them (2 Ne. 1:9-12).

The first half -- "inasmuch as [they] shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land" -- is very close to Nephi's version, but the second half is entirely different. This first part, at least, seems to have been revealed to both Nephi and Lehi, and Jarom later quotes it as such, calling it "the word of the Lord . . . which he spake unto our fathers," plural (Jarom 1:9).

We find the first two instances of the saying in its "classical" form in Lehi's parting message to Laman and Lemuel (2 Ne. 1:20) and to the children of Laman (2 Ne. 4:4). In both cases, he introduces the saying as something that "the Lord God hath said." Lehi could conceivably be quoting some prophetic writings which we do not have, something from the plates of brass perhaps; but this is unlikely, as the reference to prospering "in the land" seems to relate directly to the "land of promise" to which Lehi's family was led. It could also be something that was revealed to Lehi himself, but we have no record of this. What we do have is a record of the Lord revealing something extremely similar to Nephi, who would doubtless have told his father, and so the most reasonable assumption is that Lehi was referring to, and paraphrasing, his son's revelation.

In the next chapter, Nephi refers to own revelation -- not to Lehi's version -- and says it has been fulfilled:

And behold, the words of the Lord had been fulfilled unto my brethren, which he spake concerning them, that I should be their ruler and their teacher. Wherefore, I had been their ruler and their teacher, according to the commandments of the Lord, until the time they sought to take away my life.

Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence (2 Ne. 5:19-20).

The bit about being a ruler and a teacher is clearly from Nephi's revelation. As for the saying in question, he only quotes the second half of it, and not word-for-word, but here, too, it is about disobeying Nephi, not God.

This theory -- that the saying was revealed to Nephi and paraphrased by Lehi, and that later Nephites quoted Lehi's version -- is complicated by the fact that Alma and Mormon quote it as something the Lord said to Lehi:

Behold, do ye not remember the words which he spake unto Lehi, saying that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land? And again it is said that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord (Alma 9:13).

And thus we see how merciful and just are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of men; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. But remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord (Alma 50:19-20, Mormon speaking).

No such revelation to Lehi is recorded in the Book of Mormon as we have it. The Lord does say, "Blessed art thou, Lehi," in a dream, but not the other sentences quoted. Mormon may be conflating Lehi's dream with his paraphrase of Nephi's revelation (which also begins "Blessed art thou"), or he may be quoting a revelation to Lehi which didn't make it into the records we have. (Perhaps it was included in the Book of Lehi, the translation of which was lost by Martin Harris.) It wouldn't be the only instance of the Lord revealing something first to Lehi and then, in slightly different form, to Nephi (e.g. the Tree of Life vision).

All in all, though, I still think it most likely that Nephi, not Lehi, was the original source of this revealed saying. It was revealed to Nephi in a specific form, directly referring to himself and his brothers. Lehi then generalized it, citing only "the Lord" and not mentioning Nephi. It was Lehi's more quotable version that became common currency among the Nephites, and thus it came to be referred to mistakenly as something the Lord had said to Lehi. It's not the only possibility, but it's the likeliest one in my judgment.

My next post will explore what being "cut off from the presence of the Lord" might actually mean.

2 Comments:

Rozy Lass said...

I believe the reference is 1 Ne 4:14, not verse 4. Also see Ether 2:7,10,12 The Jaredites had the same covenant and promise.
I understand that the Brass Plates were/are a record of the descendants of Joseph, with some different prophets from the books that we now call the Bible. Hence the prophecies of Zenos, etc. Joseph, under the hand of Jacob/Israel was promised that his descendants would be fruitful and cross over the wall, etc. to a land "unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills." Perhaps in the brass plates there are more references to this covenant for the Promised Land of the new world of America.
We sure have some repenting to do to be able to keep our land of liberty.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Thank you, Rozy!

My reference was 2 Nephi. 4:4, not 1 Nephi, and it's correct. 1 Ne. 4:14 is an important one that I missed, though, since it's Nephi citing his own earlier revelation and condensing it to the classic "prosper in the land" form. I think I just searched for "cut off" and thus missed some verses that only include the first half of the saying. I'll have to update the post.

I agree that the brass plates were likely very different from our Bible, despite some apparent overlap. I think it's unlikely that they contained references to the future "promised land" of the Nephites, though. Lehi got the plates while en route to that land and immediately "did search them from the beginning," and Nephi gives a summary of their contents (1 Ne. 5:10-16). I think if the plates had directly referred to a promised land far from Palestine, that would surely have been mentioned at this point.


Saturday, October 7th 2023

What did "cut off from the presence of the Lord" mean to Nephi?

Wm Jas Tychonievich

3.5 min read (1,100 words)


"Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments, ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord": My last post catalogues instances and variants of that sentence in the Book of Mormon and speculates as to its origin. In this post and the next one, I want to explore what exactly is being threatened in the last clause. What does it mean to be cut off from the Lord's presence?

The only biblical reference to being cut off from the presence of the Lord is in the Holiness code of Leviticus. For reasons explained in my earlier post "The Nephites knew nothing of an 'Aaronic priesthood,'" I do not believe that Lehi or his descendants had the Book of Leviticus in anything like its present form; their "five books of Moses" (1 Ne. 5:11) and "law of Moses" (1 Ne. 4:15 and passim) were not the same as the Torah we know. Still, Lehi and Nephi came out of the same general cultural milieu that later produced Leviticus, so that book can give us some clues as to what the phrase may have meant to them. Here is the passage in question, reporting the Lord's words to Moses:

Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those things which they hallow unto me: I am the Lord. Say unto them,Whosoever he be of all your seed among your generations, that goeth unto the holy things, which the children of Israel hallow unto the Lord, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from my presence: I am the Lord. . . .

The soul which hath touched any [unclean thing] shall be unclean until even, and shall not eat of the holy things, unless he wash his flesh with water. And when the sun is down, he shall be clean, and shall afterward eat of the holy things; because it is his food (Lev. 22:2-3, 6-7).

If I am right that Leviticus was produced long after Moses's time, then it is actually describing later Temple regulations and projecting them back in time to the Tabernacle of Moses. Here, the idea seems to be that those who enter the Tabernacle/Temple are entering the presence of "the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherubims" (1 Sam. 4:4). A priest who "goeth unto the holy things" while ritually unclean will be cut off from that presence -- meaning, I think, that he will lose his access to the Temple and his right to function as a priest. Among the "holy things" which a priest would "eat of" was the shewbread -- literally "bread of the presence" -- reinforcing this interpretation that the "presence of the Lord" has to do with the Temple and what pertains to it.

It seems very likely that Nephi also understood the "presence of the Lord" in this way. Consider this passage, where he describes what he sees as a fulfilment of the Inasmuch Promise:

And it came to pass that the Lord did warn me, that I, Nephi, should depart from [Laman and Lemuel] and flee into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me. . . . And we did take our tents and whatsoever things were possible for us, and did journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. . . . And it came to pass that we began to prosper exceedingly, and to multiply in the land. . . .

And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine. . . .

And behold, the words of the Lord had been fulfilled unto my brethren, which he spake concerning them, that I should be their ruler and their teacher. Wherefore, I had been their ruler and their teacher, according to the commandments of the Lord, until the time they sought to take away my life. Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence (2 Ne. 5:5, 7, 13, 16, 19-20).

Nephi says that Laman and Lemuel have been "cut off from the presence of the Lord" -- but the narrative only tells us that they were cut off from the presence of Nephi. However, Nephi makes a point of mentioning that he built a temple "like unto Solomon's" only after separating from Laman and Lemuel. A few verses later (2 Ne. 5:26), he ordains his younger brothers Jacob and Joseph as priests (because Nephi knew nothing of Aaron or of the rule that only his descendants could be priests). If Laman and Lemuel had not rebelled against Nephi, they too would have had access to this temple. In fact, Nephi might have ordained them to be priests instead of Jacob and Joseph (just as Moses, according to later legend, had ordained his own elder brother). Having rebelled, though, they were, like the priests in Leviticus who profaned the holy things, "cut off" from the House of the Lord, in which his presence dwells.

Later Nephites, beginning with Nephi's own brother Jacob, would expand the meaning of being "cut off from the presence of the Lord," as I will discuss in my next post. I think this is what it meant to Nephi himself, though, and why he considered the threat of cutting-off to have been fulfilled when his people separated themselves from the Lamanites.


Monday, October 9th 2023

Later Nephite understanding of being "cut off from the presence of the Lord"

Wm Jas Tychonievich

8 min read (2,300 words)

"Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments, ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord." My last two posts discuss the origin of this Nephite saying and what Nephi himself may have understood it to mean. In this post I want to look at later Nephite (and, in one case, Lamanite) interpretations.


Jacob

Nephi's brother Jacob, the priest, is the first to relate being "cut off from the presence of the Lord" to the fall of Adam:

For as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfil the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come unto man by reason of the fall; and the fall came by reason of transgression; and because man became fallen they were cut off from the presence of the Lord.

Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement -- save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more (2 Ne. 9:6-7).

From various references scattered throughout the Book of Mormon, it appears that the Nephites had an Adam-and-Eve story broadly similar to the one we have in Genesis -- perhaps even identical, if mainstream scholars are correct in identifying the story as very old "J" material, not the Levitical "P" source which the Nephites seem not to have had. In Genesis, it appears that the Lord walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but after eating the forbidden fruit, they "hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God" (Gen. 3:8). We can infer that such direct contact ceased altogether after they were expelled from the Garden. In a fairly straightforward sense, then, the fall resulted in their being "cut off from the presence of the Lord."

This sense of the expression would not seem to apply to Laman and Lemuel (who were reportedly "cut off from the presence of the Lord" shortly before Jacob's sermon), as they never had access to the kind of direct "presence" Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden. Or did they? In 1 Ne. 3:29-31, Laman and Lemuel are visited by "an angel of the Lord" (often understood in the Old Testament to be a manifestation of the Lord himself), and they seem to take it in their stride, as if it were no very unusual occurrence. In 1 Ne. 16:39, "the voice of the Lord" speaks "many words" to Laman and Lemuel, and this seems not to have been an isolated occurrence, either. Nephi later reminds Laman and Lemuel, "ye have heard [the Lord's] voice from time to time" (1 Ne. 17:45). Quite unusually for those characterized as "wicked," Laman and Lemuel appear to have had quite direct access to the Lord's "presence" while Nephi was with them, and this apparently ended later.

Looking back at Jacob's words quoted above, though, is this really the kind of cutting-off he is talking about? Perhaps not. The context is all about physical death and resurrection, as if to die were to be cut off from the presence of the Lord, with resurrection remedying this.

This is the opposite of how we are accustomed to thinking; we tend to assume that it is here in mortality that we are more or less separated from God, to whose presence we return after death. This common understanding is reinforced by Alma the Younger, who teaches that between death and resurrection, "the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life" (Alma 40:11), while after resurrection "the wicked . . . are cast out" (Alma 40:26).


Alma the Younger

While preaching in Ammonihah, Alma the Younger repeats Nephi's claim that the Lamanites have been cut off:

Now I would that ye should remember, that inasmuch as the Lamanites have not kept the commandments of God, they have been cut off from the presence of the Lord. Now we see that the word of the Lord has been verified in this thing, and the Lamanites have been cut off from his presence, from the beginning of their transgressions in the land (Alma 9:14).

Alma points to the cutting-off of the Lamanites as having verified the word of the Lord to Lehi and Nephi. In order to qualify as evidence for anything, the cutting-off must be an observable fact, so it cannot refer (only) to their inner spiritual status (not being in a state of grace or whatever), nor to their fate in the afterlife. Neither can the cutting-off be death itself, since it occurred "from the beginning of their transgressions in the land" but the Lamanites did not die at that time. It could refer to the withdrawal of angelic visitations and such, as suggested above -- or, more observably, to their exclusion from the Nephite temple and priesthood.

In Alma's advice to his son Corianton, he goes into more detail about the "cutting off" that came from the fall of Adam:

But behold, it was appointed unto man to die -- therefore, as they were cut off from the tree of life they should be cut off from the face of the earth -- and man became lost forever, yea, they became fallen man. And now, ye see by this that our first parents were cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord . . . .

Now behold, it was not expedient that man should be reclaimed from this temporal death, for that would destroy the great plan of happiness. Therefore, as the soul could never die, and the fall had brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal, that is, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord, it was expedient that mankind should be reclaimed from this spiritual death. . . .

And now remember, my son, if it were not for the plan of redemption, (laying it aside) as soon as they were dead their souls were miserable, being cut off from the presence of the Lord. . . . And thus we see that all mankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence (Alma 42:6-9, 11, 14).

Alma refers first to being "cut off both temporally and spiritually" and later to "a spiritual death as well as a temporal," suggesting that one of the meanings of cutting-off is death. This seems to be how Mormon uses the expression when he says of one holding heretical views on baptism, "should he be cut off [i.e., die] while in the thought, he must go down to hell" (Moro. 8:14).

Alma's "cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord" is syntactically ambiguous, but in context I think it means "cut off both (a) temporally, by dying; and (b) spiritually, by being separated from the presence of the Lord." Being cut off from the presence of the Lord would them be synonymous with "spiritual death." This spiritual death or cutting-off apparently comes in two phases: Adam and Eve were immediately cut off from God's presence, but also "as soon as they were dead" they would be "cut off from the presence of the Lord." Perhaps this means being even more cut-off than they were in life, or perhaps it means that a provisional cutting-off during mortality would become permanent after death.

As noted above, Alma has just said that upon death "all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life" (Alma 40:11). Here he explains that this universal homecoming is an effect of "the plan of redemption," without which death would bring immediate and permanent cutting-off.


Samuel the Lamanite

Samuel the Lamanite follows Alma closely in equating cutting-off with spiritual death and connecting it to the fall of Adam:

Yea, behold, this death [of Christ] bringeth to pass the resurrection, and redeemeth all mankind from the first death -- that spiritual death; for all mankind, by the fall of Adam being cut off from the presence of the Lord, are considered as dead, both as to things temporal and to things spiritual. But behold, the resurrection of Christ redeemeth mankind, yea, even all mankind, and bringeth them back into the presence of the Lord.

Yea, and it bringeth to pass the condition of repentance, that whosoever repenteth the same is not hewn down and cast into the fire; but whosoever repenteth not is hewn down and cast into the fire; and there cometh upon them again a spiritual death, yea, a second death, for they are cut off again as to things pertaining to righteousness (Hel. 14:16-18).

For Samuel, the "first death" and "second death" are both spiritual in nature. The first death means being cut off from the presence of the Lord, and the second means being "cut off again as to things pertaining to righteousness." I'm not sure if the use of again means that this is just another way of expressing separation from the Lord, or if "things pertaining to righteousness" means something else.

Although Samuel characterizes both "deaths" as spiritual, the first death also seems to have something to do with physical mortality. He says that resurrection brings "all mankind . . . back into the presence of the Lord," which is a curious thing to say. It's not clear why being physically resurrected would mean returning to the presence of the Lord, or how "all mankind" being brought into his presence is to be reconciled with the statement that some of them will be "cast into the fire" of hell. (Contrast Samuel with Alma, who explicitly says it is before resurrection that all men are brought home to God.) I think it's better to deal with this more fully when I reach that part of the Book of Mormon. Here I merely want to note it as a later development of the "cutting-off" idea introduced by Nephi or Lehi, one which apparently differs from Nephi's own interpretation.


Mormon

In Helaman 12, Mormon gives a long list of things that God can cause to happen just by speaking. This is one of them:

And behold, if the Lord shall say unto a man -- Because of thine iniquities, thou shalt be accursed forever -- it shall be done.
 
And if the Lord shall say -- Because of thine iniquities thou shalt be cut off from my presence -- he will cause that it shall be so. And wo unto him to whom he shall say this, for it shall be unto him that will do iniquity, and he cannot be saved; therefore, for this cause, that men might be saved, hath repentance been declared (Hel. 12:20-22).

Mormon does not spell out what he means here, but it seems to refer to damnation after death, the "second death" spoken of by Samuel.


Moroni

Moroni's abridgment of the Book of Ether twice mentions cutting-off, though again the exact meaning is not clear:

And the Lord said unto him: I will forgive thee and thy brethren of their sins; but thou shalt not sin any more, for ye shall remember that my Spirit will not always strive with man; wherefore, if ye will sin until ye are fully ripe ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And these are my thoughts upon the land which I shall give you for your inheritance; for it shall be a land choice above all other lands (Ether 2:15).

This is interesting because, just as in the original revelation to Nephi, it pairs the threat of cutting-off with the promise of a land "choice above all other lands." It's not clear if cutting-off here means death (the Jaredites were destroyed), a withdrawal of direct revelation, or something else. (Also, "these are my thoughts"? What does that mean? Not a topic for this post.)

Another reference in Ether is interesting because it makes it very clear that (in this case anyway) cutting-off does not mean death:

And [Morianton] did do justice unto the people, but not unto himself because of his many whoredoms; wherefore he was cut off from the presence of the Lord.

And it came to pass that Morianton built up many cities, and the people became exceedingly rich under his reign . . . . And Morianton did live to an exceedingly great age, and then he begat Kim; and Kim did reign in the stead of his father; and he did reign eight years, and his father died (Ether 10:11-13).

Whatever cutting-off means here, it obviously doesn't mean an untimely demise, nor does it mean being "cursed" in any material sense. I don't think it refers to damnation after death, either, since it is reported as an an observed fact, and reported before he builds cities, becomes rich, lives a long life, and dies. I guess the likeliest reading is that, like the priests in Leviticus, he was "excommunicated" by the religious authorities and excluded from certain holy places or rites.


Monday, October 9th 2023

The question of Lehi's ethnicity

Wm Jas Tychonievich

4 min read (1,100 words)

Note: This is a lightly edited repost of something I wrote in 2014.


What was the ethnic background of Lehi? In one sense, the question is easy to answer. Alma 10:3 explicitly states that “Lehi, who came out of the land of Jerusalem, … was a descendant of Manasseh, who was the son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt by the hands of his brethren.”

From this we might assume that Lehi, a descendant of Manasseh who had nevertheless “dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days” (1 Nephi 1:4), was descended from those Manassites who, together with members of the tribes of Ephraim and Simeon, fled from the Northern Kingdom to Jerusalem during the reign of Asa, as described in 2 Chronicles 15.

The strange thing, though, is that Lehi apparently didn’t know he was a descendant of Manasseh. He found this out only after he had left Jerusalem. Having obtained the brass plates from Laban, “Lehi, also found upon the plates of brass a genealogy of his fathers; wherefore he knew that he was a descendant of Joseph, yea, even that Joseph who was the son of Jacob, who was sold into Egypt . . . And thus my father, Lehi, did discover the genealogy of his fathers. And Laban was also a descendant of Joseph, wherefore he and his fathers had kept records” (1 Ne 5:14, 16).

So, leaving aside the actual facts of his ancestry, which were unknown to him, what did Lehi think he was? What ethnicity did he identify with culturally and in practice?

The most obvious guess would be that Lehi thought of himself as a member of the tribe of Judah — as a “Jew,” to use a somewhat anachronistic term. During the 300 or so years separating the time of Lehi from the immigration of his Manassite ancestors into Jerusalem, it seems likely that the Northern immigrants would have become completely assimilated into Judah and lost their distinct tribal identities. Certainly Manasseh was already considered a “lost tribe” by the time of Lehi.

However, there are certain suggestions in the early chapters of the book (prior to the discovery of Lehi’s Manassite ancestry) that Lehi and his family did not self-identify as Jews. Lehi’s son Nephi, referring to his rebellious brothers Laman and Lemuel, says that they “were like unto the Jews who were at Jerusalem, who sought to take away the life of my father” (1 Nephi 2:13). And in the next chapter, as Lehi explains the plan to obtain the brass plates, he says, “Laban hath a record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass” (1 Nephi 3:3). There is more than one way to interpret such passages, but in my opinion the most natural reading is one which implies a distinction between Lehi’s family on the one hand and “the Jews” on the other.

Another possibility which suggests itself is that Lehi was of Egyptian extraction and that, while he lived in Jerusalem and worshiped the Hebrew God, he did not know that he himself had Hebrew blood. It seems probable that some of the Israelites might have “gone native” while in Egypt and have been left behind by the Exodus — and this would have been especially natural for descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were half-Egyptian by blood and could thus have “passed” more readily among the indigenous population.

When Nephi reports the discovery of their genealogy on the brass plates, he never mentions which tribe they belong to, saying simply “it sufficeth me to say that we are descendants of Joseph” (1 Nephi 6:2). Manasseh is only mentioned much later, in passing, by one of Nephi’s distant descendants. But while he displays a rather un-Israelite lack of interest in tribal affiliation, Nephi does make a point of mentioning that his ancestor was “that Joseph who was the son of Jacob, who was sold into Egypt” (1 Nephi 5:14). This emphasis is more consistent with an Egyptian discovering his Hebrew roots than with an Israelite learning that he belonged to a different tribe than he had supposed.

We also know that Lehi spoke and wrote Egyptian as well as Hebrew. Nephi says that his father’s language “consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2). A thousand years after Lehi, his descendants were still using both Egyptian and Hebrew, though in modified form (Mormon 9:32-33). Laban seems also to have had the learning of the Jews via the language of the Egyptians; his brass plates, which included some texts also found in the Old Testament, were written in Egyptian characters (see Mosiah 1:3-4).

