At the very beginning of Nephite history, Nephi himself prophesied that Jesus would come 600 years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem:
"Yea, even six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem, a prophet would the Lord God raise up among the Jews -- even a Messiah, or, in other words, a Savior of the world" (1 Ne. 10:4).
"And behold he cometh, according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem" (1 Ne. 19:8).
"For according to the words of the prophets, the Messiah cometh in six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem; and according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (2 Ne. 25:29).
However, when Alma the Younger is preaching an Ammonihah circa 82 BC, he appears to be unaware of this prophecy, as he says they "know not how soon" Christ will come:
And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouth of angels, of his coming; for the time cometh, we know not how soon. Would to God that it might be in my day; but let it be sooner or later, in it I will rejoice (Alma 13:25).
The skeptical explanation for this discrepancy goes something like this: According to the well-established theory of Mosiah priority, Joseph first dictated the lost 116 pages, then continued dictating from Mosiah 3 (now Mosiah 1, as the first two chapters were lost) to the end of the book, and finally went back and dictated from 1 Nephi to Words of Mormon. By the time he dictated the "small plates" books, Joseph Smith no longer remembered many of the details from the lost 116 pages, but he was worried that the pages might resurface at any time and didn't want there to be any discrepancies. That is why the "small plates" books give so few historical details and name so few of the characters. To pad out this section and make up for the lack of any detailed history, Joseph Smith filled the small plates with lots of prophecies, including Nephi's detailed visions of the future. The problem was that he didn't know he would later be creating these visions for Nephi at the time he dictated "large plates" books like Alma, and so the characters in that part of the book are inexplicably ignorant of what Nephi prophesied.
The only believing explanation I have encountered is simply that, for whatever reason, the contents of the small plates were just not common knowledge among the later Nephites. In support of this, we have Mormon circa AD 385 speaking of the small plates as if they were some obscure document buried in the archives, which he had not known about before:
And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi (W of M v. 3).
So it appears that, whatever the reason may be, Alma the Younger did not have access to the small plates. One problem with this assumption, though, is that in his words to his son Helaman circa 74 BC he appears to quote from them directly:
Yea, methought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God; yea, and my soul did long to be there (Alma 36:22).
The passage in boldface is a 20-word verbatim quote from the small plates:
And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God (1 Ne. 1:8).
If we want to maintain that Alma really didn't have the small plates, I guess the explanation must be that this passage was also in the lost 116 pages.
For the believer, the large plates, believed to have started with a Book of Lehi, would surely have contained an account of Lehi's Jerusalem vision, and Nephi's own account of that vision would likely have quoted some of his father's language directly. Alma wasn't quoting Nephi; rather, both Alma and Nephi were quoting Lehi.
For the skeptic, it is unlikely that Alma's quote would match the language of the lost 116 pages exactly, since Joseph Smith didn't have those pages when he wrote Alma. But when he was writing the replacement text ("small plates"), Smith referred to Alma and made sure to make Lehi say what Alma had said he'd said. If Smith was doing this, though, he wasn't very consistent about it. For example, Alma claimed that Lehi and Nephi called the ball Liahona (Alma 37:38), but Smith apparently forgot to include that word in the replacement text.
I've been familiar with the above arguments for some time. However, not until my umpteenth rereading of Alma just today did I notice another highly relevant passage. This is Alma addressing his son Corianton circa 74 BC
And now, my son, this was the ministry unto which ye were called, to declare these glad tidings unto this people, to prepare their minds; or rather that salvation might come unto them, that they may prepare the minds of their children to hear the word at the time of his coming (Alma 39:16).
Here Alma starts to say that Corianton is to prepare the minds of the people to hear Christ when he comes, but then he corrects himself and says that no, actually, it's to help them prepare their children to hear Christ when he comes. This implies that Alma knows Christ is not coming soon enough for people who are adults in 74 BC to hear him themselves but is coming soon enough for those people's children to hear him. In other words, he appears to know the date of Christ's coming with considerable precision, and this is in stark contrast to what he had said just eight years earlier -- when he said "we know not how soon" Christ will come and seemed to entertain the possibility that it would be in his lifetime.
