I propose that there is a continuity of method connecting Joseph Smith’s translations of ancient texts, from the Book of Mormon to his encounter with the Kinderhook plates, and that this method was both expansive and linguistic.
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson covers the story of Nephi praying on a tower in his garden, drawing a crowd, and revealing facts about the murder of the chief judge that he could only know through revelation. As I read the lesson, I felt like the story was highly dramatic! So, for my family, I adapted the story into a short play and added a few discussion questions at the end. I share it here in case it’s useful for your family. You can download the PDF of the play (which probably runs about five minutes) and it’s also reproduced below. Happy home church (for those still doing home church) or other family spiritual time! Nephi and the Garden Tower This dramatization is based on the events depicted in the Book of Mormon in Helaman 7-9. I have adapted the language and – in one case – added a character (Nephi’s brother Lehi) to help the dialogue flow more easily. At the end of some lines, I have included references in brackets to indicate where in the scriptures I have drawn from. Cast of characters Speaking parts (in order of speaking) Nephi Nephi’s brother Lehi [only appears at beginning, so same actor could also play Seantum] Onlookers / messengers Judges Crowd (at funeral) Seantum Non-speaking parts Chief judge (body) Act 1: Nephi in the garden [Open on Lehi, brother of Nephi, sitting in a chair. Nephi enters, apparently…
We round out the 10 questions interview series on Joseph Smith’s translation with a discussion between Richard L. Bushman and Kurt Manwaring about the gold plates. We’ve had a good run of interviews with scholars who have worked hard to examine the essential historical records surrounding Joseph Smith’s translation projects in order to find a greater understanding of what Joseph Smith and his colleagues said and did as they worked on the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation of the King James Bible, and the Book of Abraham. These interviews include two interviews with the editors of Producing Ancient Scripture, an interview with Samuel Brown about his understanding of Joseph Smith’s translations, an interview with Thomas Wayment about the Joseph Smith Translation, an interview with Matthew Grey about the Book of Abraham, and now this one about the gold plates and the Book of Mormon. What follows here is a co-post to the full interview at Kurt Manwaring’s site—a discussion with quotes and commentary—but I also recommend taking the time to go over and read the full 10 questions interview with Richard Bushman here. In the interview, Kurt Manwaring probed into one of the biggest concerns about the gold plates these days in different ways with his first three questions—what role did the plates play in the translation if Joseph Smith revealed the text of the Book of Mormon through seer stones? As a bit of background to these…
Understanding the nature of Joseph Smith’s translation efforts is an important part of understanding his ministry and the religions that have emerged from the early Latter Day Saint movement. Whether the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, the Book of Abraham, or (as some might argue) the temple endowment ceremony, his translations are both very important and very controversial. Kurt Manwaring has begun a month-long series of 10-questions interviews with people who are researching and writing about those translations, beginning with Sam Brown, who recently published Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism with Oxford University Press. What follows here is a co-post to the 10 questions interview with Sam Brown, summarizing some key points and adding some commentary. For those who want to read the full interview (and I suggest you do—it’s very interesting), follow the link here. Note that this is not a review of his book (something that may come later for this blog), but a discussion based on the interview with Kurt Manwaring. Sam Brown should be familiar to much of our readership at the Times and Seasons. He’s a believing member of the Church who is a physician-scientist by profession and a scholar of Mormonism by avocation. He has published several books, essays, and journal articles in the Mormon studies field, including In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death…
As I’ve been studying the “Come, Follow Me” material lately and talking about it with family, I’ve had a quote from Michael Crichton’s book Jurassic Park come to mind a few times. There are a few statements in this section of Alma that have brought it to mind. The first is found in Amulek’s words to the Zoramites. He tells them to not delay repentance because: “Behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God’ yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors” (Alma 34:32). While I’ve discussed before that there are a few ways of viewing our ability to labor and repent in the afterlife, I feel like there is still a sense of urgency to actively shape our destiny and to learn and grow during this mortal life rather than letting too much of our time and energy slip away, thinking that there will always be more time. As President Lorenzo Snow put it: “Though we may now neglect to improve our time, to brighten up our intellectual faculties, we shall be obliged to improve them sometime. We have got so much ground to walk over, and if we fail to travel to-day, we shall have so much more to travel to-morrow.”[1] There do seem to be certain things that are best learned and experienced during this mortal life as we work to “brighten up our…
Imagining the Book of Mormon as a complex work reflecting numerous steps of compilation and abridgment helps explain some curious features of the encounter with Sherem in Jacob 7.
Thinking of the Book of Mormon as the result of a series of textual accretions and combinations might help make sense of how curiously overdetermined the account of Nephite origins is.
Is philological deliberation useful for studying the Book of Mormon? Is it even permitted?
Why is 3 Nephi, which records the central event in the history of Nephite salvation and destruction, located between Helaman and 4 Nephi?
If you trace the history of a text from earlier manuscripts to later ones, it’s not unusual for the text to be extended in various ways.
I remember talking to an atheist on the riverfront walk in Dubuque, Iowa one day while serving my mission. He told my companion and me that he couldn’t believe in God after some of the things he had seen, and went on to describe (in a fair amount of gruesome detail) visiting a Catholic church in South America in the aftermath of an attack by a militant group of some sort and seeing the mutilated bodies of the Christians laying scattered about. If God existed, he reasoned, God would have not allowed such horrific act to take place. I was taken aback and was uncertain how to respond to his expression of disbelief rooted in such deep trauma. We talked with the man for a little while longer and moved on in with the day. His comments got at one of the most difficult and complex philosophical issues of Christian religion—the theodicy, the question of why evil exists if God exists, is good, and is all-powerful. That evening, I remember talking about the incident with my companion and thinking (somewhat naïvely): “I should have just opened up the Book of Mormon to Alma 14, where Alma and Amulek watch their converts burn and discuss why they can’t do anything about it. That would have shown him how we have all the answers.” Looking back, however, I’m grateful we didn’t turn to that section of the Book of Mormon during our…
Mark Ashurst-McGee asks about the uniformity of the Golden Plates in eyewitness accounts, even though they contain both Mormon’s abridgement and Nephi’s small plates, and this is in fact genuinely weird.