Against this Egyptian hypothesis, though, we have the following words of Nephi to his brothers, spoken before they had obtained the brass plates and discovered their Josephite ancestry: “Moses . . . spake unto the waters of the Red Sea and they divided hither and thither, and our fathers came through . . . the Lord is able to deliver us, even as our fathers, and to destroy Laban, even as the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 4:2-3). It’s hard to reconcile such language with the hypothesis that Nephi was himself an Egyptian.

To summarize the data to be explained:

  • Prior to receiving the brass plates, Lehi apparently knew he was an Israelite but did not know to which tribe he belonged. In the Exodus story, the Hebrews, not the Egyptians, were his “fathers.”
  • However, he seems not to have considered himself a “Jew.” (Laban’s servant also speaks of “the Jews” as if he were not one of them.)
  • Although he did not know his own ancestry, he knew that his kinsman Laban knew. (Was their family history some kind of secret to which Laban was privy but Lehi was not? Why?)
  • Even after learning that he was of the tribe of Manasseh, Lehi seems not to have been interested in this specific tribal identity so much as in his status as a descendant of Joseph.
  • Egyptian was apparently the main language of both Lehi and Laban, although they also spoke Hebrew (see Mormon 9:33). The fact that Laban’s copy of the writings of Isaiah and other Hebrew prophets was an Egyptian translation is strong evidence that he was more comfortable with Egyptian than Hebrew.

My own best guess would be that Lehi was an Egyptian, but that there was an unsubstantiated family tradition that they were actually of Hebrew blood. (In this he would be similar to the many modern-day Mormons who believe, without direct genealogical evidence, that they are descendants of Ephraim.) What he read on the brass plates was not so much a revelation as a confirmation of what he had already suspected. Why this confirmation was a secret kept by Laban is anyone’s guess.

8 Comments:

Rozy Lass said...

I wonder if the reason Lehi didn't know the full story of his ancestry is simply because the records had been lost to him, which is why the Lord knew he needed Laban's copy. In the OT, there are instances of needed your genealogy to prove which tribe you belonged to. Lehi seemed to be a merchant (as well as a prophet), perhaps the records were kept by Laban for the extended family but Lehi had fallen out of favor because he preached such uncomfortable things.
I'm curious as to why it matters. It appears that your brain works differently from mine. I don't question things like that when reading the Book of Mormon. I take it at face value, what it says is what Nephi (and others) wrote, and what Mormon edited in, and what God gave to Joseph Smith through translation. Until we have the rest of it, the sealed 2/3rds, we won't have all the answers. Not to mention the cave or room with all the original records that Mormon condensed. Won't that be a glorious day! To have ALL the records come forth for our study. I look forward to it.
I enjoy reading your thoughts, musings, and conclusions, even if I don't agree with them.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

That's an interesting idea, that Lehi may have fallen out with the family after becoming a "visionary man." It still seems odd to me that he wouldn't even have known which tribe he was a member of, though.

As for why it matters, I just want to understand the book -- who the people in it are, and why they do what they do. I'm not "questioning" it in the sense of casting doubt. As it says at the top of the blog, my working hypothesis is that the book is true, and all these thoughts are in the context of that foundational assumption.

I, too, look forward to further records coming to light -- but in the meantime, we work with what we have!


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

By the way, what does "face value" mean for you in this particular case? How do you think Lehi and his family thought of themselves ethnically before obtaining the brass plates? As Jews?


Rozy Lass said...

Face value means that I read what it says and don't try to guess what the person is thinking, or meaning, or symbolizing; unless it is something like the vision of the tree of life, which is symbolic and explained. I don't know what Lehi thought, other than he knew he was of the House of Israel, but probably didn't know exactly which tribe he belonged to. Or maybe he thought he was of the tribe of Manasseh, but wasn't sure of all those generations back. Maybe he thought he was of the tribe of Ephraim and was surprised to learn that actually he was Manasseh. Not sure.

Please don't think I am criticizing you. I'd enjoy having a face to face conversation, just because you're really interesting and I don't get the opportunity to discuss the gospel, scriptures, general conference talks much with a knowledgable person who has deep and interesting ideas. Your insights cause me to think deeper and explore more. So thank you!! Keep up this good work.


HomeStadter said...

The idea that's been kicking around Mormon writer circles is that Lehi was involved in trade with Egypt, possibly running caravans, and that is why they were familiar with Egyptian. In your scenario, are they recent converts to Judiasm and a naturalized Israelites? Is Laban also a convert? Perhaps they had a recent ancestor who was the convert? Would a person of Egyptian descent coming to a prominent position (Laban), and wealth (Lehi) be related to the pro-Egypt faction (as against Babylon) having come to power in the royal court.

Do you have any priors in mind re the location of the Nephites i.e. Heartland/MesoAmerica/Peru? Among neighbors or pretty much alone?


David Earle said...

Hi William your readers might find this useful:

https://newworldisland.org/notesonthebom/

This is a printer/e-book friendly copy of the blog (latest 20 posts) which can be sent directly to a Kindle or similar device.

Best,

David


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Thanks, David. That's great! I've added a link in the sidebar.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Homestadter, I think it goes beyond mere familiarity with Egyptian. Jeremiah preached in Hebrew in Jerusalem. Laban, living in Jerusalem, had Jeremiah's prophecies in an Egyptian translation. What reason could there be for this other than that Egyptian was his preferred language?

Since Laban and Lehi were related, I would assume it was a shared ancestor who converted to Judaism, rather than that them each converting independently. The religiosity of Laban is an interesting question. On the one hand, he obviously valued the words of the prophets; on the other hand, he doesn't seem to have been real big on basic morality.

I don't think any of the proposed locations for the Nephites fits very well. Ralph Olsen's Malaysian theory has a lot going for it, but there are obvious issues with locating them anywhere other than in the New World. I'll see if any clever solutions come to me as I go through the book.


Monday, October 16th 2023

Who was the "angel" who appeared to Laman and Lemuel?

Wm Jas Tychonievich

5.5 min read (1,600 words)

Shortly after leaving Jerusalem, Lehi sends his sons back to acquire the plates of brass from Laban. First they apparently just try asking him, not even offering any payment until their second attempt! I can’t even hazard a guess as to why they thought he would just give them this precious (and apparently secret) record for free, but I assume there’s some better explanation than "they were stupid."

Laman doesn’t even want to try a second time, since Laban has just threatened to kill him, but Nephi manages to persuade him. After the second attempt to get the plates ends with the brothers fleeing for their lives as Laban keeps his plates and helps himself to their property, Laman is understandably annoyed:

And it came to pass that Laman was angry with me, and also with my father; and also was Lemuel, for he hearkened unto the words of Laman. Wherefore Laman and Lemuel did speak many hard words unto us, their younger brothers, and they did smite us even with a rod. And it came to pass as they smote us with a rod, behold, an angel of the Lord came and stood before them, and he spake unto them, saying:

Why do ye smite your younger brother with a rod? Know ye not that the Lord hath chosen him to be a ruler over you, and this because of your iniquities? Behold ye shall go up to Jerusalem again, and the Lord will deliver Laban into your hands.

And after the angel had spoken unto us, he departed. And after the angel had departed, Laman and Lemuel again began to murmur, saying:

How is it possible that the Lord will deliver Laban into our hands? Behold, he is a mighty man, and he can command fifty, yea, even he can slay fifty; then why not us? (1 Ne. 3:28-31).

The standard Mormon reading of this is basically that Laman and Lemuel were idiots. They immediately resume complaining and saying their mission is impossible, even though an angel has just appeared to them and promised divine assistance. The story is sometimes cited as demonstrating the futility of showing signs to unbelievers, since they will perversely refuse to believe no matter how in-your-face the proof.

Maybe. But as I've said, I tend to prefer explanations other than "they were stupid."

Looking back at the account of the angel's visit, you can see that there is no mention of anything overtly supernatural. We are not told that the angel came down from heaven, that he radiated light, that his voice shook the earth, or anything of that nature. Nor are we told that Laman and Lemuel were terrified or astonished. The whole thing is remarkably matter-of-fact: "An angel of the Lord came and stood before them, and he spake unto them . . . . And after the angel had spoken unto us, he departed." If you replaced angel (of the Lord) with soothsayer or stranger or even just man, no other changes would be necessitated.

Well, sometimes angelic visitations are like that. Pace Rilke, not every angel is terrible; some, we are told, have even “entertained angels unawares" (Heb. 13:2). I propose that Laman and Lemuel’s visitant appeared as an ordinary man, and that the only thing observably “angelic” about him was the content of his message, which suggested supernatural knowledge of them and their mission — but only suggested, for might not an ordinary mortal have overheard enough of their quarrel to be able to say what this angel said?

I think that’s just about the right amount of miraculousness to make the reactions of both Nephi and his brothers understandable. For one who already accepted the reality of angels, it would be natural to assume the visitor was an angel, but this understanding would not force itself on a skeptic.

After the angel departs and Laman and Lemuel resume their murmuring, Nephi tries to inspire them with a story about the Exodus and concludes:

Now behold ye know that this [story about Moses] is true; and ye also know that an angel hath spoken unto you; wherefore can ye doubt? (1 Ne. 4:3).

The language here is telling: “ye also know,” just as you know what happened in Egypt hundreds of years ago. This isn’t the way he would speak if the angelic visitation were just an obvious fact. He’s appealing to their faith. He’s saying, in effect, “Come on, you have to admit that guy was an angel, right?”

How successful was Nephi’s attempt at persuasion?

Now when I had spoken these words, they were yet wroth, and did still continue to murmur (1 Ne. 4:4).

They weren’t convinced. Nephi wasn’t pointing out the obvious; he was arguing for a particular interpretation of what had just happened.

I’ve just been reading in 3 Nephi 28 about the disciples commonly known as the Three Nephites (although the Book of Mormon never actually specifies their ethnicity). They were transformed into such beings “as the angels of God” (3 Ne. 28:30) but not changed to the same degree as those who are resurrected, and they apparently still looked like ordinary people, since one would scarcely try to put an obvious angel in prison.

My first thought was that Laman and Lemuel's "angel" might have been the same sort of person -- what Mormons call a "translated being," who is made quasi-immortal without dying. But who, exactly? The only figures we know of before the time in question who may not have died are Enoch, Moses, and Elijah. Moses is an interesting possibility, because after the "angel" leaves, Nephi immediately begins talking about Moses -- but on balance I think it was probably not Moses for that very reason. Nephi talks about Moses and then about the angel; if he suspected that the angel was Moses, he would surely have said something to that effect. And if he had no such suspicions, then his talking about Moses was just a massive coincidence. To be clear, I do accept the reality of massive coincidences, but all in all Moses just doesn't fit. Why would that particular person have been sent to encourage them on their quest for the brass plates?

There's someone who fits much better -- not a translated being after all.

In my September 23 post "Who were the 13 luminous beings Lehi saw in his Jerusalem vision?" (which you should read now if you haven't yet), I propose that the book Lehi reads in his vision represents Laban's brass plates, the record of the descendants of Joseph, and that the being who gives it to him is Joseph himself. In explaining why I thought this, I referred to Joseph's dreams as recorded in Genesis 37. Here's how his brothers reacted to the first of these:

And his [elder] brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words (Gen. 37:8).

Compare this to what the angel says to Nephi's brothers:

Why do ye smite your younger brother with a rod? Know ye not that the Lord hath chosen him to be a ruler over you, and this because of your iniquities? (1 Ne. 3:29).

This fits perfectly, I think. Lehi and Nephi were righteous descendants of Joseph, but the Josephite record -- the brass book -- was currently in the hands of the wicked Laban. This ancestral spirit, as a post-mortal "angel," first appears to Lehi and allows him to read some of the brass book and then intervenes to help Nephi secure it. And just as Joseph told his elder brothers that he would rule over them, making them so angry that they plotted his death, so he came to deliver a similar message to Nephi's elder brothers.

One other little supporting detail is that the angel promises that "the Lord will deliver Laban into your hands" (1 Ne. 3:29). This is the first time deliver and hands occur together in the Book of Mormon, and the next several occurrences are all in this story of getting the brass plates from Laban. The first two times deliver and hands occur together in the King James Bible are both in, of all places, Genesis 37:

And Reuben heard it [the plot to kill Joseph], and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him. And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again (Gen. 37:21-22).

Under the subconscious biblical contamination theory, the choice of words suggests a link between Joseph and the events of 1 Nephi 3-4, as if Joseph Smith subconsciously understood who the "angel" was.

1 Comment:

Eric said...

Speaking of angels who don't overwhelm people with their glory, the story comes to mind of when Abraham and Sarah were told about Isaac's birth, and the angels' subsequent deliverance of Lot from Sodom.


Tuesday, October 24th 2023

You, Lady, are the Tree

Wm Jas Tychonievich

2.5 min read (720 words)

Today, serendipity led me a to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, first published in Das Buch der Bilder (1902), which echoes a theme from Nephi's vision. Here it is in case you want to slip it into your next sacrament meeting talk.

First, Nephi, as translated by Joseph Smith:

And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me, "Look!"

And I looked and beheld a tree; and it was like unto the tree which my father had seen; and the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.

And it came to pass after I had seen the tree, I said unto the Spirit, "I behold thou hast shown unto me the tree which is precious above all."

And he said unto me, "What desirest thou?"

And I said unto him, "To know the interpretation thereof" -- for I spake unto him as a man speaketh; for I beheld that he was in the form of a man; yet nevertheless, I knew that it was the Spirit of the Lord; and he spake unto me as a man speaketh with another.

And it came to pass that he said unto me, "Look!"

And I looked as if to look upon him, and I saw him not; for he had gone from before my presence. And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem, and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth; and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white.

And it came to pass that I saw the heavens open; and an angel came down and stood before me; and he said unto me, "Nephi, what beholdest thou?"

And I said unto him, "A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins."

And he said unto me, "Knowest thou the condescension of God?"

And I said unto him, "I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things."

And he said unto me, "Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh."

And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying, "Look!"

And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.

And the angel said unto me: "Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?" (1 Ne. 8:11-21)

And now, Rilke, as translated by J. B. Leishman:

Annunciation
(Words of the Angel)

You are not nearer God than we;
he's far from everyone.
And yet your hands most wonderfully
reveal his benison.
From woman's sleeves none ever grew
so ripe, so shimmeringly:
I am the day, I am the dew,
you, Lady, are the Tree.

Pardon, now my long journey's done,
I had forgot to say
what he who sat as in the sun,
grand in his gold array,
told me to tell you, pensive one
(space has bewildered me).
I am the start of what's begun,
you, Lady, are the Tree.

I spread my wings out wide and rose,
the space around grew less;
your little house quite overflows
with my abundant dress.
But still you keep your solitude
and hardly notice me:
I'm but a breeze within the wood,
you, Lady, are the Tree.

The angels tremble in their choir,
grow pale, and separate:
never were longing and desire
so vague and yet so great.
Something perhaps is going to be
that you perceived in dream.
Hail to you! for my soul can see
that you are ripe and teem.

You lofty gate, that any day
may open for our good:
you ear my longing songs assay,
my word -- I know now -- lost its way
in you as in a wood.

And thus your last dream was designed
to be fulfilled by me.
God looked at me: he made me blind . . .

You, Lady, are the Tree.

1 Comment:

HomeStadter said...

This passage of the Book of Mormon is possibly more Marian than the Magnificat or Symeons tribute to her. That says Mary is highly favored, this puts her on a level of the godhead, or pretty close.
Catholics went ahead and did that anyways, going beyond the scripture they have. I served in Mexico, which has a strong Marian tradition because of the five Marian apparitions to Jaun Diego. I had a Mexican companion who would read from this passage (v13-18) when people would say something like, your message is very nice but I can't leave the religion of my fathers and give up venerating Mary.They were always surprised that we had this passage in our book. This didn't convert anybody, but reduced contentions considerably and made it clear we weren't another variety of evangelical.
Still, I am not sure of what to do with this passage. In the LDS church we only pray to the Father in the name of Jesus. The scriptural basis for this is the instructions given by Jesus in 3 Nephi. I would put that instruction firmly in the category of - I'm going to make the gospel very simple and well defined so there are no disputations among you. Likely there is not anything neccesarily wrong with praying to other members of the godhead, in principle, and that instruction is to prevent disputations. Which means that criticizing catholics for praying to Mary might be keeping the letter of the law we have been given, but absolutely missing the spirit of it.
This simplified gospel to avoid disputations worked very well for the Lehite nations - they were extraordinarily united.

In modern times though, this reminds me of the xkcd comic:
panel 1 - there are 15 different software coding standards
panel 2 - Hey we should make a standard that incorporates the best of all these, that is simple and easy to use so there is a universal standard.
panel 3 - lots of working, meetings, etc.
panel 4 - Title: Very soon. There are 16 different established software coding standards.


One final thought - the tree is the love* of God, and as you say it is Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think the principle here may be that love, in order to exist, needs to be between at least two people (and for the highest form a male-female dyad). That is it must be reciprocated, living water, not stagnant water, and one sided love goes bad. In Moroni we learn Jesus is our pure source of love. I suspect that for him to be a source of love he must be in an established perfected loving relationship, such as a mother-son (or possibly husband-wife.) That's why it is identifying the tree (love of God) with Mary (most beautiful corresponding to most desirable, also fair and white like the fruit) and also with Jesus (sheddeth abroad (children of men) corresponding to going forth among the children of men, also word of God like the iron rod).

*As per the fourth gospel I think of this love as also being light and life to keep it clear what this is.


Thursday, October 26th 2023

Moses and the Exodus: Where the Book of Mormon parts ways with the Torah

Wm Jas Tychonievich

10 min read (3,000 words)

Among the records on the brass plates were what Nephi describes as "the five books of Moses, which gave an account of the creation of the world, and also of Adam and Eve, who were our first parents" (1 Ne. 5). Since our Bibles also contain "five books of Moses" -- the Torah or Pentateuch, comprising Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy -- it is natural to assume that the Nephites had these same five books.

I doubt this.

First, as Daymon Smith has pointed out in his Cultural History of the Book of Mormon, the description Nephi gives, while technically true of the Torah we have, would be a very odd way of summarizing it. If you were to read Nephi with no prior knowledge of the Bible, you would assume there were five books about the Creation and Adam and Eve. In fact only one of the Torah's five books, Genesis, touches on these topics, and only very briefly, in its first few chapters. The Torah as we have it is roughly 2% about the Creation and Adam and Eve, 25% about the Patriarchs, and 73% about the life and law of Moses.

(Smith's theory is that the original five books of Moses were lost to the Jews when the brass plates left Jerusalem with Lehi, and that the Torah we have is a collection of pseudepigrapha, cobbled together by later writers from oral traditions, and organized into five books because one of those surviving traditions was that there had been "five books of Moses." I would hesitate to go that far, but Smith deserves credit for pointing out that just because a book has a familiar name doesn't necessarily mean it's the same book we know.)

Second, one of the first things I discovered after starting this blog was that the Nephites knew nothing about Aaron or the Aaronide priesthood. In the Old Testament we have, Aaron is a very major figure, mentioned nearly half as often as Moses himself; but if you read only the Book of Mormon, you wouldn't even know that Aaron existed. To me this is very strong evidence that the "five books of Moses" on the brass plates were different from our Torah, and specifically that they probably didn't include anything like Leviticus or the other "Priestly" material.

Since we can't simply take it for granted that the Nephites had the same Torah that we have, the purpose of this post is to explore possible differences between the story of Moses and the Exodus as known to the Nephites and the version we have in our Bibles.


1. A much shorter sojourn in Egypt?

According to the Torah as we have it, the Israelites left Egypt with Moses exactly 430 years after their ancestor Jacob and his family had taken up residence there (Ex. 12:40-41) -- but we are also told that Jacob's grandson Kohath was among those who entered Egypt (Gen. 46:8-11), and that Moses was Kohath's grandson (Ex. 6:18-20). Kohath lived 133 years; Moses' father, Amram, lived 137; and Moses died at 120 (Deut. 34:7) -- so there's no way to make the numbers work. What does the Book of Mormon say on the question? Did the Israelites live in Egypt for more than four centuries, or only for three generations?

Neither.

And it came to pass that my father, Lehi, also found upon the plates of brass a genealogy of his fathers; wherefore he knew that he was a descendant of Joseph; yea, even that Joseph who was the son of Jacob, who was sold into Egypt, and who was preserved by the hand of the Lord, that he might preserve his father, Jacob, and all his household from perishing with famine. And they were also led out of captivity and out of the land of Egypt, by that same God who had preserved them (1 Ne. 5:15).

To whom do the pronouns I have bolded refer? Who have we just been told God preserved? Joseph, and then, via Joseph, Jacob and his household. Those same people -- the people who were saved from the famine by Joseph -- were led out of the land of Egypt. We are told in Ether 13:7 that either Joseph himself or Jacob died in Egypt, but not all of that generation did. Those who had known Joseph lived to see Moses -- into Egypt and out in a single lifetime.

Doesn't that make more sense anyway? Wouldn't you expect the Israelite culture to have been deeply influenced by that of Egypt if they had really lived there for 430 years? Do you see any signs of that at all in the Bible? There are plenty of pagan fingerprints there, to be sure, but all Canaanite and Mesopotamian, not Egyptian.