So in 82 BC, Alma doesn't know when Christ is coming -- but then in 74 BC he (1) appears to quotes verbatim from 1 Nephi and (2) suddenly does know when Christ is coming. This strongly suggests to me that at some point between those two dates, Alma gains access to the small plates and becomes familiar with their contents.I'm going to have to go back through the relevant portion of the Book of Mormon with that hypothesis in mind and see if I can find any hints of exactly when and how that might have happened.
In D&C Section 19, the Lord explains that when the punishment of the damned is described as "endless" or "eternal," this does not necessarily mean that it has no end:
Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment. Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name's glory.
Wherefore, I will explain unto you this mystery . . . . I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore -- Eternal punishment is God's punishment. Endless punishment is God's punishment (D&C 19:6-8, 10-12).
I'm sure I'm not the only Mormon to have found this passage a bit embarrassing. The doctrine that damnation is not necessarily eternal is a good one, but the explanation for that doctrine presented here just reads like sophistry. Really, we're supposed to distinguish between "endless" and "no end"? Also, the claims about what is and isn't written aren't even true. There are passages that say there shall be "no end" to the torment of the damned:
. . . not the destruction of the soul, save it be the casting of it into that hell which hath no end (1 Ne. 14:3).
. . . their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end (2 Ne. 9:16).
These can be explained away -- the first passage says only that hell itself has no end, not that any particular soul will stay there forever; while the second only says their torment is like a fire that has no end -- but again, this feels like sophistry, an attempt to make the text say something other than its plain meaning.
⁂
It turns out, however, that there are several passages in the Book of Mormon that do speak of "everlasting" or "eternal" or "endless" torment that nevertheless does have an end. For example, here is Alma the Younger recounting his conversion experience:
Nevertheless, after wading through much tribulation, repenting nigh unto death, the Lord in mercy hath seen fit to snatch me out of an everlasting burning, and I am born of God. My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss; but now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more (Mosiah 27:28-29).
Alma very clearly says that he has experienced "eternal torment," but that that experience had an end, and he is tormented no more.
Here is telling the story again:
But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins. Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell . . . . And now, for three days and for three nights was I racked, even with the pains of a damned soul. . . .
I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.
And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain! (Alma 36:12-13, 16, 18-20).
Alma's "eternal torment" -- which he equates with "the pains of hell" and "of a damned soul" -- lasted "for three days and for three nights." It was eternal, but also of a relatively short duration.
Here is Ammon describing the salvation of the Lamanites:
Yea, they were encircled about with everlasting darkness and destruction; but behold, he has brought them into his everlasting light, yea, into everlasting salvation; and they are encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love; yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work (Alma 26:15).
Here again, the "everlasting darkness and destruction" are clearly stated to have had an end.
Finally, here is Moroni, talking not about damnation but about death:
And because of the redemption of man, which came by Jesus Christ, they are brought back into the presence of the Lord; yea, this is wherein all men are redeemed, because the death of Christ bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a redemption from an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall be awakened by the power of God when the trump shall sound; and they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand before his bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band of death, which death is a temporal death (Morm. 9:13).
Here the end of the endless is about as explicit as can be: "an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall be awakened."
This last quote, from Moroni, is the least amenable to the D&C 19 treatment. "Endless sleep is God's sleep"? In what sense does the sleep of death pertain to God? I think the obvious reading is that death, unlike ordinary sleep, is potentially endless. Death is a sleep that would last forever, were it not for divine intervention. It is endless by nature, and yet it may end. To quote Lovecraft, who has been in the sync-stream recently,
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
I think "eternal damnation" should probably be understood in the same way. It is naturally and potentially endless, and yet its end may be brought about if God and Man so choose.
Mormonism and polygamy are so closely connected in the popular mind that I suppose it comes as a bit of a surprise to first-time readers that the Book of Mormon contains an impassioned diatribe against the practice:
But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.
Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.
Wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph.
Wherefore, I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.
Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none;
For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.
Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes.
For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.
For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.
And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.
For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction; for they shall not commit whoredoms, like unto them of old, saith the Lord of Hosts.
And now behold, my brethren, ye know that these commandments were given to our father, Lehi; wherefore, ye have known them before; and ye have come unto great condemnation; for ye have done these things which ye ought not to have done.
Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.
[. . .]
Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins, are more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our father[s] -- that they should have save it were one wife, and concubines they should have none, and there should not be whoredoms committed among them.
And now, this commandment they observe to keep; wherefore, because of this observance, in keeping this commandment, the Lord God will not destroy them, but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people.
Behold, their husbands love their wives, and their wives love their husbands; and their husbands and their wives love their children; and their unbelief and their hatred towards you is because of the iniquity of their fathers; wherefore, how much better are you than they, in the sight of your great Creator? (Jacob 2:23-25, 3:5-7)
The verse I have bolded is the "escape clause." It is almost universally understood to mean that if the Lord decides to "raise up seed unto" him -- meaning to have his people reproduce more prolifically -- he "will command" them to practice polygamy; "otherwise they shall hearken unto these things" -- meaning everything else Jacob has just said about polygamy, namely, that it is one of the "grosser crimes," an "abominable" excuse for "committing whoredoms."
Notice how glaringly out of place this is in the context of the surrounding verses. Before and after the escape clause, Jacob is fulminating against polygamy as an unadulterated evil -- but then in the middle of this denunciation he pauses to mention parenthetically that actually the Lord might command it sometimes and in that case it's fine?
What possible rhetorical motivation could there be for such an aside? If some modern Christian preacher against polygamy inserted some such escape clause into his sermon, we would assume its purpose was to excuse the various biblical worthies -- Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon -- who had more than one wife. Jacob in the Book of Mormon, though, despite being named after one of these biblical polygamists, clearly does not shy away from condemning them. He states unequivocally that the polygamy practiced by David and Solomon "was abominable." In any case, the excuse he gives -- that polygamy is okay if God commands it -- wouldn't exonerate anyone in the Bible, since nowhere in the Bible is anyone ever commanded to practice polygamy.
2. An interpolation?
If Jacob's sermon were a biblical text, I would be extremely confident in calling the escape clause an interpolation, and I'm sure this opinion would be virtually universal among critics: It clearly doesn't belong there but was added later by someone who wanted to practice polygamy.
It would be tempting to conclude the same thing about the Book of Mormon text: It originally condemned polygamy with no exceptions but was then modified (by Joseph Smith later in life, or perhaps by Brigham Young) to allow it in some cases. Unlike the patriarchs and kings of the Bible, Mormon leaders did claim that God had commanded them to practice polygamy, and the so the escape clause would appear to be tailor-made to justify them. The problem is that the escape clause was there from the beginning. I don't believe the original manuscript for this part of the book has survived, but certainly the escape clause is already there in the first published edition.
If we still want to see the escape clause as an interpolation, we have following options:
1. Joseph Smith modifying his own work. For the skeptic, who sees the entire text as the work of Joseph Smith, it's hard to explain the inclusion of both the anti-polygamy sermon and the escape clause. If Smith had intended to practice polygamy, why write the anti-polygamy sermon in the first place? If he did not intend to practice polygamy, why put in the escape clause? It must be that he was originally against polygamy but later changed his mind.
If the escape clause had been added later in Smith's career, it would be relatively easy to explain. Perhaps he began writing the Book of Mormon with relatively pure motives (some version of Dan Vogel's "pious fraud" theory), but once he began to amass a cult following, he was corrupted by power, wished to take advantage of his position for his own sexual gratification, and modified the text accordingly.
The problem is that the escape clause was already there in the first edition, so Smith's second thoughts on the total polygamy ban must have come just a few weeks or months after the original anti-polygamy sermon had been dictated. This would also have been before the Book of Mormon was published, before he had founded a church, and therefore presumably before he was subject to the temptations a successful cult leader is heir to. It's hard to account for the change in that time frame.
2. Joseph Smith modifying revealed material. In this scenario, the text of the Book of Mormon was revealed to Joseph Smith as claimed (not created by him), but he added the escape clause himself, either during the dictation or shortly thereafter. This would mean Smith was both a genuine prophet, producing the Book of Mormon by supernatural means, and at the same time a bit of a scoundrel, daring to tamper with holy writ in the service of his own ulterior motives. This may seem far-fetched, and certainly it doesn't fit well into the usual "prophet or con man" dichotomy, but I don't think it's entirely implausible. It wouldn't be the first time substantial spiritual gifts coexisted with a pretty serious dark side. In fact, the mainstream LDS view of Smith -- that he was a true prophet who also practiced polygamy and lied about it -- implies a similar view of his character.
