Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: 1 Nephi with Jasmin Rappleye Gimenez

Rosalynde Welch: Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute's Book of Mormon Studies Podcast. Today we are talking about the scholarly literature on first Nephi and I'm joined today by a terrific guest, Jasmine Gimenez-Rappleye Jasmine is the Director of Communications at Scripture Central. And her face and voice are probably familiar to those who know the Scripture Plus app. She runs all the social media for Scripture Plus. She's a great communicator. She knows and loves the Book of Mormon. And I'm so happy that she's with us this morning. Welcome, Jasmin.

Jasmin Rappleye-Gimenez: Thanks for having me. This is really exciting. I feel honored to be here.

Welch: Yes. So I have a couple of goals for our episode today. This is the first time this year that we've done an episode of the podcast that focuses on scholarly work around the Book of Mormon. So I'm hoping that by the end of our conversation today, three things will have happened. First of all, I hope listeners are aware that there is in fact scholarship around the Book of Mormon. There's that has been going on for, in some form or another, for almost a century and really has professionalized over the last 40 years or so. So I hope to introduce readers to that field and give them a sense for what kind of scholarly work can and does happen in relation to the Book of Mormon. Second of all, I hope to demystify it. I hope that people feel empowered by our conversation and are interested in perhaps diving into it. There's so much available online through the great work of Scripture Central, the Maxwell Institute, the Interpreter Foundation, lots of resources that people can go to online and can, for themselves, get in up to their elbows in this emerging scholarly literature. And finally, I hope that we leave readers and listeners with some specific insights into this book of First Nephi, a better understanding of what Nephi is trying to accomplish here, how the text is put together, and in particular, how it can lead us to Christ. So with those ideas in mind, let's jump right in, Jasmine, to our discussion. You are gonna start us off today by talking about some background and context that might be able to help us as we start our study of the Book of Mormon, in particular this book Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem. Tell us about this.

Gimenez: Well, it is quite a behemoth of a work. I love this volume when it comes to the beginning of the Book of Mormon year because there's just a lot of pieces going on when you enter the pages of the Book of Mormon. We know a lot of the Book of Mormon takes place in an ancient American setting, but when you first open up, it takes place in Jerusalem at a very disruptive and chaotic point in history. And it can be a little hard to get your bearings on what's going on. What are the motivations here? Why is Lehi in Jerusalem? Why are they leaving Jerusalem? Why are people upset about him prophesying certain things? And so this volume is a little bit older. It came out in 2004, but it's really a an important work in helping to situate you in what you're trying to understand when you open those first few pages. And what's... There are a lot of different ways to approach the text, but I really like starting with a historical approach because I feel like it will help you to interpret the text better, or at least in a more informed way for its ancient audience.

So the Book of Mormon presents itself as an ancient text and the authors present themselves as being from Jerusalem originally, and then later on in ancient America. And so part of interpreting the text is, you know, doing an exegesis on it, as we would say in biblical scholarship. And so to do that for the Book of Mormon, we've got to kind of get our bearings on, OK, who are the main players? Where is this taking place? What's going on in the background that informs the motivations behind these authors and what they're trying to convey? And that really is what glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem is trying to do. I was just talking to my husband this morning. We definitely could use an update since it's quite a bit older to give us the most recent scholarship on what was happening at the time. But when we look at 600 ish BC Jerusalem, there are a lot of different factions, political factions, cultural rifts going on and Lehi is stuck right in the middle of it. And so this really helps to clarify and demystify a lot of that so that you can kind of feel comfortable going into Lehi's world, going into Nephi's world and understanding what this is all about. And so this book has chapters from BYU professors covering all sorts of aspects of Lehi's world at this time. There's a chapter kind of situating you into the culture of Jerusalem, you know, what people ate, what they wore, what the weather was like, all of those things. There's a chapter on kind of the political ancient Israel at the time. And there's one on like, Lehi and Egyptian influence, since we know that the Book of Mormon is written in by the language of the Jews and the learning or no, sorry, it's opposite the language. Wait, now I can't remember. Is it the language of the Jews and the learning of the Egyptians or vice versa?

Welch: The learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians, yes.

Gimenez: Learning of Jews, language of the Egyptians. I always get those mixed up. And later on they refer to that as reformed Egyptian in the text.

