{"id":9722,"date":"2009-09-25T10:18:05","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T15:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=9722"},"modified":"2009-09-25T10:18:05","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T15:18:05","slug":"the-textual-tectonics-of-1-nephi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2009\/09\/the-textual-tectonics-of-1-nephi\/","title":{"rendered":"The textual tectonics of 1 Nephi"},"content":{"rendered":"

My basic problem with Blake Ostler\u2019s expansion theory<\/a> is that it approaches via intellectual history what is at heart a problem in textual history. Blake\u2019s theory that the Book of Mormon is a modern expansion of an ancient source is plausible and useful, perhaps even correct. In biblical texts that he cites, and certainly in the more recent prophetic texts that I\u2019ve studied, later expansions on earlier works are quite common.<\/p>\n

However, I think Blake\u2019s treatment has some limitations. The chronological dichotomy of ancient vs. modern is too narrow. If we are to critically examine the textual history proposed by Joseph Smith, we should do the same for Nephi and Mormon, rather than take their accounts at face value. Thus even if we accept the Book of Mormon as a pre-modern text, that does not require that we uncritically accept the text\u2019s claim to represent an offshoot of pre-exilic Jewish culture, a Semitic source language, or the time period of 600 BC-400 AD. Apologists\u2019 provision of evidence that tends to confirm these notions (and skeptics\u2019 efforts to the contrary) are very interesting, but not the end of the discussion. <\/p>\n

One of my problems, I suspect, is that I\u2019m looking for the expansion theory to provide things that it was never intended to accomplish. I want a theory of Book of Mormon textual history to give me tools for dealing with the text, but my primary objection to Blake\u2019s theory is that it mostly plays out at the lofty level of motif and literary form, and only infrequently deals with textual history (as it does when comparing the Book of Mormon to passages from the KJV). At that height, the expansion theory misses textual fault lines in the Book of Mormon that suggest a more complex textual history than usually envisioned.<\/p>\n

If I were to propose a Book of Mormon textual history, it would look something like plate tectonics. During the Book of Mormon\u2019s development, sections of solid text were periodically torn apart by intrusions of red-hot commentary, dividing formerly continuous texts like the Atlantic separates South Africa from the embrace of Argentina. Sometimes whole continents slipped down beneath the surface, leaving at most a plate of ancient rock surrounded by a younger continental shelf as a witness of its passing. Passages can drift towards each other until their collision leads to the rise of new verses, like the Himalayas rising between India and Asia.<\/p>\n

In this respect, the story of Nephi and his Brothers is something like the Gondwanaland of 1 Nephi. The narrative consists of a series of scenes, which often have the character of accretions: fleeing Jerusalem, and then<\/em> the return for the brass plates, and then<\/em> the return for Ishmael\u2019s family, and then<\/em> Nephi\u2019s bow, and then<\/em> the Liahona, and then<\/em> Nephi\u2019s ship and the voyage to the Promised Land. The Nephi novel has been broken up, however, by the addition of various self-contained textual units, including sermons, visions, commentaries, editorial interludes about plate-making, and lengthy scriptural quotations. If Lehi\u2019s vision was a set-piece addition to the Nephi novel, then Nephi\u2019s vision and commentary on Lehi\u2019s vision followed even later. The boundaries between narrative segments\u2014and also places where the narrative thread is dropped for a moment, and then resumed\u2014are marked not by chapter divisions, but by visits to Lehi\u2019s tent.<\/p>\n

Internal reconstruction of textual history is necessarily speculative, so for the most part all we can hope for is to extend the boundaries of what can be imagined, rather than pinning down exactly what must have been. But we might note the following from 1 Nephi as possible evidence that the text has been expanded repeatedly, rather than just once, or never.<\/p>\n