What’s struck me as most prevalent about 1 Nephi 1 is its characteristic autobiographical narrative perspective, significance of language, and the revelatory pattern of divine communication to humanity through prophets, followed by adherents and detractors. As an aside, how old is Nephi when he’s writing this? Is it during the eight years he and his family traveled around the Arabian Peninsula and wilderness? Or was it written once they’d arrived in the Promised Land? Anyone have an educated guess?
In any event, Nephi lists his familial, social, and educational status, a literary custom of his day according to Hugh Nibley. Nibley references the Autobiography of Kai, written just before Nephi’s time, in which this man Kai states “I, Kai, was the son of a man who was nehet and saa [who was worthy and wise]” (Nibley, Lecture 2, 2). Nephi begins with “I Nephi, having been born of goodly parents” (I Nephi 1:2). While this phrase is often used to highlight Lehi and Sariah’s presumed and evident good character, might it not be a reference to their “exceedingly great” (1 Nephi 3:25) property, material wealth and possessions? For instance, Lehi’s gold, silver, and many precious items are reluctantly relinquished by Laman and Lemuel to Laban in order to obtain the plates from him on their first return to Jerusalem. To which Laban was opportunistic and kicked them out of his house on threat of death (3:26), actually with his servants in hot pursuit. Understanding this possible interpretation helps explain perhaps why Nephi wrote in “the language of [his] father, which consisted of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1:2). Nephi had enough privileged position in ancient Israeli society to learn to read, write, and speak competently enough in Hebrew and Egyptian.
On that note, because Nephi probably wrote in language 1000 years removed from Mormon and Moroni, various interesting interpretations of the word ‘which’ arise from verse 2. For instance, does language refer to a record or language? BYU Religion professor Daniel Ludlow summarizes the interpretive puzzle by posing the question that “is Nephi referring to the spoken words, the written script, the grammatical constructions, the thought patterns, the exact phraseology, or what?” (Ludlow, 88). In 400 A.D. Mormon notices the change in written characters having abridged Nephi’s Small and Large Plates that had been handed down through Nephite prophet-historian generations. In historical linguistics, it is expected that groups of migrating peoples will speak pidgin, or informal mixing of a person’s primary or native tongue and vocabulary with a secondary language. This malleable formation can become the rising generation’s native tongue, or in this case, what is called a creole, if they are exposed to it instead of each pre-migration language. Hence, we get ‘reformed Egyptian’ in Mormon 9:32-34.
So, whatever sophisticated mode of language Nephi refers to, he had the privilege of learning it from his father, who became one of the many visionary prophets (Jeremiah, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah) in Jerusalem around 600 B.C. prior to its fall under Babylon mentioned in Jeremiah 35:15 and 1 Nephi 1:4 and its footnote, 4d. In verse 4 it seems Lehi was concerned at the rise of prophets in Jerusalem prophesying imminent destruction if repentance was not enacted (v.4), prayed to the Lord “with all his heart”(v. 5), and received a personal divine communication in the form of a vision while he was overcome with the Spirit (vv. 6-14). Sadly, what he reiterates to the people is mocked (v. 19).
Here is the beginning of a telling pattern of communication (the Book of Mormon is replete with it) from a loving Heavenly Father to a faithful individual earnestly seeking current guidance to a disturbing future condition or event. Nephi closes this revelatory episode from his father’s writings with the assurance that he “will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance” (v. 20). Lehi’s family is spared the Babylonian destruction under Nebachudnezzar – that is certainly one major tender mercy. Tender mercies, the spiritual experiences, is what Nephi labored to not only teach his family and descendants, but to record for our day, when the Gospel would be restored and the world would need a powerful witness of the Bible’s truths and that God speaks to all people who trust Him above all else.