In the Torah we have, Joseph enters Egypt as a slave but rises from that station to become second only to Pharaoh in power. When his family joins him in Egypt, they come as honored guests. But then when the Israelites leave Egypt, they are slaves again. Exodus explains this by way of "a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph" (Ex. 1:8) -- because he lived 400-some years after Joseph! -- who decided to re-enslave this formerly high-ranking family. In the condensed timeline suggested by the Book of Mormon, there's no reason to assume the Israelites in Egypt were ever anything other than slaves.

This timeline also fits better with the prophecy of Joseph, quoted by Lehi:

Yea, Joseph truly said: Thus saith the Lord unto me: A choice seer will I raise up out of the fruit of thy loins . . . . And he shall be great like unto Moses, whom I have said I would raise up unto you, to deliver my people, O house of Israel. And Moses will I raise up, to deliver thy people out of the land of Egypt. . . . Yea, thus prophesied Joseph: I am sure of this thing [the coming of the seer], even as I am sure of the promise of Moses; for the Lord hath said unto me, I will preserve thy seed forever (2 Ne. 3:7, 9-10, 16).

Back in my deboonking days, I used to cite this as evidence against the Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith carelessly has the Lord tell Joseph about a future seer who "shall be great like unto Moses," and then, remembering too late that Moses lived after Joseph, Smith tries to salvage the prophecy by having the Lord add parenthetically, "oh, and by the way, there's going to be this guy called Moses." (We see something similar in Ether 13, where we are told that Ether prophesied about the New Jerusalem, oh, and by the way about the yet-to-be-built original Jerusalem, too.) Obviously a clumsy mistake on the part of Joseph Smith, not a genuinely ancient prophecy.

This argument evaporates, and the prophecy reads much more naturally, if we assume that Joseph knew Moses. They were contemporaries. The Lord doesn't say "a great prophet whose name will be Moses"; he just says "Moses." They knew who Moses was. He was already a public figure, perhaps a prince in the court of Pharaoh as in the Torah we have, and the Lord was promising to "raise up" this Moses and make of him a deliverer for Joseph and his people.

This would make it impossible for Moses to be a descendant of Levi, but that's only a problem if we think the Aaronic/Levitical priesthood was instituted by Moses, and we don't think that.


2. How the Red Sea was parted

In Exodus, the only action Moses performs to part the Red Sea is to lift up his rod and stretch out his hand over the sea:

And the Lord said unto Moses, . . . But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. . . . And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided (Ex. 14:15-16, 26).

According to Nephi in the Book of Mormon, Moses parted the Red Sea by speaking to it:

Let us be strong like unto Moses; for he truly spake unto the waters of the Red Sea and they divided hither and thither (1 Ne. 4:2-3).

Now ye know that Moses was commanded of the Lord to do that great work; and ye know that by his word the waters of the Red Sea were divided hither and thither, and they passed through on dry ground (1 Ne. 17:26).

A much later Nephi, the son of Helaman, is perhaps confusing Moses with Elijah or Elisha (2 Kgs. 2:1-2, 5-15) when he speaks of him smiting the Red Sea to part the waters:

Behold, my brethren, have ye not read that God gave power unto one man, even Moses, to smite upon the waters of the Red Sea, and they parted hither and thither, insomuch that the Israelites, who were our fathers, came through upon dry ground, and the waters closed upon the armies of the Egyptians and swallowed them up? (Hel. 8:11).


3. The serpents

In the Torah, the Lord sends "fiery serpents" (seraphim) to bite the Israelites (Num. 21:6). Nephi calls them "fiery flying serpents" (1 Ne. 17:41). This is a phrase from Isaiah (14:29 and 30:6) and perhaps reflects Nephi's obvious interest in that book more than any variant version of the Exodus story he may have had.

When Moses prepares a serpent of brass on which victims of the seraphim may look to be healed, the Book of Mormon adds that many people simply refused to do so and thus perished. The Torah says nothing of this.

He sent fiery flying serpents among them; and after they were bitten he prepared a way that they might be healed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished (1 Ne. 17:41).

The Son of God . . . was spoken of by Moses; yea, and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live. And many did look and live. But few understood the meaning of those things, and this because of the hardness of their hearts. But there were many who were so hardened that they would not look, therefore they perished. Now the reason they would not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them (Alma 33:18-20).

One other possible difference is that the Book of Mormon says God "gave unto Moses power that he should heal the nations after they had been bitten by the poisonous serpents" (2 Ne. 25:20). "The nations" -- goyim -- typically means non-Israelite peoples, but in the Torah only Israelites are bitten. It's possible that "nations" here refers to the twelve tribes, though.


4. Messianic prophecies

In the Torah, the only hint of a Messianic prophecy from Moses -- and thus the sole foundation of the Samaritan Messianic tradition -- is the promise of a future "prophet" (later called the Taheb) in Deuteronomy 18:

The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; . . .

And the Lord said unto me, . . . I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him (Deut. 18:15, 17-19).

The Book of Mormon refers several times to a slightly different version of this. The main difference is that the specific punishment of being "cut off from among the people" replaces Deuteronomy's vague "I will require it of him":

Moses . . . spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that all those who will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from among the people (1 Ne. 22:20).

Behold, I [Jesus] am he of whom Moses spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul who will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from among the people (3 Ne. 20:23).

Therefore it shall come to pass that whosoever will not believe in my words, who am Jesus Christ, which the Father shall cause him to bring forth unto the Gentiles, and shall give unto him power that he shall bring them forth unto the Gentiles, (it shall be done even as Moses said) they shall be cut off from among my people who are of the covenant (3 Ne. 21:11).

The above references clearly cite Moses as the source of this saying, including the "cut off from among the people" but, but he never says it in the Torah we have. In fact, Deuteronomy, the only book of the Torah to mention the promised Prophet, is also the only one to have no references to this sort of "cutting off."

Besides this slightly different version of the Taheb prophecy, the Book of Mormon attributes more explicitly Christian prophecies to Moses but gives few details:

For behold, did not Moses prophesy unto them concerning the coming of the Messiah, and that God should redeem his people? (Mosiah 13:33).

[Zenos and Zenock] are not the only ones who have spoken concerning the Son of God. Behold, he was spoken of by Moses; yea, and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live (Alma 33:18-19).

Moses . . . hath spoken concerning the coming of the Messiah. Yea, did he not bear record that the Son of God should come? And as he lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, even so shall he be lifted up who should come. And as many as should look upon that serpent should live, even so as many as should look upon the Son of God with faith, having a contrite spirit, might live, even unto that life which is eternal (Hel. 8:13-15).

The Helaman reference above (from Nephi the son of Helaman) is the only one to give any detail, but it is not clear how much of it is being attributed to Moses. Moses said the Son of God should come, and Moses lifted up the serpent -- but did he connect the two, and say that the Son would be lifted up like the serpent, or was that connection made by later prophets like Alma and Nephi?


5. The Lord's "burial" of Moses

The Book of Mormon reports speculation that Alma the Younger's mortal life may have ended in the same unusual way as that of Moses:

Behold, this we know, that [Alma] was a righteous man; and the saying went abroad in the church that he was taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord, even as Moses. But behold, the scriptures saith the Lord took Moses unto himself; and we suppose that he has also received Alma in the spirit, unto himself; therefore, for this cause we know nothing concerning his death and burial" (Alma 45:19).

Deuteronomy also has an account of Moses being "buried by the hand of the Lord" after viewing the Promised Land from the top of Mt. Nebo in Moab:

And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.

So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he [the Lord] buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated (Deut. 34:4-7).

These are obviously forms of the same tradition, but they are not the same. Deuteronomy is quite specific that the Lord buried Moses in a specific location on earth ("in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor"), which seems to preclude reading the "burial" as a figurative reference to Moses being "taken up by the Spirit." I guess you could read it as giving the location from which Moses was translated to heaven (just as Elijah was translated on the bank of the Jordan) but it seems pretty forced. "Buried" seems like a pretty odd metaphor for being taken up into heaven, too.

More definitively, the Book of Mormon (I suppose it is Mormon writing in his own voice) clearly states that "the scriptures saith the Lord took Moses unto himself" -- but no scripture that made it into our Bible does say that or anything like it. Therefore, the Nephites had a different account of the end of Moses' life, not simply a different interpretation of Deuteronomy.

6 Comments:

Ben Pratt said...

I remember a specific moment on a tour bus for a high school music trip when I was discussing scriptures with some friends belonging to other Christian denominations, and they were balking at the story of the Three Nephites. As support for the account I referenced what happened to John the Beloved and was surprised and embarrassed when their quite reasonable reading of John 21:23 weakened my argument instead! (NB: reading it again now it is clearly a later insertion and to me it feels misleading.) It was not the first and certainly not the last time that I recognized that my reading of the Bible is heavily colored by my familiarity with and acceptance of the Book of Mormon.

Today I'm in the same spot, for I had never recognized before that the account of some of the hosts of Israel perishing for refusing to look upon the brass serpent is unique to the Book of Mormon. "The five books of Moses" whew!

I haven't commented over here yet but I've really been enjoying this blog.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Many such cases. In Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Lyman Bushman lists everything the Bible says about Enoch, his point being how little there is of it compared to what Joseph Smith added, but he still manages to write that before Smith's Enoch revelations, "Bible readers had always been curious about Enoch and the city transported into heaven" -- somehow missing the fact that neither the Bible nor any of the apocryphal Enoch literature contains so much as a hint of any such city!


HomeStadter said...

Do you see any signs of Egyptian influence in the bible?
Isn't the gold calf egyptian?

who decided to re-enslave this formerly high ranking family?
Here is an attempt to explain how Joseph (and presumably descendants) ruled alongside native pharoahs. You may find it interesting. https://twitter.com/Mssr_le_Baron/status/1457195867463565312
Under the one generation model, do we not have rebellion in the wilderness and them longing for the fleshpots of Egypt? Why would they have rebelled? In the KJV model the explanation for no Egyptianness might be that the 40 years in the wilderness worked - God rooted it out by being a very strict taskmaster - although it is odd that he deliberately left Canaanites in the land to tempt and try the nation of Israel after that.

Jospeh and the one like Moses could also be explained by Joseph prophesying of Moses earlier in that section, which was not quoted, since the quoting took place after Moses.

2. re Red sea parting - your examples here made me think of the phrase, 'smite them with the rod of my mouth', looking it up that phrase occurs in Isaiah 11:4.

What are your thoughts on the scholarly 'sources' - J, E, P, Deuteronomist? Possibly correct and none of them were actual inspired records? I've read the theory that Laman and Lemuel were Deuteronomists, and that explained a lot of their reasoning. In any case it occurs to me that this compiling would have taken place with the same generation as Nephi, and so it would share something of a kinship with 1 and 2 Nephi - same generation, drawing on some of the same source material, either directly or at some remove.

I'm enjoying this blog - if you prefer I keep my nitpicky comments to yourself, let me know.


Eric said...

The popular idea in the world is that Deuteronomy (and many of the other books of the Old Testament) reached the form we know during the captivity in Babylon. So, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the Egyptian elements of Israel's culture were stripped from their records at that time--to say nothing of any elements that would make their beliefs more Christian than most people assume who don't believe in the Book of Mormon.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

HomeStadter, nitpicky comments are always welcome!

No, I don't see anything clearly Egyptian in the Bible. Freud tried to trace monotheism itself to Egyptian influence, but I don't find his case convincing. As for the golden calf, it could just as easily be Mesopotamian or Canaanite as Egyptian; virtually all Mediterranean cultures used bull imagery in their worship.

I don't think the rebellion in the wilderness and the desire to return to Egypt requires that they were in Egypt for a long time. Whatever the timeline, they left Egypt as slaves living under harsh conditions, and yet they still wanted to return because it was more comfortable than their life in the desert.

"Smite them with the rod of my mouth" is a good find -- all three sea-parting mechanisms united in a single metaphor!

I'm broadly sympathetic to the Documentary Hypothesis in its general outlines. What is it about Laman and Lemuel that seems "Deuteronomist"?


HomeStadter said...

I believe I was thinking of this article: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-deuteronomist-reforms-and-lehis-family-dynamics-a-social-context-for-the-rebellions-of-laman-and-lemuel/

Basically, they emphasized outward observances of the Law and a centralized religion focused on the temple rites at Jerusalem and were suspicious of Lehi's and Nephi's DIY approach to seeking God. Which kind of goes along with your post on the Aaronic priesthood, but implies Nephi and Lehi knew about and rejected it and Nephi deliberately didn't teach it or record it.


Thursday, April 4th 2024

The snail on the roof, the Lincoln Memorial, and the translation of the Book of Mormon

Wm Jas Tychonievich

6.5 min read (2,000 words)

LDS Discussions, which is maintained by the pseudonymous "Mike" and is one of the more even-handed anti-Mormon sites out there, has a whole essay on the question of "Tight vs Loose Translation" of the Book of Mormon, defining the terms thus:

Tight translation: As outlined above by FAIR's use of Emma Smith’s quote above, a tight translation is where Joseph Smith is directly translating the Book of Mormon via the seer/peep stone in the hat word for word. The translation of the plates would appear on Joseph Smith’s seer/peep stone in the hat, and Joseph Smith would dictate them to his scribe. This method of translation is a literal one and does not afford Joseph Smith the ability to change or alter the words as the tight translation must be direct for the stone to reveal further words as we will see from the accounts of the translation.

​Loose translation: This method of translation would give Joseph Smith "inspiration" through revelation, which allowed Joseph Smith the freedom to dictate the text of the Book of Mormon through his own milieu, putting the text of the Book of Mormon in his own words. Effectively Joseph Smith would be given the general lessons and concepts through revelations, but it was then left to Joseph Smith to weave those into a story that could be understood in his time. Some have argued that this would be a revelation of “pure intelligence” where Joseph Smith was flooded with the story itself, some say Joseph Smith could see the actual Book of Mormon events in visions, and some say he got literal translations but was then free to make changes as he saw fit.

Mike's argument is that all eyewitness accounts of the translation support the "tight translation" theory: Joseph Smith saw a bit of text, read it out, made sure his scribe had copied it down correctly (including spelling), then saw the next bit of text, and so on. This implies that every word of the text was revealed, and that Smith played no more active or creative a role in the production of the text than did his scribes. A few aspects of the text -- for example, the use of unfamiliar words like cureloms and ziff, which were not understood by Smith but were faithfully copied down as received -- support this theory.

Overall, though, the English text of the Book of Mormon strongly implies a loose translation. It is full of anachronisms, historically problematic uses of the King James Bible, and 19th-century Protestant theology. The original text was also full of misspellings and grammatical errors, most of which have since been corrected. Smith himself also apparently felt at liberty to alter the revealed text in more substantial ways -- for example by inserting "the son of" in places where the first edition had portrayed Jesus as being God himself. All these issues constitute overwhelming evidence that, if the text of the Book of Mormon was indeed revealed, the revelation was filtered through the limited understanding of Joseph Smith, introducing countless errors and changes that were not in the original source text on the golden plates.

Mike argues that defenders of the Book of Mormon can't have it both ways: They can't say that the text was revealed word for word, as all eyewitnesses attest, and then turn around and say that problematic aspects of the text reflect Joseph Smith's own language and limited understanding.

I believe we can have it both ways. My own theory is that Joseph Smith experienced every word of the text as "given" or revealed -- that he was reading off what he saw, not consciously interpreting it or putting it in his own words -- but that what he saw was nevertheless substantially influenced and corrupted by his own understanding.

I briefly introduced this theory in my inaugural post here, "Lehi, Nephi, and the pillar of fire that "dwelt upon a rock": A case study of hard-to-define biblical parallels" (September 2023). I gave an example from my own experience as a dabbler in the art of remote viewing, in which one is given a string of numbers which have been assigned to a "target" about which one knows nothing and then attempts to perceive that target by psychic means. Later, the identity of the target is revealed, and the accuracy of the viewing can be assessed.

In the example I discussed there, I received and sketched an image of a sloping roof with dark shingles, with a very large snail shell on it. After the viewing, I checked the target image and found that it was indeed a photograph of a snail shell on a dark surface sloping in the direction indicated in my sketch -- but that the surface was rock, not a shingled roof. This was undeniably a "hit," an example of successful extrasensory perception -- the odds of my having seen a snail shell on a dark sloping surface by chance are effectively zero --  but the "shingled roof" aspect was an error. Did I see a dark sloping surface and then reason that it was most likely a shingled roof? No. I saw the roof -- including the opposite slope, with no snail on it -- just as clearly as I saw everything else. The whole thing was experienced as "given," with absolutely no sense that I was interpreting or expanding on what I saw. And yet, apparently, I was. The roof came not from the target image but from my own experience and expectations about the likely identity of dark sloping surfaces.

I recently read an even clearer example of this sort of thing from a much more professional remote viewer: Courtney Brown of the Farsight Institute, in his magnum opus, Remote Viewing: The Science and Theory of Nonphysical Perception. Brown is describing two different remote-viewing sessions in which, unbeknownst to him going in, the target was the same: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The first of the two sessions is very accurate with regard to location and environment. Descriptions of Washington, D.C. are very clear. Descriptions and sketches of various landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial) in Washington, D.C. are also clear. Descriptions and sketches of what appears to be the Ford Theater are quite good . . . . The session is also very accurate with regard to perceptions of the nature of the primary subject (a U.S. president). In this session I do not perceive the actual attack on President Lincoln, although I do report a mental despondency on the part of the President at the time of the assassination event.

The second of my two sessions for this target is also very accurate with regard to location and environment. Descriptions of Washington, D.C. are very clear. Descriptions of various landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial) in Washington, D.C. are also clear, and some of the sketches with identifying deductions are quite remarkable. (See figures 6.1, 6.2a, and 6.2b.) Descriptions and sketches of what appear to be the Ford Theater (or components of the Ford Theater) are quite good. However, I do not perceive the actual attack on President Lincoln.

This gibes with my own experience -- that the relative "importance" or salience of different aspects of the target seems to have no effect on remote viewing, and that often peripheral elements are perceived at the expense of the main target. Still, getting clear images of Washington, D.C., both times is impressive, given that this was part of an experiment with dozens of sessions, with targets ranging from an 18th-century naval battle to the largest crater on the Moon. Brown's perceptions of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial were so clear that they were chosen as cover illustrations for the paperback edition of the book. But one major problem, which Brown fails to mention, is that there was obviously no Lincoln Memorial at the time of Lincoln's assassination. This element of his viewing is a glaring anachronism.

Nevertheless, Brown perceived the Lincoln Memorial in direct low-level terms. It's not as if he got a general impression of Washington and then filled in the details based on his own knowledge -- not consciously, at any rate. Here are the figures mentioned in the text I have quoted above:




In Brown's notes, D means "deduction" -- in both senses of that word. Viewers are supposed to focus on low-level sensory-type information and avoid making logical inferences, but when inferences present themselves, they're supposed to jot them down as a way of getting them out of their system ("deducting" them) to minimize their contaminating effect. So for the Lincoln Memorial, what Brown perceived was the shape in the sketch, plus the ideas of "smooth surface, heavy, stone, short, angular." From these direct perceptions came the deductions "Lincoln Memorial, tomb, monument." Likewise, "Washington Monument" is a deduction from the perceptions "stone, heavy, thick, flat sides."

If Brown's sketch of the Washington Monument looks a bit short, and if "thick" seems an odd way of characterizing the structure, that's actually a point in his favor. Though Brown doesn't mention it, at the time of Lincoln's assassination, the Washington Monument was still under construction and looked like this:


So in these sessions we have a combination of impressive "revealed" content -- the Washington Monument not in its familiar form but as it appeared in 1865 -- combined with the obvious error of a Lincoln Memorial already existing before Lincoln had even died. The Lincoln Memorial might have crept into Brown's vision because it is a standard D.C. landmark, or because it is conceptually related to the idea of Lincoln's assassination, but in any case it was clearly inserted into the picture by Brown's mind with its 20th-century perspective, not by the target itself.

Nevertheless, the two perceptions -- the historically correct Washington Monument (analogous to Joseph Smith's nailing some little-known Hebraism) and the howler of an 1865 Lincoln Memorial (analogous to quoting Deutero-Isaiah or whatever) -- were received by Brown in the same way, with no way of distinguishing the true vision from the corrupted one. It was me both times, baba, me first and second also me.

While Joseph Smith's seership was obviously not the same thing as modern military-style remote viewing, my working hypothesis is that they had a lot in common, and that even if the entire text of the Book of Mormon was directly perceived by Joseph Smith, as if written by the finger of God, it was nevertheless filtered through his mind and compromised by his own understanding and mental associations -- most notably by the fact that his was a mind positively saturated with the King James Version of the Bible.

The question, then, is why. I have been using words like corrupted and compromised, but this was the way the Lord chose to have the text revealed. He could presumably have given the plates to a scholar, provided a Rosetta stone, and had the book translated in a more straightforward way, but he chose to do it through seership instead, ensuring the production of a hybrid work with massive 19th-century influences. This must have been optimal for his purposes. There is great value in having an accurate record of ancient religious thoughts and practices, but, to coin a phrase, "a Bible, a Bible, we have got a Bible." The Book of Mormon is something different. As Ezra Taft Benson said, "The Nephites never had the book; neither did the Lamanites of ancient times. It was meant for us."

7 Comments:

Laeth said...

I never commented before (because I didn't have anything to add), but I love your explorations of Book of Mormon lore. So, thank you.

Also, this post immediately reminded me of this interview with a Mormon practitioner of remote viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X93SblH8wo


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Thanks, Laeth. This blog gets relatively little visible engagement, so it's good to know it is in fact being read and appreciated.


