Abstract: Alma’s conversion experience was both unusual and unusually powerful, and yet he fervently wished that he could provide others with the same experience. So much so, in fact, that he actually feared that he might be sinning in his wish by seeming to oppose the will of God. Increasingly, though, I find myself sharing that wish. My involvement with the Interpreter Foundation can correctly be regarded as one manifestation of that fact. I invite others to join us.

Readers of the Book of Mormon will remember the dramatic conversion of Alma the Younger, an apostate son of the Nephite high priest in Zarahemla, and of his four fellow apostates, the sons of king Mosiah. The Greek word αποστασία (apostasia), the obvious source of our English word apostasy, carries the essential meaning of “rebellion” or “revolt,” and that is precisely what they were doing.

But “as they were going about rebelling against God,” or, as Alma himself expresses it, as they were “seeking to destroy the church of God,” an angel appeared to them. “And he descended as it were in a cloud” and “spake as it were with a voice of thunder, which caused the earth to shake,” and summoned them to repentance. “Doth not my voice shake the earth?” the angel asked, rhetorically, reminding them of something that they already knew quite terrifyingly well. “He spake unto us, as it were the voice of thunder, and the whole earth did tremble beneath our feet.” “And so great was their astonishment, that they fell to the earth, and understood not the words which he spake unto them.”1

[Page vii]The experience was so powerful that it fundamentally transformed the lives of all five. They became famously devoted and extremely successful missionaries, preaching the Gospel with great effect. They are, thus, powerful examples of the scriptural concept of repentance, which is the term that the King James Bible and derivative English works most commonly use to render the Hebrew word תשובה (teshuvah), which literally means “return,” and the Greek term μετάνοια (metanoia). Metanoia, from the preposition meta, meaning “after” or “beyond,” and a derivative of nous, meaning “mind,” suggests, very strongly, a change of thinking, a transforming change of heart (as we would say it), a repudiation of past thinking, a conversion or reformation. In some modern German Bible translations (e.g., the Einheitsübersetzung, which has been adopted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its German-speaking congregations), the verb umkehren (“to turn back,” “to turn around”) captures the sense of the Greek and the Hebrew quite well. It also represents the reactions of Alma and the four sons of Mosiah quite well — they returned to the teachings of their devout fathers, the Nephite king and the Nephite high priest.

It was so powerful, too, that Alma evidently seems to have continued to use his conversion experience in his sermons for years afterward. So, probably, did the sons of Mosiah. We have record of one such retelling of Alma’s conversion in Alma 36, where, perhaps more than a quarter of a century after their encounter with the angel, Alma employed it to testify of his faith to his eldest son, Helaman.

But we also have clear echoes of it elsewhere.

First, though: Intertextuality is a word contemporary scholars use to describe ways in which various texts refer to each other, or play off of each other, often without explicitly indicating such interplay. For example, the title of the 2012 book Seven Habits of Highly Fulfilled People

Abstract: This essay follows Zacharias’ biography from entering the priesthood till the day the angel Gabriel appeared to him in Herod’s temple. After recounting the procedures to become a priest, Brown focuses on the day when Zacharias prepared to bring one of the two central standing offerings. He points out that likely, a priest would only have a once in a lifetime chance to partake in the core of this ceremony, entering the Holy Room and burning incense on the Inner Altar. Brown paints a very visual picture of this day, immersing us in the ritual of the time, a ritual that became even more significant for Zacharias by seeing an angel in the temple, something that has not happened before nor after in the Second Temple.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Lisle G. Brown, “Tamid: Zacharias and the Second Temple,” in Temple Insights: Proceedings of the Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 22 September 2012, ed. William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 241–78. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/temple-insights/.]

Many Latter-day Saints who read Luke’s account of Zacharias’s visitation of Gabriel while offering incense at the golden inner altar of the second temple (see Luke 1:5–23) likely view it as a requisite prelude to Gabriel’s more momentous annunciation to Mary later in the chapter (see Luke 1:26–37).1 It probably does not occur to them to ask [Page 340]how Zacharias came to be in the temple for that important event. They may think that this was just to be expected because it was part of the normal duties of temple priests. Some may feel that it was not uncommon for him to offer incense and that it was just an ordinary day for Zacharias at the temple — until Gabriel appeared to him. After all, he was a priest, so it would not be surprising that he would be found ministering in the temple. But these assumptions are most assuredly not the case. Even if Gabriel had not appeared to Zacharias, it would have remained the most significant day of his lengthy temple labors. Indeed, he would have never forgotten the day when he offered incense in the house of the Lord!