So, my discussion of the autobiographical and linguistic richness and complexities, if it is useful and intriguing at best, mostly serves to establish the book’s credibility as an historical source of much human value, but so are the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Tel el-Amarna Letters, etc, discovered in the mid-20th century. Departing from both of those works, the Book of Mormon contains “formal elements of literature, such relationships of sound, multiple meanings, prose rhythms, concision, texture, and puns, that have preoccupied much literary criticism in this century” (England, 96) that are without doubt, valuable to the scholar and literary critic but also to verify internally that it is consistent with ancient knowledge and forms only Joseph could’ve known “through an ancient manuscript and revelation” (91). However, we are not to let these tantalizing tidbits of sophisticated research divert “us from other, perhaps weightier, matters, such as the large patterns of stories and repeated events that reveal the nature of sin and salvation” (England, 96), or the merciful divine patterns of revelation, an idea made famous recently in the LDS community by modern-day Apostle, Elder David A. Bednar (2005).
Nephi’s heavenly-commanded abridgment and recording efforts, and the entire book, were consecrated for a very specific purpose in the Lord, which Nephi himself didn’t fully know (1 Nephi 9: 3, 5-6). Church history records that 116 pages of profane history were translated by Joseph Smith in July 1828, and then lost, known as the book of Lehi, by Martin Harris as he sought to vindicate his monetary investment in the translation efforts to more than skeptical relatives and friends by showing them the transcript. Needless to say, at that time Joseph learned a very sobering lesson that fulfilled the Lord’s foresight in commanding Nephi to prepare more records (116 pages worth to be exact), recorded in Section 3 of the Doctrine and Covenants, one which he would not forget easily.
England (1990) argues that through Nephi and other Book of Mormon writers we receive a “remarkably full understanding of the role of Christ in human salvation and thus in history, perhaps fuller than that of biblical writers and thus more responsive to typological patterns in Israelite history as well as their own history” (95). This will come in handy once the invaluable and yet infamous Isaiah chapters are reached. He continues to cite the chiasmus and tree-of-life imagery as “formal devices…as a way of thinking and experiencing that we need to understand and recover in order to approach the formal beauty and powerful message of the Book of Mormon” (99). Lastly, because it “is more unified and has had fewer problems of transmission and translation, it might provide better answers to some questions than the Bible” (100). Essentially, the reader begins to approach the “learning of the Jews”, the allusions to which Nephi will point in order to illustrate the pure doctrines of Christ that have persisted in Biblical metaphors and imagery, yet whose significance has been lost due to cultural loss and translation errors from the original Aramaic, from the Greek Septuagint and Hebrew Pentateuch to the various German and English translations since Wycliffe and the King James version of 1603.
When revelation occurs or prophets speak, we need only but to pray and ask God if it be true, as James directs (1:5), as Lehi did (1 Ne. 1:5) or as Moroni implores of the reader (10:5). Nephi discovered it early on, and tender mercies came as much as he listened to the answers: saved from starving after breaking his steel bow, built a boat to traverse the seas to the Promised Land, escaped the threat of murderous brothers (2Ne. 5:5), and so many others. This sacred pattern of trusting God to tell you if it or anything came from Him is central to any testimony and conversion to Him and His true prophet’s teachings, through whom He does not reveal His will otherwise (Amos 3:7). May we all discover and rediscover this sacred pattern this week, is my hope.
Instead of good luck, good faith! (One of my wise college professors would encourage us as he handed out his exams to us by saying “Good skill”, instead of ‘good luck’. So, this is my variant within a faith-related frame. Hey, it was that or “May the faith be with you”, the former being just a tad more appropriate considering the sacred nature of the subject matter at-hand 🙂 )
References
Conference Report, Apr. 2005: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2005/04/the-tender-mercies-of-the-lord?lang=eng
England, E. (1990). A second witness for the Logos: the Book of Mormon and contemporary literary criticism. In John M. Lundquist (Ed.), By Study and Also By Faith, Vol. 2, (pp. 91-125). Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company.
Ludlow, D. (1976). A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company.
Nibley, H. (2004). Teachings of the Book of Mormon. (Semester 1, Lecture 2). Provo, UT: Covenant Communications.
the Wall of Faith 