And so there's discussion about, well, what does that mean? What would that look like for them? And so it's really, really wonderful. And so I always go back to this book when we come to the Book of Mormon year, so that I can kind of refresh on what's going on at the time. But it's a big book. So I'm just going to kind of narrow in on a couple pieces. One that I find really interesting is a piece by Jeffrey Chadwick called “Lehi's House at Jerusalem and the Land of His Inheritance.”

And it sounds like a pretty niche topic and it kind of is, but I find it really helpful because there's a little bit of a dissonance in the text when we're introduced to Nef—sorry, not to Nephi, to Lehi. When we're introduced to Lehi, we learn that he is of the tribe of Manasseh, and yet he's living in Jerusalem. And for anyone who knows at least something about the biblical world, that seems odd because traditionally Jews and the tribe of Judah would be in Jerusalem in the south and then all of those other tribes, including Manasseh, lived in northern Israel. So what's Lehi doing in Jerusalem? In the early 1800s or in the 1830s when the Book of Mormon first came out, it was a point of criticism that, oh, clearly this shows that Joseph Smith didn't know what he was talking about because someone from the tribe of Manasseh would never have lived in Jerusalem. But Jeffrey Chadwick goes through and provides some context and background to why this might be the case. Basically he goes into the political situation at the time. That you have major powers competing over this land of Israel. Israel is kind of the crossroads between multiple major world powers. You've got Egypt in the south, you've got Assyria in the north. Later on, Babylon kind of takes over and Israel is standing right in between those. And so Israel tends to be a place where a lot of battles and wars end up being fought. And during one of the, during one of these, uh, captivity's the Assyrians came in with Sennacherib and did kind of a first deportation of Northern Israel. And then again, in 701 BC, you've got another siege on Jerusalem itself, in addition to other places in Southern Judah. And at this time, there's a lot of disruption and people are, um, taken away to a Syria, but not everyone is taken away to a Syria. You have a lot of people left in Israel and at this time we find kind of a migration of refugees into the land and area of Judah. And so the proposal and the idea is that well, Lehi may have been one of these refugees or if not Lehi, his father or maybe his grandfather, depending on what chronology you're following. So it kind of gives you a sense of setting that Lehi is not just a prophet in a vacuum. He has a pedigree and a history, a family history,, of fleeing, of being a refugee, of having to be displaced from his home to settle in Jerusalem where he currently is. And it also helps to kind of give you a little bit of, it helps you to understand what Lehi is talking about with the slaying of Laban narrative. When Lehi has his family go back to Jerusalem, Lehi sends his sons to just go off and do whatever they can to get the plates. And one of their options is let's go to the land of our inheritance and get all of our possessions and try to essentially bribe or purchase the plates from Laban. And when we read land of inheritance, I think most of us just assume they're just going to their house in Jerusalem. But based on Jeffrey Chadwick's article, it leaves open the possibility that the real land of their inheritance is actually up in the north, that it's somewhere where Lehi's family originated from. And so, maybe. I mean, it's just a possibility that they actually had to take quite the trek in order to redeem some of the possessions of the land of their inheritance in order to bring back to Jerusalem. It's just a possibility, but it opens up several ideas and avenues for shifting your picture of what these first few chapters are like. I know I grew up watching living scriptures a lot, and so that's kind of a very cemented visual image of what these narratives are.

Welch: Yeah.

Gimenez: But when you actually try to reevaluate what the political situation was, what the historical situation was, all of a sudden that picture shifts a lot. And so you're having to reconstruct what the getting to get the brass plates was all about, what Lehi and Jerusalem was all about, and it helps you to interpret the text in new ways. So that's just one little tidbit from glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem. But like I said, it's got a lot of chapters. It's got a lot of rich resources for helping you understand that historical context a little better.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, that's great. There were two things that really struck me as I was reviewing this book in preparation for this podcast. One is just how unique these first chapters of First Nephi really are, these first 10 chapters or so, where we have a determinate context for the events of the Book of Mormon. We know that they took place in Jerusalem. We know when they took place. And because that is known history, we can coordinate and corroborate the details of the text with the known history. Of course, once they move into the wilderness and then once they migrate across the ocean into the land of promise, of course we lose that sort of determinant context. And so a different kind of scholarship and inference is necessary at that point. But during these first early chapters, there's a vast world of known history, history of course, is itself always a moving target as a scholarly field and new discoveries are made. But there's a lot that we know about the context and so it's a pretty special moment in the Book of Mormon where we can do this kind of scholarship. The second thing that really...