Unfortunately, most Church members have little, if any, idea how the Jewish priesthood functioned during the first Christian century.2 Few know how Zacharias became a priest or why it was extraordinary for him to be offering incense in the temple at all.

Organization of the Jewish Priesthood in New Testament Times

The Gospels refer to a cadre of men associated with the temple at Jerusalem as the “chief priests” (see Matthew 27:1, 6; Mark 15:1, 10, 11; Luke 22:2, 4; John 19:6, 15).3 The book of Acts also described these leaders as “the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests” (Acts 5:24). The War Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, uses similar words to describe them: “the high priest an...

Abstract: In Doctrine and Covenants 132:8 we read: “Behold, mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.” I propose that the words “order” and “confusion” in this passage are literary allusions to the ideals, constructs, and outcomes that embody Zion and Babylon, respectively. In other words, God’s house is a house of Zion and not a house of Babylon.

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Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants was dictated by Joseph Smith on 12 July 1843 in Nauvoo, Illinois, but not published until 1852. The Joseph Smith Papers website includes the following concerning the historical background of this revelation:

According to JS [Joseph Smith], biblical and divine teachings provided the impetus for the revelation. In June 1844 JS stated that he received the revelation “on enquiry” about Matthew 22:30 in the New Testament, which reads, “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” The revelation featured here begins by acknowledging questions JS had about the Old Testament practice of polygamy. In addition to citing biblical precedent, the featured revelation foregrounds several theological explanations for the practice, including the ultimate authority of God’s law; the blessings and eternal rewards for those entering into the practice; and the consequences of not following God’s law for those who had it “revealed unto them” but did not obey it.1

[Page 314]A key passage in this revelation reads:

And verily I say unto you, that the conditions of this law are these: All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations, that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, of him who is anointed, both as well for time and for all eternity, and that too most holy, by revelation and commandment through the medium of mine anointed, whom I have appointed on the earth to hold this power (and I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred), are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead. (D&C 132:7)

In this verse we are given a fairly comprehensive list of agreements and pledges, including “covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations.” We are told that all these must be authorized and administered in the Lord’s way and that “contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead.” In short, the Lord has established an orderly system in which cove...

Abstract: The Book of Giants (BG), an Enoch text found in 1948 among the Dead Sea Scrolls, includes a priceless trove of stories about the ancient prophet and his contemporaries, including unique elements relevant to the Book of Moses Enoch account. Hugh Nibley was the first to discover in the BG a rare personal name that corresponds to the only named character in the Book of Moses besides Enoch himself, a finding that some non-Latter-day Saint Enoch scholars considered significant. Since Nibley’s passing, the growth of new scholarship on ancient Enoch texts has continued unabated. While Nibley’s pioneering research compared the names and roles of one character in Moses 6–7 and BG, scholars have now been able to examine the names and roles of nearly all of the prominent figures in the two books and analyze their respective accounts in more detail. Not only are the overall storylines of the two independent accounts more similar than could have imagined a few years ago, a series of recent studies have added substance to the claim that the specific resemblances of the Book of Giants to Moses 6–7—resemblances that are rare or absent elsewhere in Jewish tradition—are more numerous and significant than the resemblances of any other single ancient Enoch text—or, for that matter, to all of the most significant extant Enoch texts combined. Of particular note is new evidence in BG that relates to the Book of Moses account of Enoch’s gathering of Zion to divinely prepared cities and the ascent of his people to the presence of God.

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[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the Latter-day Saint community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

[Page 96]See Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “Moses 6–7 and the Book of Giants: Remarkable Witnesses of Enoch’s Ministry,” in Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses: Inspired Origins, Temple Contexts, and Literary Qualities, ed. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David R. Seely, John W. Welch and Scott Gordon (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Springville, UT: Book of Mormon Central; Redding, CA: FAIR; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2021), 1041–256. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ancient-threads-in-the-book-of-moses/.]

The Latter-day Saint story of Enoch has been called the “most remarkable religious document published in the nineteenth century.”1 This is true for at least three reasons.

