Of course, very because that narrative blames disobedience rather than “male privilege” you are unable to see it as a possibility…judge judge liberal Mormons.

He didn’t give equal affirmative space to handicapped or LGBT people, either — will you similarly see him as bigoted towards those persons in his society?

Anon, the problem with that view is that he states his goals and not having women’s voices undermines that goal.

Moss, Huldah was definitely a contemporary of Lehi. She was prophesying in Jerusalem along with Jeremiah and Zephaniah. It seems reasonable that she knew Lehi and vice versa. (Which again makes me wish we had the 116 if it went into such matters more) The Talmud claims she was a relative of Jeremiah. Her husband, Shallum, was a major figure in Josiah’s court in charge of his royal clothing and his teacher, according to tradition. The Midrash says that Huldah had a religious school for women where she taught as it pertained to women. (All late traditions so we should be careful)

To complicate things it’s also possible that, depending upon how Nephi and Lehi view the Josiah reforms, that may account for downplaying women. A lot of this depends upon the view that Lehi is anti-deuteronomist and is at best conflicted about Josiah’s reforms. We know that Lehi offers sacrifice in high places which was stopped by Josiah. We know that Lehi isn’t part of the centralization of the priesthoood to the levites at Jerusalem. There are other hints such as Nephi’s vision potentially making use of Ashtoreth/Goddess imagery with the tree of life. So there are many, such as Kevin Barney, who see Lehi in the anti-deuteronomist camp.

Huldah on the other hand is responsible for finding the Book of the Law that many think either was Deuteronomy or at least contributed heavily to Deuteronomy. It’s that which leads to Josiah’s reforms. Some that people like Jeremiah saw as good while others were at best seen as mixed. While we don’t have explicit commentary on Huldah by anti-deuteronomists it seems reasonable that those who disagreed vehemently with elements of the reforms might well blame her. Again this is all mostly an argument from silence though so we have to be careful. However getting extremely speculative it might well be that Lehi saw a problem with prophetess. But by the very weak nature of the evidence I wouldn’t take such a view too seriously even if it is apossibility.

To your other point I think you’re right. Again Jacob is pretty explicit that the Lamanites were better towards women than the Nephites were. (Jacob 2:31) That ought affect how we view the rhetoric of women in Nephite culture.

I wouldn’t attribute it to villainy, but there is definitely something going on when women are so absent from a narrative. Especially when we have the Old Testament that is full of women, named and unnamed, engaging in all sort of activity- religious, political, economic, and domestic. There’s also the New Testament, which, although mostly later, is also full of women. Many as spiritual leaders (Wasn’t the prophetess Huldah a contemporary of Lehi?) What caused Nephite culture to be different? Were the women “too sacred to be talked about” like we commonly hear about Heavenly Mother? Why were Lamanites different? Why are the heroic women we have in the Book of Mormon largely Lamanite? If the Book of Mormon contains the “fulness of the gospel” what does that mean if there are so few women in it? Are women an afterthought in the Kingdom of Heaven?

I think we can look at Nephite culture, especially in comparison to the Lamanites, and say that something was going on. You could say “sexism’ or “racism” but those words are so charged people will react with hostility and think you want to throw the whole thing away instead of looking for what is really going on and what God wants us to learn from this complicated book written by complicated people. But those are the words we have. Perhaps, this book that was written for our day, has something instructive to teach us about recognizing and valuing women and their contributions to the Kingdom right now. The Nephites weren’t always the good guys. They were complicated, like us, and had cultural biases, like us. But God still worked with them and had patience with them, like he does with us.

I don’t see Nephi as on the road to hell. I think good intentions are of immeasurable value to our God, and that it is error or sophistry to impute villainy to Nephi and Mormon and others because the Book of Mormon doesn’t contain a “sufficient” portrayal of women. That’s called presentism.

Ironically, in insisting that we have to separate out the messages and stories based on sex might reflect more of our attitudes on sex than theis. N’est ce pas?

I do think it’s an interesting question asking why God didn’t inspire Mormon or Moroni to include more women’s narratives. I’m sure that over the centuries there were some.

Jean, if it wasn’t respectable for women to be written about that seems a very bad thing. Of course from Jacob, it seems like the Nephites weren’t exactly treating women well from a very early age. There’s lots of examples of egregious treatment of women. When Jacob wrote I’d assume we’re at best at the 3rd generation with most of the 2cd generation still alive. Jacob preached on this but we just don’t know much about Nephite culture after Jacob until Benjamin to know how well he was received. My guess is not terribly well.

That said, you’re right that the book simply neglects women especially in the Mormon edited portions. The OT isn’t great at that – but there are still prominent women. That’s just not the case in the Book of Mormon at all. This in turn makes it difficult for us today. Something one rather wishes Mormon had been aware of.

The point about Zoram is an interesting one since we know so little about him including his age. Was he old or was he still a young man? Women tended to marry young in Israel – at least in the second temple era. So we’d expect all the women to be quite young making one worry about big age differences. (Although again we don’t know how old Nephi and Sam are either) I also wonder if Nephi had sisters.

Regarding the Lamanites, while women leaders appear among the Maya in the classical period that’s well after Mosiah who lived during the late pre-classical era. So it’s a bit dangerous to extrapolate to the earlier period although it is quite possible that’d form a context to the particular groups the Nephite missionaries visited.