Category: 1 Nephi

In his introduction in 1 Nephi 1:1, Nephi wrote, “yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days.” Those are his primary objectives: to teach of the goodness and the mysteries of God. He tells us at the outset—then immediately shows us—that he intends to write in “double-layered discourse.” He will use the surface text to show the goodness of God, but he will reserve the most sacred things—the mysteries—to a subtext that can only be seen and read by those who know the depth of the ancient Israelite temple drama. He wrote,

1 … yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days.
2 Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians (1 Nephi 1:1-2).

Yea is a very important word here. It is “used to introduce a statement, phrase, or word stronger or more emphatic than that immediately preceding.”{1} So, the words following yea are not simply the conclusion. They are the culmination or crest of the ideas that introduced it.

Verse 2 does not say, “I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of a mixture of the languages of the Jews and the Egyptians.” It says he will write in a dual language using the same words to convey two separate meanings.

In verse 2, Nephi is giving us a clue to understand his sacred subtextual record. There are two distinct elements of his writing, the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians. At that time in the Israelite world, Egyptian was a dominant language, just as English is now. It was a language that many who were educated and literate could speak and, possibly, could read and write.

Nephi was a prophet, and his language, like that of Lehi and Isaiah, was the language of temple and priesthood—the learning of the covenant Jews—an audience blessed with “eyes to see.” Thus Nephi’s work is filled with language that is dualistic and symbolic in its meaning. In the record we have today, English functions much like Egyptian, allowing people who read it to understand the “goodness of God.” But the code language is still there and deals with the “mysteries of God.”

There are two main themes woven into the First Nephi narrative—the ancient Israelite temple drama and the Atonement of the Messiah. When woven together, they become the golden thread that runs through the entire narrative of First Nephi, giving continuity and purpose to the surface text and to the equally important subtext, each independently but with perfect harmony.

Nephi’s first objective: to teach about the goodness of God— is accomplished by his repeatedly reminding us that notwithstanding all the roadblocks that were thrown in front of his father and himself, the Lord intervened to help them overcome those hindrances and fulfill their assignments.

Nephi’s second object: to illuminate “the mysteries of God,”is transmitted to us through its inspired translation. One of the greatest miracles of the Book of Mormon is that it was translated into King James English so we can move from the Bible to the Book of Mormon and back again, knowing that the meanings of the words in one are the same as the meaning of the words in the other.

That being so, all we have to do to know what Nephi meant by the word translated mysteries is to find out how that word is used in the Bible. What we find is that every time mystery is found in the New Testament, it is a translation of mysterion, which means “a secret or ‘mystery’ through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites.”{2}

The distinguished Biblical scholar, Raymond E. Brown, has shown that the meaning of the Greek word mysterion (translated “mystery” in the English versions of the New Testament) and of the Hebrew word sode (translated “secret” in the English versions of the Old Testament) is essentially the same. Mysterion is more specific since it refers to secrets disclosed during initiation into sacred religious rites, while sode is more general in that it refers to the deliberations (or decisions) of either a religious or a secular council. Brown observes that the New Testament mysterion refers to the Council in Heaven. He shows that in the Old Testament sode sometimes refers to that Council or its decisions (as in Amos 3:7), though it is sometimes used to describe any gathering, whether legal, or illegal and conspiratorial.{3}

Understanding these words casts a fascinating light on the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. The Nephites most likely spoke Hebrew or some other Semitic language, not Greek, so the Greek word mysterion was probably not a part of their language, whereas the Hebrew word sode (with its English equivalents) was likely familiar to the ancient Book of Mormon peoples. In the Book of Mormon, as in the Bible, sode might refer to a Council in Heaven sode experience, or a ceremony related to the temple drama representing a sode experience, or even the secret decisions of conspirators. In this, the English translation of the Book of Mormon is very precise. When the underlying word sode is used in the negative sense, it is translated as “secret,” as in “secret combinations.” However, when the underlying word sode is used in the positive sense—indicating a temple or temple-like experience—it is always translated as “mystery,” equivalent to the English New Testament translation of the Greek mysterion. Thus, Nephi writes of “having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God” (1 Nephi 1:1). Read that way, one can find references to the ancient Christian rites throughout the New Testament, and references to the ancient Nephite temple rites throughout the Book of Mormon.