* First, the account is highly original. For example, according to a preliminary linguistic analysis by Stanford Carmack,

Abstract: The accounts of the Anti-Christ, Korihor, and of Alma’s mission to the Zoramites raise a variety of apparently unanswered questions. These involve Korihor’s origins, the reason for the similarity of his beliefs to those of the Zoramites, and why he switched so quickly from an atheistic attack to an agnostic plea. Another intriguing question is whether it was actually the devil himself who taught him what to say and sent him on a mission to the land of Zarahemla — or was it a surrogate of the devil or a human “devil” such as, perhaps, Zoram? Final questions are how Korihor ended up in Antionum, why the Zoramites would kill a disabled beggar, and why nobody seemed to have mourned his violent death or possibly unrighteous execution. There are several hints from the text that suggest possible answers to these intriguing questions. Some are supported by viewing the text from a parallelistic or chiastic perspective.

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Two of the most gripping stories within the Book of Mormon are first, the account of Korihor and second, Alma’s mission to the Zoramites. These stories have been discussed in many forums, and many authors have supplied commentary on them. However, there remain at least seven significant questions in these accounts — “holes,” if you will. John Welch has called at least some of these lacunae or gaps, “omissions.”1

While answers to these questions cannot currently be proven definitively, the text offers several hints that, like an accumulation of circumstantial evidence in a legal case, can be amassed to provide speculative but credible answers. Some of this circumstantial evidence is new, coming from the relatively recent discovery of underlying parallelistic structures within the Book of Mormon text. John Welch expressed this idea when he wrote: “The design and depth of the [Page 50]Book of Mormon often comes to light only when the book is studied with chiastic and other ancient literary principles in mind.”2 Such parallelistic considerations seem particularly helpful in the case of Korihor and of the Zoramites, as I will attempt to demonstrate.

This article will consider how important themes are presented: 1) in the current verse and chapter format, 2) by parallelistic structures (usually chiasms), and 3) in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. The latter point is important since the modern chapter and verse divisions were not revealed by inspiration to Joseph Smith and were not a part of the first printing. They were provided by Orson Pratt and not published until 1879.

Abstract: Latter-day Saint scholars generally agree that “the place called… Nahom,” where Ishmael was buried (1 Nephi 16:34) is identified as the Nihm tribal region in Yemen. Significantly, a funerary stela with the name y s1mʿʾl — the South Arabian equivalent of Ishmael — was found near the Nihm region and dated to ca. 6th century bc. Although it cannot be determined with certainty that this is the Ishmael from the Book of Mormon, circumstantial evidence suggests that such is a possibility worth considering.

In recent decades, Latter-day Saint scholars have come to identify Nahom — the burial place of Ishmael, Nephi’s father-in-law (1 Nephi 16:34) — with the Nihm tribal region in Yemen.1 The exact borders of the Nihm tribal area have fluctuated over time, but it has been located near the Wadi Jawf since the early Islamic era.2 Several inscriptions referring to individuals as nhmyn (“Nihmite”) confirm the tribe existed at least by the seventh century bc,3 and based on these texts scholars generally believe the Nihm tribe were in a region near the Jawf in antiquity.4

It is noteworthy, therefore, that in 2008 a corpus of over 400 crudely carved funerary stelae recovered from the Wadi Jawf were published by the Sanaʿa National Museum.5 These stelae have anthropomorphic facial features carved above an inscription of the name of the deceased. This is a pan-Arabian style of funerary stela,

Abstract: In this essay Parry starts with the symbology of ritual vestments, and then discusses in detail how the ancient clothing worn in Old Testament temples are part of the rituals and religious gestures that are conducted by those who occupy the path that leads from the profane to the sacred. The profane is removed, one is ritually washed, anointed, invested with special clothing, offers sacrifices, is ordained (hands are filled), and offers incense at the altar, before entering the veil. Putting on clothes, in a Christian context, is often seen as symbol of putting on Christ, as witnessed by the apostle Paul using the word “enduo,” when talking about putting on Christ, a word mainly used in the Septuagint for donning sacred vestments (symbols also for salvation, righteousness, glory, strength and resurrection) in order to be prepared to stand before God. Parry then goes on explaining how priestly officiants wearing sacred vestments, emulated celestial persons who wear sacred vestments, making one an image of those celestial persons. He concludes with showing how the ancient garbs of the High Priest point to Christ.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Donald W. Parry, “Ancient Sacred Vestments: Scriptural Symbols and Meanings,” in Temple Insights: Proceedings of the Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 22 September 2012, ed. William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 219–40. [Page 12]Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/temple-insights/.]

