You can listen to or download the March 28 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The hosts were Steve Densley, Matthew Bowen and Mark J. Johnson. In this episode, our hosts discussed the relationship of the Book of Moses to the Book of Mormon with the Interpreter Foundation’s Jeff Lindsey. The second portion of the show was a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #19 (D&C 46-48). The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: March 28, 2021. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

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This series is cross-posted with the permission of Book of Mormon Central from their website at Pearl of Great Price Central

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The beautiful copper engraving above by Noël Pisano was made from meticulous observation of one of the many prehistoric paintings in the caves of Pech-Merle, in the heart of the massif central of southern France.[1] Although the cave walls and ceilings contain many images of greater sophistication, this simple tracing of a single hand is singularly arresting. Its original is solidly dated to 25,000 years ago, yet in standing to examine it in close quarters, the gap of time between oneself and the skilled artist is suddenly erased, and we are brought to admire the beauty and subtlety of his technique. To create this work, the artist had to crawl into the cavern by candlelight. After contemplating his design and choosing the ideal place for its execution, he placed his hand on the wall to serve as a stencil. To create the colored outline, he projected pigment onto the rock by blowing, perhaps with the help of a sprayer held tight in his lips.[2] This well-honed technique allowed a negative of the hand, surrounded by symbols whose meaning is now is lost to us, to be preserved tens of thousands of years later as an ancient snapshot, the sole remaining memory of the life of this individual.

In another chamber, we find what is undoubtedly a family portrait. Fourteen hands of adults and children are found together here, in a deep, submerged section of the cavern now accessible only during periods of drought. The creators of such relics “almost certainly intended them to last for generations.”[3] Elsewhere in the cave, visitors are moved to discover a dozen footprints of an adolescent boy drawn into this place by unknown rites, hostile forces of nature, or the mere boldness of curiosity — and preserved intact for twelve thousand years in the clay of the cavern floor.[4]

As a witness of the great effort and care sometimes made to honor the dead in this era, Hariri notes the 1955 discovery in Sungir, Russia of:[5]

a 30,000 year-old burial site belonging to a mammoth-hunting culture … [Among other things, i]t contained two skeletons, buried head to head. One belonged to a boy aged about twelve or thirteen, and the other to a girl of about nine or ten. The boy was covered with 5,000 ivory beads. He wore a fox-tooth hat and a belt with 250 fox teeth (at least sixty foxes had to have their teeth pulled to get that many). The girl was adorned with 5,250 ivory beads. Both children were surrounded by statuettes and various ivory objects.

Abstract: In sermons and writings, Jacob twice quotes the prophecy of Isaiah 11:11 (“the Lord [ʾădōnāy] shall set his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to gather the remnant of his people”). In 2 Nephi 6:14 and Jacob 6:2, Jacob uses Isaiah 11:11 as a lens through which he interprets much lengthier prophetic texts that detail the restoration, redemption, and gathering of Israel: namely, Isaiah 49:22–52:2 and Zenos’s Allegory of the Olive Trees (Jacob 5). In using Isaiah 11:11 in 2 Nephi 6:14, Jacob, consistent with the teaching of his father Lehi (2 Nephi 2:6), identifies ʾădōnāy (“the Lord”) in Isaiah 11:11 as “the Messiah” and the one who will “set himself again the second time to recover” his people (both Israel and the righteous Gentiles who “believe in him”) and “manifest himself unto them in great glory.” This recovery and restoration will be so thoroughgoing as to include the resurrection of the dead (see 2 Nephi 9:1–2, 12–13). In Jacob 6:2, Jacob equates the image of the Lord “set[ting] his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to recover his people” (Isaiah 11:11) to the Lord of the vineyard’s “labor[ing] in” and “nourish[ing] again” the vineyard to “bring forth again” (cf. Hebrew yôsîp) the natural fruit (Jacob 5:29–33, 51–77) into the vineyard. All of this suggests that Jacob saw Isaiah 49:22–52:2 and Zenos’s allegory (Jacob 5) as telling essentially the same story. For Jacob, the prophetic declaration of Isaiah 11:11 concisely summed up this story, describing divine initiative and iterative action to “recover” or gather Israel in terms of the verb yôsîp. Jacob, foresaw this the divine action as being accomplished through the “servant” and “servants” in Isaiah 49–52, “servants” analogous to those described by Zenos in his allegory. For Jacob, the idiomatic use of yôsîp in Isaiah 11:11 as he quotes it in 2 Nephi 6:14 and Jacob 6:2 and as repeated throughout Zenos’s allegory (Jacob 5) reinforces the patriarch Joseph’s statement preserved in 2 Nephi 3 that this figure would be a “Joseph” (yôsēp).

