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.
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.
I never noticed before how odd the second verse of Words of Mormon is:
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.
