Abstract: The biblical Hebrew collocation pinnâ derek or pannû derek (cf. Egyptian Ἰr wꜣ.t [n]), often rendered “prepare the way” or “prepare a way” in English, is an evident stylistic feature of Nephi’s writings. The most basic meaning of this idiom is “clear my way,” which is how it is rendered in 2 Nephi 4:33. Zenos’s use of “prepare the way” (Jacob 5:61, 64) in the context of “clear[ing] away” bad branches also reflects this most basic meaning.

The Hebrew idiom pinnâ derek or pannû derek often appears in early English translations of the Hebrew Bible (including the KJV) as “prepare the way” (see, e.g., Isaiah 40:3 [cf. Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4], 57:14, 62:10 [pannû derek]; Malachi 3:1 [pinnâ derek]). Nephi’s replete use of this idiom constitutes a stylistic marker in his personal writings (see 1 Nephi 3:7; 9:6; 10:7–8 [with reference to Isaiah 40:3]; 10:18; 11:27 [also with reference to Isaiah 40:3]; 14:17; 17:41; 22:20; 2 Nephi 2:4; 4:33; and 9:10).

The basic meaning of the Hebrew verb pānâ is “to turn.”1 In its Piel stem (pinnâ), this verb means “to clear away, remove” (Zephaniah 3:15) or “tidy up” (Genesis 24:31; Leviticus 14:36).2 As an idiomatic expression, pinnâ derek (and its plural imperative pannû derek) denotes “clear the [Page 32]way”3 or “clear a track”4 — namely, “make” a way, road, track, or path “clear, free from obstacles.”5 The Egyptian equivalent of this idiom is Ἰr wꜣ.t n (“prepare a way for”).6 As a Hebrew speaker taught in the “learning of the Jews,” Nephi surely would have been familiar with the former, and as one whose education also included the “language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2), he was plausibly familiar with variations of the latter. Thus, Nephi’s apparent use of the idiom in 2 Nephi 4:33 begs further scrutiny. Toward the end of what has come to be called “the Psalm of Nephi” (2 Nephi 4:16–35), a document written immediately after the death of Lehi7 and later transcribed by Nephi to his small plates, Nephi petitions the Lord thus:

O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape before mine enemies! Wilt thou make my path straight before me! Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way — but that thou wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way, but the ways of mine enemy.

Abstract: In two separate passages Isaiah appears to describe the mortal Messiah as lacking in physical beauty and perhaps as even having some type of physical disfigurement (see Isaiah 52:14 and 53:2–4). On the contrary, Joseph, David, Esther, and Judith — portrayed in the biblical text as physical saviors or deliverers of Israel — are represented as beautiful in form and appearance. In fact, their beauty seems to be a significant factor in the successful exercise of their power as physical saviors of Israel. Unlike Joseph, David, Esther, and Judith, Christ may have been foreordained to descend to his mortal state with a less than attractive physical appearance and as someone who experienced illness throughout his life so that “he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities” (Alma 7:12).

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Following his initial rejection by the people of King Noah, “after the space of two years … Abinadi came among them in disguise, that they knew him not, and began again to prophesy among them” (Mosiah 12:1).1 During this second period of preaching Abinadi2 cited many of the words of Isaiah, including:

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He hath no form [לא־תאר lo-toar] nor comeliness [ולא הדר ve’lo hadar]. And when we shall see him, there is no beauty [ולא־מראה ve’lo-mareh] that we should desire him [ונחמדהו ve’nechmedehu].3 He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows [מכאבות machovot] and acquainted [וידוע vidua] with grief [חלי choli]. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs [חלינו cholaenu] and car...

Abstract: We typically teach and often even sing that we should be our brothers’ (and sisters’) keepers. And we do it with the very best and most holy of intentions. For many of us, indeed, loving and caring for our brothers and sisters is at the very heart of what it means to live a life of truly Christian discipleship. And rightly so. But there’s another way to think about this matter. I’ve pondered it for decades, and now, maybe some others will also find it thought-provoking.

In all the congregations of the Saints where I’ve participated, one of the most popular and oft-recurring hymns has been “Lord, I Would Follow Thee.” With lyrics by Susan Evans McCloud that were set to music by K. Newell Dayley, two of the verses of the hymn read as follows:

I would be my brother’s keeper;I would learn the healer’s art.To the wounded and the wearyI would show a gentle heart.I would be my brother’s keeper—Lord, I would follow thee.