When priests and high priests served in the Mosaic tabernacle or the Jerusalem temple, they wore holy vestments, which were an integral part of the temple setting.* The priest’s vestments consisted of four parts — headpiece,1 sash, tunic, and linen breeches.2 The high priest’s vestments consisted of eight pieces — the four belonging to the priest plus an ephod (or “special apron”3), a robe of the ephod, a breastplate, and a golden plate of the headpiece (see Exodus 29:5–6). The Exodus text does not mention footwear.4 The texts may suggest a possible order of putting on clothing for the priests (see Leviticus 8:13) and the high priests (see Leviticus 8:7–10).

On the Day of Atonement, which occurred once a year, the high priest dressed in white and wore the girdle, tunic, mitre, and breeches. Inasmuch as the clothing was holy (see Exodus 28:2–3), priests and high priests were vested with the sacred clothing in a sacred ceremony. In fact, if the priests failed to wear the linen breeches (and possibly other sacred vestments) while administering in the temple, they were subject to death (see Exodus 28:42–43).

The priests’ sacred vestments served three distinct functions: (1) a pragmat...

Abstract: The scriptures are saturated with covenantal words and terms. Any serious or close reading of the scriptures that misses or ignores the covenantal words, phrases, and literary structure of scripture runs the risk of missing the full purpose of why God preserved the scriptures for us. This is especially true for the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, which emerged out of an Old Testament cultural context. Research during the past century on ancient Near Eastern covenants has brought clarity to the covenantal meaning and context of a variety of words and literary structures in the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon. This article builds on that revealing research to show that the English word “perfect” in a covenantal context in scripture can also be represented with the covenantal synonyms of “loyal, loyalty, faithful, and trustworthy.” God has revealed and preserved the scriptures as records of these covenants and of the consequences of covenantal loyalty or disloyalty. The Lord’s injunction to “be ye therefore perfect” (Matthew 5:48) is beautifully magnified when we realize that we are not simply asked to be without sin, but, rather, to “be ye therefore covenantally loyal” even as God has been eternally and covenantally loyal to us.

For Latter-day Saint readers, one of the most consternation-creating passages in scripture is Jesus’s admonition in the Sermon on the Mount to “be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). For those of us already desiring to be more like God, that is, with tendencies toward perfectionism, this charge from Jesus can feel overwhelming, overpowering, and dispiriting. Who, among the fallen children of Adam and Eve, will ever in this mortal life be able to be perfect? The cause seems hopeless.

[Page 2]A different perspective may come by considering the difference in the Book of Mormon when Christ reiterates His commandment, but this time also referring to Himself: “Be perfect, even as I or your Father who is in heaven is perfect” (3 Nephi 12:48). Perhaps the perfection referred to requires a perspective going beyond mortality and looking to the fullness that comes after the resurrection. But even then, the commandment to be “perfect” is given to us as flawed mortals for whom perfection seems so unobtainable.

Thankfully, there have been regular reminders from scholars1 and church leaders2 that the original meaning of the Greek word “teleios,” far from evincing the meaning of flawlessness, instead evokes the sense of completion, goal-orientation, maturity, and purposefulness. For example, after a careful examination of the Hebrew and Greek words involved in KJV passages that use the word “perfect” with respect to mortals, Frank Judd explains that mortal flawlessness is not implied in Matthew 5:48; on the contrary, the “essential sense of the Savior’s command to be perfect is a call to live the gospel of Jesus Christ to the best of one’s ability, using the Atonement to repent when necessary.”3

Abstract: It’s almost always better to be right than to be wrong, to be exact than to be sloppy. In scholarship generally and serious scriptural study specifically, it’s important to work toward precision in both interpretation and explanation. However, the Lord is fully capable of reaching us where we are, despite our imperfect languages and our limited capacities. “These commandments are of me,” he says at D&C 1:24, “and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.”

Some of you are no doubt familiar with the venerable joke about the monk who, after decades of anticipation, finally has an opportunity to examine the document that has governed much of his long life. When at last he emerges from the archive in which he’s been permitted to study the original manuscript, tears of regret and sorrow are coursing down his face. When his waiting friends ask him why he’s so sad, he responds: “The word was celebrate!”1

In such cases, it’s important to be precise, and to get the words right.

Many years ago, a friend who was a fellow classics major told me of a Sunday School class that he had just attended. It was apparently focused on the apocalyptic prophecies in Matthew 24.

