{"id":34015,"date":"2015-09-28T04:44:46","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T09:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34015"},"modified":"2015-09-28T05:17:58","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T10:17:58","slug":"reading-nephi-series-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/09\/reading-nephi-series-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – Series Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading Nephi all my life. I remember traveling with my Dad to speak at a small branch in our stake when I was a boy in primary. What can a young boy say to a congregation for a full five minutes? I decided it ought to be scriptural, so I picked what I was most familiar with and inspired by\u2014the story of Nephi and his brothers going back to get the plates. When I was a teenager, I began to passionately engage Isaiah. But the whole motivation was Nephi\u2014if Nephi loved the words of Isaiah, then (a priori<\/em>) I loved the words of Isaiah too. Of course as I\u2019ve grown older, my relationship with Nephi has grown more complicated. I\u2019ve come to see the ambiguous, sometimes disappointing Nephi; just as I\u2019ve come to see how prodigious he is in ways I couldn\u2019t imagine as a child. This is no different, of course, than my relationship with any other human with whom I\u2019ve been privileged to grow intimate.<\/p>\n

And I hope I really have grown intimate with Nephi\u2014I feel as though I have. I\u2019m blessed enough at any rate to look forward to the renewal of our ties each time I pick up his book to give it a serious read. My life has been just as potently shaped by this man\u2019s life and record, as my reading of that record has been shaped by my ever-evolving life. This is scripture.<\/p>\n

I kept a journal during my most recent time through, and doing so was a wonderful experience\u2014dynamically adding to my conversation with him. Now I\u2019ve decided to share it. Why in the world would I do that? I don\u2019t have a definitive answer, but here are some thoughts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I\u2019ll start by being self-critical and acknowledge upfront a worry that we all might share: maybe I\u2019m just arrogant\u2014appointing myself as someone whose experience benefits others. I can in good conscience deny this as a motive\u2014at least as the driving motive. But of course motivations are complicated, composite things, with intricacies to which we\u2019re not always privy\u2014and maybe my arrogance is solidly a part of it.<\/li>\n
  2. But the primary reason that I feel <\/em>motivated is dialogic. My relationship with Nephi really is a conversation. He presents me with his narrative, and I talk to him about each part as I go, listening to his various responses, and quite often arguing with him. Our conversation has lasted three decades. Occasionally Moroni or a later Nephi jumps in, and occasionally others in my life join our conversation as well. Each time they do it adds tremendously. Scripture was originally a public, communal affair[1], and it never gets entirely away from this essential aspect. But giving everyone a personal copy of the scriptures (in fulfillment of Lehi\u2019s prophesy in I Nephi 5) risks the danger of making scripture study a merely individual, closeted affair. I love the idea of more voices joining our conversation. At least, that\u2019s how I feel this time through.<\/li>\n
  3. I\u2019ve mostly lost my ability to read without reading critically. And critical readings are a natural fit for the bloggernacle\u2014it seems natural to share mine here. But criticism is more than negative critique\u2014and the bloggernacle as a whole too often misses that point. I\u2019ve been inspired by others round these parts whose critical readings are immensely constructive, and I want to try my own hand at it.<\/li>\n
  4. And at any rate, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world, right? There are lots of approaches to reading the scriptures; I hope this adds something new and worthwhile[2].<\/li>\n
  5. Finally, I\u2019ll confess that I simply feel compelled to it. Too often in our culture we say that with a sort of wink in order to insinuate that God has given us revelation\u2014and so appoint ourselves a prophet, just as Lehi did but with rather less justification or result. I don\u2019t mean to do this. I mean more to insinuate neurosis than spiritual inspiration. Can I do so and still claim this as an undeniably spiritual experience for myself? We\u2019ll see.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Mostly, I hope you\u2019ll join in. I hope you will read Nephi with us, gather together with us, and add your own voice to our conversation. My reading this time through is as different as my last time through, as it will be from my next time through. There are some sticking points, some older arguments Nephi and I are still hashing through, but most of our conversation here is new. And I\u2019m eager for the newness that you might add.<\/p>\n

    But on that note, I want to be perfectly explicit upfront. I\u2019m going beyond Times and Season\u2019s comment policy\u2014or perhaps giving it a hardline reading. If you want to debate historicity, the validity or legitimacy of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the church or faith in general, I invite you to seek out other posts or venues where various of these are the theme. Here, in this series, I will only allow that which contributes to our conversation with Nephi. You\u2019re welcome to dislike him and dislike me and to comment candidly on that fact. But your comments need to be grounded in the text and contribute to the conversation we\u2019re having, rather than an attempt to hijack that conversation.<\/p>\n

    I look forward to hearing from you.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    * * * *<\/p>\n

    1. This is an oft-cited fact in many commentaries. Note that the scriptures themselves reference the public reading of the scriptures; for example, Nehemiah 8, Colossians 4:16, I Thessalonians 5:27, and I Timothy 4:13.<\/p>\n

    2. Being a little more specific: Jim Faulconer\u2019s unflinching interrogation of each line of scripture has been tremendously influential on me. But it\u2019s also hard to sustain an extended reading\u2014which is (I think) part of why Jim\u2019s published interrogations<\/a>[1] moved along with Correlation\u2019s Sunday School lesson liturgy. I want a critical reading that\u2019s more narrative and less tied to our Sunday School assignments.<\/p>\n

    Grant Hardy has inspired us all with his commitment to the text itself. He\u2019s helped teach us to read \u201cagainst the grain.\u201d But to date he gives us mostly overview with the occasional dive down into a specific story here and there. Again, I want to move slower and not focus simply on Nephi\u2019s words, but even more so on my conversation with Nephi. (While I\u2019m specifically referring to Grant\u2019s A Reader\u2019s Guide<\/a><\/em>. I\u2019ll note here too that I\u2019ve been using his A Reader\u2019s Edition<\/a><\/em> this time through, which has been immensely enjoyable. I highly encourage others to do the same\u2014a change in form brings a change in substance as well.)<\/p>\n

    Perhaps more than any other, I\u2019ve been inspired by Kathleen Norris\u2019s The Cloister Walk<\/em><\/a>, which I highly recommend. I\u2019ll frankly admit that I\u2019m not the writer she is, nor am I exploring the relevance of ancient practices for modern life. I\u2019m merely recording (mostly) my thoughts and my side of the conversation\u2014but it\u2019s a conversation with Nephi, which Norris (I think) has never had.<\/p>\n

    Finally, I\u2019ll acknowledge my similar debt to Julie M. Smith\u2019s Sunday School notes<\/a> and Kent Larson\u2019s Literary Gospel Doctrine<\/a>; their works were inspiring, but again with a different (and more scholarly) approach than my own.<\/p>\n

    Goodness, compared to all of these folks, my approach is profoundly normal. It\u2019s not paradigm shifting or erudite; it\u2019s literally just my thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019ve been reading Nephi all my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":34016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/068-068-the-liahona-full.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34022,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34015\/revisions\/34022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}