{"id":34559,"date":"2015-12-16T10:06:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T15:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34559"},"modified":"2015-12-16T10:06:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T15:06:25","slug":"reading-nephi-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/12\/reading-nephi-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a>This is an extraordinarily odd chapter\u2014and odd in ways that really do support the either prophet or genius narrative of Joseph Smith. Why, if one were simply trying to cover up their mistake in losing 116 pages and the first several hundred years of history, would you stick this chapter in here? You go ahead and finish translating from Mosiah through Moroni. Then, since your narrative is screwed up, you plan out this clever narrative of there being \u201cother\u201d plates\u2014the Small Plates of Nephi\u2014tacked on at the end of the gold plates\u2014you use this ad hoc addition of these other plates to backfill and fix your narrative. But if what you\u2019re really worried about is the scandal of the loss of the 116 pages, why wouldn\u2019t you stick this chapter with it\u2019s explanatory narrative\u2014all about God knowing the reasons for these small plates when Nephi himself doesn\u2019t, but surely there\u2019s some <\/em>purpose\u2014at the very beginning? Modified slightly, Chapter Nine would work extremely well as a preface. As is, Nephi totally interrupts himself in the middle of his exodus narrative in order to talk about a tangent concerning different plates. He tells us that he is emphasizing \u201cthe more part of the ministry\u201d as opposed to political and military events. Again, this is something that would make a nice preface to the whole book. Instead, Nephi\u2019s preface to the whole book (the headnote just prior to chapter one) is a claim that the record is a family drama and the workings of God in that family drama. Rather than serving as a preface, Chapter Nine is thrown into the middle of an entirely separate narrative and conflicts with the books actual preface.<\/p>\n

So why does this weird, anomalous chapter irrupt here? Well there\u2019s a fantastic internal consistency and two points I want to make. First, there\u2019s the fact that Nephi is self-conscious about pulling the narrative from the Larger Plates and feels the need to justify these actions and his editorial choices. Why do we need a second set of plates? And if we need a second set of plates, why are we just repeating stuff that\u2019s in the other set of plates as well?<\/p>\n

Nephi\u2019s need to justify what\u2019s happening leads to the second point. Nephi honestly doesn\u2019t know why. Typically, Latter-day Saints read this (legitimately) as referring to the great miracle of God\u2019s foresight. God knew the 116 pages would be lost, and had Nephi prepare this record as a replacement in order to keep a coherent narrative. Nephi didn\u2019t know this, but he was obedient to the commandment he received via revelation. As a greater narrative taking in the 19th<\/sup> century translation, this all makes sense. If you read the passage carefully, however, Nephi does<\/em> have a reason for making this second record\u2014and he lists it, though we usually overlook this reason in our rush to \u201chuzzah\u201d the greater narrative and divine foresight accounting for the loss of the 116 pages. The actual reason Nephi gives, however\u2014and not the mere fact of making another set of plates\u2014is what confuses Nephi. As it should. Just as it would confuse any reader of Nephi\u2019s age. In addition to being distracted by our contemporary narrative, we read over Nephi\u2019s reason because it\u2019s such an obvious reason for us today. The reason is a division between the secular and the spiritual.<\/p>\n

God tells Nephi to have a spiritual as well as a secular record (or at least, a record that doesn\u2019t contain the secular elements). But the concept of the secular was totally absent from Nephi\u2019s mind and cultural context. While he can certainly understand God\u2019s command\u2014focus on the ministry, on the prophecies and workings of the spirit, and on the meaning of the Law of Moses\u2014he would not have understood this very modern conceptual division between the temporal and the spiritual. Even here in its \u201cpurified,\u201d spiritual form (that is, even here in the Small Plates, which attempted, contra the Large Plates, to focus on \u201cthe more part of the ministry\u201d), Nephi\u2019s record drips with the integration of what we today would consider secular and spiritual. Despite his intentions, Nephi\u2019s lousy at making the distinction. But he tries. Importantly, he of course can\u2019t help but suspect that his reader will be just as confused Nephi himself is. So, having gotten underway and then inevitably imagining a confused audience (Nephi, why in the world are you leaving out lots of important detail from the Large Plates?), he feels the need to justify what he\u2019s doing. And he doesn\u2019t do so by parsing and explaining new concepts and their practical worth as a division or editorial criterion in sacred record making. Nephi\u2019s not <\/em>a philosopher, capable of sophisticated conceptual analysis and coming to grips with the new division. Instead, he just pins it on God and bears testimony that this bizarre thing that he\u2019s doing is at God\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

I suspect Nephi sticks it in here because after the first eight chapters, he feels the weight of the awkwardness quite keenly\u2014especially as he moves to transition from Lehi\u2019s dream to his own vision.<\/p>\n

One more quick note: I wonder what \u201cthe more part of [the ministry\/the reign of kings]\u201d means. The more part could mean \u201cfor the most part\u201d (i.e., referring to quantity); but it could also refer to quality. Neither makes a great deal of sense to me. An odd phrase that I don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an extraordinarily odd chapter\u2014and odd in ways that really do support the either prophet or genius narrative of Joseph Smith. Why, if one were simply trying to cover up their mistake in losing 116 pages and the first several hundred years of history, would you stick this chapter in here? You go ahead and finish translating from Mosiah through Moroni. Then, since your narrative is screwed up, you plan out this clever narrative of there being \u201cother\u201d plates\u2014the Small Plates of Nephi\u2014tacked on at the end of the gold plates\u2014you use this ad hoc addition of these other plates to backfill and fix your narrative. But if what you\u2019re really worried about is the scandal of the loss of the 116 pages, why wouldn\u2019t you stick this chapter with it\u2019s explanatory narrative\u2014all about God knowing the reasons for these small plates when Nephi himself doesn\u2019t, but surely there\u2019s some purpose\u2014at the very beginning? Modified slightly, Chapter Nine would work extremely well as a preface. As is, Nephi totally interrupts himself in the middle of his exodus narrative in order to talk about a tangent concerning different plates. He tells us that he is emphasizing \u201cthe more part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"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-34559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34559","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=34559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34560,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34559\/revisions\/34560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}