HomeStadter said...

I thought from your plug on the main blog that you were going to try and remote view the actual translation process itself. But this post is good too.

Do you have any thoughts about those who see anachronisms but they are to ~1600 England, not 1800s New York. For example, Skousen thinks 'pleasing bar of God' was the clerk transcribing 'pleading bar of God' incorrectly 'pleading bar' being a 1500s or so legal terminology long archaic aby the 1800s, and 'pleasing bar' not existing in the English language prior to the Book of Mormon.

Re: Deutero-Isaiah. It is odd that trito-Isaiah (and also the first chapter), is not quoted at all in the BOM. Your theory explains the first, but not the second, unless that happened by pure chance.


WJT said...

Interesting points, HS.

Regarding Trito-Isaiah, I think it is referenced in the BoM — for example “the robe of righteousness” (Isa. 61:10, 2 Ne. 9:14) — though no chapters are reproduced wholesale. Colby Townsend has done some work on this, I believe.

“Pleasing bar” is certainly an odd turn of phrase, and Skousen’s emendation makes a lot of sense. I would assume that “pleading bar” probably was known by JS, not in its original legal sense but as a religious metaphor. Religious language tends to be conservative like that. It might be worth looking into.


HomeStadter said...

Yes, I think I will be reading his 'The Earliest Text' next. I just finished Bradleys '116 pages'.

If I may, your theory is that the Book of Mormon was engraved in a highly condensed form and Joseph Smith unpacked it into its current form, similar to Daniel extracting all that meaning from the words 'mene mene tekek upharsin'. However, it was strictly speaking his subconscious (including spiritual gifts) that did the translation, without conscious awareness. Assumed is that the subconscious has total recall to incorporate phrases such as 'robes of righteousness' but does not know things that never occurred to Joseph Smith, which is why the style of the Book of Mormon diverges wildly from the KJV in some ways, some of them ways that would be obvious to even the most rudimentary scholar of linguistics. In short someone other than Joseph Smith (the conscious Joseph Smith, at least) translated it, and it was not Deity either. Kind of crazy, but other explanations have some severe problems as well.


This attempted 'translation' of some of the copied down characters, are of interest to this discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yciPd61VHaY


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

I saw that about the translation of the "Caractors" document. I've downloaded his paper about it but haven't had time to look at it yet.


S. Carmack said...

Let's get real about the Book of Mormon. Skousen's done a lot of real text-critical work, since 1988 and finishing this year, so 36 years. And since 2014, S. Carmack has collaborated.

The more accurate terminology, from Skousen 1998, is tight control and loose control. Still, these terms are easily confused and conflated with tight and loose translation, which many associate with literal/functional/conceptual translation modes. Better to be clear by using the plain terminology: revealed words / ideas. Of course, from a non-revealed perspective, the text of 270k words was just a creative dictation of fiction, somehow accomplished in under 70 days of dictation (see John Welch, BYU Studies, 2020?, for the estimate).

But suppose one thinks it was the result of revelation. 188 unique names in thousands of instances argue for words, since names are words not ideas. Also, even if Joseph Smith in 1820s America was somehow a native speaker of 1590s Elizabethan English (which is still a view held by some today, who are invested in the text being a revelation of ideas), the FORM of the English language could not have been achieved by a mere mortal such as Smith. That's a real problem.

Ultimately, from a revelatory perspective, the lexis and syntax (and even the biblical quotes), argue that the Lord sent Smith words in 1829 (as is rather plainly suggested in 2n2724).

Indeed, syntactically speaking, the Book of Mormon is quite different from roughly contemporary pseudo-archaic production. And it is also quite different in various ways from King James syntax. And there are important aspects that even an Elizabethan speaker would not have produced. One is the heavily finite clausal complementation after several high-frequency verbs of influence, the main ones being cause, command, suffer. Hundreds of instances. No other English text has its level of finite complementation. And no text has its level of obsolete ditransitive finite complementation after these three verbs, either. There was no model of these things for Smith, and no pseudo-archaic text is this way. Smith's model was heavy infinitival complementation for these verbs.

There are many other syntactic and lexical niceties to consider, which constitute the most objective evidence, and I won't bother you with any more.


Friday, April 5th 2024

Thoughts on the murder of Laban

Wm Jas Tychonievich

6 min read (1,800 words)

Nephi and his brothers have twice failed to obtain the plates of brass from Laban. The first time, Laman alone goes to Laban and simply asks for the plates; Laban refuses, calls him a robber, and threatens to kill him. The second time, the four brothers goes together, bringing gold and silver to offer in payment. Laban again refuses, throws them out, and sends servants to kill them. In fleeing, the brothers have no choice but to leave their gold and silver behind, "and it fell into the hands of Laban" (1 Ne. 3:26).

The third attempt famously ends with Nephi's decapitating the helpless Laban, whom he then impersonates in order to steal the plates. None of this was planned in advance, we are told, but Nephi nevertheless seems to have had a premonition that things would end with the "destruction" of Laban. Citing Moses as an example to encourage his brothers before this final attempt, Nephi concludes with, "Let us go up; the Lord is able to deliver us, even as our fathers [who left Egypt with Moses], and to destroy Laban, even as the Egyptians" (1 Ne. 4:3). He approaches Laban's house alone, with neither weapons nor money nor a clear plan, apparently counting on the Lord to come through with a Moses-style miracle.

And it was by night; and I caused that they should hide themselves without the walls. And after they had hid themselves, I, Nephi, crept into the city and went forth towards the house of Laban.

And I was led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.

Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine.

And when I came to him I found that it was Laban (1 Ne. 4:5-8).

The standard Mormon reading is that "the spirit" that led Nephi was the Spirit of the Lord -- hence the capitalization in current editions -- but several commentators have pointed out that this is never made explicit in the text; it is only ever called "the spirit." Daymon Smith has proposed that it was a spirit associated with Makmahod, the sword which Laban wore and with which Nephi killed him. Corbin Volluz raises an even darker possibility with the Hamlet quote that serves as the title of his 2013 essay "'The Spirit That I Have Seen May Be The Devil' -- Nephi's Slaying of Laban." It has also been proposed that the "spirit" was only Nephi's own internal monologue, which is how most moderns would also understand the "gods" who moved the Homeric heroes, but in my judgment this possibility can be ruled out. In telling the story, Nephi distinguishes sharply between the words of the spirit and his own rationalizations, even though it would be in his interest to ascribe the latter to the spirit as well.

And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him (1 Ne. 4:9-10).

Nephi presents himself as unwilling to kill Laban, doing so in the end only because he was thus "constrained" -- that is, compelled or forced -- by the spirit. The spirit speaks only after Nephi has drawn Laban's sword, which is one of Daymon Smith's reasons for associating the spirit with the sword itself. It also raises a question, though: Why is Nephi, professedly unwilling to shed blood, unsheathing Laban's sword before the spirit has constrained him to kill? Is he drawn to the fine weapon by an irrepressible manly curiosity, like Achilles among the women? Is he planning to take it with him for self-defense as he sneaks into Laban's house to steal the plates? Possibly -- but the most natural reading is that the idea of murdering Laban has already occurred to Nephi by the time the spirit on his shoulder, be it angel or devil, chimes in.

And the spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property (1 Ne. 4:11).

The spirit first simply says, "Kill him," with no explanation given. The second time it offers that "the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands" -- not a moral justification, but a suggestion that Nephi's remarkable luck in finding Laban defenseless may not be luck but providence. If God didn't want you to kill him, why would he have made him so easy to kill? Note also that the spirit refers to "the Lord" in the third person, implying that it is not itself the Spirit of the Lord.

Nephi then begins to give his own rationalizations for the murder: that Laban had tried to kill him and had taken their property. As Corbin Volluz mentions in his essay, Nephi will go on to commit these very crimes against Laban, killing him and taking his property. When he goes on to put on Laban's clothes and speak in his voice, it perhaps underscores the deeper symbolic sense in which he has "become Laban." Nephi also says that Laban "would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord," perhaps implying that Nephi and his brothers had told him that the Lord had commanded them to take the plates but that Laban had still refused to cooperate.

And it came to pass that the spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.

And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise. Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law. And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass. And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause -- that I might obtain the records according to his commandments.

Therefore I did obey the voice of the spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword (1 Ne. 4:12-18).

After repeating its previous statements, the spirit adds that the Lord himself "slayeth the wicked," implying that therefore Nephi is justified in doing the same. What follows is clearly influenced by the New Testament and is thus textually suspect: "It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief." This echoes the language of Caiaphas as to why Jesus must die:

Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad (John 11:47-52).

This introduces further moral complications. On the one hand, Caiaphas is clearly proposing something wicked: that Jesus be killed for the crime of performing miracles, lest he become so popular as to be perceived as a threat to Rome and provoke violent retaliation. On the other hand, the Gospel author suggests that, due to his role as high priest, Caiaphas spoke more than he knew, and that his words had an unintended but truer meaning: that it was in fact good for Jesus to die in order to save his own nation and others.

Taking his words as he intended them, though, Caiaphas was wrong. Having Jesus executed did not save the Jews from the Romans, who in a matter of decades would raze Jerusalem and its Temple and kill or enslave most of the Jewish people. Nephi's hopes were to prove equally vain. What happened to his nation, the Nephites, in the end? The very fate that the murder of Laban was supposed to prevent: They "all dwindled in unbelief" (Ether 4:3), and then "they were all destroyed" (Morm. 8:2).

Daymon Smith in the final volume of his Cultural History of the Book of Mormon makes the provocative suggestion that the theft of the brass plates may have caused another nation, too, to dwindle in unbelief:

Moreover, we can suppose that the Brass Plates -- being removed from Jerusalem, immediately prior to its capture by Babylon -- also generated commentary and other metatext. Such metatext would've been preserved, carried to Babylon and eventually the gaps in the record were filled in by Babylonian traditions.

This, he says, would yield the Old Testament as we have it, a Babylonized "counterfeit" of the brass-plate records "which inscribes false traditions into scripture."

Who or what was the "spirit" that constrained Nephi to kill? How laudable or culpable was Nephi for obeying it? I don't have definitive answers to those questions, but I think it is clear that the acquisition of the brass plates came at a cost. "Should the first book in the Nephite record be subtitled, 'The Tragedy of Nephi'?" Corbin Volluz asks. It is certainly tempting to see in him a tragic hero in the classical mold: a good man doomed by a tragic error or hamartia, in this case the murder of Laban and the theft of the plates.

2 Comments:

Eric said...

I'm smelling a lot of "if" coming off these ideas.

For me, Mr. Volluz is too disingenuous to take seriously. The last Nephites fell because of their own sins, and not for Nephi's (implied) transgression.


WJT said...

I respect Corbin Volluz as a thinker.


Tuesday, July 2nd 2024

The purpose of plates: A hypothesis

Wm Jas Tychonievich

6.5 min read (1,900 words)

Obviously, I haven't posted on this blog for a while. I've been hung up on my inability to make sense of the whole idea of "plates" as a record-keeping medium, but I think I'm finally starting to make some progress.

Why would any people want to engrave its scriptures on metal plates rather than writing them on scrolls as the writers of the Bible did? The reason given in the Book of Mormon is a concern for the permanence of the records:

I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates; and we know that the things which we write upon plates must remain; but whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates must perish and vanish away (Jacob 4:1-2).

In theory, something engraved in gold should be permanent, since gold is one of the least reactive substances known to man and will not rust or corrode or decay the way other materials eventually do. In practice, though, we would not expect a document written on gold to be preserved down through the millennia, simply because the material itself is so valuable and so easily cannibalized for other purposes. "Neither moth nor rust doth corrupt" gold, granted, but what about the "thieves break through and steal" bit? Trusting that something will be preserved for future generations simply because it's engraved in gold seems foolish.

With relatively few exceptions, documents of great antiquity which have survived down to the present have done so not because the original was written in some uniquely permanent and incorruptible medium, but because a great number of copies were made, and then copies of those copies, and then copies of copies of copies, and so on.

This process of iterative copying is not perfect, of course, and over time errors and emendations creep into the text. All things considered, though, it's a remarkably effective way of preserving a text for a long period of time. Written language consists of discrete characters, drawn from a finite set and arranged in a linear order, which makes it the kind of thing that can be copied perfectly. It's even possible to memorize a lengthy composition word-for-word and then write down a faithful copy from memory, which is likely how the first written copies of the Homeric epics and the Quran originated.

The words of Homer, who sang nearly three millennia ago, are still readily available today. Of the celebrated works of Parrhasius, four centuries closer to our time than Homer, nothing survives. The reason for this is simply that Homer was a poet, and Parrhasius was a painter, and paintings cannot be copied perfectly by hand the way poems can. If you had the time and the inclination, you could copy down the entire Vulgate Bible by hand, and do so perfectly, even if you didn't understand a word of Latin. Now try to imagine producing, by hand, a perfect copy of this picture of Jerome writing the Vulgate:


Obviously this is impossible. Not just difficult, but strictly impossible. Dürer himself, who created the original, could not have produced a perfect copy by hand. However, many perfect copies were made, and long before modern photographic technology, because what Dürer created was not a painting on canvas but an engraving on a copper plate. This could be used to produce any number of prints, with perfect fidelity, through the technique of intaglio printmaking. The process is illustrated on Wikipedia as follows:


When you hear that Dürer is most famous for his woodcuts and copper engravings, you should not imagine sheets of engraved copper hanging up in a museum somewhere. The copper plate was not the artwork itself, but a means of producing and reproducing countless iterations of it.

As you can see above, the intaglio process involves getting ink into the engraved grooves on the plate and then transferring this ink to paper, creating a perfect mirror-image of the engraving. Although the diagram above makes it look as if this completely removes the ink from the grooves, in fact the grooves remain black with ink even after the print has been made.


In his book The Lost 116 Pages, Don Bradley quotes some little-known early descriptions of the Golden Plates. Citing Orson Pratt, he writes:

The plates, witnesses reported, were partly sealed shut and were engraved with hieroglyphics, in the grooves of which was a "black, hard stain" that contrasted the characters against the golden page.

He also quotes a similar description given by Francis Gladden Bishop:

The characters are rubbed over with a black substance so as to fill them up, in order that the dazzling of the gold between the characters would not prevent their being readily seen.

Both Pratt and Bishop apparently understood the black ink to be in the grooves for the purpose of contrast, to make it easier to read the text directly from the plates. Doesn't it seem likelier, though, that this black stain is an indication that the Golden Plates, like the copper plates of Dürer, were primarily used for making prints? Of course, one could read directly from the plates, but the text would be in mirror image. Perhaps a pair of specially designed spectacles could correct that, though. Hypothetically speaking.

If I am correct in my hypothesis that the scriptures used by ordinary Nephite literati were intaglio prints from the Plates, that would suggest that their sacred writings had a form that made this particular form of copying necessary -- that the "text" on the Plates was much more like Saint Jerome in His Study than it was like the Vulgate Bible. Had they relied on low-fidelity hand-copying to preserve it, much of the content would rapidly have "perished and vanished away."

It is interesting to note in this connection that, in addition to texts in the narrow sense, Joseph Smith introduced certain pictures into the canon of sacred writings, and that these were of Egyptian origin. Take for example this Facsimile from the Book of Abraham:


I don't want to get into questions about this facsimile in particular -- Joseph Smith interpreted about half of it as being about a rather cryptic astronomical theory and left the rest of it a mystery, while modern scholars see it as a common funerary talisman -- but simply to note the significance of the fact that this picture, just as much as the text of the Bible or Book of Mormon, is part of the scriptural canon of the Latter-day Saints. The facsimile as we have it is an excellent example of my point about it being impossible to produce perfect copies of pictures by hand, as it is pretty clearly a copy of a copy of a copy, from which much of the detail has been lost or corrupted. It's a pity that Abraham didn't use intaglio printing technology instead of writing "by his own hand upon papyrus"!

This, according to Joseph Smith, is an example of what Egyptian scripture looks like. Both the Golden Plates and the Brass Plates, we know, were written in the Egyptian manner (see 1 Ne. 1:2, Mosiah 1:4, Morm. 9:32). Is it possible that the engravings on the Plates consisted of, or at least included, similar "facsimiles"? For evidence of that, I turn again to Don Bradley's indispensable work. According to Charles Anthon, who looked at characters hand-copied from the Golden Plates:

The characters were "arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks." Anthon saw in this circular design an echo of "the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt," meaning the Aztec calendar published by Alexander Von Humboldt in 1814.

Anthon wrote this well before Joseph Smith had purchased the papyri from which the Book of Abraham was produced, but doesn't that description -- "a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks" -- sound exactly like Facsimile 2? As with that facsimile, I attribute the "rudeness" of the delineation to the fact that it was a hand-drawn copy. Presumably the original on the Plate was anything but rude. If this was indeed the character of the Nephite records, the need for intaglio printing to preserve the details intact is evident.

Finally, there's the question of why the Nephite and Jaredite plates were gold but Laban's were brass. Given the costliness of gold, there must have been some compelling reason for using it, but the existence of Laban's plates seems to indicate that brass -- cheaper, lighter, less susceptible to deformation -- would have served just as well. In fact, copper and zinc (the components of brass) remain the favored materials for intaglio plates. How to account for the use of both types of plates, gold and brass?

Here's my theory. In almost all ways, brass plates would be preferable to gold in practical terms. The chief value of gold is (1) that it does not corrode and (2) that it is so expensive as to make the production of unauthorized "fake" gold plates by private citizens impractical. I propose that gold plates were rarely used directly, but were kept (by kings or chief priests) as the "gold standard" guaranteeing the authenticity of all copies. Prints from the gold plates were used to create brass plates, and these brass plates (which were more portable, and of which there could be multiple copies) were used to create the prints in common use. In the event that the gold plates were themselves lost, prints from authenticated brass plates could be used to create a new set of gold plates -- an extremely expensive undertaking beyond the means of anyone outside the kingly or priestly establishment.

Laban was an important man, but not that important."He can command fifty" -- what is that, like a first lieutenant? He was entrusted with a brass-plate copy of the Josephite record, not with the original gold. Given the many centuries separating Joseph from Laban, it seems likely that the gold-plate record was no longer extant. It also appears that Laban or his associates were making brass-plate copies of the words of contemporary prophets, like Jeremiah, who would not yet have reached the stage of being canonized in gold.

Lehi seems to have understood that brass, unlike gold, is not an imperishable medium: "Wherefore, he said that these plates of brass should never perish; neither should they be dimmed any more by time" (1 Ne. 5:19).This reads most naturally as a prophecy that the Brass Plates will be miraculously preserved, and the statement that they should not "be dimmed any more by time" suggests that they had already been considerably dimmed.

So that's my current theory on plates. As I continue to reread the Book of Mormon, with this theory in mind, I'll see if it helps any puzzle pieces fall into place or if it all just ends in a stupor of thought causing me to forget the thing that was wrong.

11 Comments:

Laeth said...

this is brilliant! it makes a lot of sense though it never occurred to me (nor have I seen it mentioned by anyone, not even the great Hugh Nibley). outstanding work.


Leo said...

That's a very compelling theory.


William Wright (WW) said...

I'm curious as to why would there have been stain on the Gold Plates for the intent of making exact copies? Who was copying and for what purpose?

Both Mormon and Moroni said they created the Gold Plates that became the Book of Mormon specifically as an act of preservation at the very end of that society, that no one in the future would know the language that had been written on them (and likely few in their day even knew, since it was written in this "Reformed Egyptian" rather than the "Hebrew" that seems to have been the common language of the day, or at least more common), and that the plates, and therefore the writing on them, was useless without the interpreters that would be given with them.

Similarly, Ether's plates were written in a language that no one could understand and which Mosiah had to use the interpreters in order to translate into his own language. Distributing copies of this record (which wasn't really allowed anyway) would have involved not printmaking, but handwritten copies of the translation that Mosiah read to the people.

In both cases, it doesn't seem that making exact paper copies or replicas of the characters was a priority or even desirable.

As for whether preserving records on gold plates (and brass) was foolish and unsafe, akin to putting all of your eggs in one basket, Alma explains how this works to Helaman and why it wasn't viewed as risky, by him at least. Joseph Smith personally found out what happens if anyone tried to grab the plates with any unrighteous intent.


Leo said...

Those are really good points WW. I guess we’d have to assume Mormon was publishing printed copies as part of his late stage preaching to the Nephites. I don’t think that’s too hard to imagine but it does require reading something into the record that’s not explicitly stated.


WJT said...

Excellent points, WW, exactly the sort of useful feedback I was hoping for. I see I haven’t adequately distinguished between the plates of Nephi and Jacob, kept by priests and kings for many generations, and the plates of Mormon, created as a time capsule at the end of the Nephite civilization.

Which set of plates did the witnesses see, I wonder: the Book of Mormon proper, or the Small Account?


Bruce Charlton said...

It's a good idea.

Gold plates are very soft, however, and every time a print was taken from them there would have been erosion and blurring. This wad a problem even with harder metal plates used for engraving, which is why He wicked innovation of using the end grain of (very hard and resistant) box wood was positively regarded.

As you say, gold Printing plates would need to be kept as a check primarily, and used as seldom as possible for making copies.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Gold is 2.5 Mohs, the same as zinc, which is commonly used for intaglio printing today.


Bruce Charlton said...

Op-ed

He wicked was spelled "corrected" from Bewick's...


WJT said...

