ePub feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Abstract: The story often referred to as Alma’s conversion narrative is too often interpreted as a simplistic plagiarism of Paul’s conversion-to-Christianity story in the book of Acts. Both the New and Old Testaments appropriate an ancient narrative genre called the prophetic commissioning story. Paul’s and Alma’s commissioning narratives hearken back to this literary genre, and to refer to either as pilfered is to misunderstand not just these individual narratives but the larger approach Hebraic writers used in composing biblical and Book of Mormon narrative. To the modern mind the similarity in stories triggers explanations involving plagiarism and theft from earlier stories and denies the historicity of the narratives; ancient writers — especially of Hebraic narrative — had a quite different view of such concerns. To deny the historical nature of the stories because they appeal to particular narrative conventions is to impose a mistaken modern conceptual framework on the texts involved. A better and more complex grasp of Hebraic narrative is a necessary first step to understanding these two (and many more) Book of Mormon and biblical stories.

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The idea of conversion has both a history and a geography.1

As a BYU graduate student, I read (not for the first time) Fawn Brodie’s catalogue of narratives Joseph Smith purportedly plagiarized from the Bible:

Many stories he borrowed from the Bible. The daughter of Jared, like Salome, danced before a king and a decapitation followed. Aminadi, like Daniel, deciphered handwriting on a wall, and Alma was converted after the exact fashion [Page 116]of St. Paul. The daughters of the Lamanites were abducted like the dancing daughters of Shiloh; and Ammon, the American counterpart of David, for want of a Goliath slew six sheep-rustlers with his sling.2

This frequently quoted passage from Brodie’s oft-and-still-cited book

Abstract: The historian who wrote 2 Kings 23:5 and Mormon, who wrote Mosiah 11:5, used identical expressions to describe King Josiah’s and King Noah’s purges of the priests previously ordained and installed by their fathers. These purges came to define their respective kingships. The biblical writer used this language to positively evaluate Josiah’s kingship (“And he put down [w

Abstract: Studying the origins and traditions of Passover enriches our understanding of Easter. We can deepen our own worship and expand our ritual memory by an acquaintance with these traditions. Latter-day Saints possess unique understandings that further illuminate the constancy and plenitude of the Lord’s covenantal relationship with us.

As the calamitous strife of war and the terrifying distress of displaced peoples seeking refuge continue to swirl around our globe, we turn our thoughts and observance to the Prince of Peace. Easter season, and its ancient connection with the Passover, sits like a steadfast rocky island in the churning flow of time, reminding us of covenant promises made and fulfilled over millennia by our faithful God. We can rejoice that the dreadful day of Jesus Christ’s death was soon followed by the great and glorious day of his victory over mortality.

Christians may be tempted to give a patronizing nod to the thought that the Jews in the meridian of time did not understand the true nature of Christ’s kingdom. We sometimes hasten to point out that Christ’s was a spiritual not a worldly kingdom. And yet we may also suffer our own myopia regarding the significance of the Jewish traditions of this season. Such blindness impoverishes our understanding of Easter. As we read the scriptural account of the last week of Christ’s life, we see that Christ himself made specific and strict efforts to conform his life and actions to Jewish expectations as they had been formed by the ritual of the Passover feast. Our collective study of the Old Testament this year can open our own vision to the richness of Passover. Memory and memorial, multiple millennia of ritual reiterations, covenants made and fulfilled — all can magnify our Easter worship.

By the time of Jesus Christ, the Passover season combined two feasts: Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. The terror and urgency [Page 82]of that original Passover night are hard to overestimate. Pressure between the Egyptians and Israelites had been intensifying dramatically. Moses’s return to Pharaoh’s court, perhaps initially welcomed by his fellow Israelites, was soon perceived as an additional cause of great suffering. Pharaoh twisted Moses’s request to go into the wilderness to worship as an excuse to impose new and unreasonable demands upon the “idle” Israelites who he sardonically pretended must have too much time on their hands. The officers of the people made an accusation against Moses and Aaron: “The Lord look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us” (Exodus 5:21). Moses, feeling the brunt of their anger, took his dismay to the Lord, complaining, “For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all” (Exodus 5:23).