3. God modifying Jacob. If we take the view that Mormon polygamy really was commanded and justified by God, then perhaps God himself added the escape clause as he was revealing Jacob's words to Joseph Smith. The higher law of polygamy had not been revealed to Jacob, who therefore spoke from his limited understanding. Since God planned to command Smith later to practice polygamy, he added the escape clause to make it easier for the Prophet to accept this future commandment.
4. Later Nephites modifying Jacob. Because the pre-Mosiah books of the Book of Mormon were not abridged by Mormon, it is easy to assume that they contain the unedited words of Nephi, Jacob, and the others. In fact, though, we know virtually nothing of the provenance of the "small account." All Mormon says is this:
I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi (W of M v. 3).
He just "found" them, some 900 years after the time of Jacob? This is obviously suspect, just as suspect as Hilkiah happening to "find" the previously unknown Book of Deuteronomy in the Temple one day. I've sometimes entertained the possibility that the Small Account, though included by Mormon in good faith, was actually late Nephite pseudepigrapha, not the authentic writings of Nephi and Jacob. This would account for some of the Small Account's perplexing features, such as the dated prophecies of the coming of Christ, which seem to have been unknown to later Nephites, and the quotations from Malachi 3 and 4, which the Nephites had access to only after the coming of Christ.
Another possibility, though, is that the Small Account contains a a core of authentic early Nephite texts, but with many additions and alterations by the many generations of record-keepers through whose hands it passed. We know that some later Nephites (King Noah and his people at the very least) did practice polygamy, so perhaps the escape clause was added by later Nephites to an otherwise authentic sermon by Jacob in order to justify such things.
I think this idea is worth pursuing, and that it may be worthwhile to read the whole of the Small Account with an critical eye out for passages which may be later interpolations.
3. Jeremy Hoop's alternative reading of the escape clause
The proximate inspiration for this post was this video from Jeremy Hoop:
Hoop's position is that Joseph Smith never taught or practiced polygamy, and that the Book of Mormon makes no allowances for it, either. He therefore has to reinterpret the escape clause so that it is not an escape clause after all. His reading is ingenious and, I think, not impossible.
Although the meaning of the escape clause seems obvious when we read it in the light of the later Mormon practice of polygamy, the verse itself is actually rather ambiguous. It reads, recall,
For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things (Jacob 2:30).
The standard reading hinges on two questionable assumptions: (1) that "command my people" means "command my people to practice polygamy," and (2) that "these things" means Jacob's denunciation of polygamy. Hoop questions both of these.
First, what does "command my people" mean? Well, this is what immediately precedes the escape clause:
Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none; For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts. Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes (Jacob 2:27-29).
The "commandments" referenced immediately before "command my people" are clearly commandments not to practice polygamy. The fact that v. 30 begins with for (rather than nevertheless) implies that it is explaining more about these same commandments, not introducing the possibility of diametrically opposite commandments in the future.
What about "these things"? As Hoop points out, this is the only reference to "things," plural, before the escape clause:
This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son (Jacob 2:23).
In Hoop's reading, the Lord is saying, "I will command my people not to practice polygamy. If I did not explicitly so command them, they would hearken unto the things which are written concerning David and Solomon and excuse themselves in committing whoredoms."
Two possible grammatical objections: First, we normally read will as having a future reference. "I will command my people" is naturally understood to refer to a possible future commandment, not to a commandment already "given unto our fathers." Second, in modern usage, except with a first-person subject, shall typically has an imperative meaning (as in "Thou shalt not kill" or "Congress shall make no law").
The second objection is easily dealt with. The Book of Mormon contains many instances of "they shall" which are clearly predictions rather than commands -- for example "they shall rebel against me" (1 Ne. 2:23), "they shall dwindle in unbelief" (2 Ne. 1:10), and many others.
Non-future use of auxiliary will is on shakier ground. It's possible in theory, but I can't find any clear examples in the King James Bible or elsewhere in the Book of Mormon.
What about "raise up seed unto me"? Doesn't that mean increasing the birthrate among the righteous? And isn't that goal better served by commanding polygamy than by banning it?