Ha! Given your strong opinions on just about everything, I figured you really did consider it a “wicked innovation” for some reason.


William Wright (WW) said...

Even if it was the small plates, I can't see that yet, either. Some of the stuff written on those plates (as we currently understand those contents - I think Doug did a good job of questioning what was on the plates that Mormon attached) was clearly not for public consumption. Things like Nephi's vision of the entire destruction of his civilization, for example.

Nephi, Jacob, and others also write as if those 'small plates' were primarily for preservation (expressly said that they were written for a future generation), and Jacob suggests that they did have other writings, teachings, probably scrolls and things, but only the very best or most needed was then transferred to and captured on plates, this being because of how difficult it was to engrave. In effect, rather than producing paper copies from plates, the intent seems to have been the opposite: to take teachings, including those from paper copies, and preserve only the most critical things on plates.

Mormon also had no knowledge of the small account or their contents until he stumbled upon them as he was pulling things together, which would suggest that copies of the text were not available even to him at that time. We might say that they didn't survive until then if they did exist, but that would still be a point in favor of plates vs. copies for preserving holy records, if so.

With respect to the Brass Plates example, Lehi seems to have had no ingoing knowledge of what the Plates actually said until he examined them (he just knew some general things, like genealogy and that it was a record of the Jews, but not the specific information). Since Lehi was both a wealthy man and a prophet in some manner, my guess is if there were copies of the Brass Plates floating around, he would have had one.

I do, however, really like your hypothesis that the 'dimming' of the Brass Plates over time may have been a reference to corrosion, and that Lehi's commentary was a regarding a miracle or divine aid in preventing any further decay. I think that words really well. Not knowing anything about metallurgy, I briefly looked into this after you made that point and it made me think that without divine aid, plates made out of Brass would be long past their shelf life and perhaps unreadable today. Is that right?


WanderingGondola said...

Hmm, an interesting theory; at the same time, some good counterpoints have been made. I feel like there's something missing from the whole "plates" discussion, but beats me what it could be... Maybe it's just the sync talking?

It was around 1:30am last night (the 3rd) when I first saw this post. For the previous two hours I'd been playing Elder Scrolls Online, adventuring in a mechanical realm known as the Clockwork City. I'd stopped playing shortly after perusing a library to make a copy of a poem (a talking crow wanted it in exchange for helping me find a key... it makes sense in context!), so it was very fresh in mind that the vast majority of texts in the City take the form of sets of metal plates. Can't really make a proper comparison with the BoM plates, though it's stimulating to consider anyway.


Wednesday, August 21st 2024

Thoughts on the Astronaut Nephi theory

Wm Jas Tychonievich

10 min read (3,100 words)

William Wright ("The Promised Land: Landing the Jaredites and Lehites somewhere..." and passim) and Leo ("Mapping God's Vineyard") have proposed that the "sea" across which Lehi's family traveled to reach the promised land was actually outer space. In this post I try to assess how textually plausible that is.

Irreantum

And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey; and all these things were prepared of the Lord that we might not perish. And we beheld the sea, which we called Irreantum, which, being interpreted, is many waters (1 Ne. 17:5).

"Being interpreted" appears multiple times in the New Testament, always to translate a Hebrew or Aramaic word or name into the Greek in which the New Testament is written. These glosses are necessary because the language of the intended readers is not the same as the language of Jesus and his disciples. Here, though, Nephi is writing for his own descendants and reporting a name that his own family gave to the sea, so it's not clear why a gloss would be necessary. Why would Lehi's family have given the sea a name that their own children would have difficulty understanding? To me, this strongly suggests that, though this part of the Book of Mormon is not supposed to have been edited by Mormon, it was likely edited by someone and that the gloss was added by this later editor and not by Nephi himself. This in turn implies that the meaning of Irreantum is obscure and that therefore the gloss might be wrong. So that's a point in favor of the theory that Nephi might not have been talking about literal waters.

Since the Astronaut Nephi theory is something I got from William Wright and his friend Leo, and since they also try to tie the Book of Mormon in with Tolkien's world and languages, it occurred to me to try to find an Elvish etymology for Irreantum. Here's one possible analysis as a three-morpheme compound:
  • airë -- an archaic Quenya word for "sea" which fell out of use due to conflict with another word airë, which means "holy." Although today we pronounce Irreantum so that the first two syllables sound like those of irresponsible, I don't think it's impossible, given the non-standard spelling habits of Joseph Smith and his associates, that a "long i" sound, corresponding to the diphthong in the Elvish word, was originally intended.
  • yána -- Quenya for “wide, vast, huge,” from the root √YAN. In earlier versions of the language, √YAN meant "holy." The root for "holy" was later changed to √AYA(N), but it's interesting that both airë and yan could mean "holy." This is one possible explanation for the gloss: In a compound word, aire-yan would most naturally be understood to mean "holy," since both elements can mean that; hence the need to explain that in this case it actually means "vast sea."
  • tumna -- Quenya for "deep" -- or, in Tolkien's earlier notes, "profound, dark, hidden" -- from the root √TUB, also meaning "deep"; in many words derived from the root (for example Sindarin tum, "valley"), the final b becomes m.
So Irreantum could be Aireyantum, suggesting both "vast, deep sea" and "holy darkness." As evidence that the latter reading can be very naturally applied to outer space, we have Carl Sagan's essay "Sacred Black," in which he modifies the French minced oath sacre-bleu and applies it to outer space.

Unfortunately for the Astronaut Nephi theory, everything else about Irreantum seems inconsistent with its being anything other than a literal body of water. Even in the first just quoted, they "beheld the sea" only after they had "come to the land which we called Bountiful." If the "sea" is simply the night sky, it should be equally visible from anywhere, and the association with a particular place seems strange.If anything, the night sky would have been more clearly visible in the desert they had just left than in Bountiful, whose "much fruit" implies higher humidity and probably lots of trees.

Furthermore, we learn that this "sea" has a "seashore":

And it came to pass that we did pitch our tents by the seashore; and notwithstanding we had suffered many afflictions and much difficulty, yea, even so much that we cannot write them all, we were exceedingly rejoiced when we came to the seashore; and we called the place Bountiful, because of its much fruit (1 Ne. 17:6).

What could possibly be meant by the "shore" of outer space? Isn't every point on Earth's surface equally "adjacent" to outer space? I suppose one could say that a very high mountain, being closer to the place where the atmosphere ends and the vacuum begins, is on the border or "shore" of space. Unfortunately, the tops of high mountains are not notable for their "much fruit," and in any case the text seems to make it clear that Bountiful by the sea is not a mountaintop:

And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been in the land of Bountiful for the space of many days, the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying: Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord (1 Ne. 17:7).

Nephi has been in Bountiful for many days before he goes "up into the mountain." It was near a mountain but not on it. I suppose this is technically consistent with its being "by the seashore," but that just seems like a ridiculously convoluted way of saying "near a high mountain," especially since one verse later the mountain is referred to plainly as "the mountain."

And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters (1 Ne. 17:8).

"These waters" can only mean Irreantum, and for the reasons discussed above, it's hard to force the reading that Irreantum is outer space. I suppose you would have to say that in these verses references to a literal sea and seashore are interspersed with references to the "waters" of outer space. Perhaps Nephi stays down on the (literal) seashore, and perhaps contemplates crossing those waters, but the Lord calls him up into a mountain, away from the ocean but closer to the sky, and says, "No, actually you're going to cross these waters."

This still strikes me as an extremely strained reading, and I would want to find a pretty clear smoking gun in the text before subjecting it to such an extravagant interpretation.


More than just this earth

A bit later in the same chapter, we find some verses more amenable to the Astronaut Nephi theory. In rebuking his brothers for mocking and criticizing his ship-building enterprise, one of the things Nephi says to them is this:

Behold, the Lord hath created the earth that it should be inhabited; and he hath created his children that they should possess it. . . . And he leadeth away the righteous into precious lands . . . . He ruleth high in the heavens, for it is his throne, and this earth is his footstool (1 Ne. 17:36-39).

Is it possible that "the earth" in v. 36 means something more like "the world" -- or perhaps "land" in a generic sense -- including more than just the one planet called "this earth" in v. 39? We can imagine Nephi gesturing up at the stars and saying, "God created all this land -- on all these planets -- to be inhabited, and he created us, his children, to possess it. After all, his domain is the whole of the heavens, of which this earth is just a part."

The expression "this earth" does not occur in the King James Bible, but it used in the Book of Moses, clearly in the context of there being other earths:

And worlds without number have I created; . . . But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds (Moses 1:33, 35).

Nephi alludes to two passages from Isaiah. One of these, Isa. 66:1, has the Lord say, "The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool." The other, Isa. 45:18, says:

For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.

This strongly implies multiple habitable worlds. It states that the earth would have been created "in vain" if it were not inhabited, implying that the same is true of the heavens.


To throw me into the depths of the sea

After Nephi's rebuke, his brothers

were angry with me, and were desirous to throw me into the depths of the sea; and . . . they came forth to lay their hands upon me" (1 Ne. 17:48).

This has to be a literal sea, right? Everyone is still on earth at this point, so throwing Nephi into outer space doesn't seem possible. I mean, we can make something up -- perhaps the ship included an antigravity device which Laman and Lemuel planned to use to make Nephi fly off into the void -- but nothing in the text warrants that.

Nephi then says,

If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done. And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me, that I should build a ship? (1 Ne. 17:50-51).

Even though Nephi is talking about seemingly impossible feats, still some things are more readily imagined than others. Douglas Hofstadter writes somewhere that, after driving a car through a swarm of bees, it's very natural to say, "It's lucky the windows weren't open," but not at all natural to say, "It's lucky those bees weren't made of cement." In the same way, it's natural to imagine being able to transform sea into dry land -- but to transform outer space into land? What would that even mean? Here, again, I think water just has to mean "water."

Of course it's possible in principle that Nephi was camped at a literal seashore while he built a ship to cross the very different "sea" of outer space, but this passage makes the most sense if the water he imagines being turned into earth is the very water they intend to cross. Nephi is saying, "Look, if God wanted to get us across this sea by teaching me how to turn it into earth and then having us walk across, he could do it. So why not the much less extravagant miracle of teaching me how to build a ship?"


The building of the ship

Here is the description of the building of the ship itself:

[W]e did work timbers of curious workmanship. And the Lord did show me from time to time after what manner I should work the timbers of the ship. Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men.

And I, Nephi, did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things.

And it came to pass that after I had finished the ship, according to the word of the Lord, my brethren beheld that it was good, and that the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine (1 Ne. 18:1-4).

Nephi emphasizes the fact that the construction of the ship "was not after the manner of men." This was not an ordinary ship and did not reflect ordinary human technology. This is consistent with the theory that it was actually a spacecraft. On the other hand, it is apparently made of "timbers," an unlikely material for an interplanetary vessel. Reports of UFOs that incorporate wood in their structure are not unheard of, though, with the Roswell wreckage being the best known example. Who is to say what materials would or wouldn't be suitable for this "curious workmanship" that "was not after the manner of men"?


The voyage

How consistent is the description of the voyage itself with space travel?

And it came to pass after we had all gone down into the ship, and had taken with us our provisions and things which had been commanded us, we did put forth into the sea and were driven forth before the wind towards the promised land (1 Ne. 18:8).

The reference to putting forth into the sea, rather than onto, is consistent with the "sea" being space; a spacecraft does not float on the surface of space but is immersed in it.

"Driven before the wind" is obviously incompatible with space travel if it is taken literally, since "wind" in the ordinary sense is an atmospheric phenomenon. In support of the space-travel reading, though, we might note the way "before the wind" is used in the King James Bible. It is never used to refer to the propulsion of a sailing ship, but only to describe lightweight things such as chaff and stubble being blown away, or made to "fly."

And I, Nephi, began to fear exceedingly lest the Lord should be angry with us, and smite us because of our iniquity, that we should be swallowed up in the depths of the sea (1 Ne. 18:10).

As noted above, a spacecraft is "immersed" or "swallowed up" in the depths of outer space even when it is operating normally. We can contrive ways of making Nephi's fear fit the outer-space setting, but the most natural reading is definitely that he fears their floating ship will sink.

Laman and Lemuel then "bind" Nephi "with cords" (1 Ne. 18:11). Artists almost universally depict Nephi being tied to the mast like Odysseus, but nothing in the text suggests this. Nephi reports that after his bands were loosed, his wrists and ankles were swollen (v. 18), which sounds more like he was hogtied rather than tied to anything. Anyway, no references to a mast and therefore no conflict with the outer-space reading.

18:13 Wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship, insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters for the space of three days; and they began to be frightened exceedingly lest they should be drowned in the sea; nevertheless they did not loose me. And on the fourth day, which we had been driven back, the tempest began to be exceedingly sore. And it came to pass that we were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea. And after we had been driven back upon the waters for the space of four days, my brethren began to see that the judgments of God were upon them (1 Ne. 18:13-15).

Like the earlier reference to "wind," "storm" and "tempest" normally refer to atmospheric phenomena, though we could perhaps contrive a space-friendly reading. Also, in contrast to the earlier reference to the ship's going "into" the sea, here it is "upon the waters" -- more consistent with sailing on a surface than with traveling through space.

When Nephi's parents' lives are in danger during the voyage, he writes,

their grey hairs were about to be brought down to lie low in the dust; yea, even they were near to be cast with sorrow into a watery grave (1 Ne. 18:18).

I don't think this is a very natural way of describing a death in space, even in the context of the "great waters" metaphor.

When the storm ceases, we have this description.

And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed the winds did cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did guide the ship, that we sailed again towards the promised land (1 Ne. 18:21-22).

This is essentially the same language used in the New Testament to describe Jesus stopping a storm on the Sea of Galilee: "And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39). There is one hint, though, that this may not be a literal storm on a literal sea: Immediately after the winds cease and there is "a great calm" -- i.e., no wind -- they "sailed again towards the promised land." Obviously you can't sail towards anything when there's no wind. Of course the Gospels also describe the voyage continuing after the wind ceases and there is a great calm, but they don't say they sailed (Luke alone mentions sailing, and only before the storm; see Luke 8:23), and we know that they sometimes traveled the Galilee by rowing (see Mark 6:48).

While I wouldn't call it a smoking gun, this reference to "sailing" in "a great calm" is the only textual evidence I can find against the standard reading that the Lehites sailed an ordinary ship across an ordinary sea.


Conclusion

As much as I like the interplanetary reading of the Book of Mormon and want to find it convincing, so far I'm just not finding it that plausible. For the time being, I think I regrettably have to classify it together with readings that propose that maybe north means "west" and horse means "tapir."

4 Comments:

William Wright (WW) said...

Yeah, great points. No real convincing counter evidence from me.

We might be mistaken in applying our Earth-based and grounded rules and imaginations to other worlds and realities, though, and using it as evidence, which I know is a cop out, but it is also true.

As one example, you imagine and are completely bounded by a spherical Earth in describing the problem of a seashore as something where land meets space (i.e., there is no such thing - it doesn't make sense on a globe, which I agree with). But that is how people on spherical worlds think. What if Nephi's world was a disc or flat (like that disc sitting on Peter's head)? Sounds crazy, yeah, but that is how Tolkien first envisioned Arda when he wrote his stories (before he realized how absurd it was). That is also how CS Lewis formed Narnia.

I've imagined Nephi and his group as not coming from our Earth, and that opens up possibilities for things to be different, including the possibility of living on a disc (why not?). For a person living on said disc, the idea of walking for 8 years due East in the wilderness, coming to the edge of their disc or land, beyond which is only the vastness of space or whatever encircles that world, and calling it a "seashore" would make some kind of sense, I think.

It would make just as much sense as trying to develop a practical explanation for how Lehi's family could have possible taken a full 8 years to cross the Arabian peninsula walking due east while being guided by the Liahona.


Leo said...

This is a great summary. I'm glad you pulled it together. It certainly requires some creative reading to make this fit outer space. No objection on that point.

The biggest hurdle I see from your analysis is the location or setting of the seashore where Nephi built the boat. That's a very good point. I don't think straining over "onto" and "into" will help much. I doubt we can put that much confidence in the BoM's prepositions despite it being the "most correct book". Or worries about a watery grave and drowning. If one is left in outer space I think it's the same result as drowning in the Indian Ocean -- you can't breathe. If the ancients' conception of space was "great waters", which I think both the Bible and Tolkien substantiate, I think they would deem a burial in space as a watery grave.

As foreign as it sounds to us, even today's scientists describe the goings on of space as "storms". Think of a "solar storm". Or read this from NOAA: "Did you know that there are storms always occurring in space? Not rain or snow, but winds and magnetic waves that move through space! This is known as space weather."

According to NOAA we have weather, winds, waves, and storms in space. Why did today's scientists adopt earthly weather terms to describe these phenomena? If NOAA can imagine it certainly we can too. Perhaps Nephi did the same. It's a lot easier than explaining complex astrophysics at least.

None of that helps much with your concern about the setting. For that, I think, we turn to Tolkien's description of the world after it was made round at the end of the Second Age:

"And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said: 'All roads are now bent.' Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallone, if they would.

Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it. And they taught that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the West still went on, as it were a mighty bridge invisible that passed through the air of breath and of flight (which were bent now as the world was bent), and traversed Ilmen which flesh unaided cannot endure, until it came to Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle, and maybe even beyond, to Valinor, where the Valar still dwell and watch the unfolding of the story of the world. And tales and rumours arose along the shores of the sea concerning mariners and men forlorn upon the water who, by some fate or grace or favour of the Valar, had entered in upon the Straight Way and seen the face of the world sink below them, and so had come to the lamplit quays of Avallone, or verily to the last beaches on the margin of Aman, and there had looked upon the White Mountain, dreadful and beautiful, before they died."

You'll notice these tales and rumors of the straight road occurred exactly where Nephi builds his ship: "along the shores of the sea". What I envision in 1st Nephi is Lehi's crew are among those "permitted to find" the Straight Road and it is upon that Road that they set sail. Think of the Rainbow Connection Kermit the Frog sings about (although I think Sarah McLachlan does it better). You know, the one that "calls the young sailors" like in Tolkien's description.

But most importantly, I think you are forgetting that in WW's theory, Lehi and co are not departing from planet earth. They are departing from Valinor, which I suspect is still flat like earth was originally (per Tolkien). In that case, coming to the seashore would literally be the end of the earth where it meets outer space.

It might be useful to re-do this analysis using the Jaredite experience since they would have departed this earth. The only question there is did they depart it before or after the world was made round?


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Thanks for the comments, both of you.

Proposing both Flat Earth and multiple habitable planets is a new one for me. I've only ever encountered it as a joke (e.g. the Flat Mars Society). Flat Earth usually includes the idea that the stars and planets are relatively small objects fixed to a dome above the Earth, not large Earth-like objects which one might in principle travel to and live on.

Anyway, I don't think it makes much sense to envision flat earths coexisting with spherical planets in the same universe -- let alone an originally flat earth being "made round"! The cosmological differences are too great.

I do plan to look at the Jaredite voyage next, so stay tuned.


Leo said...

True, most of this sounds pretty laughable. The idea that the earth was once flat and made round is pretty silly. Or that there are flat land masses floating around space somewhere like Asgard is depicted in the Marvel movies, also a silly idea. The thing is though, if you believe the BoM or the Bible or, frankly, any religion, you are currently embracing ideas that are no less crazy/silly/irrational than those. They only seem normal because you have chosen to accept them as plausible.

Christians believe a story about a resurrected homeless man that pretty much no one has ever seen or heard from. Or that some dude made the Red Sea split. Or that the earth was made in 7 days. Or that a guy once left this planet on a chariot of fire.

Hindu think there's an elephant god with multiple arms who can give you wisdom and good luck.

Most religionists believe at one point the entire planet was covered in water and then somehow drained off.

All of those ideas are completely batsh*t crazy and would seem like a joke akin to the Flat Mars Society if they weren't widely embraced as part of religion. The truth is, you, me, and most humans choose our own list of crazy ideas we want to believe and I don't think that's without good reason. I think it's because there is some innate knowledge that belief in the unexplainable is somehow closer to reality than not. Maybe it's a failing of evolution that hasn't been eliminated yet. Or maybe this human instinct is for good reason.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to the Jaredite analysis!


Saturday, August 24th 2024

Tight like unto a saucer?

Wm Jas Tychonievich

7.5 min read (2,200 words)

My last post, "Thoughts on the Astronaut Nephi theory," looked at Nephi's ship and his family's voyage to the promised land through the lens of the theory that the voyage was an interplanetary one. This post will give the Jaredites the same treatment.


Earlier use of barges

Nephi only built one vessel and crossed one body of "water." The Jaredites' travels are a bit more complicated, which poses special problems for the space-travel interpretation:

And it came to pass that they did travel in the wilderness, and did build barges, in which they did cross many waters, being directed continually by the hand of the Lord.

And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people. . . .

And now . . . it came to pass that the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands. And as they came to the sea they pitched their tents; and they called the name of the place Moriancumer; and they dwelt in tents, and dwelt in tents upon the seashore for the space of four years. . . .

And the Lord said: Go to work and build, after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did go to work, and also his brethren, and built barges after the manner which they had built, according to the instructions of the Lord (Ether 2:6-7, 13, 16).

So the Jaredites first used barges to "cross many waters," arriving in a wilderness "beyond the sea." From there they continued their journey until they reached "that great sea which divideth the lands." To cross this latter body of water, they built "barges after the manner which they had built" before, when they crossed many waters.

