And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites.And it is many hundred years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son; and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. But may God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps some day it may profit them (W of M vv. 1-2).
So Mormon supposes (or, rather, "it supposeth him," a construction which is to the best of my knowledge unique to the Book of Mormon) that his son Moroni will live to see the entire destruction of the Nephites. He prays that Moroni will "survive" the Nephites -- meaning that he will continue to live after all the other Nephites have been killed, for that is the meaning of survive when it is used transitively, as detailed in Webster's 1828 dictionary, the standard reference for English as used by Joseph Smith and his contemporaries.
Webster expresses most people's natural sentiments when he gives as an example the sentence, "Who would wish to survive the ruin of his country?" But Mormon positively prays that his son will survive not only the ruin of his country but the "entire destruction" of his people. Why? To quote the key sentence again:
But may God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps some day it may profit them.
Each of the three instances of them must have the same antecedent: "my people, the Nephites." No other reading is possible. Mormon wants Moroni to outlive all the other Nephites so that he can write about the Nephites -- which I suppose makes sense, since the full story of the Nephites cannot be written until after that story has ended. And why is it important to write about the Nephites? "That perhaps some day" -- in the future, long after the Nephites are extinct -- "it may profit them," meaning the Nephites.
The only sense I can make of this is that Moroni's writings will profit beings who once lived as Nephites but have since moved on to another state. I would assume that spirits and resurrected beings would remember their own history and would have no need (and in the case of spirits perhaps no ability) to read a book about it. It makes the most sense if we assume that the writings will help reincarnated Nephites, who having passed through the veil of forgetfulness would have no knowledge of their own past lives as Nephites, or even of the fact that there ever were any such people as the Nephites.
3 comments:
There are many such examples of this in the BoM. You can find another in 2 Ne 25 where Nephi appears to be addressing both his people and the future Nephites as the same group reborn when Christ arrives:
And after Christ shall have risen from the dead he shall
Show himself unto you, my children, and my beloved brethren!
Jacob's sermon in 2 Nephi 10 is far more explicit imo.
"wherefore, as it has been shown unto me that many of our children shall perish in the flesh because of unbelief, nevertheless, God will be merciful unto many; and our children shall be restored, that they may come to that which will give them the true knowledge of their Redeemer."
He later clarifies this restoration is "in the flesh"
"When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the earth, unto the lands of their inheritance."
I think the most natural reading of 2 Ne. 10:2 is that some of the children will perish and others will be restored. It's grammatically similar to "many should perish by the sword, and many should be carried away captive into Babylon" (1 Ne. 1:13). The second "many" is implicitly different from the first; if it were the same, it would say "them" instead of "many" in the second instance.
In 2 Ne. 26:1, I think it's possible to interpret "you, my children, and my beloved brethren" loosely so as to include future Nephite generations -- just as we might say, "In five billion years, the sun will go red giant and kill us all" without meaning that we personally will live to see that.
Words of Mormon allows no such wiggle room. It is describing what Mormon hopes will happen to the Nephites after the complete extermination of the Nephite race, when there will be no "future generations" to which he might be referring.
Of course, if we accept my reading of W of M, then we have good reason for interpreting the other passages you mention in the same way.
Whoops I meant to say 2 Ne 26, not 25.
Yes you could say he's just referring to resurrection, which he does mention later in the chapter. But one chapter prior in the same address he tells them:
"For I know that ye have searched much, many of you, to know of things to come; wherefore I know that ye know that our flesh must waste away and die; nevertheless, in our bodies we shall see God. Yea, I know that ye know that in the body he shall show himself unto those at Jerusalem, from whence we came;"
So he's like "yeah you're gonna die and so are your children but we are promised to see God in the flesh." Then he references the people at Jerusalem who.....see God in the flesh. In the next chapter he promises them they will be "restored in the flesh". The later Nephi promises his children and brethren that Jesus would "show himself unto you" after Jesus resurrects.
So to me the simpler reading is Nephi, Jacob, and their "brethren" received a promise for themselves and their immediate children that even though they would die, they would later be restored to the flesh/reborn and see Jesus in that state so that he could save them. And that would tie nicely to tales from 3 Nephi of parents and their children being blessed directly by Jesus.
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