The Twelve Tribes against the Twelve Apostles

The first part of Nephi's high mountain vision deals with the conception, birth, baptism, ministry, end execution of Jesus Christ -- the resurrection is, strangely, omitted -- and presents no real problems. It is consistent with the stories we have in the New Testament. After Christ's execution on the cross, though, things get a little confusing:

And I, Nephi, saw that he was lifted up upon the cross and slain for the sins of the world.

And after he was slain I saw the multitudes of the earth, that they were gathered together to fight against the apostles of the Lamb; for thus were the twelve called by the angel of the Lord. And the multitude of the earth was gathered together; and I beheld that they were in a large and spacious building, like unto the building which my father saw.

 

And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: "Behold the world and the wisdom thereof; yea, behold the house of Israel hath gathered together to fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb."

And it came to pass that I saw and bear record, that the great and spacious building was the pride of the world; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great.

 

And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: "Thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (1 Ne. 11:33-36).

This can be seen as a reference to the fact that the early church was persecuted. What is strange is the angel's insistence that "the house of Israel hath gathered together to fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb." In the history we know, it was primarily the Romans that persecuted the early Christians, and though the Jews also participated, it certainly wasn't the gathered House of Israel, a term which always refers to all Twelve Tribes being reunited, as in the LDS Article of Faith, "We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes" (A of F 10). The Ten Tribes disappeared in the eighth century BC and remain "lost" to this day. James, one of the apostles against whom these gathered tribes are supposed to be fighting, addresses his epistle "to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad" (James 1:1).

Furthermore, elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, Jesus himself seems to say that the tribes will not be gathered until they accept him as their Redeemer:

And I command you that ye shall write these sayings after I am gone, that if it so be that my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name, that they may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes whom they know not of, that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed, who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the earth because of their unbelief, may be brought in, or may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer.

And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfil the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel (3 Ne. 16:4-5).

If the House of Israel is not gathered until after they accept Christ, why would they have "gathered together to fight against the twelve apostles"?

One possible interpretation is that the gathering in Nephi's vision is figurative. The tribes weren't literally gathered together any more than they were literally in a single "large and spacious building." Rather, the apostles went out into the world, meeting hostility wherever they went -- tradition has it that Matthew was killed in Ethiopia, Bartholomew in Armenia, Andrew in Greece, Thomas in India, and so on -- and in this way the Twelve Tribes, while still physically "scattered abroad," were figuratively "gathered" or united in their fighting against the apostles.

Another possibility is that "after he was slain" means thousands of years after he was slain (or just that Nephi saw this after he saw Jesus slain, which may or may not correspond to historical chronology). They fight may be still in the future, after the promised "literal gathering of Israel" -- which would mean the "twelve apostles" must be someone other than the biblical figures to whom that term usually refers, but this is hardly a problem for Mormons, who already accept that many different groups of twelve men can be and have been called by that title.

It is even possible that Nephi's use of the term has no reference to Jesus' disciples during his mortality at all. Notice how the Twelve are first introduced in the vision:

And I looked and beheld the Redeemer of the world, of whom my father had spoken; and I also beheld the prophet who should prepare the way before him. And the Lamb of God went forth and was baptized of him; and after he was baptized, I beheld the heavens open, and the Holy Ghost come down out of heaven and abide upon him in the form of a dove. And I beheld that he went forth ministering unto the people, in power and great glory; and the multitudes were gathered together to hear him; and I beheld that they cast him out from among them.

And I also beheld twelve others following him. And it came to pass that they were carried away in the Spirit from before my face, and I saw them not.

And it came to pass that the angel spake unto me again, saying: Look! And I looked, and I beheld the heavens open again, and I saw angels descending upon the children of men; and they did minister unto them.

And he spake unto me again, saying: Look! And I looked, and I beheld the Lamb of God going forth among the children of men. And I beheld multitudes of people who were sick, and who were afflicted with all manner of diseases, and with devils and unclean spirits; and the angel spake and showed all these things unto me. And they were healed by the power of the Lamb of God; and the devils and the unclean spirits were cast out (1 Ne. 11:27-31).