Savior, may I love my brotherAs I know thou lovest me,Find in thee my strength, my beacon,For thy servant I would be.Savior, may I love my brother—Lord, I would follow thee.1

[Page viii]The phrase my brother’s keeper comes, of course, from the tragic story of Cain and Abel that is recounted in the fourth chapter of Genesis. Here are the two most salient verses of that story:

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? (Genesis 4:8–9)2

Cain’s insouciant, even insolent, answer to the Lord’s question reflects his defiance of God. He is arrogant and unrepentant. And our typical response to him is that, yes, you are your brother’s keeper. Or, at least, you should be.

We all know what it means to be “our brother’s keeper” in this sense, and, if we’re serious Christians, we aspire to be precisely that and, in fact, to become better at being that than we now are. Cain, as we commonly read the story in Genesis 4, is flippantly telling the Lord that he doesn’t care where Abel is, that Abel is no concern of his. Certainly, we don’t want to emulate Cain — and not only because we would prefer not to incur God’s displeasure. Instinctively, we feel that we ought indeed to care about our brothers and sisters and, in so doing, to emulate God, whose “work” and whose “glory,” we are told, is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). “Wisdom,” according to the Book of Mormon’s wise king Benjamin, consists, at least in part, of learning “that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17). Having related to an inquiring lawyer the story of “the Good Samaritan,” who ministered kindly to an injured Israelite — a stranger, and no relation — the mortal Jesus admonished the lawyer to “go, and do thou likewise.”3

The apostle Paul implies, by his famous linking of it with faith and hope, that love, or “charity” (as the King James Bible renders the Greek term ἀγάπη [agape]), is a divine gift; the prophet Mormon, in a letter shared with us by his son, explicitly counsels us to pray to God to be granted that divine gift.4

Thus, clearly,

Abstract: A comet seen by the Chinese in 5 bc has been considered by some authors as a possibility for the Star of Bethlehem. This article starts with that premise and argues that Book of Mormon evidences reinforce that likelihood. The comet path can account for all events surrounding the Star of Bethlehem. Based on typologies in the scriptures, eyewitness reports, and the comet’s timing, the date of Christ’s birth can be determined. A proposal can then be made as to when and why the wise men began travelling to Jerusalem. The comet left a trail of debris the wise men saw on the night they located the house where Jesus was. The wise men and Joseph and Mary left Judea in mid-June of 5 bc and the slaughter of the innocents occurred later in that month. Using Josephus’s “Antiquities,” this article then argues strongly that Herod’s death occurred sometime after a lunar eclipse on September 15, 5 bc and before the next Passover. This serves also to support his death in the spring of 4 bc, contrary to some scholars who opt for a 1 bc death. This study reaffirms the reality of the Star of Bethlehem.

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In this paper, I propose that Jesus Christ was born in March of 5 bc and that the wise men visited him in mid-June of 5 bc. This hypothesis1 hinges on a comet seen by the Chinese in that month. The claim is that the appearance of the comet marked the day of Christ’s birth and thus is the celestial apparition we refer to as the Star of Bethlehem.

The observers of the comet only left us with the month and year of the first observation, the length of time the apparition was seen, and a single celestial position. The information we have is summarized as follows:

* [Page 280]A single position (B1950 right ascension = 20 hours 20 minutes, declination = -15°). At the birth of Christ, the right ascension was 18 hours 27 minutes, declination = -19°.2)

* The approximate galactic coordinates (l = 30°, b = -25°).

Abstract: This essay harnesses the late twentieth-century discovery of Hebrew rhetoric by Bible scholars to identify Lehi’s dream as the foundation of the carefully constructed unity in Nephi’s writings and to identify previously unrecognized elements of that dream which are distributed throughout his final work. The teachings and prophecies in 1 and 2 Nephi are shown to derive from their shared dream/vision. Further, the entirety of Nephi’s writings in the Small Plates is shown to be a tightly designed rhetorical production that establishes the centrality of Christ’s identity, mission, and teachings for current and future generations of Lehi’s descendants and ultimately for the entire world. For decades, interpreters of the Book of Mormon and its teachings have singled out the vision of the tree of life given first to Lehi and subsequently to his son Nephi as one of the book’s most prominent elements that require careful study. While literary and visual artists continue to find inspiration in the human dramas retold throughout the book, the text itself features visualizations1 of its basic doctrinal messages: (1) God on his throne in heavenly council, (2) the tree of life with the straight and narrow path, the iron rod, and the great and spacious building, and (3) the allegory of the olive tree. As I will explain below, those three visual images are part of Lehi’s and Nephi’s great vision and provide the blueprint for the complex of covenant history and [Page 232]doctrinal teaching recorded by multiple authors throughout the entire book. This article will trace that blueprint in the structure and content of Nephi’s Small Plates with limited side glances at the rest of the text.

