Lehi's prophecy of John the Baptist

The first mention of baptism in the Book of Mormon is in this prophecy of Lehi's, as reported by Nephi:

And he spake also concerning a prophet who should come before the Messiah, to prepare the way of the Lord -- Yea, even he should go forth and cry in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight; for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. And much spake my father concerning this thing.

And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water. And after he had baptized the Messiah with water, he should behold and bear record that he had baptized the Lamb of God, who should take away the sins of the world (1 Ne. 10:7-10).

As I noted in my inaugural post here, this is a highly suspect passage -- "jaw-droppingly detailed for something supposedly written in the 6th century BC, but also containing not one single detail not found in the New Testament." It seems to draw heavily on the Gospels in a way that Lehi himself could not have done.

It begins by alluding to Isaiah, but the form the Isaiah quotation takes shows the influence of the New Testament:

The voice of one calling out,

Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isa 40:3, NASB).

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isa 40:3, KJV).

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God (Isa. 40:3, Brenton's Septuagint Translation).

Almost all modern translations are similar to the NASB above in that the voice is not crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord" but rather is crying, "In the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord." I think the logic of Hebrew poetic parallelism almost forces this reading: The voice says something and then repeats itself in other words, using synonyms. "Prepare" becomes "make straight"; "the way" becomes "a highway"; "of the Lord" becomes "for our God"; and "in the wilderness" becomes "in the desert." 

The Septuagint, as seen in Brenton's version above, removes "in the desert," thus making it more reasonable for the voice to be crying in the wilderness rather than crying, "In the wilderness . . . ." If the Septuagint reflects an earlier Hebrew text that has since been lost, this may be the correct reading.

The Gospels are written in Greek and thus follow the Septuagint, but all three of the Synoptics further simplify the quotation by replacing "the paths of our God" with simply "his paths."

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight (Mark 1:3, Matt. 3:3, Luke 3:4).

It is highly unlikely that three authors would independently alter Isaiah in the same way, so presumably Matthew and Luke are copying Mark rather than drawing directly from Isaiah. All three Synoptics quote this (modified) line of Isaiah and present John the Baptist as its fulfillment, but none of them actually put the words of Isaiah in John's mouth. Only the Fourth Gospel does this:

He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias (John 1:23).

This is an even further simplification of Isaiah, removing the poetic parallelism entirely.

Here, again, is Lehi's version:

Yea, even he should go forth and cry in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight (1 Ne. 10:8).

Like the Fourth Gospel, this puts the words of Isaiah in John's mouth (though fewer of them; Lehi's John simply cries in the wilderness rather than telling people that he is crying in the wilderness). The Isaiah quotation itself, though, is the Synoptic version word for word. So even this part of Lehi's prophecy, the one part that seems to come from the Old Testament rather than the New (though still "Deutero-Isaiah" and thus problematic for those who accept that hypothesis), still shows the clear influence of the Gospels.

The other things that Lehi has his crier-in-the-wilderness say also come right out of the Gospels:

There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose (Mark 1:7).

he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear (Matt. 3:11)

one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose (Luke 3:16)

there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose (John 1:26-27).

there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose (1 Ne. 10:8)

"There standeth one among you whom ye know not" is right out of the Fourth Gospel, but "mightier than I" is from the Synoptics. All four Gospels have John use a shoe metaphor to describe his unworthiness, but Lehi uses precisely the same wording as the Fourth, including the singular shoe where the Synoptics all use the plural. Again, Lehi's wording seems to be dependent on both the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel.

The remainder of Lehi's prophecy seems to be taken from the Fourth Gospel:

John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: . . . These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:26, 28-29).

And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water. And after he had baptized the Messiah with water, he should behold and bear record that he had baptized the Lamb of God, who should take away the sins of the world (1 Ne. 10:9-10).

Bethabara is mentioned only in the Fourth Gospel, and only in some versions. It is generally agreed that the original text had Bethany and that the Bethabara variant was created by Origen in the third century. That Lehi would have singled out such an obscure place, which likely did not even exist in his day, is extremely unlikely, and the fact that is juxtaposed with other material from the same part of the Fourth Gospel, such as the "Lamb of God" reference, makes it even more suspicious. (The title "Lamb of God" is used twice by John in the Fourth Gospel and nowhere else in the entire Bible. The Book of Mormon uses it 33 times.)