For Jeremy Hoop's take on that, we will have to turn to another ingenious element of his argument: connecting Jacob's sermon with Abinadi's.
4. Jacob's sermon as context for Noah and Abinadi?
When the wickedness of King Noah is introduced, it is clear that polygamy is one of his chief sins:
For behold, he did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart. And he had many wives and concubines. And he did cause his people to commit sin, and do that which was abominable in the sight of the Lord. Yea, and they did commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness (Mosiah 11:2).
The language here is very similar to Jacob's sermon. Polygamy is "abominable" and means committing "whoredoms." In practicing polygamy, Noah "did not keep the commandments of God" -- so, as in Jacob 2, the commandment is not to practice polygamy.
Later, in preaching to Noah and his people, Abinadi quotes extensively from Isaiah, including a passage about how the Messiah "shall see his seed" (Isa. 53:10). He then expounds at length on what that means, emphasizing that the "seed" are not biological offspring:
And now what say ye? And who shall be his seed?
Behold I say unto you, that whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord -- I say unto you, that all those who have hearkened unto their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins, I say unto you, that these are his seed, or they are heirs of the kingdom of God.
For these are they whose sins he has borne; these are they for whom he has died, to redeem them from their transgressions. And now, are they not his seed?
Yea, and are not the prophets, every one that has opened his mouth to prophesy, that has not fallen into transgression, I mean all the holy prophets ever since the world began? I say unto you that they are his seed (Mosiah 15:10-13).
Why does Abinadi spend so much time on this seemingly minor question of Isaiah interpretation? Why, in calling a corrupt king and his court to repentance, is it so important to clarify what exactly is meant by the prophecy that "he shall see his seed"?
Jeremy Hoop connects the dots and proposes that Noah and his priests had Jacob's anti-polygamy sermon, accepted it as scripture, and tried to justify their own practice of polygamy in precisely the same way that the Mormons would do centuries later: by invoking (and, Hoop would say, misinterpreting) the "escape clause": The Lord sometimes commands polygamy "if I will . . . raise up seed unto me." Mosiah's exegesis of Isa. 53:10 is an implicit critique of this excuse. His whole point is that raising up "seed" unto the Lord -- for he has earlier identified Isaiah's Messiah as "God himself" (Mosiah 15:1) -- has nothing to do with literal baby-making and is therefore no justification for the practice of polygamy.
This is an extremely clever reading, and I'm half convinced. On the one hand, it's quite a coincidence that Abinadi, in preaching to wicked polygamists, would hammer home this point about the Lord's "seed," the very same language that appears in Jacob's escape clause. On the other hand, it's hard to see why Abinadi would not make the connection explicit in his preaching. In fact, although the scene is set with the information that Noah and his priests are polygamists, nothing in Abinadi's preaching addresses polygamy directly. Does he expect his audience to connect the dots themselves? -- "Hey, if the seed of the Lord is not literal, that implies that our reading of the polygamy escape clause is wrong!" I would expect much more directness from Abinadi.
If Hoop is right -- if Jacob's sermon (with the escape clause) was known and accepted as scripture by Noah and his priests -- that has important implications for the status of the Small Account. As far as I know, the only place where the Book of Mormon proper appears to quote from the Small Account is in Alma's words to his son Helaman:
Yea, methought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God (Alma 36:22).
This is the same language used by Nephi in his account of Lehi's Jerusalem vision:
[H]e thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God (1 Ne. 1:8).
The exact match with Nephi's wording, even down to "he thought he saw," strongly suggests that this is a direct quote from the Small Account. It's not quite a smoking gun, though, since Lehi's Jerusalem vision is of such central importance that it would surely have been included on the main Plates of Nephi as well, possibly even with the same wording. Even in this more secular history, you can't very well tell the story of Lehi without mentioning that vision.
Jacob's sermon, on the other hand, is of no particular historical significance but is included for spiritual reasons only. It was thus likely recorded only in the Small Account. If Hoop's reading of Abinadi is correct, it is strong evidence that some version of the Small Account was not only known to the post-Mosiah Nephites but accepted by them as authoritative scripture.