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This paper explains how Nephi’s writings constitute a tightly designed rhetorical unity presented as an expansion of the great dream or vision first given to Lehi and subsequently repeated for Nephi. Writing in the last decades of his life, Nephi used the original contents of that vision to lay out several key teachings for his readers:

* The future coming of Christ into the world to atone for the sins of all peoples and

* to overcome death by providing a resurrection for every human being.

* The plan of salvation and the gospel or doctrine of Christ.

Abstract: Metaphors occur when there is a contradiction in the senses of the words used that cause the text to be interpreted non-literally, as Paul Ricoeur has noted. The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians describing the body as a temple has been taken to be one such scriptural metaphor: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? … know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19). As a metaphor, it is a strong one. The supposed contradiction between a temple and a body includes the inanimate nature of the temple, its holiness in contrast to the natural man, and its unchanging, eternal purpose. The non-literal interpretation of both the body and the temple being a place where the spirit of God can dwell is emphasized in the metaphorical reading and rightly allows us to consider how we may invite the spirit into our lives. Yet to reduce the “body as temple” doctrine to a mere metaphor robs us of the deeper understanding of the body and its role in our spiritual progression and exaltation in the Plan of Happiness. Using the common characteristics archeologists and temple scholars use to classify various sites as temples across the world, this paper shows how the human body can rightly and without contradiction be called a temple of God (D&C 93:35).

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A physical body is the foundational purpose of leaving the premortal sphere to come to Earth,1 however brief or extended our stay may be. It is a necessary step in the progression of a spirit into a soul (D&C 88:15) and toward the exaltation of godhood. And while the body’s inherent natural man poses opposition to our final state, the body itself is given and retained in resurrection with glory empowering the state of godhood. Without the body, no one can become truly like God. [Page 206]There is something glorious about the body itself, then, which is holy and sacred, from the time it is bestowed upon us in mortality to its sanctified possession in immortality.

The holy nature of the physical body is found throughout scripture modern and ancient. Joseph Smith spoke to this holiness of the body when he revealed that “the elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle of God, even temples” (D&C 93:35). Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, carries this association between the body and the temple, stating, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? … Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?

Review of Robert A. Rees, A New Witness to the World (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2020). 244 pages. $9.95 (paperback).

Abstract: Robert A. Rees has written about the Book of Mormon for over sixty years. In this book are collected sixteen essays that all focus on different aspects of the text of the Book of Mormon, and two that provide a personalized interaction. The topics range from the examination of the spiritual biographies of Nephi and Ammon to the issue of automatic writing as a possibility for the dictation of the Book of Mormon to an essay examining the Nephite 200-year peace.

A New Witness to the World collects Robert A. Rees’s essays covering six decades of serious thought about the Book of Mormon. It necessarily covers multiple topics. All writers who approach the Book of Mormon naturally view it with the tools in their personal kit. Rees is a literary critic and unsurprisingly examines themes in the Book of Mormon and comparisons to the literary world into which the Book of Mormon was presented. The breadth of his interests over time confirm that he takes the Book of Mormon seriously and thinks seriously about how it speaks to its readers.

Preamble: It Has Opened My Heart Wider to Experience His Love

Rees loves the Book of Mormon. That isn’t my description. It is his. The very first line of the very first essay (labeled as the Preamble) is “I love the Book of Mormon” (p. xvi). In total, eight of the sixteen paragraphs in the essay begin with “I love …” and develop a different aspect of the text. It is a testament to his literary sensitivity that the repetition enhances the [Page 192]message without becoming boring. I would like to imagine that it was an unconscious mirror of the parallelisms in the book he loves.

This essay is the oldest in the collection, originally having been published in 1989. Placing it at the beginning of the collection declares that it also reflects a current sentiment. As a preamble, it is intended to set the tone for the essays to follow, and therefore, the rest of the essays contextually become examples of things that Rees loves about the Book of Mormon.

There are a total of fifteen essays, including the preamble and introduction. Two essays date from the 1980s. Most were published in the 2000s. The introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 13 were written for this volume. I offer my impressions from each of the articles.