I trust the problems this poses for the space travel theory are obvious. There narrative has the Jaredites crossing at least two distinct bodies of water, but there is only one outer space. Therefore at most one of these can be a space voyage -- presumably the second, across the Great Land-Dividing Sea, since that is presented in the text as a much more difficult and impressive feat than their earlier crossing of many waters. However, they cross this latter "sea" with barges of the same sort -- built after the same "manner" -- as those with which they had earlier crossed literal seas of water. Even without knowing any details of the technology the Jaredites used, I think we can safely say that a spacecraft would be constructed after an entirely different "manner" from a seagoing vessel.

Just as the Lehites called the great sea Irreantum, the Jaredites gave a name either to the great sea or to the place on its shore where they camped: Moriancumer. I have analyzed Irreantum as Aire-yan-tum -- meaning simultaneously "vast, deep sea" and "holy darkness." William Wright has analyzed Moriancumer as Elvish before ("Jaredites in Moria: Making sense of the Brother of Jared and his shining stones"), but he wants to connect it to Moria, so he just ignores the letter n. I would instead assume that Moriancumer includes the same yan morpheme as Irreantum and thus analyze it as Mor-yan-kuma. (For the interchangeability of -er and -a in Joseph Smith's transliterations, see the Book of Abraham manuscripts, where the same name is rendered variously as Elkenah and Elk-kener.) The first morpheme of course means "dark, black," as in Mordor. The second, yan, means "wide, vast, huge" and also "holy". The third, most appropriately for the outer-space hypothesis, means "void." So they arrived at "that great sea which divideth the lands . . . and they called the name of the place" Vast Black Void.

That's a pretty good name! But, as discussed in my last post, it's hard to know how interpret their "coming to" the "shore" of outer space.


Making the barges

Here is the description of the new barges, built to cross the Great Land-Dividing Sea:

And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did go to work, and also his brethren, and built barges after the manner which they had built, according to the instructions of the Lord. And they were small, and they were light upon the water, even like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water.

And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish.

And it came to pass that the brother of Jared cried unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, I have performed the work which thou hast commanded me, and I have made the barges according as thou hast directed me. And behold, O Lord, in them there is no light; whither shall we steer? And also we shall perish, for in them we cannot breathe, save it is the air which is in them; therefore we shall perish (Ether 2:16-19).

The repeated emphasis "tight like unto a dish" (flying saucer?) seems odd -- of course any ship has to be watertight! -- but then the Brother of Jared's prayer makes it clear that these vessels are going to be hermetically sealed, making it impossible for the passengers to breathe. This is certainly consistent with their being spacecraft -- or at least it seems so until we get the Lord's response:

And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: Behold, thou shalt make a hole in the top, and also in the bottom; and when thou shalt suffer for air thou shalt unstop the hole and receive air. And if it be so that the water come in upon thee, behold, ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood (Ether 2:20).

I don't see any possible way of reconciling this with the outer-space hypothesis. Obviously you can't restock a spacecraft with air by unstopping a hole in it and letting the air in! The Lord also mentions the possibility that water will come in when the hole is unstopped. It's not clear what that could mean if the "water" is actually the vacuum of outer space.


Perils of the voyage

Prior to the voyage, the Lord explains some of the conditions the Jaredites will have to face:

And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire.

For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth.

And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come. Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea? (Ether 2:23-25)

The comparison to "a whale in the midst of the sea" makes it sound as if these "barges" will actually be submarines, which is consistent with a space voyage, in which the ship is immersed in the "sea" rather than floating on its surface. This is followed by a warning that "the mountain waves shall dash upon you," though, which seems like something that could happen only on the surface. Perhaps the meaning is that they will sail on the surface but, due to the "mountain waves," the vessels will be submerged from time to time. Or we could see the apparent paradox of waves in the midst of the sea as evidence that it is not a literal ocean that is being described.


The voyage

After a digression, Moroni returns to the narrative in Chapter 6:

And it came to pass that when they had prepared all manner of food, that thereby they might subsist upon the water, and also food for their flocks and herds, and whatsoever beast or animal or fowl that they should carry with them—and it came to pass that when they had done all these things they got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God.

And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind.

And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind.

And it came to pass that when they were buried in the deep there was no water that could hurt them, their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ark of Noah; therefore when they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters (Ether 6:4-7).

This seems to make it clear that the vessels were sometimes "buried in the deep" and other times "upon the top of the waters." This makes sense on a literal sea, but it's not clear how we could interpret that distinction if this were a space voyage.

And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind. . . . And thus they were driven forth; and no monster of the sea could break them, neither whale that could mar them; and they did have light continually, whether it was above the water or under the water (Ether 6:8, 10).

The reference to whales and sea monsters poses another serious problem for the outer-space theory, unless we want to propose that animals of some kind live in the void of outer space, and that the vacuum is densely enough populated with them to make them a danger to space voyagers.

And thus they were driven forth, three hundred and forty and four days upon the water. And they did land upon the shore of the promised land (Ether 6:11-12).

Their voyage took about five times as long as Columbus's crossing of the Atlantic, despite the fact that they were continually driven by "a furious wind" and thus should have made good speed. This is perhaps evidence that this was not a normal ocean voyage.

One other thing I should mention is that neither here nor in the account of the Lehite voyage are there any references to the points of the compass. As long as the Lehites and Jaredites are traveling by land, we are told which direction they are going, but when they sail it is only "towards the promised land," with no indication of whether that meant north, south, east, or west. This is a curious omission from an account of a nautical voyage, but is of course consistent with a voyage through space, where such terms would have no meaning.


Conclusion

Despite a few intriguing hints, any attempt to read the Book of Ether as we have it as describing a space voyage runs into multiple extremely serious, perhaps insuperable, problems. If we want to maintain that the Jaredites did in fact traverse outer space, I think our only option is to conclude that the version of the story we have in the Book of Mormon -- written by Ether, who lived centuries after Jared; and abridged by Moroni, who lived centuries after Ether -- is a distorted one, with the space voyage incorrectly interpreted by later writers who no longer understood such things.

2 Comments:

Leo said...

Strong analysis once again. Your final theory is intriguing but I think if that were the case, the entire story would have been modified to not include the strange ship description or other details that don't fit well w a nautical voyage. IOW I think it would have been more heavily edited.

When I did my own analysis, I reached many of your same conclusions but what stood out to me the most is that the description of the voyage and the ships doesn't match well with EITHER theory. There are significant problems envisioning it either way (for me). But I agree, it's less difficult to place it on the Pacific Ocean than it is to place it in Space. I don't think it's *a lot* less difficult, but it is less.

For this to work in Space you'd have to envision something almost like the Kessel Run depicted in the Solo Star Wars movie where you have a very non-traditional path through Space, complete with a "monster of the sea" hidden in a space cloud (wave?) and eager to gobble up the Millennium Falcon (why would it want to eat a ship??). That doesn't solve the issue of unstopping a hole for air, but that little detail hardly fits an ocean voyage either. How realistic is it that they would be able to re-stop the hole if water started pouring in b/c they unstopped it without realizing they were "buried in the deep" at that particular moment?

You have to suspend reality quite a bit to see this Jaredite voyage as a real event even in our earth oceans. The only rational conclusion if we set aside faith/belief is that the story is completely made up by someone who had no real understanding of oceanic voyages. Joseph Smith would fit that description. And yet, we have to account for faith/belief or else this blog of yours has no point. The story is a stretch in either direction. For me, I don't see it as that much more of a stretch to place it in space. It makes some of the story easier to believe, although admittedly not all of it.


Leo said...

You make a good point about the boats being the same boats they had made before and used to cross other waters. I'm trying to think through why would Jared's brother suddenly be concerned about not having light and not being able to breathe on THIS journey but not the others? If they were the same boats and the same journey just across a bigger body of water, they should have had the same problems before this journey right?

It's also strange that the BoJ asks "whither shall we steer?" That means these barges had a steering mechanism and they must have had some way to tell which direction they were heading so they could continue to steer in that direction. But for whatever reason, in this case, the BoJ is concerned that they won't be able to see and therefore won't know which way to steer. It seems like none of that fits very well with the idea that this a rinse and repeat oceanic voyage like we'd normally imagine. I agree it's no slam dunk in space though. Anyway, just still thinking it through.


Thursday, September 12th 2024

Does this one verse in the Book of Mormon imply reincarnation?

Wm Jas Tychonievich

2 min read (530 words)

I never noticed before how odd the second verse of Words of Mormon is:

And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites.

And it is many hundred years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son; and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. But may God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps some day it may profit them (W of M vv. 1-2).

So Mormon supposes (or, rather, "it supposeth him," a construction which is to the best of my knowledge unique to the Book of Mormon) that his son Moroni will live to see the entire destruction of the Nephites. He prays that Moroni will "survive" the Nephites -- meaning that he will continue to live after all the other Nephites have been killed, for that is the meaning of survive when it is used transitively, as detailed in Webster's 1828 dictionary, the standard reference for English as used by Joseph Smith and his contemporaries.


Webster expresses most people's natural sentiments when he gives as an example the sentence, "Who would wish to survive the ruin of his country?" But Mormon positively prays that his son will survive not only the ruin of his country but the "entire destruction" of his people. Why? To quote the key sentence again:

But may God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps some day it may profit them.

Each of the three instances of them must have the same antecedent: "my people, the Nephites." No other reading is possible. Mormon wants Moroni to outlive all the other Nephites so that he can write about the Nephites -- which I suppose makes sense, since the full story of the Nephites cannot be written until after that story has ended. And why is it important to write about the Nephites? "That perhaps some day" -- in the future, long after the Nephites are extinct -- "it may profit them," meaning the Nephites.

The only sense I can make of this is that Moroni's writings will profit beings who once lived as Nephites but have since moved on to another state. I would assume that spirits and resurrected beings would remember their own history and would have no need (and in the case of spirits perhaps no ability) to read a book about it. It makes the most sense if we assume that the writings will help reincarnated Nephites, who having passed through the veil of forgetfulness would have no knowledge of their own past lives as Nephites, or even of the fact that there ever were any such people as the Nephites.

3 Comments:

Leo said...

There are many such examples of this in the BoM. You can find another in 2 Ne 25 where Nephi appears to be addressing both his people and the future Nephites as the same group reborn when Christ arrives:

And after Christ shall have risen from the dead he shall
Show himself unto you, my children, and my beloved brethren!

Jacob's sermon in 2 Nephi 10 is far more explicit imo.

"wherefore, as it has been shown unto me that many of our children shall perish in the flesh because of unbelief, nevertheless, God will be merciful unto many; and our children shall be restored, that they may come to that which will give them the true knowledge of their Redeemer."

He later clarifies this restoration is "in the flesh"

"When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the earth, unto the lands of their inheritance."


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

I think the most natural reading of 2 Ne. 10:2 is that some of the children will perish and others will be restored. It's grammatically similar to "many should perish by the sword, and many should be carried away captive into Babylon" (1 Ne. 1:13). The second "many" is implicitly different from the first; if it were the same, it would say "them" instead of "many" in the second instance.

In 2 Ne. 26:1, I think it's possible to interpret "you, my children, and my beloved brethren" loosely so as to include future Nephite generations -- just as we might say, "In five billion years, the sun will go red giant and kill us all" without meaning that we personally will live to see that.

Words of Mormon allows no such wiggle room. It is describing what Mormon hopes will happen to the Nephites after the complete extermination of the Nephite race, when there will be no "future generations" to which he might be referring.

Of course, if we accept my reading of W of M, then we have good reason for interpreting the other passages you mention in the same way.


Leo said...

Whoops I meant to say 2 Ne 26, not 25.

Yes you could say he's just referring to resurrection, which he does mention later in the chapter. But one chapter prior in the same address he tells them:

"For I know that ye have searched much, many of you, to know of things to come; wherefore I know that ye know that our flesh must waste away and die; nevertheless, in our bodies we shall see God. Yea, I know that ye know that in the body he shall show himself unto those at Jerusalem, from whence we came;"

So he's like "yeah you're gonna die and so are your children but we are promised to see God in the flesh." Then he references the people at Jerusalem who.....see God in the flesh. In the next chapter he promises them they will be "restored in the flesh". The later Nephi promises his children and brethren that Jesus would "show himself unto you" after Jesus resurrects.

So to me the simpler reading is Nephi, Jacob, and their "brethren" received a promise for themselves and their immediate children that even though they would die, they would later be restored to the flesh/reborn and see Jesus in that state so that he could save them. And that would tie nicely to tales from 3 Nephi of parents and their children being blessed directly by Jesus.


Tuesday, October 8th 2024

The polygamy escape clause

Wm Jas Tychonievich

12 min read (3,500 words)

1. Jacob's sermon and the escape clause

Mormonism and polygamy are so closely connected in the popular mind that I suppose it comes as a bit of a surprise to first-time readers that the Book of Mormon contains an impassioned diatribe against the practice:

But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.

Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.

Wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph.

Wherefore, I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.

Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none;

For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.

Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes.

For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.

For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.

And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.

For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction; for they shall not commit whoredoms, like unto them of old, saith the Lord of Hosts.

And now behold, my brethren, ye know that these commandments were given to our father, Lehi; wherefore, ye have known them before; and ye have come unto great condemnation; for ye have done these things which ye ought not to have done.

Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.

[. . .]

Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins, are more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our father[s] -- that they should have save it were one wife, and concubines they should have none, and there should not be whoredoms committed among them.

And now, this commandment they observe to keep; wherefore, because of this observance, in keeping this commandment, the Lord God will not destroy them, but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people.

Behold, their husbands love their wives, and their wives love their husbands; and their husbands and their wives love their children; and their unbelief and their hatred towards you is because of the iniquity of their fathers; wherefore, how much better are you than they, in the sight of your great Creator? (Jacob 2:23-25, 3:5-7)

The verse I have bolded is the "escape clause." It is almost universally understood to mean that if the Lord decides to "raise up seed unto" him -- meaning to have his people reproduce more prolifically -- he "will command" them to practice polygamy; "otherwise they shall hearken unto these things" -- meaning everything else Jacob has just said about polygamy, namely, that it is one of the "grosser crimes," an "abominable" excuse for "committing whoredoms."

Notice how glaringly out of place this is in the context of the surrounding verses. Before and after the escape clause, Jacob is fulminating against polygamy as an unadulterated evil -- but then in the middle of this denunciation he pauses to mention parenthetically that actually the Lord might command it sometimes and in that case it's fine?

What possible rhetorical motivation could there be for such an aside? If some modern Christian preacher against polygamy inserted some such escape clause into his sermon, we would assume its purpose was to excuse the various biblical worthies -- Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon -- who had more than one wife. Jacob in the Book of Mormon, though, despite being named after one of these biblical polygamists, clearly does not shy away from condemning them. He states unequivocally that the polygamy practiced by David and Solomon "was abominable." In any case, the excuse he gives -- that polygamy is okay if God commands it -- wouldn't exonerate anyone in the Bible, since nowhere in the Bible is anyone ever commanded to practice polygamy.


2. An interpolation?

If Jacob's sermon were a biblical text, I would be extremely confident in calling the escape clause an interpolation, and I'm sure this opinion would be virtually universal among critics: It clearly doesn't belong there but was added later by someone who wanted to practice polygamy.

It would be tempting to conclude the same thing about the Book of Mormon text: It originally condemned polygamy with no exceptions but was then modified (by Joseph Smith later in life, or perhaps by Brigham Young) to allow it in some cases. Unlike the patriarchs and kings of the Bible, Mormon leaders did claim that God had commanded them to practice polygamy, and the so the escape clause would appear to be tailor-made to justify them. The problem is that the escape clause was there from the beginning. I don't believe the original manuscript for this part of the book has survived, but certainly the escape clause is already there in the first published edition.

If we still want to see the escape clause as an interpolation, we have following options:

1. Joseph Smith modifying his own work. For the skeptic, who sees the entire text as the work of Joseph Smith, it's hard to explain the inclusion of both the anti-polygamy sermon and the escape clause. If Smith had intended to practice polygamy, why write the anti-polygamy sermon in the first place? If he did not intend to practice polygamy, why put in the escape clause? It must be that he was originally against polygamy but later changed his mind.

If the escape clause had been added later in Smith's career, it would be relatively easy to explain. Perhaps he began writing the Book of Mormon with relatively pure motives (some version of Dan Vogel's "pious fraud" theory), but once he began to amass a cult following, he was corrupted by power, wished to take advantage of his position for his own sexual gratification, and modified the text accordingly.

The problem is that the escape clause was already there in the first edition, so Smith's second thoughts on the total polygamy ban must have come just a few weeks or months after the original anti-polygamy sermon had been dictated. This would also have been before the Book of Mormon was published, before he had founded a church, and therefore presumably before he was subject to the temptations a successful cult leader is heir to. It's hard to account for the change in that time frame.

2. Joseph Smith modifying revealed material. In this scenario, the text of the Book of Mormon was revealed to Joseph Smith as claimed (not created by him), but he added the escape clause himself, either during the dictation or shortly thereafter. This would mean Smith was both a genuine prophet, producing the Book of Mormon by supernatural means, and at the same time a bit of a scoundrel, daring to tamper with holy writ in the service of his own ulterior motives. This may seem far-fetched, and certainly it doesn't fit well into the usual "prophet or con man" dichotomy, but I don't think it's entirely implausible. It wouldn't be the first time substantial spiritual gifts coexisted with a pretty serious dark side. In fact, the mainstream LDS view of Smith -- that he was a true prophet who also practiced polygamy and lied about it -- implies a similar view of his character.

3. God modifying Jacob. If we take the view that Mormon polygamy really was commanded and justified by God, then perhaps God himself added the escape clause as he was revealing Jacob's words to Joseph Smith. The higher law of polygamy had not been revealed to Jacob, who therefore spoke from his limited understanding. Since God planned to command Smith later to practice polygamy, he added the escape clause to make it easier for the Prophet to accept this future commandment.

4. Later Nephites modifying Jacob. Because the pre-Mosiah books of the Book of Mormon were not abridged by Mormon, it is easy to assume that they contain the unedited words of Nephi, Jacob, and the others. In fact, though, we know virtually nothing of the provenance of the "small account." All Mormon says is this:

I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi (W of M v. 3).

He just "found" them, some 900 years after the time of Jacob? This is obviously suspect, just as suspect as Hilkiah happening to "find" the previously unknown Book of Deuteronomy in the Temple one day. I've sometimes entertained the possibility that the Small Account, though included by Mormon in good faith, was actually late Nephite pseudepigrapha, not the authentic writings of Nephi and Jacob. This would account for some of the Small Account's perplexing features, such as the dated prophecies of the coming of Christ, which seem to have been unknown to later Nephites, and the quotations from Malachi 3 and 4, which the Nephites had access to only after the coming of Christ.

Another possibility, though, is that the Small Account contains a a core of authentic early Nephite texts, but with many additions and alterations by the many generations of record-keepers through whose hands it passed. We know that some later Nephites (King Noah and his people at the very least) did practice polygamy, so perhaps the escape clause was added by later Nephites to an otherwise authentic sermon by Jacob in order to justify such things.

I think this idea is worth pursuing, and that it may be worthwhile to read the whole of the Small Account with an critical eye out for passages which may be later interpolations.


3. Jeremy Hoop's alternative reading of the escape clause

The proximate inspiration for this post was this video from Jeremy Hoop:

(video)


Hoop's position is that Joseph Smith never taught or practiced polygamy, and that the Book of Mormon makes no allowances for it, either. He therefore has to reinterpret the escape clause so that it is not an escape clause after all. His reading is ingenious and, I think, not impossible.

Although the meaning of the escape clause seems obvious when we read it in the light of the later Mormon practice of polygamy, the verse itself is actually rather ambiguous. It reads, recall,

For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things (Jacob 2:30).

The standard reading hinges on two questionable assumptions: (1) that "command my people" means "command my people to practice polygamy," and (2) that "these things" means Jacob's denunciation of polygamy. Hoop questions both of these.

First, what does "command my people" mean? Well, this is what immediately precedes the escape clause:

Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none; For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts. Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes (Jacob 2:27-29).

The "commandments" referenced immediately before "command my people" are clearly commandments not to practice polygamy. The fact that v. 30 begins with for (rather than nevertheless) implies that it is explaining more about these same commandments, not introducing the possibility of diametrically opposite commandments in the future.

What about "these things"? As Hoop points out, this is the only reference to "things," plural, before the escape clause:

This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son (Jacob 2:23).

In Hoop's reading, the Lord is saying, "I will command my people not to practice polygamy. If I did not explicitly so command them, they would hearken unto the things which are written concerning David and Solomon and excuse themselves in committing whoredoms."

Two possible grammatical objections: First, we normally read will as having a future reference. "I will command my people" is naturally understood to refer to a possible future commandment, not to a commandment already "given unto our fathers." Second, in modern usage, except with a first-person subject, shall typically has an imperative meaning (as in "Thou shalt not kill" or "Congress shall make no law").

The second objection is easily dealt with. The Book of Mormon contains many instances of "they shall" which are clearly predictions rather than commands -- for example "they shall rebel against me" (1 Ne. 2:23), "they shall dwindle in unbelief" (2 Ne. 1:10), and many others.

Non-future use of auxiliary will is on shakier ground. It's possible in theory, but I can't find any clear examples in the King James Bible or elsewhere in the Book of Mormon.

