{"id":35259,"date":"2016-05-24T04:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T09:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=35259"},"modified":"2016-05-15T19:28:49","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T00:28:49","slug":"reading-nephi-1310-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2016\/05\/reading-nephi-1310-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – 13:10-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a>I wonder what we\u2019re getting here in this passage. How much of this is straightforwardly the details of the vision? In particular, is Nephi\u2019s understanding of the vision a part of the vision, in the same way that one comes into a dream already comprehending the background and meaning of the events that one dreams? Or is the interpretation all Nephi? Was he even capable of making the distinction? How much of this is the evolved interpretation of a man who has pondered for decades on the vision\u2019s meaning? Then again, how much of this is from the mind of Joseph Smith for whom no historical events would\u2019ve loomed larger than the American Revolution? One of course need not deny historicity to think that the details of at least the meaning of the vision were something different on the gold plates than as they came out on Oliver\u2019s parchment stack.<\/p>\n

The wrath of God stands out to me. What is the wrath of God? Given the context here, and the way that the wrath of God is poured out first on the \u201cseed of [Nephi\u2019s] brethren\u201d and next gets poured out on the \u201cmother Gentiles\u201d who war against the colonists, I\u2019m inclined to interpret the wrath of God as disease\u2014that thing which played an absolutely decisive role in both the war of Native American subjugation and the later war of colonial liberation. It makes sense to think of Nephi understanding mass casualties from disease as the hand of God in the same way that Isaiah and the Jews interpreted Sennacherib\u2019s casualties as the work of a destroying angel. Perhaps more importantly, it lends support to the idea that we\u2019re getting an at least mixed vision here, consisting of dreamt details and Nephi\u2019s interpretation. This is, I think, the way of all vision and prophecy.<\/p>\n

Finally, I feel a great deal of sympathy for Nephi\u2014both the young and the old Nephi\u2014the young Nephi who has just been shown a shocking vision of the ultimate genocide of his posterity and the old Nephi who in carving the details of his youthful vision into plates of metal is no doubt struggling with the current existential threats posed to his people in the wake of various violent family squabblings. Consequently, the people who face the wrath of God are not his<\/em> people but the seed of his brethren, while the \u201cwhite\u201d and \u201cfair\u201d and \u201cbeautiful\u201d gentiles remind Nephi of his own posterity.<\/p>\n

I do not know what to make of this latter comparison; what is it exactly about the later gentiles that resonates with Nephi? In addition to its being distasteful, I suspect that something like a comparison of physical appearance is both inaccurate\u2014an ancient Nephi would\u2019ve been significantly darker toned than 16th<\/sup> century Europeans and probably darker toned than 16th<\/sup> century Incas or Powhatans\u2014and irrelevant to Nephi\u2019s worldview; as is evident, Nephi had his own prejudices and problems to overcome, but American style racism doesn\u2019t appear to have been one of them. Technological competence strikes me as another possibility, though I can\u2019t figure out how \u201cwhite\u201d and \u201cfair\u201d work as descriptors there (unless Joseph\u2019s conceptual filters produced a garbled translation). The most plausible thing I can think of is moral goodness or perhaps organizational acumen; this works well with the lament that is built into Nephi\u2019s comparison. Regardless, it\u2019s jarring and unsettling.<\/p>\n

Returning to the main chord vibrating for me in this passage: Nephi is shown this youthful vision of the ultimate failure of his life\u2019s work and ambition, and is then commanded to write it out at a time when shadows of that failure abound. A prophet\u2019s lot\u2014like all of our lots I suppose\u2014is not enviable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wonder what we\u2019re getting here in this passage. How much of this is straightforwardly the details of the vision? In particular, is Nephi\u2019s understanding of the vision a part of the vision, in the same way that one comes into a dream already comprehending the background and meaning of the events that one dreams? Or is the interpretation all Nephi? Was he even capable of making the distinction? How much of this is the evolved interpretation of a man who has pondered for decades on the vision\u2019s meaning? Then again, how much of this is from the mind of Joseph Smith for whom no historical events would\u2019ve loomed larger than the American Revolution? One of course need not deny historicity to think that the details of at least the meaning of the vision were something different on the gold plates than as they came out on Oliver\u2019s parchment stack. The wrath of God stands out to me. What is the wrath of God? Given the context here, and the way that the wrath of God is poured out first on the \u201cseed of [Nephi\u2019s] brethren\u201d and next gets poured out on the \u201cmother Gentiles\u201d who war against the colonists, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":34019,"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-35259","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-full1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35259","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=35259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35260,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35259\/revisions\/35260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}