Gimenez: If you don't mind me dovetailing on that, I think what you mentioned there is really critical that because it's determinant, we've had a lot of – we've been able to do a lot of historical scholarship. And that's really influenced the trajectory that the scholarly field has taken in so many ways because it's a determinant point when scholars in the 1950s and 60s are asking, well, what can we know about the Book of Mormon? They're like, well, we know it took place in Israel, so let's start there. And a lot of our scholars from you know, the middle of the 20th century, that's where they got their training in ancient Near Eastern studies and biblical studies. And so they're trying to take that lens and apply it to the Book of Mormon in order to draw insights from it and in order to try to understand it better. And so we have a disproportionate amount of scholarship on the biblical setting of the Book of Mormon, and not nearly as much on like a New World setting for the Book of Mormon. And as you've mentioned, literary theological lenses for viewing the text as well, has been a little bit more light handed. And part of the restraints for understanding the Book of Mormon in a new world historical setting are like you said, it's indetermined. So we can't really put a pin in the map and say, let's start digging there. It's more speculative, we just have to guess. But even if we were to speculate and say, okay, well, maybe it took place in like Central America somewhere because we don't have direct pins in the map, it's so much harder to. to create a very definite cultural context for interpreting the text. And we have a dearth of Latter-day Saints scholarship in that area in general. We've got great scholars who have done work in ancient Mesoamerica, ancient North America, ancient South America, but they're just barely starting to scratch the surface of interacting in Book of Mormon studies in some ways based on constraints of their own field. And just not as much attention has been driven there. So personally, I would love to see a lot more attention in the scholarship on an ancient American setting moving forward, but as we'll, I'm sure talk about later, there are other ways to view the text than just from a historical setting. And those provide fresh ways for us to interpret and glean insights from the text.

Welch: Yeah, that's right. Another point to be made is that as we think about contextualizing the Book of Mormon in this ancient biblical world, we should think about not just kind of the hard history of geography and politics and culture and lived experience, what life was like on the ground, but the great insight of Hugh Nibley was that we should also think about contextualizing it and historicizing it in the language, the poetry, and the discourse of the ancient world. And I think that's where things really took off kind of in the mid-century of the 20th century with Hugh Nibley, his insight that we can look inside the Book of Mormon for literary forms and for corroboration in ancient texts as much as in ancient archeology. So that textual angle, that historical textual angle would prove to be extremely crucial for the shape of Book of Mormon studies going forward through that second half of the 20th century.

The other thing that really struck me in this volume, Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem, is the importance of Jerusalem as a theological idea at the time that Lehi and his family came out. Jerusalem was not just kind of a political center, but it was the theological and the sacrificial and the cultural center for Jewish people of the time. And during all of the upheaval that you described in the century or so before the events of the Book of Mormon open, Jerusalem had been at the center of these warring empires. And there had grown up this idea, sometimes called Zion theology, that Jerusalem was inviolable and that it could never fall and that God had made these promises to David and then reiterated in Isaiah that somehow Jerusalem could never fall. And I think we see the reverberations of that idea throughout these early chapters of 1st Nephi as it's so difficult for not only the Jewish people in Jerusalem as Lehi prophesies to them of the coming destruction of their city, but Laman and Lemuel themselves, right? The pull of Jerusalem as the center of their world, the one stable point in their cosmos. And to imagine that falling is really unthinkable. And what Lehi and Nephi ask them to do is to imagine that their stable point is not actually the city of Jerusalem. It is their connection to the Lord, and that connection to the Lord is mobile. It can travel. They can continue to receive new light and direction from the Lord, wherever they are, in the wilderness, across the sea, in a new land. This is really asking them to shift their worldview in a very, very fundamental way. So I think we can see that conflict play out through these early chapters here in 1 Nephi.