[Page 288]Nephi regarded the prophecy of Isaiah 11:11 (“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to recover the remnant of his people … ”)1 as having transcendent covenant significance. He recognized that the Lord’s “set[ting] his hand again” — literally, “add[ing] his hand” — to gather the “remnant” of Israel “the second time” would signal his “commenc[ing]” the work to fulfill all of the covenants of the Father for the final time.2

Beyond his wholesale quotation of Isaiah 11 in 2 Nephi 21, Nephi quotes Isaiah 11:11 in two additional Gezera Shawa-type3 juxtapositions with quotations of Isaiah 29:14 (“Therefore, behold, I will proceed [yôsīp] to do a marvellous work among this people,” see 2 Nephi 25:17, 21; 2 Nephi 29:1) on the basis of the use of the verb yôsîp/yôsīp in both passages

This is the third of eight weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed. Hugh Nibley was a master at taking ancient history and applying its lessons to our day. One of the best examples of this is within his writings on revelation, reason, and rhetoric.

This is an Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 17, “My Law to Govern My Church” on D&C 41-44. The panelists for this roundtable were Terry Hutchinson, John Gee and Kevin Christensen. This roundtable was extracted from the March 14, 2021 broadcast of Interpreter Radio. The complete show may be heard at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-march-14-2021/. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

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This series is cross-posted with the permission of Book of Mormon Central from their website at Pearl of Great Price Central

Listen to an audio recording of this Essay:

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“And I, the Lord God, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. … And the rib which I, the Lord God, had taken from man, made I a woman.”[1] Giorgio Vasari describes the scene above by contrasting the poses of Adam and Eve: “One [is] almost dead from being imprisoned by sleep, while the other comes alive completely reawakened by the benediction of God. The brush of this most ingenious artisan reveals the true difference between sleep and awakening, as well as how stable and firm His Divine Majesty may appear when speaking in human terms.”[2]

Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the symbolism of the painting extends beyond the Creation and looks forward to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the birth of the Church that would carry out the divine commission to carry the Gospel to the world. In his analysis of the painting, Gary A. Anderson notes some details that are “highly unusual”:

Adam lies slumped around a dead tree, an odd sight for a luxuriant garden where death was, as of yet, unknown. The only way to understand this tired figure is to see him as a prefigurement of Christ, the “second Adam,” who was destined to hang on a barren piece of wood. “The sleep of [Adam],” the fourth-century theologian St. Augustine observed, “clearly stood for the death of Christ.”[3] … If this is how we are to read this image of Adam, perhaps a similar interpretation holds for Eve.

To get our bearings on this we must bear in mind two facts. First, Mary as the “second Eve” is she who gives birth to Christ. Second, Mary as the “symbol of the church” is she who emerges from the rib of Christ on the Cross[, symbolized by the blood and water that issued from His side]. In this central panel of the Sistine ceiling, we see both the first and second Eve emerging from the ribs of Adam. …

Further support for this comes from the history of the chapel itself. It was built on the model of Solomon’s Temple and was dedicated on August 15, 1483, the feast day of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin Mary in Heaven. A favored image of Mary in Christian devotional practice was Mary as the ark or tabernacle of God. Like the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament, the throne upon which God almighty took his seat, Mary was the seat in which God took human form. Like the Temple itself, she housed the verum corpus or the “true body” of God.

Review of Chiasmus: The State of the Art, edited by John W. Welch and Donald W. Parry (Provo, UT: BYU Studies and Book of Mormon Central, 2020). 358 pages. $24.68, paperback.

Abstract: This collection of essays represents the latest scholarship on chiasmus. They were selected from papers delivered at an academic conference at Brigham Young University in 2017. Articles reflect both “the state of the art” and the state of the technique in chiastic studies.

In the academic world, readers are published collections of articles that represent the breadth, depth, variety, and history of the best scholarship on a given theme. Readers may reflect the current nature of scholarly understanding or indicate a turning point in the intellectual interest in a subject. They often supplement textbooks as principal sources in undergraduate lower or upper division courses.