Nephi was probably about 45 years old when he wrote in his very first verse that he had “a great knowledge of…the mysteries of God,” he was declaring that he understood the ancient Israelite temple drama, ordinances, and covenants.{4}

Nephi says he was very selective, not only about what he wrote on the small plates, but also about how he wrote it. In both the surface and the subtext, he told only sacred things that would fit into the temple pattern he wished to illustrate. The English translation accurately transmits all of that to modern readers. This being so, we would do well to look very carefully at what he says, but even more especially at how he says it.
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FOOTNOTES

{1} Oxford English Dictionary, definition 3.

{2} The Greek dictionary at the back of James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, 3466. For a more extensive discussion of the sode experience as it relates to the Council in Heaven see the chapter called “Sode Experience” in Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, First edition, p. 195-208; Second edition, p. 139-148.

{3} Raymond E. Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 2-6.

{4} That pattern of using a sacral subtext to teach and explain the ancient Israelite temple drama was used by the prophets throughout the Book of Mormon. The entire last half of Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord is a careful but undisclosed analysis of that Book of Mormon subtextual message.
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1 Nephi 1:1 — LeGrand Baker — “Therefore I write” — The Chiastic Structure of First Nephi

First Nephi has a carefully structured, chiastic, arrangement. Its language is unlike anything else in the Book of Mormon. It is written like a Greek or Norse epic poem. It is a chiasmus, and, like those other ancient epic poems, it follows the model of the cosmic myth. The cosmic myth is always in the pattern of a chaismas. In its simplest form it looks like this:

.     A. The hero is required to leave home.
.          B. He is given a seemingly impossible task.
.               C. He receives the necessary tools to begin
.                    D. He confronts overwhelming odds
.               c. He receives additional tools
.          b. He fulfills the task.
.     a. The hero returns home, triumphant.{1}

That is also the outline of the plan of salvation and of the ancient Israelite temple drama.{2} Nephi also uses that pattern when he writes 1 Nephi:

.     A. Nephi and his family must leave home.
.          B. They are given a seemingly impossible task.
.               C. They receive the brass plates and Ishmael’s family.
.                    D. Rebellion and starvation in the wilderness.
.               c. The Liahona leads to a mountain top for sustenance.
.          b. They travel to Bountiful to complete their task.
.     a. They arrive at the promised land.

The pattern is actually more complex than that and is discussed in the my last chapter about 1 Nephi called, “1 Nephi 22 — LeGrand Baker — Nephi’s Conclusion.”

The ancient pattern after which First Nephi is written is called by modern scholars “the hero cycle” or “the cosmic myth.”{3} It is cosmic because it reflects the pattern of stories recited and written throughout human history. It is a complete worldview. It is called a myth because the principles it teaches are not dependent on the historicity of the story.{4} That is, the story it tells may be historically true, like First Nephi, or it may be fictional, like Star Wars or Hamlet, but the principles it teaches are universally the same.

To say that 1 Nephi is an epic poem means much more than that it is lengthy, involved, and tells about a hero’s journey, as Meyer Abrams explained:

An epic poem is a ceremonial performance, and is narrated in a ceremonial style which is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech and proportioned to the grandeur and formality of the heroic subject and epic architecture.{5}

We have wondered if First Nephi had ever been used that way in a ceremonial performance. Such a thing was not unknown in ancient Israel. Every seventh year, during the pre-exilic Israelite New Year’s Festival, the king and the entire congregation would recite the book of Deuteronomy as a reminder of the Lord’s covenants and of Moses’s instructions to them.{6} Deuteronomy was Moses’s last sermon to the people just before he departed. Such a ceremonial use of First Nephi would have given a sustained religious underpinning for the Nephite split with the Lamanites, and may, in part, account for the repeated admonition to “remember” the covenants made to the fathers.

It may also account for why Mormon searched the royal archives to find the original plates of Nephi, rather than using just a later copy, to attach to the gold plates that Moroni would eventually deliver to the Prophet Joseph (Words of Mormon:1:3-5).

Nephi was probably about 45 when he began writing First Nephi, and it took him ten years to write it.{7} It seems that if Nephi, who obviously had an excellent education, would spend ten years writing a fifty-plus page work in the chiastic style of an epic poem, then every word of Nephi’s original manuscript version must have been what it was intended to be, and that the whole of the version Nephi engraved on the gold plates was carefully polished. We believe that is also true of our English version. That is, we believe the English version is not so much a “translation” as it is an English rendering of the original.{8}

So, admittedly without having any proof of how or where—or even if—it might have been used by the Nephites for ritual purposes, we wonder if Nephi’s poem was used in connection with “a ceremonial performance.” Could it be that the Nephites used First Nephi in the same way the Israelites used Deuteronomy or the Book of Genesis in the portrayal of the covenant renewal drama during their Feast of Tabernacles?