The opening chapters of the Passover story begin here with the perception of a broken promise, an impossible request, and a divided and downtrodden people. The Lord encourages Moses, who proceeds in faith, but as for the people, they are just too overwhelmed; “they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:9). Despite their weakness, the Lord proceeds to call upon these timid and enslaved sufferers, even outlining their family organizations as his “armies” (Exodus 6:26, 7:4). While the Lord multiplies his signs and wonders, Pharaoh continues to refuse and finally threatens to kill Moses. The Israelite people, by choice or by circumstance, must be feeling the weight of that same displeasure. Interestingly, because of these same wonders, “Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people” (Exodus 11:3).

Abstract: A favorite scripture of many faithful saints is Alma 7 where it describes how the Savior came to Earth to understand, in the flesh, not only human sin, but human suffering. He did this in order to succor and heal us. Despite its obvious appeal, two points may seem curious to some readers. First, the doctrinal power of verses 11–13, which form a chiasm, has as its apex not the “mercy in succoring us,” as might be expected, but the “in the flesh” detail. Why? Upon closer examination, it appears that, in addition to performing the Atonement, Christ needed a mortal experience in order to add a complete experiential knowledge to his omniscient cognitive knowledge. That could only be obtained, in its fulness, “according to the flesh,” hence the emphasis in the chiasm. A second possible curiosity is that Alma ends his beautiful teaching with his brief testimony, which lends an air of closure. Then, the topic appears to change completely and seemingly inexplicably to a discussion of repentance and baptism. Again, why? Closer examination reveals that the next two verses (14–15) form a second chiasm. If the first chiasm can be viewed as a statement of what Christ offers us, the second may be viewed as what we offer Christ. He runs to us in 7:11–13; we run to him in 7:14–15. When viewed together, the two chiasms form a two-way covenantal relationship, which Alma promises will result in our eternal salvation.

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One of the masterpieces within the Book of Mormon is surely the one-chapter gem of Alma 7. Alma, himself, proclaims his description of the mission of Christ to be “one thing which is of more importance than they all” (Alma 7:7). Grant Hardy points out that, “in Gideon, Alma is … straightforward, with some of the clearest prophecies in the Book of Mormon of Jesus’ life.”1 Truly, the explication of Christ’s [Page 30]mission and the way to access the gift of his healing power are priceless messages to the people of Gideon, to the Church, and to the world.

Background and Overview for the Discourse of Alma 7

The back story for the power-discourse of Alma is that he had been serving in Zarahemla as the chief judge over the land. He then made the decision to transfer his considerable political, military, administrative, and prosecutorial power of the judgment seat to “a wise man” (Alma 4:16– 17). However, he retained his position as high priest over the church so that he could concentrate on preaching “in pure testimony” (Alma 4:19). Alma began that preaching in his own capital city where, after much labor, he enjoyed success in bringing the faithful of the city back to the fold and establishing “the order of the church in the city of Zarahemla” (Alma 6:4). Fueled by that success, Alma then traveled to the recently built “city of Gideon” (Alma 6:7).

Alma chapter 7 is wholly self-contained.

Abstract: Several of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s earliest revelations, beginning with Moroni’s appearance in 1823, quote the prophecy of Malachi 3:1 with the Lord “suddenly com[ing] to his temple” as “messenger of the covenant.” Malachi 3:1 and its quoted iterations in 3 Nephi 24:1; Doctrine and Covenants 36:8; 42:36; 133:2 not only impressed upon Joseph and early Church members the urgency of building a temple to which the Lord could come, but also presented him as the messenger of the Father’s restored covenant. Malachi’s prophecy concords with the restored portion of the “fulness of the record of John” and its “messenger” Christology in D&C 93:8 in which Jesus Christ is both “the messenger of salvation” (the “Word”) and the Message (also “the Word”). The ontological kinship of God the Father with Jesus, angels (literally messengers), and humankind in Joseph’s early revelations lays the groundwork for the doctrine of humankind’s coeternality with God (D&C 93:29), and the notion that through “worship” one can “come unto the Father in [Jesus’s] name, and in due time receive of his fulness” (D&C 93:19; cf. D&C 88:29). D&C 88 specifies missionary work and ritual washing of the feet as a means of becoming, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, “clean from the blood of this generation” (D&C 88:75, 85, 138). Such ritual washings continued as a part of the endowment that was revealed to Joseph Smith during the Nauvoo period. Missionary work itself constitutes a form of worship, and temple worship today continues to revolve around missionary work for the living (the endowment) and for the dead (ordinances). The endowment, like the visions in which prophets were given special missionary commissions, [Page 2]situates us ritually in the divine council, teaches us about the great Messenger of salvation, and empowers us to participate in his great mission of saving souls.