Introduction: Carrying Water on Both Shoulders.

Rees’s opening sentence is, “How are we to regard the Book of Mormon and how are we to read it?” (p. 1). The essay is a short tour through the ways that the Book of Mormon has been approached through history and moves to important changes that represent the current approaches. Rees’s discussion of history is on point, but what resonates is the current situation.

Rees’s love for the Book of Mormon is strong enough that he can use critical thinking when approaching it. He clearly keeps up with some of the best of the secular approaches to the Book of Mormon, specifically citing a work by Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hicks.1 He does not review the articles but emphasizes their insight that the Book of Mormon continues to be polarizing and tends to form two camps — the religious and the secularist (p. 9). The history he has already described is evidence that this is a persistent issue, but it becomes one that needs to have some resolution. We are beginning to see a newer dichotomy that is no longer between true and false, but between faithful examination and secular examination. To be certain, secular examination separates itself from the religious, but it is a qualitatively different approach than past issues that focused only on truth claims.

Abstract: Since the mid-twentieth century, scholarly studies of the literary craftsmanship of biblical texts have revealed considerable insights into the intended purposes of the authors of these scriptural narratives. The present study applies the analytical methods of these studies to Mormon’s abridgment of Alma’s records of the Zoramite mission (Alma 31–35), revealing intricate patterns of literary conventions ranging from the most specific (e.g., diction, syntax, and figures of speech) to the most general (e.g., rhetoric, tone, and structural logic). From this perspective, Alma 31 provides a framework to distinguish Nephite and Zoramite religious practices and structure the narrative of the entire Zoramite mission, including the missionaries’ teachings. More broadly, Mormon’s account of the Zoramite mission sets the stage for the general degradation of Nephite society that focuses his abridgment of Nephi’s Large Plates for the next one hundred years.

[Editor’s Note: This article provides a good example of using literary analysis to enhance understanding of the scriptures. While it was previously published, it has not been widely accessible, and thus we have chosen to republish it to bring it to the attention of readers. It was first presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters, 25 January 1992, at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. An abridged and edited version was later published as “Patterns of Prayer: Humility or Pride,” Ensign 22, no. 8 (August 1992), 8–11, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1992/08/patterns-of-prayer-humility-or-pride. The original presentation was included in The Association for Mormon Letters Annual 1994, 212–15. The article is reprinted here with the permission of the author, with minor edits.]

[Page 184]Alma’s mission to the Zoramites occupies a crucial place in Mormon’s record of Nephites at Zarahemla (Alma 31–35). It is located between extended accounts of relatively successful ecclesiastical and military missions (Alma 5–27, 43–62). A detailed examination of this text reveals Mormon’s purposes in incorporating it into his abridgment, as well as something of the nature of the record he was creating and of the literary task he had undertaken.

Mormon divides his abridgment of this account into three parts. He identifies Alma’s motivations for undertaking the mission and strategies to ensure its successful completion. He details Alma’s execution of that plan. And he evaluates the success of the mission as a commentary on the moral condition of Nephite society.

Setting the Stage

Mormon introduces the Zoramites in the conclusion to his narrative about the apostate, Korihor (Alma 30). The text mentions that after Korihor had confessed his iniquity and after his followers had reconverted to the gospel, he went begging for his sustenance among the Zoramites. While going from house to house, he was “run down and trodden down, even until he was dead” (Alma 30:59). By this narrative bridge, Mormon introduces the Zoramites through an action that signals the ignoble end of an individual apostate and the reprehensible moral conduct of an apostate group (see Mosiah 2). The group would ultimately prove more dangerous to the Church and more destructive to Nephite spirituality than the individual Korihor. Aware of this condition of apostasy, Alma organized a mission to reclaim the Zoramites.

Mormon attributes to Alma three motivations for his mission. The first was spiritual. The record mentions that the Zoramites had fallen into a state of apostasy and had become idolatrous (v. 1). Thus, Alma did “sicken because of the iniquity of the people” (v. 1) and was “exceeding sorrowful” (v. 2). He was, above all, concerned for the welfare of their souls.