Where does this saying originally come from? It isn't biblical, nor is it found in the other writings of Joseph Smith. It appears to be either (a) something that was revealed to Nephi and later recast by Lehi in more epigrammatic form or (b) something that was independently revealed, in slightly different form, to both Lehi and Nephi.
The earliest instance we have is from Nephi. He believes in his father's dreams and visions, and prays for his brothers Laman and Lemuel, who do not. In response the Lord speaks to him. It is not clear if this was a literal voice or something else, but in any case it is presented a Nephi's first recorded revelation. Among the things the Lord says is this:
Blessed art thou, Nephi . . . . And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands. And inasmuch as thy brethren shall rebel against thee, they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And inasmuch as thou shalt keep my commandments, thou shalt be made a ruler and a teacher over thy brethren (1 Ne. 2:19-22).
Although this is the earliest instance of the saying, it is also the least typical. It includes "ye shall prosper" followed by a reference to "land," but not in the otherwise invariant form "ye shall prosper in the land." (Nephi later cites this revelation, in 1 Ne. 4:14, but condenses it to "prosper in the land of promise.") Its first and second halves refer to different groups of people: "ye" (a plural pronoun, including Nephi and unspecified others) vs. "thy brethren" (excluding Nephi). The most significant difference is that the second conditional clause is not about failing to keep God's commandments but rather about rebelling against Nephi.
In this form, the saying is too specific -- too anchored to Laman, Lemuel, and Nephi as individuals -- to have become proverbial until it was (I think) recast by Lehi.
Lehi later reports that he has "obtained a promise" -- meaning a direct revelation? -- which parallels Nephi's revelation in a general way but is even longer and less quotable.
Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever.
But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord -- having a knowledge of the creation of the earth, and all men, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the world; having power given them to do all things by faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into this precious land of promise -- behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold, the judgments of him that is just shall rest upon them. Yea, he will bring other nations unto them, and he will give unto them power, and he will take away from them the lands of their possessions, and he will cause them to be scattered and smitten. Yea, as one generation passeth to another there shall be bloodsheds, and great visitations among them (2 Ne. 1:9-12).
The first half -- "inasmuch as [they] shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land" -- is very close to Nephi's version, but the second half is entirely different. This first part, at least, seems to have been revealed to both Nephi and Lehi, and Jarom later quotes it as such, calling it "the word of the Lord . . . which he spake unto our fathers," plural (Jarom 1:9).
We find the first two instances of the saying in its "classical" form in Lehi's parting message to Laman and Lemuel (2 Ne. 1:20) and to the children of Laman (2 Ne. 4:4). In both cases, he introduces the saying as something that "the Lord God hath said." Lehi could conceivably be quoting some prophetic writings which we do not have, something from the plates of brass perhaps; but this is unlikely, as the reference to prospering "in the land" seems to relate directly to the "land of promise" to which Lehi's family was led. It could also be something that was revealed to Lehi himself, but we have no record of this. What we do have is a record of the Lord revealing something extremely similar to Nephi, who would doubtless have told his father, and so the most reasonable assumption is that Lehi was referring to, and paraphrasing, his son's revelation.
In the next chapter, Nephi refers to own revelation -- not to Lehi's version -- and says it has been fulfilled:
And behold, the words of the Lord had been fulfilled unto my brethren, which he spake concerning them, that I should be their ruler and their teacher. Wherefore, I had been their ruler and their teacher, according to the commandments of the Lord, until the time they sought to take away my life.
Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence (2 Ne. 5:19-20).
The bit about being a ruler and a teacher is clearly from Nephi's revelation. As for the saying in question, he only quotes the second half of it, and not word-for-word, but here, too, it is about disobeying Nephi, not God.
This theory -- that the saying was revealed to Nephi and paraphrased by Lehi, and that later Nephites quoted Lehi's version -- is complicated by the fact that Alma and Mormon quote it as something the Lord said to Lehi:
Behold, do ye not remember the words which he spake unto Lehi, saying that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land? And again it is said that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord (Alma 9:13).
And thus we see how merciful and just are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of men; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. But remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord (Alma 50:19-20, Mormon speaking).
