{"id":40052,"date":"2020-04-14T05:01:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T10:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=40052"},"modified":"2020-04-14T16:53:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T21:53:44","slug":"revisiting-sherem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2020\/04\/revisiting-sherem\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Sherem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of my choices in books this year have been influenced by a decision to try and catch up on literature about the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 I feel a bit overwhelmed, to be honest, since there\u2019s a lot out there and I have been more focused on the New Testament in recent years.\u00a0 I recently finished reading Christ and the Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7<\/em>, a collection of essays on Jacob 7 that resulted from a two-week gathering of the Mormon Theology Seminar.\u00a0 There are both a published book version<\/a> and a free PDF<\/a> version offered through the Maxwell Institute.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good read, and I felt like there some interesting takeaways that have changed how I see Sherem (the titular antichrist).<\/p>\n

Sherem is an interesting character.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know where he comes from, but Jacob portrays him as a no-good, trouble-causing vagabond that shows up on the scene and disrupts Jacob\u2019s congregation and people.\u00a0 Jacob even goes as far as telling Sherem to his face that: \u201cthou art of the devil,\u201d and still refers to him as a \u201cwicked man\u201d after his repentance and death.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Jacob also structures his telling of the story to present Sherem as a sort of anti-prophet, inverting a trope from the Hebrew Bible where \u201cthere came a man of God\u201d who delivers a message to someone in authority, often followed by showing a sign that God\u2019s power is behind him.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Instead, Sherem\u2019s coming is noted as \u201cthere came a man\u201d (omitting the usual \u201cof God\u201d) who challenges the authorities with a religious message, but then is at the receiving end of the sign from a man of God instead of giving one.\u00a0 All this puts Sherem in a very negative light.<\/p>\n

Yet, for all of the bad press, Sherem\u2019s story resembles that of Paul in the New Testament in some ways.\u00a0 Like Paul, who \u201cwas violently persecuting the church of God\u201d because he was \u201cfar more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors,\u201d[3]<\/a> Sherem attempted to \u201coverthrow the doctrine of Christ\u201d because he felt that it led people to \u201cpervert the right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Paul underwent a dramatic conversion experience where \u201cGod \u2026 was pleased to reveal his Son to me,\u201d during which \u201che fell to the ground and heard a voice,\u201d and following which \u201cfor three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Likewise, as a result of Jacob\u2019s prayer, \u201cthe power of the Lord came upon [Sherem], insomuch that he fell to the earth.\u00a0 And it came to pass that he was nourished for the space of many days.\u201d\u00a0 Following this dramatic experience, Sherem had the people of Nephi gathered and \u201cconfessed the Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministering of angels,\u201d admitting that \u201che had been deceived by the power of the devil\u201d in his previous efforts.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Like Paul, who was a significant factor in the spread of Christianity among the eastern regions of the Roman Empire, Sherem\u2019s preaching proved significant in securing belief in the Doctrine of Christ among the Nephites, since after his deathbed sermon, \u201cthe love of God was restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Sherem, like Paul, seemed to be a sincere and zealous believer in the religious traditions passed on to him prior to a dramatic conversion to Christianity.\u00a0 The big difference is that while Paul was able to embrace hope in Christ’s grace and was able to continue to serve the Lord, Sherem fixated on the possibility that he was past redemption and died soon after his encounter with Jacob.<\/p>\n

That being said, there are a few reasons for why Sherem may have portrayed so negatively by Jacob. \u00a0First, the narrative seems to be a microcosm of the ongoing struggles Jacob had with convincing his people to embrace a Christian perspective.\u00a0 As he noted: \u201cWe labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God\u201d (Jacob 1:7), but found that they \u201cbegan to grow hard in their hearts\u201d (Jacob 1:15).\u00a0 The story of Sherem, perhaps, preserves some of that ongoing struggle in a single, pointed narrative (which may explain why Jacob decided to include it after he has already ended his record twice).\u00a0 Another point that Adam Miller brought up is that Jacob may have seen Sherem as a symbol of his struggles with his older brothers. \u00a0Laman and Lemuel are portrayed as being \u201clike unto the Jews who were at Jerusalem,\u201d complaining about Lehi \u201cbecause he was a visionary man\u201d and later stating that they believed that \u201cthe people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statues and judgements of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Religious differences may have contributed to split in the family and Jacob’s lament that the Nephites had become \u201ca lonesome and a solemn people \u2026 hated of our brethren\u201d (Jacob 7:26).\u00a0 Thus, as Adam Miller wrote, Jacob \u201ccan\u2019t engage with Sherem because, throughout their encounter, he\u2019s too busy shadow-boxing his brothers.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Whatever case, Jacob may have been hard on Sherem in his record because he was dealing with his own demons throughout the course of their encounter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Jacob 7:14, 23.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> See Jana Riess \u201c\u2018There Came a Man\u2019: Sherem, Scapegoating, and the Inversion of Prophetic Tradition,\u201d in Christ and the Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7<\/em>, ed. Adam S. Miller and Joseph M. Spencer (2018), Maxwell Institute Publications<\/em>, 23, https:\/\/scholarsarchive.byu.edu\/mi\/23\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Compare this to the stories introduced in 1 Samuel 2:27; 1 Kings 13:1; 1 Kings 20:28; 2 Kings 1:6; 2 Kings 4:42; and 2 Chronicles 25:7.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Galatians 1:13-14.\u00a0 All references to the Bible use the New Revised Standard Version.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Jacob 7:2, 7.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Galatians 1:16-17 and Acts 9:4, 9.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Jacob 7:15-17.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Jacob 7:23.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> 1 Nephi 2:11, 13; 1 Nephi 17:22.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Adam S. Miller, \u201cReading Signs of Repeating Symptoms,\u201d in Christ and the Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7<\/em>, ed. Adam S. Miller and Joseph M. Spencer (2018), Maxwell Institute Publications<\/em>, 23, https:\/\/scholarsarchive.byu.edu\/mi\/23\/<\/a>., 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of my choices in books this year have been influenced by a decision to try and catch up on literature about the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 I feel a bit overwhelmed, to be honest, since there\u2019s a lot out there and I have been more focused on the New Testament in recent years.\u00a0 I recently finished reading Christ and the Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7, a collection of essays on Jacob 7 that resulted from a two-week gathering of the Mormon Theology Seminar.\u00a0 There are both a published book version and a free PDF version offered through the Maxwell Institute.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good read, and I felt like there some interesting takeaways that have changed how I see Sherem (the titular antichrist). Sherem is an interesting character.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know where he comes from, but Jacob portrays him as a no-good, trouble-causing vagabond that shows up on the scene and disrupts Jacob\u2019s congregation and people.\u00a0 Jacob even goes as far as telling Sherem to his face that: \u201cthou art of the devil,\u201d and still refers to him as a \u201cwicked man\u201d after his repentance and death.[1]\u00a0 Jacob also structures his telling of the story to present Sherem as a sort of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-of-mormon","category-scriptures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40052","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\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40221,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40052\/revisions\/40221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}