Abstract: The Book of Mormon sheds light on a “great mystery” located in John 10:16 (D&C 10:64). In this paper, using a comparative method that traces intersecting pastoral imagery, I argue that John 10:16–18 (as opposed to merely John 10:16) not only refers to Jesus’s visit to the Lehites in Bountiful and the lost tribes of Israel (the standard LDS view), but that it has a scripturally warranted covenant-connection to the emergence and dissemination of the Nephite record. Specifically, the Book of Mormon, according to the Good Shepherd (3 Nephi 15:12–16:20), effectively serves as his recognizable voice to the inhabitants of the earth across time and space. The Nephite record has come forth so that the Lord’s sheep (those who hear his voice in and through that record in the final dispensation) may be safely gathered into the fold before he comes in glory to reign as a second King David. The Nephite record’s coming forth to eventually establish peace on earth was foretold by prophets such as Isaiah (Isaiah 52:7–10), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 34:23–25; 37:15–26), and Nephi (1 Nephi 13:34–37, 40–14:2; 1 Nephi 22:16–28). The value of this comparative approach is to recast our understanding of various passages of scripture, even as additional value is assigned to the Nephite record as the covenant of peace.

“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” (John 10:16)

Jesus Christ’s reference to his “other sheep” in John 10:16 is perhaps not well understood. Latter-day Saint scholars generally view the reference as pointing to the Lehites that Jesus addresses in 3 Nephi and those of the lost tribes of the house of Israel whom he subsequently visits, [Page 146]of whom we have no present account. Among non-Latter-day Saint scholars, there appear to be several perspectives on the “other sheep,” but one predominates: the other-sheep phrase refers to those who would hear the Good Shepherd’s voice among the early Gentiles.1 On one hand, though, a little learning is a dangerous thing insofar as it diminishes the expectation of discovery due to received assumptions; on the other hand, where there is no exegetical inheritance, scholarly speculations tend to multiply. Some scholars have posited in the concise and elusive passage in John 10:16 an assurance that others would yet hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in future generations, that his voice would eventually be unto all across time and place. The Good Shepherd’s voice, for these scholars, would be unto all the “children of God, both Jews and Gentiles.”2 Nevertheless, what is precisely evoked when examining John 10:16 appears to remain a relative mystery. This paper, therefore, seeks to explain not only who the other sheep are, but more significantly, when and especially how they are to be brought into the fold according to the eschatological prophecies that employ pastoral imagery. Implicit in this approach is an affirmation that the gathering and numbering of the sheep requires meeting the condition...

Abstract: Contemporary Palestinian archaeology has produced two major threats to traditional interpretations of the history of ancient Israel. The first threat, which derives from scientific discomfort with the exodus story as an explanation for the sudden population expansion in southern Palestine at the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200 bce), has led to a wide variety of theories about how these Israelites could have been drawn from existing populations in the general area. This challenge is answerable in ways that preserve the exodus account, which is fundamental to the Book of Mormon as well as the Bible. The second threat is the glaring mismatch between the biblical glorification of David and Solomon’s “empire” and disparagement of the northern kingdom combined with the archaeological finding that the cities of the northern kingdom were far larger and more advanced than Jerusalem and the south. This discrepancy between archaeology and the biblical record provided support for the widely embraced theory that everything from Genesis through Kings had been revised to promote the political and religious preeminence of Judah above the other tribes. This second challenge does fit the archaeology and contemporary textual interpretations. But it also provides stronger grounding for the hypothesis that Nephi’s Brass Plates could have been produced by an ancient Manassite scribal school of which he and his father were highly trained members, and which may have been out of sync with the Jewish scribal schools and the elders of Jerusalem.

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In previous papers I have argued that, in the historical and cultural context of late seventh-century bce Jerusalem, Lehi and Nephi would have been seen as highly trained scribes belonging to a Manassite scribal school,1 and that the Brass Plates could have been understood as a recent project designed to preserve the Abrahamic/Manassite tradition of [Page 112]history and scripture in the Egyptian language in the face of the newly undertaken Judahite version (that would eventually result in the Hebrew Bible).2 Those three papers incorporated numerous relevant findings from modern archaeology, while largely ignoring an important dimension of contemporary archaeological interpretations that would flatly dismiss the Book of Mormon account of the history of ancient Israel. While modern archaeology has not produced a clearly documented or even unified alternative history to the traditional biblical version, it has staked out important claims about the origins of the ethnic people of Israel that directly challenge the perspectives that are fundamental to both the biblical and the Book of Mormon accounts. But all such claims are based on interpretations of artifacts. In this paper I will first discuss those interpretations and their alternatives to demonstrate the continuing plausibility of the Book of Mormon’s account of Nephi’s Brass Plates. Secondly, I will explore archaeological discoveries in the northern kingdom that possibly support or give helpful insight to my hypothesized Manassite s...