No such revelation to Lehi is recorded in the Book of Mormon as we have it. The Lord does say, "Blessed art thou, Lehi," in a dream, but not the other sentences quoted. Mormon may be conflating Lehi's dream with his paraphrase of Nephi's revelation (which also begins "Blessed art thou"), or he may be quoting a revelation to Lehi which didn't make it into the records we have. (Perhaps it was included in the Book of Lehi, the translation of which was lost by Martin Harris.) It wouldn't be the only instance of the Lord revealing something first to Lehi and then, in slightly different form, to Nephi (e.g. the Tree of Life vision).
All in all, though, I still think it most likely that Nephi, not Lehi, was the original source of this revealed saying. It was revealed to Nephi in a specific form, directly referring to himself and his brothers. Lehi then generalized it, citing only "the Lord" and not mentioning Nephi. It was Lehi's more quotable version that became common currency among the Nephites, and thus it came to be referred to mistakenly as something the Lord had said to Lehi. It's not the only possibility, but it's the likeliest one in my judgment.
My next post will explore what being "cut off from the presence of the Lord" might actually mean.
After his first vision of the pillar of fire -- of which we have no other details, only that "he saw and heard much" -- Lehi returned home to Jerusalem, "cast himself upon his bed," and proceeded to have a second vision:
And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God.
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.
And the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read. And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. And he read, saying:
Wo, wo, unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine abominations!
Yea, and many things did my father read concerning Jerusalem—that it should be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof; many should perish by the sword, and many should be carried away captive into Babylon (1 Ne. 1:8-13).
Much more followed -- "many great and marvelous things" both "read and seen," but again we have no details. Apparently it wasn't all bad news about the destruction of Jerusalem, based on Lehi's reaction: "his soul did rejoice, and his whole heart was filled, because of the things which he had seen, yea, which the Lord had shown unto him” (v. 15). Specifically,
He testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the world (v. 19).
The traditional interpretation, and problems with it
The "One" descending out of heaven is capitalized in modern editions (though not in the 1830 edition or the printer's manuscript), implying that this being is understood to be Christ, with the "twelve others following him" presumably being the twelve biblical apostles.
This interpretation is reinforced by the very similar language used in the account of Nephi's vision: "And the Lamb of God went forth . . . . And I also beheld twelve others following him" (1 Ne. 11:27, 29). These twelve are later explicitly identified as "the apostles of the Lamb; for thus were the twelve called by the angel of the Lord" (v. 34). Given that we know Lehi's vision included content about the Messiah, and that he used the same expression ("twelve others following him") with which Nephi would later refer to the apostles, it seems obvious that the One Descending must be Christ and that the Twelve Others must be the apostles. Who else could they be?
Here are my reasons for questioning this traditional and seemingly obvious interpretation.
First, Lehi's vision also includes "God sitting upon his throne," clearly a separate being from the One Descending -- but Nephite prophets always taught that the Messiah was the same being as God: "God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people" (Mosiah 15:1). We know that that later Nephites knew Lehi's vision (it is directly quoted by Alma the Younger in Alma 36:22). If they had understood the One Descending to be the Messiah, they would not have conflated the Messiah with God.
Second, Nephi's vision is consistent with the twelve followers being ordinary mortals, but Lehi's is not. Like the One Descending, they come down from heaven: "they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth" (1 Ne. 1:11). Christ came down from heaven, but did the apostles? Only in the same sense that we all do, I suppose, "trailing clouds of glory from God, who is our home." Lehi's Twelve are not earth-dwellers who meet and follow the One after he descends; the Twelve and the One descend together. They "follow him" not in the sense of being his disciples, but in literally following him from heaven down to earth.
Third, Nephi is seeing a vision of things that will happen in the distant future. He sees Christ being born and baptized, acquiring twelve followers, being crucified, and so on. None of these figures he sees talk to him or interact with him, because they're not actually present; he's essentially watching a movie.
Although Lehi also apparently saw visions of the future Messiah, the vision of the Twelve and the One is not a movie-like vision of the future. These beings come down and interact with Lehi. One of them -- either the One Descending or the first of the Twelve Others -- gives him a book in which he reads the fate of Jerusalem. Their coming down is not a future event Lehi is precognitively witnessing; it is a present event, involving beings who were in heaven at the time of Lehi and came down to reveal things to him. His experience is fundamentally different from Nephi's.