What about "raise up seed unto me"? Doesn't that mean increasing the birthrate among the righteous? And isn't that goal better served by commanding polygamy than by banning it?

For Jeremy Hoop's take on that, we will have to turn to another ingenious element of his argument: connecting Jacob's sermon with Abinadi's.


4. Jacob's sermon as context for Noah and Abinadi?

When the wickedness of King Noah is introduced, it is clear that polygamy is one of his chief sins:

For behold, he did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart. And he had many wives and concubines. And he did cause his people to commit sin, and do that which was abominable in the sight of the Lord. Yea, and they did commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness (Mosiah 11:2).

The language here is very similar to Jacob's sermon. Polygamy is "abominable" and means committing "whoredoms." In practicing polygamy, Noah "did not keep the commandments of God" -- so, as in Jacob 2, the commandment is not to practice polygamy.

Later, in preaching to Noah and his people, Abinadi quotes extensively from Isaiah, including a passage about how the Messiah "shall see his seed" (Isa. 53:10). He then expounds at length on what that means, emphasizing that the "seed" are not biological offspring:

And now what say ye? And who shall be his seed?

Behold I say unto you, that whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord -- I say unto you, that all those who have hearkened unto their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins, I say unto you, that these are his seed, or they are heirs of the kingdom of God.

For these are they whose sins he has borne; these are they for whom he has died, to redeem them from their transgressions. And now, are they not his seed?

Yea, and are not the prophets, every one that has opened his mouth to prophesy, that has not fallen into transgression, I mean all the holy prophets ever since the world began? I say unto you that they are his seed (Mosiah 15:10-13).

Why does Abinadi spend so much time on this seemingly minor question of Isaiah interpretation? Why, in calling a corrupt king and his court to repentance, is it so important to clarify what exactly is meant by the prophecy that "he shall see his seed"?

Jeremy Hoop connects the dots and proposes that Noah and his priests had Jacob's anti-polygamy sermon, accepted it as scripture, and tried to justify their own practice of polygamy in precisely the same way that the Mormons would do centuries later: by invoking (and, Hoop would say, misinterpreting) the "escape clause": The Lord sometimes commands polygamy "if I will . . . raise up seed unto me." Mosiah's exegesis of Isa. 53:10 is an implicit critique of this excuse. His whole point is that raising up "seed" unto the Lord -- for he has earlier identified Isaiah's Messiah as "God himself" (Mosiah 15:1) -- has nothing to do with literal baby-making and is therefore no justification for the practice of polygamy.

This is an extremely clever reading, and I'm half convinced. On the one hand, it's quite a coincidence that Abinadi, in preaching to wicked polygamists, would hammer home this point about the Lord's "seed," the very same language that appears in Jacob's escape clause. On the other hand, it's hard to see why Abinadi would not make the connection explicit in his preaching. In fact, although the scene is set with the information that Noah and his priests are polygamists, nothing in Abinadi's preaching addresses polygamy directly. Does he expect his audience to connect the dots themselves? -- "Hey, if the seed of the Lord is not literal, that implies that our reading of the polygamy escape clause is wrong!" I would expect much more directness from Abinadi.

If Hoop is right -- if Jacob's sermon (with the escape clause) was known and accepted as scripture by Noah and his priests -- that has important implications for the status of the Small Account. As far as I know, the only place where the Book of Mormon proper appears to quote from the Small Account is in Alma's words to his son Helaman:

Yea, methought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God (Alma 36:22).

This is the same language used by Nephi in his account of Lehi's Jerusalem vision:

[H]e thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God (1 Ne. 1:8).

The exact match with Nephi's wording, even down to "he thought he saw," strongly suggests that this is a direct quote from the Small Account. It's not quite a smoking gun, though, since Lehi's Jerusalem vision is of such central importance that it would surely have been included on the main Plates of Nephi as well, possibly even with the same wording. Even in this more secular history, you can't very well tell the story of Lehi without mentioning that vision.

Jacob's sermon, on the other hand, is of no particular historical significance but is included for spiritual reasons only. It was thus likely recorded only in the Small Account. If Hoop's reading of Abinadi is correct, it is strong evidence that some version of the Small Account was not only known to the post-Mosiah Nephites but accepted by them as authoritative scripture.


4 Comments:

William Wright (WW) said...

I don't know if Jeremy Hoop cites them, but Richard and Pamela Price developed the argument that Hoop expresses with respect to the "escape clause" in their book "Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy" first published almost 25 years ago. I believe their work is fairly well known among Denver Snuffer's followers like Hoop, who are all fairly against Joseph having practiced polygamy.

The Price's devoted an entire chapter to this. In the link below, you will find it in Chapter 18 of Volume 1 if you scroll down:

https://restorationbookstore.org/pages/joseph-smith-fought-polygamy-online

I personally don't agree with either the Price-Hoops or the Mormon church interpretation of Jacob 2:30.


Leo said...

Good summary and fascinating idea about the Small Plates being not wholly unadulterated. I had never considered that. And yes, Bill is correct that this reading isn't Jeremy's original idea although he does a good job articulating it and I think it's a potentially valid reading. Tying it to Abinadi's words is also pretty clever, as you say.

But for me it's easier to see the escape clause as a punctuation error and that it should read as follows:

"For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people otherwise; they shall hearken unto these things."

Or IOW: "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people otherwise [meaning, to not practice polygamy]; they shall hearken unto these things [that I am telling you right now, to not practice polygamy and to keep my commandments]."

For me that reading requires a lot less work and comes to the same idea, that polygamy sucks and is a terrible thing. Plus, polygamy does not make more babies. It has no impact on the birth rate since the bottleneck is the same. Whether one man impregnates multiple women or multiple men do so, it's still a 9-month gestation.


Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Bill and Leo, thanks for the context. My first impression of Denver Snuffer was not good, and so I've never engaged with him or his movement enough to know that Hoop's reading of Jacob is not original.

Leo, I don't see how your reading works. The Lord has just commanded them not to practice polygamy, so when he mentions that he may later "command my people otherwise," I don't see how that can also mean not to practice polygamy. "Otherwise" indicates a contrast with what was said before.

Leo, from a Brighamite perspective, polygamy would still result in raising up more "seed unto the Lord," since the most "righteous (by Brighamite standards) could have enormous numbers of offspring while many of the "less faithful" would not reproduce at all. Not more babies total, perhaps, but more of the "right sort" of babies.

Bill, what's your interpretation of Jacob 2:30?


Leo said...

I think you're assuming he is pivoting when he might just be continuing to rail on polygamy. IOW, "otherwise" doesn't have to indicate a contrast to what was said right before. It could be a contrast to what the Nephites think it means to "raise up seed". He's saying "if I make a commandment to raise up seed, I won't do it through polygamy, it will be done another way (otherwise)".


Tuesday, October 29th 2024

Malachi, and the Small Plates as Nephite pseudepigrapha

Wm Jas Tychonievich

4 min read (1,300 words)

During the visit of the resurrected Jesus to the people at Bountiful, he recites part of the Book of Malachi to them, citing it by name:

And it came to pass that he commanded them that they should write the words which the Father had given unto Malachi, which he should tell unto them. And it came to pass that after they were written he expounded them. And these are the words which he did tell unto them, saying: Thus said the Father unto Malachi -- . . . (3 Ne. 24:1).

Jesus then proceeds to quote Chapters 3 and 4 virtually verbatim from the King James Version of Malachi (which together comprise Chapter 3 in the original Hebrew). After the quotation, he explicitly states that this is material which the Nephites had not had before:

And he saith: These scriptures, which ye had not with you, the Father commanded that I should give unto you; for it was wisdom in him that they should be given unto future generations (3 Ne. 26:2).

We should therefore understand that (a) the Nephites only had Malachi 3-4, not the entire book, and (b) they only had it after the visit of Jesus. How well does the actual text of the Book of Mormon fit with those two points? Here, from a paper by Colby Townsend, is an exhaustive list of Malachi material in the Book of Mormon:
  1. 1 Ne. 2:23 references Mal. 3:9
  2. 1 Ne. 3:7 references Mal. 3:1
  3. 1 Ne. 14:17 references Mal. 3:1, 4:1
  4. 1 Ne. 17:13 references Mal. 3:1
  5. 1 Ne. 22:15 references Mal. 4:1
  6. 1 Ne. 22:23-24 references Mal. 4:1-2
  7. 2 Ne. 25:13 references Mal. 4:2
  8. 2 Ne. 26:4 references Mal. 4:1
  9. 2 Ne. 26:6 references Mal. 4:1
  10. 2 Ne. 26:9 references Mal. 4:2
  11. Alma 45:13, 14 references Mal. 4:5
  12. Ether 9:22 references Mal. 4:2-3
Many of these are undeniably quoting Malachi, with highly distinctive phrases reproduced word-for-word in the same order. Others are just occurrences of short phrases such as "he shall prepare ... way" and "curse[d] ... with a ... curse," which aren't exactly smoking guns. Even by Townsend's broad, inclusive standard for what counts as an allusion, though, notice that not a single reference to Malachi 1 or 2 appears on his list; 100% of the Malachi material in the Book of Mormon is from Malachi 3 and 4, the two chapters we know the Nephites had. So that checks out.

The problem, though, is where in the Book of Mormon this Malachi material occurs. The only Malachi quotation that occurs in a reasonable place, in a text written after the visit of Jesus, is the one in Ether, which was written by Moroni centuries after Jesus. (It is problematic in its own way, though, since it refers to "the Son of Righteousness." See my 2013 post on that phrase.) All 11 of the others are, if we take the text as face value, anachronisms.

The supposed Malachi quotation in Alma can be dismissed, I think. It uses the phrase "great and dreadful day," which in the King James Version occurs only in Malachi 4:5. However, the exact same Hebrew phrase is also found in the Book of Joel, where it is translated "great and terrible day" (Joel 2:31). Joel was written in the 9th century BC, long before Lehi left Jerusalem, and would have been available to the Nephites. The use of "dreadful" rather than "terrible" in the translation presumably shows the influence of Malachi, but there is no reason to think the original text was referencing Malachi rather than Joel.

That leaves those 10 quotations -- several of which are undeniably dependent on Malachi -- in the first two Books of Nephi. Since Nephi supposedly wrote this material about a century before Malachi and six centuries before Christ, what are we to make of these quotations?

One option is just to add them to the list of "hard-to-define biblical parallels" which somehow found their way into the English translation even though they couldn't have been present on the Plates. I find this unsatisfactory because it fails to explain (a) why only Chapters 3 and 4 are referenced and (b) why there are lots of Malachi references in 1 and 2 Nephi but none in the pre-Christ portion of the Book of Mormon proper (Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, and the early chapters of 3 Nephi).

Another option, for those who believe Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon, is that Smith got confused about chronology. After losing the 116 pages, Smith first dictated from Mosiah to the end of the book and then went back and dictated the "Small Plates" portion from 1 Nephi to Omni. Thus, although 1 and 2 Nephi are set before the visit of Jesus, Smith dictated them after dictating the visit of Jesus. Perhaps after dictating the Malachi material in 3 Nephi, he started freely including Malachi in the book and carelessly forgot to stop doing so when he went back and dictated the "Small Plates." In my opinion, it is not remotely plausible that Smith could have been so careless. He clearly spelled out in 3 Nephi that the Nephites didn't have Malachi until the coming of Jesus, and then just carelessly included it anyway (but still carefully including only Chapters 3 and 4), not just once but 11 times? This is pushing the Joseph Smith idiot-savant theory to its breaking point. Dictating 3 Nephi would have made Joseph Smith more aware of the need to keep Malachi out of the pre-Christ portion of the book, not less so.

My own tentative conclusion is that the Malachi problem shows the Small Plates are Nephite pseudepigrapha. Although they are written in the voices of Nephi, Jacob, and other early prophets, they were in fact composed sometime after the visit of Jesus Christ. As I mentioned in my last post, the Small Plates were just "found" by Mormon centuries after Christ, and we know nothing of their provenance. There is no obvious reason to assume they were authentically ancient when Mormon "found" them, and several reasons to doubt this (which I may lay out in another post). But the translation of the Small Plates also has rather dodgy history, right? If they weren't actually written by Nephi and company, why assume they were the work of later Nephites rather than of a panciked Joseph Smith trying to undo the damage done by the loss of the 116 pages? Because of Malachi, that's why. Joseph Smith would have had no reason to suddenly start quoting Malachi when he invented the "Small Plates" text, nor to carefully restrict himself to Chapters 3 and 4. The pattern we observe points to post-Christ Nephites, not Joseph Smith.

One tangentially related note before I wrap this up: The account of Jesus dictating Malachi 3-4 to the Nephites suggests a possible explanation for other anachronistic Bible quotations in the Book of Mormon, such as Moroni's extended quotation from 1 Corinthians (Moro. 7, cf. 1 Cor. 13). If Jesus could bring the Nephites scriptures that were written after Lehi left Jerusalem, then other heavenly messengers could have done the same. We know (see 3 Ne. 28) that the Three Disciples traveled among both the Jews and the Gentiles, and that they "ministered unto" Mormon. Mormon lived in the 4th century AD, long after the books of the New Testament had been written, and it seems probable that the Three Disciples would have delivered some of the content of those books to him in the same way that Jesus delivered the words of Malachi at Bountiful.

5 Comments:

William Wright (WW) said...

". . . we know nothing of their provenance"

This isn't true, though. Provenance, stewardship, and record keepers were fairly well documented, including for the small plates.

Ammaron was the one who hid the sacred records among which Mormon 'found' the small plates, so you would need to develop a story for who within the chain of custody from him going back (which weren't many names at all, particularly in the time after Jesus visited Bountiful, which is when you say the pseudepigrapha must have occurred) included the forgery or false authorship, and why they did it, I guess.


WJT said...

A document’s own claims about itself aren’t a provenance.


William Wright (WW) said...

Joseph said he got the record from a man named Nephi, who was one of the named record keepers in the book (and one of the Disciples). He seemed to vouch for the record in delivering it to Joseph, and we have the names of everyone before and after that man in the book who kept the records, and also the account of how the small plates ended up included in those records.

That is as much provenance as you are going to get in dealing with the angelic transference of golden plates.

I mentioned that there is no story here to suggest how and why such a pseudepigrapha would have come into Mormon's possession. That is what I was asking for - what is the story? How could the Angel Nephi come to give Joseph a record that contained fakes and forgeries? How was Mormon, who appears to have taken his role as historian and record-keeper so seriously, duped into tacking on those writings? Where did the chain of custody break down after Jesus and Nephi?

Could be an interesting story, I just don't see it.


HomeStadter said...

Other possible explanations:

1. Some older document is the source of these distinct phrasings in both cases. I would judge this more probable if it tended to cluster better, about a similar topic.

2. I've always assumed Mormon just physically attached Nephi's plates to his record. What if he 'translated' it instead the way you are thinking Joseph Smith translated the BoM. Why he would do this is unclear, but it would then be 'contaminated' with Mormons subconscious as well as Joseph Smiths.


Leo said...

Homestadter’s first theory is the same one I thought of as I read your post — that Malachi was drawing from something more ancient in his own writings. The second theory doesn’t seem to match up with the story of the small plates in the BoM, however. I would say instead perhaps someone else “translated” the original small plates and Mormon just assumed it was exactly what it claimed to be. So there you have two potential solutions.

It’s a fascinating idea for the small plates to be pseudepigrapha, though. I don’t think I agree w WW that it would make the small plates a forgery. There could have been good reasons for someone rewriting them.

Regardless, I like the first theory the best. Malachi himself may have borrowed from others.


Thursday, October 31st 2024

A closer look at Malachi material in the Small Plates

Wm Jas Tychonievich

6 min read (1,800 words)

This is a follow-up to my last post, "Malachi, and the Small Plates as Nephite pseudepigrapha."

1. He shall prepare the way

The first passage from Malachi that seems to be referenced in the Small Plates is Malachi 3:1.

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts (Mal. 3:1).

Here are the alleged references to this in the Book of Mormon:

And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them (1 Ne. 3:7).

And when the day cometh that the wrath of God is poured out upon the mother of harlots, which is the great and abominable church of all the earth, whose founder is the devil, then, at that day, the work of the Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people who are of the house of Israel (1 Ne. 14:17).

And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led (1 Ne. 17:13).

In two of these three passages, the only link to Malachi is some form of the expression "prepare the way." However, this expression is found in multiple parts of the Bible, not only in Malachi, and cannot by itself be considered a quotation from or allusion to Malachi.

Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither (Deut. 19:3).

So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the Lord his God (2 Chr. 27:6).

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isa. 40:3).

And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people (Isa. 57:14).

Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people (Isa. 62:10).

Only in 1 Ne. 14:17 is there a connection beyond the apparently common phrase "prepare the way." That verse also includes a "covenant" reference, as does Mal. 3:1. It also includes "the day cometh," which (in precisely that wording) occurs in the King James Version only in Mal. 4:1. However, similar expressions such as "the day of the Lord cometh" (Isa. 13:9, Joel 2:1, Zech. 14:1) are found elsewhere in the Bible. None of the three phrases highlighted in 1 Ne. 14:17 is really distinctive to Malachi. I suppose finding all three together in one verse is some evidence of the influence of Malachi, but it's very far from being a smoking gun.

Overall, I think we can dismiss this group of alleged allusions. They do not constitute strong evidence that the authors of the Small Plates knew Malachi.


2. Cursed with a curse

The next alleged allusion is also very weak:

Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation (Mal. 3:9).

For behold, in that day that they shall rebel against me, I will curse them even with a sore curse, and they shall have no power over thy seed except they shall rebel against me also (1 Ne. 2:23).

The expression "curse with a curse" is not unique to Malachi. In fact, there is an even better match for Nephi's wording elsewhere in the Old Testament:

And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword (1 Kgs. 2:8).

The same Hebrew word translated as "grievous" in 1 Kgs. 2:8 is rendered "sore" in Micah 2:10, so this is essentially the same expression used by Nephi. I don't think Nephi was particularly alluding to Kings, either; more likely, this was just a common expression. So this parallel, too, can be dismissed as evidence for the influence of Malachi.


3. Stubble, the Sun of righteousness, and calves of the stall

The only real smoking-gun links to Malachi are references to this one passage:

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall (Mal. 4:1-2).

And here are the Small Plates passages that appear to references it:

And when the day cometh that the wrath of God is poured out upon the mother of harlots, which is the great and abominable church of all the earth, whose founder is the devil, then, at that day, the work of the Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people who are of the house of Israel (1 Ne. 14:17).

For behold, saith the prophet, the time cometh speedily that Satan shall have no more power over the hearts of the children of men; for the day soon cometh that all the proud and they who do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day cometh that they must be burned (1 Ne. 22:15).

For the time speedily shall come that all churches which are built up to get gain, and all those who are built up to get power over the flesh, and those who are built up to become popular in the eyes of the world, and those who seek the lusts of the flesh and the things of the world, and to do all manner of iniquity; yea, in fine, all those who belong to the kingdom of the devil are they who need fear, and tremble, and quake; they are those who must be brought low in the dust; they are those who must be consumed as stubble; and this is according to the words of the prophet. And the time cometh speedily that the righteous must be led up as calves of the stall, and the Holy One of Israel must reign in dominion, and might, and power, and great glory (1 Ne. 22:23-24).

Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name (2 Ne. 25:13).

Wherefore, all those who are proud, and that do wickedly, the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, for they shall be as stubble. And they that kill the prophets, and the saints, the depths of the earth shall swallow them up, saith the Lord of Hosts; and mountains shall cover them, and whirlwinds shall carry them away, and buildings shall fall upon them and crush them to pieces and grind them to powder. And they shall be visited with thunderings, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and all manner of destructions, for the fire of the anger of the Lord shall be kindled against them, and they shall be as stubble, and the day that cometh shall consume them, saith the Lord of Hosts. O the pain, and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people! For I, Nephi, have seen it, and it well nigh consumeth me before the presence of the Lord; but I must cry unto my God: Thy ways are just. But behold, the righteous that hearken unto the words of the prophets, and destroy them not, but look forward unto Christ with steadfastness for the signs which are given, notwithstanding all persecution—behold, they are they which shall not perish. But the Son of righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away, and many of the fourth generation shall have passed away in righteousness. (2 Ne. 26:4-9).

With the exception of 1 Ne. 14:17, already discussed, these are undeniable instances of highly distinctive phrases from Malachi. However, they all come from that one brief passage, raising the possibility that in that passage Malachi himself was quoting some earlier prophet. That possibility was raised in the comments on my last post, but my first reaction was to consider it unlikely since several different parts of Malachi were quoted. That turns out not to be the case, though. It's really just that one passage.

2 Comments:

Leo said...

Yeah I think that probably settles it. Very thorough analysis.


William Wright (WW) said...

I stumbled on a 5-year old reddit thread in doing a quick look into this as well.

The redditor had the thought that both Nephi and Malachi were quoting Zenos, the prophet found on the Brass Plates but not in the Bible. I think it is a compelling idea and possibility after reading some of their reasoning:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lds/comments/c9ydvl/what_is_malachi_doing_in_1st_and_2nd_nephi/?rdt=44281


Monday, November 4th 2024

Zenos was quoted by Joel, Nephi, Alma, Malachi, and Paul

Wm Jas Tychonievich

11 min read (3,200 words)

"One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism," said Joseph Smith, "is to receive the truth, let it come from whence it may." Even Reddit, you may ask? Yes, apparently, even Reddit.