Gimenez: Oh, for sure. I mean, I think, I mean, Latter-day Saints can relate to this sentiment as well as we've, you know, the Latter-day Saints built a temple in Kirtland for the first time. And this is, you know, Zion. This is where God's going to dwell. And time and time again, we saw that fall through as we were pushed out and had to be more mobile. And so we can definitely understand where Laman and Lemuel are coming from there. And when it comes to Jerusalem, they say, you know, we know that Jerusalem can't be destroyed. And there's, there’s good reason for that. In history, we know that Jerusalem, well, Jerusalem had been attacked before, but as recently as like 701 BC, about a hundredish years before Lehi's time, you've got Sennacherib from Assyria coming in and decimating a lot of the area of Judah. And we have evidence for that in certain ancient documents like the Lachish letters talking about the destruction that Assyria implemented there. But when it comes to Jerusalem, we have some conflicting accounts.

Sennacherib himself leaves an account in Assyria about how he, oh yeah, I left Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. I basically like trapped them there. But in the Bible, we get an account where there's a divine deliverance of Jerusalem where even though Sennacherib got close, he couldn't actually take Jerusalem. And so from an Israelite's perspective who believes in a God of miracles, they see that as Jerusalem is the place. Jerusalem is where the temple is. God is with Jerusalem. Jerusalem cannot fall. So when it comes to Laman and Lemuel, they definitely have reason to think that Jerusalem is inviolable, like you said, and they have to shift a massive paradigm to realize that, oh, we need to travel and we can travel like the Israelites did in the wilderness and God will be with us there too.

Welch: Yeah. So this type of scholarship, we could say, this kind of historical and contextual scholarship, it might be fair to say that it starts in some ways outside of the text of the Book of Mormon. Of course, these scholars have read the Book of Mormon and are familiar with its contents to begin with. But then they look outside into the context, whether that be, as I mentioned, the historical context or the linguistic context. And they bring insights from there to bear on the text, and then use that light to make sense of what we see happening in the Book of Mormon. So it's a movement from kind of outside the text to inside the text of the Book of Mormon. Let's talk now about maybe a different style of scholarship, one that starts inside the text and is mostly rooted in a close reading of the text itself and making sense of what's happening there in relation to itself. And a really good and rather classic example of this kind of scholarship is from an eminent scholar in Book of Mormon Studies, Noel Reynolds, and he wrote an article called “The Political Dimension of Nephi's Small Plates.” Walk us through this article, Jasmine, and help us see what Reynolds is arguing and his method. How does he make his argument?