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On May 6, 1833, a portion of the “the fulness of the record of John” was restored through the prophet Joseph Smith (cf. D&C 93:18). In this restored fragment, John bore witness that he saw the premortal Christ:

And he bore record, saying: I saw his glory, that he was in the beginning, before the world was; therefore, in the beginning the Word was, for he was the Word, even the messenger of salvation. (D&C 93:7–8)

John’s language combines the concept of a preexistent, divine, personified “Word” (Greek logos), as a development on the idea of a preexistent, divine, personified wisdom or intelligence (see, e.g., Proverbs 8:22–31; cf. Abraham 3:19–28), with the concept of a divine Messenger invested with a fullness of divine authority. John’s description of Jesus Christ with the appositive “even the messenger of salvation” recalls Malachi’s prophecy of t...

Abstract: Given the knowledge of the corporeal, embodied nature of God that the Prophet Joseph Smith received in his 1820 First Vision, Latter-day Saints have argued from their earliest days that the Bible is most accurately understood as teaching precisely the same thing — that God has a body and that humans are literally created in his physical image. Now, a new book from an unlikely (and quite unintentional) ally makes a strong case for our position. It is a book that will both gratify Latter-day Saints and, at some points, offend them. In any event, readers of Interpreter should be aware of it.

I’m writing to call readers’ attention to a new book that, in my judgment, will be intensely interesting to at least a few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — God: An Anatomy.1 The author, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, will be familiar to some as the telegenic British-accented host of programs for the BBC, Britain’s Channel 4, and, in America, the History Channel on the archaeology, history, and religion of ancient Israel and Judah. Not merely a television host, she is also the holder of a doctorate from the University of Oxford and of a chair in Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at the University of Exeter in England.

God: An Anatomy is a massive tome that, including endnotes, extends to very nearly 600 pages. But its length is only one reason, and not the major one, why I can’t simply recommend it for all Latter-day Saint readers. It is most emphatically not a Latter-day Saint book.

[Page viii]“I’ve never believed in God,” Dr. Stavrakopoulou says flatly, on her book’s very first page.2 Understandably in that light, the book is neither reverent nor awestruck in its approach to her vastly important subject. For her, what she’s discussing is merely a matter of ancient history, not a clue to the ultimate nature of reality or of any relevance to the heavens, human salvation, or an afterlife. After all, she believes in none of those things. And yet, her very lack of belief also frees her from any obligation to grind theological axes and permits her to go with her data. And that liberty, I think, has allowed her to create a book that offers rich material for believers in the Restoration and that can, in some important ways, support the teachings of Joseph Smith and his successors.

Not surprisingly, so far as I can see, God: An Anatomy seems to have received far more enthusiastic reviews from secularists than from religious believers. And here, as in many other regards, the unique position of the Latter-day Saints in the religious world is apparent.

From the time Joseph emerged from the grove of trees near his home outside of Palmyra, New York, in the spring of 1820, the Latter-day Saint view of God has diverged from the mainstream Christian conception of deity — and, for that matter, from mainstream Judaism and Islam. It could not have been otherwise, given his vision of the Father and the Son.

“I have always declared God,” he said to a sizable audience fewer than two weeks before his martyrdom, “to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.”

Abstract: In the Book of Abraham, God tells Abraham in Haran, “I cause the wind and the fire to be my chariot” (Abraham 2:7). While this initially might appear to be an anachronism, as the chariot is normally thought to have been introduced later, archaeological finds of chariots at the site of Harran predate Abraham by hundreds of years.

It has been said that “the Book of Mormon has not been universally considered by its critics as one of those books that must be read in order to have an opinion of it.”1 The same could be said of the Book of Abraham. One indication that critics do not bother to read the book is that, to date, none have bothered to comment on an apparent anachronism in the text. To spot it as an anachronism, one would have to take the Book of Abraham seriously as an ancient text, which most critics are unwilling to do. The purpose of this article is to discuss the apparent anachronism and why it is not one.