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FOOTNOTES

{1} The ancient Hymn of the Pearl is an excellent example. See LeGrand L. Baker and Stephen D. Ricks, Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord? The Psalms in Israel’s Temple Worship in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Eborn Books), first hardback edition 2009, p. 97-135; second paperback edition 2010, p. 79-98) The paperback edition is found on this website under “published books.”

{2} The pattern of the Israelite and Nephite temple dramas is the theme that runs throughout our book, Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord. The book gives a reconstruction of the Israelite temple drama at the time of Solomon’s Temple. The second half of the book shows that virtually every sermon in the Book of Mormon is based on the Nephite temple experience.

{3} Two classic works on the universality of the hero cycle or cosmic myth are Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: MJF, 1949); and Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (Boston: Gambit, 1969).

{4} For a discussion of the cosmic myth see Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, hardback edition, p. 97-135; paperback edition, p. 79-98)

{5} Meyer Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (Boston, Heinle & Heinle , 1999), 77.

{6} John A. Tvedtnes, “King Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles” in John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks, eds., By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, 27 March 1990, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990), 2:206.

{7} Nephi reports that he received instructions to make the small plates 30 years after the family had left Jerusalem. He has completed 1 Nephi after they had been gone 40 years (2 Nephi 5:28-34).

{8} For a discussion of Nephi’s possible personal involvement in the English translation see LeGrand L. Baker, Joseph and Moroni (Salt Lake City, Eborn Books, 2007), 91-98.

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1 Nephi 1:1

1. I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father; and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days.

Anciently, writers often used a literary device called a colophon at the beginning or end of a document. It identified the author, declared his authority, and briefly stated what he was writing about.{1}

Verse 1 of First Nephi is an impressive ancient colophon. Standing alone, it is sufficient evidence that the Book of Mormon is an ancient document. It is a bit awkward for us to read today, but it is the awkwardness that makes it so important. Its language would be perfectly at home tucked amid Plato’s writings, but there was nothing in Joseph Smith’s New England backcountry culture that could have caused him to write the sentence in that way.

Another example is the beginning of Zeniff’s autobiography:

I, Zeniff, having been taught in all the language of the Nephites,
having had a knowledge of the land of Nephi…
having been sent as a spy…
Therefore, I contended with my brethren…. (Mosiah 9:1-2)

Another example is this exchange of official correspondence:

14 Now I close my epistle. I am Moroni; I am a leader of the people of the Nephites.
15 Now it came to pass that Ammoron, when he had received this epistle, was angry; and he wrote another epistle unto Moroni, and these are the words which he wrote, saying:
16 I am Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites; I am the brother of Amalickiah whom ye have murdered. Behold, I will avenge his blood upon you, yea, and I will come upon you with my armies for I fear not your threatenings.

Nephi’s colophon is awkward to us because it seems to be logically upside down. If we, or the Prophet Joseph, were to write those ideas we would say:

I am Nephi, and I am writing for the following five reasons:
.        First…. I was taught in all the learning of my father.
.        Second….I have seen many afflictions.
.        Third….I have been highly favored of the Lord.
.        Forth….I have a knowledge of the goodness of God.
.        Fifth….I have a knowledge of the mysteries of God.

However, Nephi’s colophon is not like that. Rather, it is written in a Greeklike logical pattern whose structure is like a simple addition problem with five points and a conclusion:

I Nephi
.        having been taught in all the learning of my father
.        plus … seen many afflictions
.        plus … highly favored of the Lord
.        plus … knowledge of the goodness of God,
.        plus … knowledge of the mysteries of God,
conclusion : Therefore I write.

This second pattern is the same structure as a simple addition problem, which is the same pattern as an ancient logical argument. It would be very comfortable among the works of Plato, but sounds awkward to us just as it would have been awkward to Joseph Smith and his contemporaries. Even though there was nothing in Joseph’s own background to cause him to write a sentence in that form, it is the form in which Nephi’s well educated contemporaries would have written. Therefore, the structure of Nephi’s colophon is convincing evidence that we are dealing with an ancient text.