Nephi writes, "my father said he should baptize . . . and he also said he should baptize with water," with the also making it read as if "with water" adds some new information not already implied in the word baptize. Since baptism is definitionally a rite involving water, this is strange. The specification "with water" makes sense only when literal water baptism is being distinguished from a metaphorical "baptism" of some other kind, as in the Synoptics:

I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost (Mark 1:8).

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he . . . shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire (Matt. 3:11).

I indeed baptize you with water; but .. . he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire (Luke 3:16).

Lehi, however, at least in Nephi's abridgment, never mentions any other kind of baptism. This is yet another way in which his prophecy parallels the Fourth Gospel, which has John say "I baptize with water" without mentioning any other kind of baptism until later in the story. As I wrote in my 2019 "Notes on John 1" about vv. 24-27:

The author has not mentioned until now that John was baptizing people. Obviously he takes it for granted that his readers pretty much know who John was and what he was doing. Also omitted, though obviously implied in what comes later (and by "I baptize with water"), is John's statement that the one coming after him would baptize with the Holy Ghost.

All in all, it's hard for me to see this prophecy of Lehi's as anything but a case of massive biblical contamination. Even if we grant that detailed information about John the Baptist could have been revealed to Lehi 600 years in advance, it's not plausible that his prophecy would mention exactly the same details, in exactly the same language, as the Gospel writers who wrote of John after the fact.

It's almost as if what was revealed to Lehi was not a vision of John but rather a vision of the yet-to-be-written text of the New Testament (including a post-third-century version of the Fourth Gospel as well as at least one of the Synoptics). Visions of future books are attested elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, so it's not technically outside the realm of possibility. It does strain credulity, though, to think that the exact wording of the Gospels was predetermined 600 years in advance. Seeing that there will in the future be a "Bible" is one thing, but actually reading that Bible centuries before it is written -- by, one presumes, authors possessing creativity and free will -- is much harder to swallow.

The skeptical explanation is of course that the "prophecy" was actually invented in the 19th century by Joseph Smith and that its content was lifted directly from the King James Bible. In other words, Joseph just made it up, plagiarizing freely from the Bible, and the biblical parallels discussed here are one of many smoking guns.

The "semi-skeptical" stance I have tentatively staked out in "The snail on the roof, the Lincoln Memorial, and the translation of the Book of Mormon" is that Joseph Smith's seership worked much like modern remote viewing, in that paranormally received material (in this case revelation) was inextricably mixed with content from the seer's own mind, and that all of this was experienced as a single "given" thing, with no way for the seer to know -- other than checking it against external evidence -- what elements of the vision were true clairvoyance and which were noise or what I have called "contamination."

In the present case, the external evidence seems to be telling us that every word of Lehi's prophecy of John could be contamination -- that we can't say with any confidence that he foresaw John at all, and if he did, the content of that vision was likely quite different from what we have in the Book of Mormon. I started this post as part of an effort to figure out what the Nephites knew of "baptism" prior to Alma (the first instance of anyone actually practicing baptism in the Book of Mormon), and it appears that 1 Ne. 10 provides little or no usable evidence relative to that question.

The one element in 1 Ne. 10 that strikes me as potentially significant -- although, again, it too could easily be contamination -- is that mention of baptism "with water" as if that were a different thing from simple baptism. Obviously the word baptism in our Book of Mormon is a translation of something -- and given that baptism is a very specialized word referring to a specific feature of our culture, it is likely that the translation is not an exact one. The "with water" thing suggests (possibly) that the basic meaning of the Nephite word thus translated did not necessarily imply water. Perhaps it meant something like "purification" or "initiation" or something. The evidence for this is thus far extremely slight -- I'm basing it on details of the wording of a passage that is heavily (perhaps totally) contaminated -- but I'll be keeping it in the back of my mind as a possibility as I go through the other pre-Alma "baptism" passages.