PS Don’t worry Mirror. I’ve been too busy to respond to your last question to me, but I will soon.

One possibility is that when Nephi saw Jesus and Mary, he had a feeling identical in nature if not in magnitude to the one where Lehi ate the fruit, as they were symbolic synonyms.

In terms of the merits of Nephi’s choice, to me it seems more like a translation/expedited exaltation choice a la John or the three nephites. There is no long-term dichotomy.

Was Nephi really being given a choice? Can you lie to the Spirit of the Lord about what you want?

I actually think that Grant Hardy’s interpretation has some merit to it.

“When the Spirit showed Nephi the same tree and asked what he wanted, it would not have been unreasonable to respond, ‘I want to taste the fruit; I want to experience that exceedingly great joy.’ In fact, as readers, we have been set up to expect Nephi to respond in exactly this way. Instead, he asks for knowledge: ‘to know the interpretation thereof.’ The Spirit leaves, an angel takes over, and in the end Nephi is wiser but not happier. For the rest of his life, and through the entirety of his literary labors, Nephi works through the implications of that choice.” (Understanding the Book of Mormon, 86)

The idea that Nephi *should* have asked to partake of the fruit, but does not, and hence is given a lesser guide through the remainder of his vision, is intriguing to me. I’m not convinced that Nephi chose wisely here.

In that sense, it is very similar to Lehi’s dream in 1 Nephi 1. After seeing a vision of God’s judgments on Jerusalem, including its destruction and the murder and enslavement of its inhabitants, Lehi’s reaction is to marvel over God’s goodness and mercy to all the world’s people. Just like Lehi, even when Nephi is seeing judgment or destruction, what he is really learning about is still exclusively the love of God. This has often been a very difficult concept for me to accept or understand, but in my opinion at least, that is the unified theme of the entire vision. The details are all just evidence proving the thesis of God’s love.

Because of that, for me, the discussion about the meaning of the condescension of God is inadequate, since it is all about His condescension—Mary, yes, but also his sermons, his miracles, his healings—all of it is a part, and just like the Tree represents the entirety of God’s love, so the virgin Mary also represents God’s condescension in its entirety, because contained within her are the symbols of everything before and after.

At least that’s my opinion.

I need to go through the different pericopaes of these four chapters more slowly and analytically at some point. I struggle a bit to capture a unified meaning/linkage between it all.

Sad to say, I’ve yet to replicate the Spirit of the Lord’s success. But that’s due to my inadequacies as a teacher, not because the method is flawed.