Come, Follow Me November 11-17: Ether 1-5
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Two Kinds of Friendship
By Kristian S. Heal
We are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness and have been for some time now.[1] Not only are we bowling alone, but we are often most alone when surrounded by people or connected to seemingly vibrant virtual communities.[2] Friendship seems harder and harder to find, especially in a world riven by social and political divides. What makes things worse is that the epidemic is often invisible to those who lead, whether in business, communities, or churches, because successful sociality (a certain extrovertness, if you will) is often essential to assuming those positions. Or we are too busy doing the work to notice. The lonely look just the same as you and me. They often mask their loneliness well. Or they absent themselves while the rest of the world carries on.
The Book of Mormon offers two seemingly similar origin stories for the major peoples it describes, the Lehites and the Jaredites. But one of the significant differences between these stories is the role of loneliness and friendship in the first generations of immigrants to the land of promise. For the Lehites, their “lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days” (Jacob 7:26). Familial bonds frayed. Friendship was almost entirely absent. In fact, friendship is not a significant theme in the books of Nephi or even the small plates. The first family seems to have suffered from a lack of friends, a lack that was not made up for with the addition of Ishmael’s family. Friendship was not entirely absent, but one wouldn’t know it from Nephi’s record. It is left to Lehi to inform us that Zoram was “a true friend unto my son, Nephi, forever” (2 Nephi 1:30). But even this may have pointed more towards loyalty than friendship.
Nephi may have been more focused on family strife than friendship. Or he may have been more concerned with bringing out other themes in carefully crafting his narrative. Nephi’s company, those who eventually separated from the main body with him, are defined not by any explicit mention of friendship but by their acceptance of the Lord’s revelations to Nephi and his father: “I, Nephi, did take my family, and also Zoram and his family, and Sam, mine elder brother and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all those who would go with me. And all those who would go with me were those who believed in the warnings and the revelations of God; wherefore, they did hearken unto my words” (2 Nephi 5:6).
The Book of the Ether is different. It is not simply the story of Jared, “his brother and their families” (Ether 1:33). From the beginning, they were joined by “some others and their families” (Ether 1:33). Later, Jared describes these “others” as “our friends” (Ether 1:36). The Lord is more specific, telling us that these “others” were the “[brother of Jared’s] friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families” (Ether 1:41; cf. Ether 2:1). In all, Jared and his brother traveled with 22 friends, making a company of 24 families, nicely mirroring the 24 plates that record their story.
Doubtless, Moroni would have been particularly attentive to this emphasis on friendship, given his relationship status when he wrote the account of the Jaredites. “My father hath been slain in battle,” he laments, “and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends nor whither to go.”[3] Without father, family, or friends, Moroni may find consolation in narrating a story about a close-knit group of family and friends. Theirs is the kind of friendship that Joseph Smith said is “like brother [Theodore] Turley in his blacksmith shop welding iron to iron; it unites the human family with its happy influence.”[4] This kind of friendship, Joseph said elsewhere, “is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism to revolutionize and civilize the world, and cause wars and contentions to cease.”[5] And it seems to have been the basis of the peace and prosperity of the first generation of the Jaredites, who “were taught to walk humbly before the Lord; and they were also taught from on high” (Ether 6:17). Friendship seems to be a key motif of the Book of Ether.[6] Friends are mentioned in it more than in any other book in the Book of Mormon.
Scholars have argued that the Book of Ether has a particular message to its gentile readers.[7] Several aspects of this message have been convincingly articulated. But one message, the importance of friendship, has been absent. Could it be that a vital message of the Book of Mormon for our day is the importance of living in a lively community of friends? I hope so.
[1] Colin Killeen, “Loneliness: An Epidemic in Modern Society.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 28.4 (1998), 762-770.
[2] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 20th anniversary edition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020.
[3] Mormon 8:5.
[4] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843–30 April 1844],” 1681, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 29, 2024, http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-e-1-1-july-1843-30-april-1844/51. Cf. “Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 3, 15 July 1843–29 February 1844,” [13], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 29, 2024, http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-3-15-july-1843-29-february-1844/19; and “Discourse, 23 July 1843, as Reported by Willard Richards,” [13], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 29, 2024, http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-23-july-1843-as-reported-by-willard-richards/3.
[5] “History, 1838–1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843–30 April 1844],” 1680, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 29, 2024, http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-e-1-1-july-1843-30-april-1844/50 .
[6] Note that Moroni also captures in the Book of Ether that other kind of friendship that is so central to the Book of Mormon’s main narrative, the kind that King Mosiah called “friends in iniquity” (Mosiah 29:22). That is a subject for another time.
[7] Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction. Provo, UT: BYU Maxwell Institute, 2020.
Images
Walter Rane, Marvelous Were the Prophecies of Ether, 2003. Walter Rane Prints. [walterraneprints.com].
The Lord Manifests Himself to the Brother of Jared by Franz Mark Johansen, 2008. Springville Museum of Art. [Springville.org]
The Veil Was Lifted and He Saw the Lord's Finger by Thy Mind, O Human, 2017. [Thymindoman.com]
Tight Like Unto a Dish by Jayden Itejere, 2024. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/tight-like-unto-a-dish]