Of the colophons in the Book of Mormon, Nephi’s is the most significant and by far the most interesting because of its structural completeness, its window into Nephi’s purposes and personality, and especially because of its multilayered meanings.

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FOOTNOTE

{1} The first chapter of Revelation is an excellent example. The author identifies himself as John the apostle. He has been instructed by an angel to write, and his writings will testify of the Jesus the Savior
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1 Nephi 1:0 — LeGrand Baker — How Joseph translated the Book of Mormon

[I wrote this for our ward newsletter, June 2004,and  supposed some of you might find it interesting. The ideas are more fully discussed in my book, Joseph and Moroni.]

“The most perfect Book,” How Joseph translated the Book of Mormon – LeGrand Baker

At the time Nephi (she said it was Nephi) showed Mrs. Whitmer the Gold Plates,{1} the angel suggested she hire someone to help her around the house while Joseph and Oliver were staying there working on the translation of the Book of Mormon. She hired her niece, a girl named Sarah Conrad, to live at the house and help with the chores. She did not tell Sarah what Joseph and Oliver were doing, but it did not take long for Sarah to discover something unusual was going on. Sarah noticed that the Prophet and his friend “would go up into the attic, and they would stay all day. When they came down, they looked more like heavenly beings than they did just ordinary men.”{2} At first Sarah was curious, but in time their appearance actually frightened her. She went to her aunt and threatened to leave if she was not told what made those men “so exceedingly white.”{3}

When Mrs. Whitmer “told her what the men were doing in the room above and that the power of God was so great in the room that they could hardly endure it. At times angels were in the room in their glory which nearly consumed them.”{4} The light with which Joseph shown came from his having been with the angels. This explanation was reasonable enough, and satisfied Sarah. She not only stayed with the Whitmers, but also became one of Joseph’s good friends, was baptized, and much later, after the Church was driven from Kirtland, Missouri, and Nauvoo, she settled with the Saints in Provo, Utah. {5}

Sarah’s is the earliest of a number of accounts which testify that at times, when the Prophet was receiving revelation or was in the presence of heavenly beings, he, like Moses, actually glowed. Wilford Woodruff used the words, “His face was clear as amber,” when he tried to describe the Prophet’s appearance on one of those occasions.{6} Philo Dibble, who was present when the Prophet received the revelation which is now the 76th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, reported, “Joseph wore black clothes, but at this time seemed to be dressed in an element of glorious white.”{7}

Sarah’s testimony that the men who were working on the translation of the Book of Mormon “looked so exceedingly white,” combined with Mrs. Whitmer’s explanation, “angels were in the room in their glory which nearly consumed them,” gives us a valuable key to understanding the Book of Mormon, by having a better insight to how it was translated. One may assume that if there were angels in the room they had some purpose for being there other than just to pass the time of day. It is reasonable to believe that their presence in the translating room implies that they were somehow involved int the actual work of translation.

Neither Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, the Whitmers, nor Sarah Conrad left any record identifying who the angels were; but others also knew; and we have some information from them.

Parley P. Pratt, did not identify the angels by name, but he testified that through Joseph Smith “and the ministration of holy angels to him, that book came forth to the world.”{8} His brother, Orson, added that during those years Joseph “was often ministered to by the angels of God, and received instruction” from them. {9}

President John Taylor, who was a dear friend and confidant of the Prophet Joseph mentioned some of the angels by name. He said,

Again, who more likely than Mormon and Nephi, and some of those prophets who had ministered to the people upon this continent, under the influence of the same Gospel, to operate again as its [the gospel’s] representatives? Well, now, do I believe that Joseph Smith saw the several angels alleged to have been seen by him as described one after another: Yes, I do.{10}

On another occasion, when President Taylor was discussing the restoration of the Gospel, he said, “I can tell you what he [Joseph] told me about it.” Then told this story:

Afterward the Angel Moroni came to him and revealed to him the Book of Mormon, with the history of which you are generally familiar, and also with the statements that I am now making pertaining to these things. And then came Nephi, one of the ancient prophets, that had lived upon this continent, who had an interest in the welfare of the people that he had lived amongst in those days.{11}

On yet another occasion, President Taylor was even more explicit.

