{"id":34613,"date":"2015-12-28T08:55:01","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T13:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34613"},"modified":"2015-12-28T08:55:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T13:55:01","slug":"reading-nephi-101-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/12\/reading-nephi-101-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – 10:1-10"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a>The first lines go right along with the confusion and different worldview conspicuous in 9. Having just stated the Lord\u2019s intention for Nephi to focus on the spiritual as opposed to the secular and his own confusion over this point, Nephi launches in to tell us about his journey, his reign, and<\/em> his ministry. It\u2019s all the same to him. It\u2019s all the workings of God. And I Nephi through the first part of II Nephi is in fact about showing that God was behind Nephi\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n

I wonder what\u2019s behind this notion of a \u201cland of inheritance.\u201d It\u2019s a large theme in scripture. Here, Nephi\u2019s keen on establishing a new land of promise, which becomes a land of inheritance for his people. This plays large later in the Book of Mormon as overzealous nationalists insist on retaking the land of Nephi, which results in disaster. I wonder if it is a part of Nephi\u2019s and later prophets\u2019 focus on being grafted back in to the House of Israel. The prophecies of Lehi concerning the exile and then return of the Jews must have played large in their minds as they themselves distinguished and made sense of their own journey. It wasn\u2019t an exile, it was divine guidance to new promised lands; but the idea of multiple promised lands was brand new, and they were keenly aware of being \u201cbroken off\u201d from their people. How would contemporary scholars or prophets have characterized the meaning of a land of inheritance?<\/p>\n

Finally, I can\u2019t help but notice the conspicuous nature of Nephi\u2019s consistent addendums to Lehi\u2019s prophecies of a Messiah. Note that for Lehi this is a prophet, similar to the other prophet (John) who will come before. A prophet, prophesied by others (e.g., Isaiah) who will play the role of Anointed One. But Nephi never lets it stay there. Each mention of this Messiah brings about Nephi\u2019s clarifying that this Messiah will be \u201cin other words, a Savior of the world,\u201d \u201cor this Redeemer of the world.\u201d This parallels Grant Hardy\u2019s note that every time Nephi talks about Lehi\u2019s divine dreams he adds \u201cor in other words vision\u201d or the like\u2014obviously aware of Jeremiah\u2019s disparaging remarks about dreams and seeking to elevate the dreams to the status of vision. Here too, it seems clear that as Nephi goes back to his father\u2019s account of things, he doesn\u2019t feel like his father went far enough in spelling out what this Messiah would be\u2014and so he has to clarify. Particularly given the context of exile and return to lands of inheritance, one can\u2019t help but wonder if Lehi\u2019s view of the Messiah was not more in line with his contemporaries\u2014a new David. This corroborates with Lehi\u2019s dream\/vision in I Nephi 1. Nephi\u2019s Messiah on the other hand seems more in line with our own sense of a cosmic redeemer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an accepted view by scholars and devotional readers alike that we get the same, New Testament-style Jesus all the way through the Book of Mormon. But I do not think that Lehi and Nephi had the same understanding of a Messiah. As our Baptist brothers and sisters would put it, they didn\u2019t worship the same Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first lines go right along with the confusion and different worldview conspicuous in 9. Having just stated the Lord\u2019s intention for Nephi to focus on the spiritual as opposed to the secular and his own confusion over this point, Nephi launches in to tell us about his journey, his reign, and his ministry. It\u2019s all the same to him. It\u2019s all the workings of God. And I Nephi through the first part of II Nephi is in fact about showing that God was behind Nephi\u2019s reign. I wonder what\u2019s behind this notion of a \u201cland of inheritance.\u201d It\u2019s a large theme in scripture. Here, Nephi\u2019s keen on establishing a new land of promise, which becomes a land of inheritance for his people. This plays large later in the Book of Mormon as overzealous nationalists insist on retaking the land of Nephi, which results in disaster. I wonder if it is a part of Nephi\u2019s and later prophets\u2019 focus on being grafted back in to the House of Israel. The prophecies of Lehi concerning the exile and then return of the Jews must have played large in their minds as they themselves distinguished and made sense of their own journey. […]<\/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-34613","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\/34613","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=34613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34614,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34613\/revisions\/34614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}