As laid out in my previous post, "A closer look at Malachi material in the Small Plates," there are three places in the Book of Mormon where Malachi seems to be quoted by prophets who definitely (according to the Book of Mormon itself) did not have access to the Book of Malachi. The passages in question are 1 Ne. 22:15-24, 2 Ne. 25:13, and 2 Ne. 26:4-9. In every case, it is the same brief passage, Malachi 4:1-2, that is quoted or paraphrased, suggesting that both Nephi and Malachi may have been quoting some unknown third prophet.

But which prophet? My first thought was that it might be some lost prophecy of Isaiah, since all the Malachi material occurs in commentaries on that prophet. 1 Ne. 20-21 quotes Isa. 48-49 in full, and 1 Ne. 22 (with Malachi material) is Nephi's commentary. Then 2 Ne. 12-24 quotes Isa. 2-14 in full, and 2 Ne. 25-26 (with Malachi material) is Nephi's commentary. Other lost Isaiah material (the "sting of death" bit, not appearing in our Old Testament but cited in the Gospel of Nicodemus as a saying of Isaiah) appears to be quoted in the Book of Mormon, so it seemed like a reasonable hypothesis.

In a comment, though, Bill pointed me to "What is Malachi doing in 1st and 2nd Nephi?" In this Reddit post, someone using the handle stisa79 makes the case that the prophet being quoted by both Nephi and Malachi is Zenos. Upon investigation, I find this theory to be pretty compelling.

Stisa79 notes that 1 Ne. 19 quotes extensively from Zenos, often referring to him simply as "the prophet" but in a context that makes it clear that Zenos is intended. Then 1 Ne. 20-21 quotes Isaiah, and then we come to 1 Ne. 22. In vv. 1-14, Nephi repeatedly paraphrases the Isaiah passages he has just quoted. Then in vv. 15, 17, and 23 -- right where Malachi appears to be quoted -- Nephi again cites "the prophet." The context makes Zenos a likely candidate for the prophet he has in mind.

Here is the first citation from "the prophet":

For behold, saith the prophet, the time cometh speedily that Satan shall have no more power over the hearts of the children of men; for the day soon cometh that all the proud and they who do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day cometh that they must be burned. For the time soon cometh that the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous. Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come, and the righteous be preserved, even unto the destruction of their enemies by fire. Wherefore, the righteous need not fear; for thus saith the prophet, they shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire (1 Ne. 22:15-17).

The words in red echo Malachi 4:1; those in blue echo 1 Corinthians 3:15. Under the Zenos theory, then, both Malachi and Paul were also quoting Zenos. Is there any hint of such a connection in the Bible? Remarkably, there is. (This bit is my own discovery, not the Redditor's.) Here is the context of the passage in Paul, color-coded in the same way as the one from Nephi:

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15).

That word stubble is what first caught my eye, but the real smoking gun is the second passage I have highlighted in red: "the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire." What's the logical connection (implied by "because") between those two clauses? It only makes sense if we assume Paul is alluding to "the day . . . that shall burn as an oven" (Mal. 4:1).

To be clear, this could be a case of Paul alluding to Malachi, and Joseph Smith plagiarizing both Malachi and Paul, but I think the Zenos theory is a much tidier explanation.

Why assume it's Zenos, though? Just because Nephi calls both Zenos and this chap "the prophet"? He also sometimes calls Isaiah "the prophet," so that in itself isn't very strong evidence. For specific evidence that it is Zenos, we need to turn to the Malachi-like language in 2 Nephi. (We now return to summarizing this Redditor's argument; the bit about Paul is my only original contribution here.)

Here are the two passages in question. Language that seems to come from Malachi is highlighted in red, while the words highlighted in blue seem to be allusions to -- something else:

Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name (2 Ne. 25:13).

Wherefore, all those who are proud, and that do wickedly, the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, for they shall be as stubble. And they that kill the prophets, and the saints, the depths of the earth shall swallow them up, saith the Lord of Hosts; and mountains shall cover them, and whirlwinds shall carry them away, and buildings shall fall upon them and crush them to pieces and grind them to powder. And they shall be visited with thunderings, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and all manner of destructions, for the fire of the anger of the Lord shall be kindled against them, and they shall be as stubble, and the day that cometh shall consume them, saith the Lord of Hosts. O the pain, and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people! For I, Nephi, have seen it, and it well nigh consumeth me before the presence of the Lord; but I must cry unto my God: Thy ways are just. But behold, the righteous that hearken unto the words of the prophets, and destroy them not, but look forward unto Christ with steadfastness for the signs which are given, notwithstanding all persecution, behold, they are they which shall not perish. But the Son of righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away, and many of the fourth generation shall have passed away in righteousness (2 Ne. 26:4-9). 

And here are the words of Zenos to which the blue phrases appear to allude:

And the God of our fathers, who were led out of Egypt, out of bondage, and also were preserved in the wilderness by him, yea, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up, according to the words of Zenock, and to be crucified, according to the words of Neum, and to be buried in a sepulchre, according to the words of Zenos, which he spake concerning the three days of darkness, which should be a sign given of his death unto those who should inhabit the isles of the sea, more especially given unto those who are of the house of Israel. For thus spake the prophet: The Lord God surely shall visit all the house of Israel at that day, some with his voice, because of their righteousness, unto their great joy and salvation, and others with the thunderings and the lightnings of his power, by tempest, by fire, and by smoke, and vapor of darkness, and by the opening of the earth, and by mountains which shall be carried up. And all these things must surely come, saith the prophet Zenos. And the rocks of the earth must rend; and because of the groanings of the earth, many of the kings of the isles of the sea shall be wrought upon by the Spirit of God, to exclaim: The God of nature suffers. And as for those who are at Jerusalem, saith the prophet, they shall be scourged by all people, because they crucify the God of Israel, and turn their hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders, and the power and glory of the God of Israel. And because they turn their hearts aside, saith the prophet, and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations. Nevertheless, when that day cometh, saith the prophet, that they no more turn aside their hearts against the Holy One of Israel, then will he remember the covenants which he made to their fathers. Yea, then will he remember the isles of the sea; yea, and all the people who are of the house of Israel, will I gather in, saith the Lord, according to the words of the prophet Zenos, from the four quarters of the earth (1 Ne. 19:10-16).

That about covers the Redditor's argument, but let me add one more discovery of my own. The language marked in green above seems to allude to Peter's quotation of the prophet Joel:

But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; . . . I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke (Acts 2:16, 19).

Does this mean Joel, too, was quoting Zenos? Remarkably, as with Paul, the evidence is there:

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars [LXX: vapor] of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call (Joel 2:28-32).

The blue passages allude not to anything in our Book of Malachi, but to passages we have identified above as coming from Zenos. Immediately after appearing to quote Malachi, Nephi adds that "the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men" -- and then (I have just noticed now!) -- proceeds to quote the same Joel-like language we find attributed to Zenos in 1 Ne. 19.

For behold, saith the prophet, the time cometh speedily that Satan shall have no more power over the hearts of the children of men; for the day soon cometh that all the proud and they who do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day cometh that they must be burned. For the time soon cometh that the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous. Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come, and the righteous be preserved, even unto the destruction of their enemies by fire. Wherefore, the righteous need not fear; for thus saith the prophetthey shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire. Behold, my brethren, I say unto you, that these things must shortly come; yea, even blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke must come; and it must needs be upon the face of this earth; and it cometh unto men according to the flesh if it so be that they will harden their hearts against the Holy One of Israel. For behold, the righteous shall not perish; for the time surely must come that all they who fight against Zion shall be cut off (1 Ne. 22:15-19).

Where Joel has "my spirit," Nephi has "the fulness of the wrath of God" -- but in each case the language about it being "poured out upon all" (an expression not found elsewhere in the Bible) is the same.

I've marked Joel's "The sun shall be turned to darkness" in blue as well. To understand why, we need to look at three different passages:

to be buried in a sepulchre, according to the words of Zenos, which he spake concerning the three days of darkness (1 Ne. 19:10).

and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings (2 Ne. 25:13).

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings (Mal. 4:2).

So the three days of darkness are three days in the sepulchre, after which the one in the sepulchre will rise with healing in his wings. In Malachi, the one with healing in his wings is the Sun. We may thus infer that in the original figurative language used by Zenos, the Sun is laid in a sepulchre for three days, causing the three days of darkness. Joel's reference to the Sun turning to darkness would then be an allusion to this same prophecy.

Going back to the Joel quote above, you'll see that I've highlighted "before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." In my original post about Malachi, "Malachi, and the Small Plates as Nephite pseudepigrapha," I noted that Colby Townsend cites Alma 45 as an example of Malachi language in the Book of Mormon:

Yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of iniquities; yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not all pass away before this great iniquity shall come. And when that great day cometh, behold, the time very soon cometh that those who are now, or the seed of those who are now numbered among the people of Nephi, shall no more be numbered among the people of Nephi. But whosoever remaineth, and is not destroyed in that great and dreadful day, shall be numbered among the Lamanites, and shall become like unto them, all, save it be a few who shall be called the disciples of the Lord; and them shall the Lamanites pursue even until they shall become extinct. And now, because of iniquity, this prophecy shall be fulfilled (Alma 45:12-14).

Townsend saw in this a reference to Malachi 4: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" (Mal. 4:5). I dismissed this in my post, noting that although the phrase "great and dreadful day" is unique to Malachi in the King James Version, in the original Hebrew the very same expression (translated "terrible" rather than "dreadful") occurs in Joel 2, so Alma could have been quoting Joel instead. Now, though, it appears that both Malachi 4 and Joel 2 are quoting Zenos, so this passage in Alma turns out to be relevant after all. That is confirmed by the phrase I have highlighted in blue above. Here is the same language in one of the Malachi/Zenos passages we have already discussed:

But the Son of righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away, and many of the fourth generation shall have passed away in righteousness (2 Ne. 26:9).

I find the case that all of this is from Zenos to be extremely compelling, and the intertextuality is so very intricate and self-consistent that it is hard to believe it could have been contrived by Joseph Smith -- especially by a Joseph Smith who was at the same time too dumb to know Nephi shouldn't have been quoting Malachi and Paul. In my opinion, the evidence laid out here (much of which, again, comes from "stisa79"), transforms the Malachi material in the Book of Mormon from a major embarrassment to a powerful evidence of the book's authenticity. (And I say that as someone who is not an apologist and who was initially perfectly willing to accept the opposite conclusion, that Malachi proves the Small Plates are fake.)

The one loose end that remains is the Book of Mormon's use of "Son of Righteousness" instead of "Sun of righteousness." Malachi has Sun, and I think I've made a pretty good case that Zenos used Sun as well (with the Sun's three-day entombment in a sepulchre causing the three days of darkness). Since the two words are homophones in English but entirely dissimilar in Hebrew, it's hard to see how the Sun-to-Son swap could have been made by anyone other than the English-speaking Joseph Smith. That, I believe, is now the only unsolved problem relating to Malachi material in the Book of Mormon.

5 Comments:

William Wright (WW) said...

Really well done. I think pretty solid evidence, and the additional ties you made were great.

As to your last unsolved mystery, I did go back and confirm in Skousen's Earliest Text edition of the Book of Mormon that both the printer's manuscript and the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon do indeed have "Son" rather than "Sun". The original manuscript isn't extant for either the 2 Nephi or 3 Nephi references, so we can't go back to that, unfortunately.

Skousen's edition changed it to Sun in their version, to map to Malachi, but they admit it is a conjecture on their part (they literally list that as the reason for the proposed change to those two phrases), likely envisioning that Cowdery wrote the homophone down wrong as he heard it from Joseph's dictation.

So that is a possibility, though there could be other interesting explanations for the difference.


Leo said...

Man, '79 was just a good year for births, wasn't it?


jason said...

https://books.google.com/books?id=_4zcCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&dq=Zenos&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0ooqsqciJAxXtG9AFHXBtHt0Q6AF6BAgIEAM#v=onepage&q=Zenos&f=false That Christ's saying are mainly also just quoting Zenos is blasphemy. Joseph Smith had his "witnesses" to the golden plates mine cool sounding sayings and make a Zenoa document from which to blaspheme God and pretend it all came from this imaginary Zenos dooofus.


WJT said...

Jason, why blasphemy? In the Gospels as we have them, Jesus undeniably quotes and alludes to many Old Testament writings. Feel free to make a case against Zenos, but “it’s blasphemy” isn’t an argument.


WJT said...

To clarify, I understand that many of Joseph Smith’s claims are blasphemous IF false. Obviously. What you seem to be implying is that the Zenos thing is inherently blasphemous and THEREFORE false.


Saturday, November 9th 2024

Yes, the Book of Mormon does quote Joshua -- but the Church is covering it up!

Wm Jas Tychonievich

5 min read (1,600 words)

I've been reading Jonah Barnes's new book The Key to the Keystone: How Apocryphal Texts Unlock the Book of Mormon's Brass Plates. Barnes's basic thesis is that the content of the Brass Plates differs significantly from that of the Old Testament as we have it, and that various apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts preserve some of these alternative traditions that were lost from the Bible but preserved, via the Brass Plates, in the Book of Mormon. Since I've also explored the question of how the Brass Plates may have differed from the Bible (see "Moses and the Exodus: Where the Book of Mormon parts ways with the Torah"), I'm reading his arguments with interest, though some of the links are more convincing than others.

Barnes is part of the small but growing Mormon "anti-Deuteronomist" movement, which sees Josiah as a bad guy, rejects the Book of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History (meaning the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), and casts Laman and Lemuel as Deuteronomists. He makes the bold claim that the Book of Mormon never quotes from or alludes to any of these rejected books.

The Book of Mormon very obviously does contain material that echoes Deuteronomy -- namely, the prophecy of the prophet like unto Moses, and the account of the Lord's "burial" of Moses. However (as I also pointed out in my Moses post), the Book of Mormon versions of these passages differ significantly from Deuteronomy as we have it, so Barnes concludes that they aren't from Deuteronomy itself but from some older tradition which the Deuteronomists later incorporated. This seems to me to be special pleading, motivated by his anti-Deuteronomist agenda. When the Book of Mormon contains alternate versions of Genesis stories, Barnes says the Nephites must have had an "expanded" version of Genesis; when it contains alternate versions of Deuteronomy material, he concludes that they didn't have Deuteronomy at all.

As a clear example of this bias, Barnes asserts that the Nephites had Leviticus (doubt), based mostly on vague references to the "law of Moses." The only specific links he provides are a reference to drinking blood ("something prohibited by Leviticus 17:14") and the phrase "statues, and judgements, and commandments," which "appears in Leviticus 26:15." In fact, all three of these could with equal justice be adduced as evidence that the Nephites had Deuteronomy, a.k.a. "the book of the law," which also prohibits blood-drinking (Deut. 15:23; see also Gen. 9:4), and which has seven references to statutes and judgments and commandments, including one (Deut 11:1) which matches the Book of Mormon wording much more closely than does Leviticus.

The Book of Mormon also prominently quotes Joshua -- "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" -- so I was anticipating some similar argument from Barnes about how it wasn't actually from Joshua after all. Astonishingly, what I found instead was a flat denial that the passage in question even exists. Attempting to make the case that the Book of Mormon writers surely would have quoted the Deuteronomistic History if they had had it, Barnes writes:

Surely the Book of Mormon writers will tell the famous stories from Joshua, Samuel, and Kings again and again, as they so often tell and retell the story of Adam and Eve... right?

It turns out that they don't. Nephi said, "I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning." So why did the Nephite prophets not:

1) Quote Joshua's adage to "choose ye this day whom ye will serve" when the Lamanites and Nephites parted ways in 2 Nephi 5?

2) Recite the Lord's promise in Joshua 1:8 . . .

He goes on to list a total of 11 things from the Deuteronomistic History that the Nephites might have been expected to quote if they had had access to it -- but very first on the list is a passage from Joshua which the Nephites absolutely do quote, word for word, though not in the chapter Barnes mentions. Barnes even gives it in its Book of Mormon form (the KJV has "Choose you this day"):

For thus saith the scripture: Choose ye this day, whom ye will serve (Alma 30:8).

How could Barnes possibly have missed that? It's one thing to overlook it; it's another to say, "If the Nephites had Joshua, how come they never quote this specific sentence?" -- and then give a sentence which does in fact appear word for word in the Book of Mormon!

My theory, based on my own experience trying to look up the Alma reference above, is that Barnes was led astray by the church's Great and Abominable Search Function, the awfulness of which it is impossible to overstate. I normally use Ctrl-F on a text file from Gutenberg if I need to search the Book of Mormon, but when I read Barnes, I only had my phone handy, so I had to run the search on the church's Gospel Library app. Here are the results of my initial search:


As you can see, it returns whole chapters rather than verses as search results. It turns out that Alma 30 is in fact the chapter I was looking for, but you'd never guess that from looking at the search results. Instead of highlighting the verse that includes all four of the words in my search prompt, it offers instead as an excerpt the first occurrence of one of them, in this case "day." If Jonah Barnes had run a similar search to check if the Book of Mormon quotes this line from Joshua, it's easy to see how he could have wrongly concluded that it does not.

I was still sure that it does, though, so I tried a different search term. Remembering that Joshua was quoted in the context of explaining that Nephite law did not regulate beliefs, I searched for that instead:


Most of these looked like they were "law of Moses" references, but Alma 1 looked like it might be about the actual legal system, so I clicked that one. I thought I had found what I was looking for:

Nevertheless, this did not put an end to the spreading of priestcraft through the land; for there were many who loved the vain things of the world, and they went forth preaching false doctrines; and this they did for the sake of riches and honor. Nevertheless, they durst not lie, if it were known, for fear of the law, for liars were punished; therefore they pretended to preach according to their belief; and now the law could have no power on any man for his belief. And they durst not steal, for fear of the law, for such were punished; neither durst they rob, nor murder, for he that murdered was punished unto death (Alma 1:16-18).

That was the expression I had remembered -- but the Joshua quote was nowhere to be found! Was Jonah Barnes right? Had I somehow misremembered? I was so certain of my memory that I was beginning to consider Mandela Effect type explanations, but then I gave the Great and Abominable Search Function one more go and finally found the passage I'd had in mind:

Now there was no law against a man’s belief; for it was strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on to unequal grounds. For thus saith the scripture: Choose ye this day, whom ye will serve. Now if a man desired to serve God, it was his privilege; or rather, if he believed in God it was his privilege to serve him; but if he did not believe in him there was no law to punish him. But if he murdered he was punished unto death; and if he robbed he was also punished; and if he stole he was also punished; and if he committed adultery he was also punished; yea, for all this wickedness they were punished. For there was a law that men should be judged according to their crimes. Nevertheless, there was no law against a man’s belief; therefore, a man was punished only for the crimes which he had done; therefore all men were on equal grounds (Alma 30:7-11).

If anyone knows of a digital Book of Mormon with a less abominable search function, do let me know. I've even tried downloading the Bickertonites' Bible & BOM app, but it treats all search prompts as if they were in quotation marks -- so the prompt choose day serve returns zero results -- and so is no better than a Ctrl-F. The Community of Christ no longer appears to offer any scripture search function, and even if they did there would be the inconvenience of their different chapter-and-verse scheme.

UPDATE: The University of Michigan has a fairly decent BoM search. I'm putting it in the sidebar.


Monday, November 25th 2024

It's plausible that Joel quoted (and inverted) Zenos

Wm Jas Tychonievich

1.5 min read (470 words)

In "Zenos was quoted by Joel, Nephi, Alma, Malachi, and Paul," I proposed that Joel 2:28-32 paraphrases or alludes to Zenos. (See that post for the evidence behind this assertion.) However one of these links seemed a little dubious at first. Joel writes, "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh" (Joel 2:28), while Nephi, in a passage we had identified as containing Zenosian material writes, "the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men" (1 Ne. 22:16). The expression "pour[ed] out . . . upon all" is unique to these two passages, but the meaning is obviously completely different. Furthermore, nothing in Joel suggests that he is quoting or paraphrasing anyone else -- no "thus saith the prophet" or anything like that.

Since reading Jonathan Neal Atkinson's 2002 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dissertation "New Exodus, New Covenant, New Creation: The Reuse of the Old Testament in Joel," I no longer have these misgivings. As Atkinson documents, the Book of Joel is extremely allusive, almost on the level of the Book of Revelation. Of its 73 verses, Atkinson reckons that 58 of them -- 79% -- quote, paraphrase, or allude to other books of the Old Testament, including Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 1 Kings, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Malachi. There is some disagreement among scholars over the direction of these influences -- whether Joel is a very early prophet quoted by all these other books or a very late prophet who quotes them all -- but Atkinson makes a convincing case that it is the latter. In no case does Joel ever explicitly cite his sources. Given that background knowledge about Joel, we can assume that of course he would have alluded to Zenos, too, if he had access to that prophet's writings, but would not have mentioned his name.

But is it plausible that he would completely invert the meaning of his source, alluding to Zenos's negative outpouring of wrath but changing it to a positive outpouring of God's spirit? Yes. We have an example of just that, where Joel alludes to Micah and/or Isaiah but inverts their meaning:

. . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore (Isa. 2:4 = Micah 4:3).

Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong (Joel 3:10).

Joel clearly alludes to these earlier prophets (see Atkinson's dissertation for evidence regarding the direction of dependence) but turns their meaning on its head, making Isaiah's prophecy of peace into a call to war. It is therefore highly plausible that he could have given Zenosian material a similar treatment.

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