Thoughts on the murder of Laban

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I doubt this.

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

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

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

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

1. A much shorter sojourn in Egypt?

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

Neither.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. How the Red Sea was parted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. The serpents

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

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

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

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

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

4. Messianic prophecies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. The Lord's "burial" of Moses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You, Lady, are the Tree

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

First, Nephi, as translated by Joseph Smith:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Annunciation

(Words of the Angel)

You are not nearer God than we;

he's far from everyone.

And yet your hands most wonderfully

reveal his benison.

From woman's sleeves none ever grew

so ripe, so shimmeringly:

I am the day, I am the dew,

you, Lady, are the Tree.

Pardon, now my long journey's done,

I had forgot to say

what he who sat as in the sun,

grand in his gold array,

told me to tell you, pensive one

(space has bewildered me).

I am the start of what's begun,

you, Lady, are the Tree.

I spread my wings out wide and rose,

the space around grew less;

your little house quite overflows

with my abundant dress.

But still you keep your solitude

and hardly notice me:

I'm but a breeze within the wood,

you, Lady, are the Tree.

The angels tremble in their choir,

grow pale, and separate:

never were longing and desire

so vague and yet so great.

Something perhaps is going to be

that you perceived in dream.

Hail to you! for my soul can see

that you are ripe and teem.

You lofty gate, that any day

may open for our good:

you ear my longing songs assay,

my word -- I know now -- lost its way

in you as in a wood.

And thus your last dream was designed

to be fulfilled by me.

God looked at me: he made me blind . . .

You, Lady, are the Tree.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How successful was Nephi’s attempt at persuasion?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question of Lehi's ethnicity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To summarize the data to be explained:

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

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

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

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

Jacob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alma the Younger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel the Lamanite

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

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

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

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

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

Mormon

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

And behold, if the Lord shall say unto a man -- Because of thine iniquities, thou shalt be accursed forever -- it shall be done.

 

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

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

Moroni

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

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

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

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

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

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

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