The Standard View

The standard view of chariots in Egyptian history is that one of the most important innovations of the Hyksos in Egypt was “the introduction of the horse and of the horse-drawn chariot which played so large a part in the later history of the country.”2 It is thought that “ironically, the Hyksos introduced the horse-drawn chariot and the more powerful compound bow into Egypt, both military innovations that enabled the Egyptians to compete more successfully in battle with their neighbors.”3 The “horse and horse-drawn chariot” are supposed to have appeared in Egypt “toward the very end of the Hyksos occupation.”4 Some think the [Page 300]first organized Egyptian “chariotry division” was fought at the battle of Megiddo under the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Thutmosis III.5 Others assign the first Egyptian chariot battle to either Thutmosis III’s father, Thutmosis II, or grandfather, Amenhotep I.6 Some have gone so far as to argue that the introduction of the chariot forms the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East.7

The most famous conflict involving chariots was the battle of Qadesh where both sides, the Egyptians under Ramses II and Hittites under Muwatalis, used chariots to great effect.8 Ramses even set up a chariot depot at Joppa.

Abstract: The story of the Israelites getting bitten in the wilderness by “fiery serpents” and then being miraculously healed by the “serpent of brass” (Numbers 21:4–9) is one of the most frequently told stories in scripture — with many of the retellings occurring in the Book of Mormon. Nephi is the first to refer to the story, doing so on two different occasions (1 Nephi 17:41; 2 Nephi 25:20). In each instance, Nephi utilizes the story for different purposes which dictated how he told the story and what he emphasized. These two retellings of the brazen serpent narrative combined to establish a standard interpretation of that story among the Nephites, utilized (and to some extent developed) by later Nephite prophets. In this study, each of the two occasions Nephi made use of this story are contextualized within the iconography and symbolism of pre-exilic Israel and its influences from surrounding cultures. Then, the (minimal) development evident in how this story was interpreted by Nephites across time is considered, comparing it to the way ancient Jewish and early Christian interpretation of the brazen serpent was adapted over time to address specific needs. Based on this analysis, it seems that not only do Nephi’s initial interpretations fit within the context of pre-exilic Israel, but the Book of Mormon’s use of the brazen serpent symbol is not stagnant; rather, it shows indications of having been a real, living tradition that developed along a trajectory comparable to that of authentic ancient traditions.

The story of the Israelites getting bitten in the wilderness by “fiery serpents” then healed by looking upon the “serpent of brass” set on a pole (Numbers 21:4–9) is, according to one writer, “one of the most widely attested miracles in holy writ.”1 Perhaps no other book of scripture refers to the story as frequently as the Book of Mormon, which not only has several explicit references to the story (1 Nephi 17:41; 2 Nephi 25:20; [Page 218]Alma 33:18–22; Helaman 8:13–15), but also makes various typological echoes and allusions to it as part of a larger pattern of Exodus typology occurring throughout the text.2

Naturally, Nephi is the first writer to use this episode, citing it on two separate occasions and within different contexts (1 Nephi 17:41; 2 Nephi 25:20). In each instance, Nephi utilized the story for different purposes which dictated how he told the story and what he emphasized. Despite their different emphases and contexts, these two retellings of the brazen serpent narrative combined to establish a standard interpretation among the Nephites. Later Book of Mormon prophets used the story essentially in the same ways Nephi son of Lehi did, with only minor, albeit somewhat significant, adjustments in the interpretation (see Alma 33:18–22; 37:45; Helaman 8:13–15). Thus, the origins of Nephite interpretations of the brazen serpent episode seem to have emerged from Nephi’s world.

Therefore, to better understand the Book of Mormon’s use of the brazen serpent narrative, I will first examine each of the two occasions Nephi made use of that story, contextualizing them within the iconography and ...

Abstract: This paper brings together contemporary Ancient Near East scholarship in several fields to construct an updated starting point for interpretation of the teachings of the Book of Mormon. It assembles findings from studies of ancient scribal culture, historical linguistics and epigraphy, Hebrew rhetoric, and the history and archaeology of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant, together with the traditions of ancient Israel to construct a contextualized perspective for understanding Lehi, Nephi, and their scribal training as they would have been understood by their contemporaries. Lehi and Nephi are shown to be the beneficiaries of the most advanced scribal training available in seventh-century BCE Jerusalem and prominent bearers of the Josephite textual tradition. These insights give much expanded meaning to Nephi’s early warning that he had been “taught somewhat in all the learning of [his] father” (1 Nephi 1:1). This analysis will be extended in a companion paper to provide the framework that enables the recognition and tracking of an official Nephite scribal school that ultimately provided Mormon with the records that he abridged to produce our Book of Mormon.

