{"id":34018,"date":"2015-09-28T05:15:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T10:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34018"},"modified":"2015-09-28T05:16:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T10:16:11","slug":"reading-nephi-headnote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/09\/reading-nephi-headnote\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – Headnote"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

(Series introduction here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

What would I write now if I were to give an account of some stretch of nine formative years of my life in a paragraph, serving as the key markers of a short bio I\u2019d then write\u2014say, from my momentous move as a high school freshman, through my marriage and graduation from BYU (i.e., my entering of the promised land!)? I know that what I would write this year would be different from how I would\u2019ve written it last year\u2014and even more different than had I written it upon graduation. This isn\u2019t just rhetoric\u2014my extended family created a family history book published the year I graduated, and I wrote a two or three page biography for inclusion. I recently read it to my kids. I\u2019m not at all unhappy with it, but I would not have written it the same way today.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t read Nephi anymore without reading a carefully crafted political narrative with lots of faithful spin (I don’t remember who first keyed me into seeing it this way). Discussing this with other saints sometimes makes them uncomfortable; but for me (and I think it should be the case for everyone), Nephi\u2019s flaws (or at least, the flaws that my own reading of the text highlights) make the text more believable and certainly more useful. We have anything but a polished, perfect hero. We have a dedicated zealot, committed to a specific understanding of what his father\u2019s experience and their family exodus meant, a narrative of himself as the rightful heir to that spiritual heritage, and a narrative that reveals that Nephi clearly felt threatened by contenders\u2014whether those contenders were people (his brothers or the sons of Ishmael) or the competing narratives for what had happened (which other witnesses might tell). Nephi\u2019s not writing this as a young man, remember; he\u2019s writing this as an old \u201cking\u201d of a broken and exiled half-family in a strange land, experiencing a plethora of threats. He writes a forceful narrative to make it look like the Lord was with him all along and like his brothers were off all along. That\u2019s how Nephi\u2019s account reads to me, generally speaking.<\/p>\n

But while this oft-noted point about politics is conspicuous, I can\u2019t think it\u2019s merely politics. It\u2019s certainly also identity. How much of this is identity in the making (writing in general, but particularly autobiography, is a powerful means of shaping identity; language in general is expressive and creational in this way) and how much of this is articulation of long-formed identity?<\/p>\n

The first line of the headnote is striking. It\u2019s an account of Nephi\u2019s parents and their four sons. Not of their household, not of the later sons and daughters born. (Were the daughters–mentioned in II Ne 5:6–later? We don\u2019t know; they\u2019re immaterial to Nephi\u2019s account; which of course makes me wonder about his worldview more generally.) This is about the drama that took place between these six people as they organized and left Jerusalem. That\u2019s clearly where the competing narratives originate, and that\u2019s what Nephi focuses on. Each event he mentions (and then expands upon in I Nephi) is intentional in how it reflects well upon Nephi, poorly upon Laman & Lemuel, and marks Nephi as the God-chosen heir of Lehi\u2019s heritage. Nephi notes their sufferings in the wilderness\u2014not their suffering on account of being unprepared or on account of Lehi\u2019s poor or hasty choices or on account of their having no real direction of what to do or where to go. And the book ends, not with their reaching land but with their reaching the Promised Land.<\/p>\n

Politics aside, is it possible today to genuinely experience my life as so profoundly enmeshed with the designs of deity? I let God off the hook all the time, citing bad luck, other people’s poor choices, genetic and personal weakness, and the like. Mostly, however, it doesn’t feel like choice. My own experiences\u00a0seem so cosmologically insignificant. Is the difference because Nephi’s a megalomaniac, is he merely faithful in the wake of events far more dramatic than my own, or is this one of the ways in which culture transcends choice, with Nephi no more able to craft his experience than I am? Is one more faithful than the other?<\/p>\n

One final note on Grant Hardy\u2019s[1] provocative quote marks around \u201cI, Nephi.\u201d Reading chapter one in the wake of these quote marks, it\u2019s conspicuous that our author never names himself as Nephi, but refers to himself as \u201cI, Nephi.\u201d I\u2019ve always ignored this as a quirk\u2014an odd, perhaps formal, but not ungrammatical way to refer to himself. But what if, as Hardy\u2019s quote marks suggest, it\u2019s more than that? What if it\u2019s a title? Again, Nephi is writing this as an older king (or something close to that), and writing it to counteract other, competing narratives that are challenges to his theocratic authority. Was Nephi\u2019s name changed when he became King? Like the Egyptian kings, did he receive a new name that shorthand referenced deity: \u2018I am\u2019 Nephi?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

1. Again, I’m using Hardy’s\u00a0A Readers Edition<\/em><\/a> this time through, which is a wonderful new way for me to read the text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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