First Nephi sees scenes from the life of Jesus. Then he sees "twelve others following him" -- which may mean coming after him in time -- and these are then "carried away in the Spirit" so that he no longer sees them. Rather than this referring to anything that happened to the apostles themselves, I think this may just mean that this part of the vision ended, and he went on to the next scene. The next scene is "angels descending upon the children of men" -- When did this happen? It could have been any time -- and then the scene changes back to the life of Jesus. The Twelve are explicitly removed from the scene before this, and there is no mention of their appearing in the subsequent scenes of Jesus' life. This is consistent with the possibility that they are not contemporaries of the mortal Jesus.

If the Twelve Apostles in the vision are not the familiar New Testament characters, who might they be?

It's interesting that immediately after seeing the Twelve "carried away in the Spirit," Nephi sees angels descending and ministering. The number of angels is not specified, but could it be the same Twelve, now translated or resurrected beings? This brings me back to my 2023 post "Who were the 13 luminous beings Lehi saw in his Jerusalem vision?" This, you will recall, is what Lehi saw in that vision:

And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.

And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament. And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth (1 Ne. 1:9-10).

In that post, I pointed out the identical language used in the two visions -- "twelve others following him" -- but thought the Twelve seen be Lehi couldn't be the apostles seen by Nephi because they descended from Heaven and didn't seem to be ordinary mortals. Now, though, I see that Nephi's vision does suggest that the Twelve Apostles may have been carried off to Heaven and then descended again as "angels."

What is meant by these angels "descending upon the children of men"? This unusual language is only found in other place in scripture:

And he [Jesus] saith unto him [Nathanael], Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man (John 1:51).

Here the angels both ascend and descend -- just as in Nephi's vision, if the Twelve are in fact the same beings as the angels. In my 2019 post "Notes on John 1," I had this to say about that verse of the Gospel:

"The angels of God ascending and descending" certainly sounds like a reference to Jacob's dream -- "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it" (Genesis 28:12) -- with the Son of man playing the role of the ladder.

The use of "descending upon" makes sense in John 1 because Jesus is metaphorically Jacob's Ladder. What does it mean in Nephi's vision, where the angels descend not upon a singular Son of Man but "upon the children of men"?

The only other "descending upon" in scripture refers not to angels but to the Spirit at the baptism of Jesus:

And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him (Mark 1:10).

One likely interpretation of this is that the Spirit of God entered Jesus at this point, making him fully divine. Could Nephi mean something similar, with angelic spirits entering the bodies of mortals?

In my post on Lehi's Jerusalem vision, I proposed that the twelve star-like beings he saw descending out of heaven might be the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes. Could it be these same patriarchs, as glorified "angels," that "descend upon" or enter the Twelve Apostles? Later in Nephi's vision he is told:

Thou rememberest the twelve apostles of the Lamb? Behold they are they who shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel (1 Ne. 12:9).

This would certainly make sense if the Twelve Apostles are in some sense the Twelve Patriarchs.

In my post on Lehi's Jerusalem vision, I noted that each of the Twelve Tribes is associated with a holy book and even used language suggesting that each book almost embodied one of the patriarchs:

If Joseph -- in the form of the book kept by his tribe, the plates of brass -- will go forth unto all nations, what of the other 11 starry beings who also go forth? Well, according to Nephi's later prophecies, each of the other tribes will also produce a holy book, and these, too, will go forth to the world.

And this brings me to the symbol of the Cherubim, or the Four Living Creatures -- who symbolize both the Twelve Tribes of Israel (see "The Throne and the World" for details) and, by a later tradition, the authors of the four canonical Gospels. And this reminds me of my own 2024 vision, recorded in "Étude brute?", in which I was shown a book and told

This book is the Cherubim. Not the Book of the Cherubim, but the Cherubim themselves.

Well, this post has certainly raised more questions than it has answered. I'm just thinking aloud and welcome comments.