Current approaches to the interpretation of the Book of Mormon often share the assumption that in reading the English Book of Mormon through the lens of contemporary literature, history, theology, or philosophy, readers can fully understand what it says or what it teaches. In his study of ancient Judaism, Michael Stone went to some lengths to explicate how modern perceptions and orthodoxies can shape how we see the facts and words of the ancient world:

It is those orthodoxies that have formed the cultural context  of the scholars’ own days, for, to a great extent, the scholars’ contemporary cultural context determines what they perceive. Consequently, they tend to privilege the elements [Page 162]that are in focus through those particular “spectacles,” even if other phenomena are present in the same data. This selectivity is, for the most part, not deliberate … It is necessary to recognize our own inherited cultural complex and to attempt to challenge it from varied perspectives and so achieve a more nuanced view of the past preceding the coming into being of our inherited orthodoxies.1

What is ever more glaringly lacking is a thorough attempt to interpret the Book of Mormon on its own terms as a starting point for all other forms of analysis. How would its first prophets have been understood by ancient near eastern peoples at the end of the seventh century BCE? And so I propose to gently reframe the question asked by scholars who have explored possible ancient near eastern connections for the Book of Mormon to ask how contemporaries of Lehi and Nephi would have understood their teachings.

We need to know how the teachings of the first Book of Mormon prophets would have been understood by their contemporaries before we can confidently compare them to ancient or modern cultures. Like James Hoffmeier, who wrote about evidences that ancient Israel may have sojourned in Egypt, I recognize there is no hard evidence today for anything like a separate Josephite scribal culture in seventh-century Jerusalem. So the next best thing is to explore the plausibility and the implications of such claims: “In the absence of direct archaeological or historical evidence, one can make a case for the plausibility of the biblical reports based on the supporting evidence.”2 I will argue below that the Book of Mormon itself constitutes strong evidence for such a Josephite scribal culture in sev...

Review of Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020). 128 pages. $9.95 (paperback).

Abstract: The Book of Ether is a sometimes-overlooked gem of a text within the Book of Mormon, a history within a history that deserves careful and innovative investigation. Rosalynde Frandsen Welch offers such with a novel perspective in her entry in the Maxwell Institute’s series of “brief theological introductions” to the books within the Book of Mormon. The principal focus of Welch’s analysis is on issues concerning Moroni’s editorial purposes, how he interacts with his source text, and the ethics of his agenda for his abridgment of the Jaredite record. She critiques what she sees as Moroni’s lack of interest in the Jaredite record for its own sake and his attempts to “Christianize” the indigenous religion and culture of the former inhabitants of the land he occupies. Additionally, Welch presents Moroni as offering his future audience a “reader-centered theology of scripture” that seeks to transfer the authority of Scripture from the author to the reader. This review finds some of Welch’s proposals to be problematic but recognizes the great value of her beautifully written contribution to the academic study of the Book of Ether and the Book of Mormon.

Rosalynde Frandsen Welch is an independent scholar of Latter-day Saint literature, theology, and scripture. She earned a PhD from UC San Diego in early modern English literature. She is a member of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s advisory board and received a research grant from the Institute to write the manuscript for this study of the Book of Ether. Welch has published an impressive number and variety [Page 146]of scholarly works that can be found in academic journals such as BYU Studies, the Mormon Studies Review, and the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, as well as in multiple blogs and in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The focus of this review is on her entry in the Maxwell Institute’s Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions series, which looks at the Book of Ether.

Welch is a wondrous wordsmith, with a highly articulate and lucid writing style, so much so that I could honestly read her eloquent prose all day. The way she organizes her treatment of the Book of Ether is accessible, fluid, effective, and interesting to read. In this theological analysis of the Book of Ether, she builds upon the work of scholars such as Grant Hardy and Joseph Spencer and adds notable original perspectives in an effort to present this singular Jaredite/Nephite blend of inspired writings in a light that most readers would not have previously considered.

In Welch’s introductory remarks, she explains her approach to this volume:

My basic method in this study is threefold: (1) to make the best sense I can of the text’s language and structures, (2) to infer something of the writer’s intent, and then (3) to press beyond the plain sense and authorial intent to draw out emergent patterns of meaning at work in the passage. (pp. 12–13)

Readers should keep in mind that this collection from the Maxwell Institute is a series of “brief theological introductions,” not the standard verse-by-verse commentaries or intensive doctrinal expositions many may be used to seeing. Instead, Welch’s approach is to more broadly “search the book of Ether for themes at the heart of religion as it is experienced by believers” (p. 13). Although the author does occasionally touch briefly on particular points of the story of the brother of Jared and other highlights of the Jaredite record, it is clear from the outset that her principal focus is on what Moroni’s intentions are and how he is interacting with his source text.