This new collection of essays edited by Jack Welch and Donald Parry is an academic reader in multiple senses:

* It introduces students of all ages and experience levels to the latest research in chiastic studies as manifest in a variety of ancient literary sources, including the Hebrew Bible (six articles), Christian Bible (two articles), Book of Mormon (one article), and Mayan texts (one article). In addition, Professor Welch himself illustrates the comparative value of chiasmus in analyzing several homicide narratives in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

* [Page 266]It complements and updates the standard and still valuable collection of articles on chiastic studies published four decades earlier, also edited by Professor Welch.1

* It offers an operational definition of this ancient literary convention and considers its rhetorical value for writers, redactors, editors, readers, and critics.

* It includes an extended bibliography of published works on chiasmus.

But this volume is much more than an academic reader. Collectively, these essays are also a statement of respect for Professor Welch, who recently retired as one of the leading international contributors to this scholarly tradition and who introduced chiastic studies to Latter-day Saint scholars a half century ago after he had discovered the traditional Hebrew literary convention used throughout the text of the Book of Mormon.2 Scholarly studies of the Book of Mormon have not been the same since. The event that gave rise to this “state of the art” publication was an academic conference at Brigham Young University in August 2017.3 This celebration brought together dozens of scholars and clerics to reflect on this standard but not uncontroversial literary convention of (primarily) the ancient Near East.

Those who are more than a little familiar with this convention recognize chiasmus as a specialized and complex expression of parallelism, an even more ubiquitous literary convention of biblical Hebrew.

Abstract: The first 450 years of Nephite history are dominated by two main threads: the ethno-political tension between Nephites and Lamanites and religious tension between adherents of rival theologies. These rival Nephite theologies are a Mantic theology that affirms the existence of Christ and a Sophic theology that denies Christ. The origin of both narrative threads lies in the Old World: the first in conflicts between Nephi and Laman, the second in Lehi’s rejection of King Josiah’s theological and political reforms. This article focuses on these interrelated conflicts. It suggests that Zoram, Laman, Lemuel, Sherem, and the Zeniffites were Deuteronomist followers of Josiah. The small plates give an account of how their Deuteronomist theology gradually supplanted the gospel of Christ. As the small plates close, their last author, Amaleki, artfully confronts his readers with a life-defining choice: having read the Book of Mormon thus far, will you remain, metaphorically, with the prophets in Zarahemla and embrace the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, or will you return to the land of Nephi and the theology you believed and the life you lived before you read the Book of Mormon?

The first 450 years of Nephite history in the Book of Mormon narrative are dominated by two main threads: the ethno-political tension between Nephites and Lamanites and religious tension between adherents of rival Nephite theologies. One of these theologies affirms the existence of Christ. The other denies Christ. The origin of both narrative threads lies in the Old World: the first in conflicts between Nephi and Laman, the second in Lehi’s rejection of King Josiah’s theological and political reforms. Having been born around the same time as Lehi, Josiah lived from 649 to 609 bc and reigned for 31 of his 40 years. He was king when Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi were born and probably when Laman and Lemuel came of age. His policies and actions were surely salient in [Page 218]the life of Lehi and all his family while they lived in Jerusalem. However, the Book of Mormon suggests that his policies and actions were largely not supported by Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob.1 Others who accompanied Lehi on his migration, including Laman and Lemuel, apparently did accept the reforms, thus bringing this Old World theological rivalry with them to the Promised Land. This rivalry reverberates throughout the history recorded in the small plates of Nephi and into the Book of Mosiah as a contest between competing Sophic and Mantic theological traditions.2

Josiah’s Reforms

Josiah’s theological and political reforms began at age 18, when Shaphan the scribe gave him the Book of the Law (Torah) discovered by Hilkiah the high priest during a renovation of Solomon’s temple. This book,

This is the second of eight weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. In an eloquently written chapter of Hugh Nibley Observed, Marilyn Arnold highlighted Nibley’s profound disappointment that most people don’t share his deep love for the Book of Mormon.

 

You can listen to or download the March 21 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The hosts were Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson and Mike Parker. In this episode, our hosts discussed the upcoming General Conference as well as renovations to the pioneer-era temples. The first portion of the show was a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #18 (D&C 45). The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: March 21, 2021. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.