And when Joseph Smith was raised up as a Prophet of God, Mormon, Moroni, Nephi and others of the ancient Prophets who formerly lived on this continent, and Peter and John and others who lived on the Asiatic Continent, came to him and communicated to him certain principles pertaining to the Gospel of the Son of God…. He was indebted to God; and we are indebted to God and to him for all the intelligence that we have on these subjects.{12}

Similarly, George Q. Cannon once assured his listeners,

[The Prophet Joseph] had doubtless, also, visits from Nephi and it may be from Alma and others. He was visited constantly by angels;… Moroni, in the beginning as you know, to prepare him for his mission came and ministered and talked to him from time to time, and he had vision after vision in order that his mind might be fully saturated with a knowledge of the things of God. {13}

Joseph said very little about his work with Book of Mormon prophets other than Moroni. However, in the famous letter to John Wentworth, the one in which he also wrote the Articles of Faith, the Prophet explained that the Book of Mormon came forth only “after having received many visits from the angels of God unfolding the majesty and glory of the events that should transpire in the last days.”{14} The “many visits” could, of course, have all been from Moroni. But Moroni is only one angel and Joseph wrote that he had received “many visits from the angels.” That statement by the Prophet, coupled with those of his friends, leads one to conclude that the prophets who wrote the Book of Mormon either helped Joseph understand what he was reading, or actually participated in the translation of the Book of Mormon. It seems reasonable to me to suppose that the translation process was something of a joint effort between Moroni,

Joseph Smith who used the Urim and Thummim, Nephi (perhaps more than one Nephi), Alma, Mormon “and others” of th e book’s original authors. Let me explain why I believe that is so.

One cannot read the Book of Mormon without being aware that its original authors were very concerned that their message be accurately conveyed to the people of our day.{15} It would be consistent with the desires they expressed in their own lifetimes, and equally consistent with the covenants the Lord made with them about the preservation and coming forth of the Book of Mormon,{16} that those same prophets who originally wrote the words should be permitted to be present when Joseph Smith was working on the translation of their own writings. But It is my personal opinion that they were more involved than just acting as advisors.

I once heard Nibley say that a translation, no matter how good, is, in fact, only a commentary – because at best, it is only the translator’s best guess about what the author intended to say. (The variety and number of translations of the Bible are sufficient evidence of how true that is.) However if the person who wrote the text in the first language, also wrote it in the second language, then the result would not be a “translation” at all. It would be a primary text written by the original author. Similarly, if the original authors translated their own portions of the Book, then when we read the Book, we are reading the actual words as they were written by Nephi, Alma, Mormon and the other great prophets. That would mean that the Book of Mormon in English is not a translation of a primary source, but is itself a “primary source” because it is the actual words of the original authors, and the ideas expressed by them there are as near to what they intended to say as the English language is able to convey. I believe that, and that is the way I read the Book of Mormon.

It is my personal opinion that the original authors did participate in the translation of the Book of Mormon, and that the precision of their language – as they expressed it in English – imposes upon their readers the obligation to study with great care, not just the meaning of the words, but also the structure of the sentences, and the relationship of the ideas, in order to discover the full intent of the writings of those ancient American prophets.

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1. {1}  Andrew Jensen, Biographical Encyclopedia, 1:267.
2. {2}  Richard L. Anderson, “The House Where the Church Was Organized,”Improvement Era,April, 1970, p. 21.
3. {3}  Oliver B. Huntington, “Diary,” typescript copy at BYU Library. Vol. 2, p. 415-6.Huntington heard this story from Sarah, herself, when she was 88 years old.
4. {4}  Huntington, “Diary,” 2:415-6.
5. {5}  Huntington, “Diary,” 2:415-16. See also Anderson, “The House…”, Improvement Era,April, 1970, p. 21. I have also spoken with her descendants who confirmed the story.
6. {6}  Wilford Woodruff, Conference Report, April, 1898, p. 89.
7. {7}  Juvenile Instructor, 27:303-4.
8. {8}  Journal of Discourses, 9:212. (Hereafter, JD)
9. {9}  JD 15:185. See similar testimonies in JD 13:66 and 14:140.

{10} JD 21:164.{11} JD 21:161.

12. {12}  JD 27:374.
13. {13}  JD 13:47; and JD 23:363.
14. {14}  Documentary History of the Church, 4:537.
15. {15}  For examples see: II Nephi 33:3-4; III Nephi 5:18; Mormon 8:12, 9:30-31; Enos 1:15-16;Ether 12:25-29. See also, II Nephi 3:19-21, 26:16, chapter 27; Mormon 5:12-13; Mosiah1:7; Doctrine and Covenants 17:6.
16. {16}  Doctrine and Covenants 10:46-53.

(End of this week’ comments)