To illustrate Matthew 24:12 (which, in the King James Version, reads, “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold”), the dedicated teacher had come equipped with a wax candle and a box of matches. Several times, he lit the candle and, after a short interval, blew it out each time, [Page viii]inviting members of the class to contemplate the significance of cooling wax.

But the verb to wax that is used in KJV Matthew 24:12 has absolutely nothing to do with the cooling of wax. It means, simply, “to grow,” and is an English cognate of the German verb wachsen, which carries exactly the same meaning. We say of the moon that it “waxes” and “wanes,” by which we mean that the size of the visible moon appears to cyclically increase (grow) and then decrease (shrink) in the sky. When some of us say that Senator Bunkum “waxed eloquent” or that a prose author suddenly “waxed poetic,” we’re not talking at all about beeswax or candle wax.

The verb and the noun are quite distinct in meaning and largely, if not wholly, distinct in their etymological histories. Our modern noun wax comes from Old English weax (which referred to a substance made by bees), which in turn comes from proto-Germanic wahsam and ultimately from the proto-Indo-European root wokso- (“wax”). By contrast, our modern verb to wax (in the sense of “to grow”) derives from Old English weaxan, “to increase, grow,” and, before that, from proto-Germanic wahsan and proto-Indo-European weg-.2

Thus, if staring at cooling candle wax delivered any actual insights into Matthew 24:12, such insights would occur only by sheer coincidence.

But the teacher wasn’t done yet. He or she then turned to Matthew 24:28, which, in the King James Version, reads, “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”

What was the significance of eagles gathering around a carcass? As I recall, the class didn’t immediately see it,

Review of Dan Vogel, Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2021). 250 pp. $18.95 (softback).

Abstract: The Book of Abraham continues to undergo scrutiny in both academic and polemical publications. The latest offering of substance in the latter category, Dan Vogel’s Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique, criticizes the work of those who argue for the antiquity and inspiration of the Book of Abraham and makes a sustained argument that the book is, instead, modern pseudepigrapha written by a pious fraud (Joseph Smith) in the nineteenth century. Book of Abraham Apologetics lays out a particular naturalistic approach to this text that works best only when certain metaphysical and methodological assumptions are taken for granted. This approach, however, as well as most of his arguments against the Book of Abraham’s historicity, are severely undermined both by Vogel’s inability to properly assess the evidence and his metaphysical or ideological commitments. This review critiques Vogel’s critique of Book of Abraham apologetics and offers an alternative to his questionable framing of the text and its interpretation.

At first glance, the Book of Abraham would hardly appear to warrant much, if any, apprehension; after all, the book occupies a meager fourteen pages (five chapters) in the current edition of the Pearl of Great Price as canonized by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But looks, as the saying goes, can be deceiving, and popular prejudice notwithstanding, the Book of Abraham has proven both resilient and, in some ways, elusive.1 Hugh Nibley wisely warned us a generation ago that the road ahead for anybody wishing to assess the origin and nature of the Book of Abraham by academic means is daunting. “Consider for [Page 264]a moment the scope and complexity of the materials with which the student must cope if he would undertake a serious study of the Book of Abraham’s authenticity,” wrote Nibley in 1968.

At the very least he must be thoroughly familiar with (1) the texts of the “Joseph Smith Papyri” identified as belonging to the Book of the Dead, (2) the content and nature of the mysterious “Sen-sen” fragment, (3) the so-called “Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar” attributed to Joseph Smith, (4) statements by and about Joseph Smith concerning the nature of the Book of Abraham and its origin, (5) the original document of Facsimile 1 with its accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions, (6) the text of the Book of Abraham itself in its various editions, (7) the three Facsimiles as reproduced in various editions of the Pearl of Great Price, (8) Joseph Smith’s explanation of the Facsimiles, (9) the large and growing literature of ancient traditions and legends about Abraham in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Greek, Slavonic, etc., (10) the studies and opinions of modern scholars on all aspects of the Book of Abraham.2

Nibley was not being alarmist with this assessment. After all, the canonical text of the Book of Abraham purports to be Joseph Smith’s inspired translation of a historical narrative attributed to the eponymous biblical patriarch and preserved on an ancient Egyptian papyrus. This means, at a minimum, that anyone wishing to pass judgment on the authenticity of the text is going to need some kind of t...