Of course, if we accept the preexistence of human spirits (and we do), it is possible that the Twelve Others were the same beings that would later incarnate as the apostles of Jesus, and that they came down to Lehi in their pre-incarnate state, both to inform him of the fate of Jerusalem and to dramatically pre-enact for his benefit certain elements of their future mission -- as if their going "forth upon the face of the earth" was a sort of pantomime of their anticipated work as traveling preachers some six centuries later.
So the Twelve Others could be the apostles, but if so that has important ramifications. Assuming these twelve apostles are more or less the same characters we meet in the New Testament, in that latter book they come across as being ordinary men who were transformed through their association with Christ and became extraordinary. (At least this is true of Simon Peter, the most fleshed-out of the lot.) If they are Lehi's Twelve Others, though, they seem already to have been angelic beings of sorts all those centuries before, brighter than the stars in the firmament, their incarnation as much a "condescension" as that of Christ. And among these godlike beings was the future Judas Iscariot? It's not impossible, but it would require some major reevaluation of the way we normally think of the apostles -- who seem almost to be cast as "bumbling sidekicks" in much of the Bible.
Who else could they be?
If the thirteen luminous beings are not already-godlike beings who will, centuries in the future, condescend to incarnate as mortals, the other possibility is that they are people who already incarnated centuries in the past and have since "gone to heaven" and become like angels. If not the twelve apostles, could they be the twelve patriarchs?
Think of the two dreams of Joseph. In the first,
we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf (Gen. 37:7).
Joseph's brothers immediately understand the dream's import and say, "Shalt thou indeed reign over us?" (v. 8). The upright sheaf represents Joseph himself, and the bowed sheaves represent his 11 brothers.
The second dream is more directly relevant to Lehi's Jerusalem vision because it uses the imagery of the sun and stars:
Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me (v. 9).
Joseph's father, Jacob, understands the dream thus: "Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?" (v. 10). The sun is Jacob, the moon is Rachel, and the 11 stars are Joseph's brothers. Joseph does not mention how he himself was represented in this latter dream, but if the sheaves bowed to a sheaf, it stands to reason that the stars bowed to a star. Could Lehi's sun-like being be Jacob; and the 12 star-like beings, his sons?
After the One and the Twelve descend,
the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read. And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord (1 Ne. 1:11-12).
Does "the first" mean the One, or the first among the Twelve? If the latter, then this should be Joseph, clearly primus inter pares in the dream on whose imagery Lehi's vision seems to draw.
Now isn't that curious? Later, in his "real," non-visionary life, Lehi is given another book and reads it. After seeing what is in the book, "he was filled with the Spirit, and began to prophesy concerning his seed" (1 Ne. 5:17). What book was this? The plates of brass, a record kept by the descendants of Joseph, and identifying Lehi as one of their number (something he had apparently not known before). What did he prophesy? "That these plates of brass should go forth unto all nations" (v. 18), just as the 12 star-like beings in his vision "went forth upon the face of the earth."
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.
For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; . . . And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews (2 Ne. 29:12-13).
There's one more hint that the book in Lehi's vision is, or represents, the brass plates. When the contents of the plates of brass are summarized, one prophet is singled out for special mention. The plates contained
the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah; and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah (1 Ne. 5:13).
Jeremiah perhaps receives special mention because he was Lehi’s contemporary (all the prophets, even the new guy!) and because, as a different Nephi would put it centuries later, Jeremiah was “that same prophet who testified of the destruction of Jerusalem” (Hel. 8:20).
Of the specific contents of the book in Lehi’s Jerusalem vision we have but this one sentence:
Wo, wo, unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine abominations! (1 Ne. 1:13)
And this is clearly a condensed paraphrase of one of the prophecies of Jeremiah:
I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! (Jer. 13:27)
So this book — which may have been presented to Lehi by Joseph of Egypt, contained the words of Jeremiah, and filled him with the Spirit of the Lord — may have been identical to the brass book of Laban, a record kept in Egyptian by the descendants of Joseph, which also contained the words of Jeremiah, and which also filled Lehi with the Spirit of the Lord.
To me this makes more sense than the theory that the twelve apostles came down 600 years before their birth to tell him about the imminent destruction of Jerusalem.