Gimenez: Sure. So this one came out in BYU Studies in 1987. So it's definitely an old article, but it was pretty foundational for other treatments that have come since then kind of tackling a very similar idea that when you read the Book of Mormon, specifically the small plates, you maybe should question your assumptions about what you take at face value. What's really going on here? It's very easy to see First Nephi as a very black and white narrative between good guys and bad guys. Nephi is the continually righteous son and his gosh darn it bad brothers, Laman and Lemuel are always getting in the way. Laban's a bad guy who just gets in the way. It's all about Nephi's struggle to conquer and overcome and be this righteous example to his brothers as they go to the promised land. Noel Reynolds kind of takes that narrative and helps you rethink those assumptions about what's really going on here. He doesn't villainize Nephi by any stretch, but he helps readers to understand why Nephi is writing his account in the first place. He's not telling a dispassionate documentary of what happened. He's writing this 30 plus years after the fact where he is now in the New World. He's established as the ruler over the Nephite people after he's split off from his brothers and there clearly was a big rift there and there's a lot of tension in that division of the families. And now Nephi is trying to convince his people or rather reestablish to his people that he is the legitimate ruler over his people and he is chosen by God to do so. And so you can see hints throughout the text where he is not manipulating the narrative, but trying to definitely show his side of the story to demonstrate how, yeah, all along, God chose me all along. I've been trying to do my best to be the ruler and Laman and Lemuel here all the ways that Laman and Lemuel have fallen short of that. And that's why I, as the younger brother ended up taking over. So it's almost like a persuasive essay from Nephi to demonstrate his right to rule. And we see this in the ancient world a lot. You've got narratives of kings ascending to the throne, and they're always going to tell a very deliberate narrative about why they have the divine right to rule over their competitors or opponents. And so that's what we see Noel Reynolds doing in this article. And he takes very specific elements that, you know, Nephi has multiple times throughout his text where he has time and time again, these same elements play out where God gives a commandment and he gives a sign to Nephi that he's chosen by God and his brother's murmur and Nephi prevails after all. And these elements repeat over and over again, first with the retrieval of the brass plates, then again when they go back to get the family of Ishmael, then again when he's trying to build the ship, then again when they're crossing the ocean. So you've got these recurring cycles, if you will, where these events and these little vignettes of stories occur and the same elements of God choosing Nephi. Nephi choosing the right, Laman and Lemuel falling short of choosing the right, but eventually getting on board and then being blessed because of it cycle over and over and over again to demonstrate time and time again that Nephi is the legitimate ruler of his people. He has the political right to rule. He has the spiritual right to rule and he was given that by God to just demonstrate his hegemony over his people. So that one's a really interesting one because it will make you rethink pretty much everything you think you know about first Nephi. You've got to check, okay, why is Nephi giving us this detail? Did this really happen? Well, there's good reason it did, but why is he including this specifically? Why is he telling it this way? Why isn't he including the other side of the story? So it helps you just think a little bit more critically as a reader. And this approach has then been revisited several times with subsequent scholars like Grant Hardy has kind of gone into deconstructing the small plate narrative and Joseph Spencer with his Brief Theological Introductions and we see that a lot. So lots of potential for bearing fruit when it comes to analyzing these texts with a fine tooth comb.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, I agree with you that he was prescient in some ways in recognizing that we can start from inside the text and in particular we can start from the motivations of the narrator and we can infer what those motivations would have been and then we can use that as a lens to make sense of what was chosen, what was chosen to include. Every single word, every single sentence, every single incident is the result of an editorial and authorial choice. So why is it that, in this case, Nephi made the choice to include such and such an event, to portray such and such a character in this way? Well, maybe we have a unifying overarching lens that can help us make sense of that. And in this case, Reynolds suggests that it could be Nephi's need, as you say, to legitimate his heirship. As the younger son, he is still the legitimate heir of Lehi. And as you pointed out, this is so important because over time, the Lamanites and the Nephites developed these competing founding narratives of how the family of Lehi came to the New World, what those events were. And in some ways, they're kind of diametrically opposed, right? The Lamanites see the Nephites, see Nephi and Lehi as having been responsible for driving the family wrongfully out of Jerusalem, of having wrongfully seized political power in the wilderness. The Lamanites see Nephi as having wrongfully seized political power in the wilderness and across the sea. And then again, in the land of the first inheritance, where Nephi eventually we’ll see leaves with his people and takes the brass plates with him. And so it's necessary for Nephi to maintain the legitimacy, not only, of course, of Nephite rule over their own people, but also of their messianic claims as well. This is a point that Reynolds makes, I think, is a good one. The records, the brass plates and Nephi's writings are the repository of the Nephites legitimizing religious and political claims. They're both religious and political because Nephi's claim to legitimate rule is tied to his acceptance of the messianic revelations, right? The revelations that Christ would come. So this is both religious and political. And we can say, well, hang on. You know, the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to convince people that Jesus is the Christ. And that's true. And for Nephi, in order to convince people that Jesus was the Christ, as Reynolds see it, that entails that the Nephites had legitimate claim to political and religious authority. And in all of this, we see how important records are, right? The records are the place where these claims are codified where they're preserved and how they can be passed along from generation to generation. So as we see the importance of the records in throughout First Nephi, we have these moments where Nephi will pop in and say, just a reminder, I'm writing these records myself with my own hand and I'm doing it for these important reasons. We can understand why proving the provenance of the records is so crucial for Nephi throughout these chapters.

Gimenez: And these records have multivalent significance throughout the text, but one of which is a very tangible and physical symbol of being like an emblem of kingship, that he has possession of the brass plates, but in addition to the brass plates, he has the swordof Laban, he's got the Liahona, and so these end up kind of being emblems of kingship for him to additionally legitimize him as the ruler. You see this in other cultures as well, where in order to be officially coronated as king, you get certain emblems. You get scepter, crown staff. I mean, we even just saw vestiges of that this last year when King Charles was crowned king in May of 2023 in England. And we kind of got to see a lot of those accoutrements of ritual. And the same thing happened in the ancient world where you've got these emblems of kingship that legitimize your right to rule. And so when Nephi absconds with these emblems, he's also saying that I have the right to rule. And that kind of fuels, like you mentioned in the Book of Mosiah, the Lamanites' counter narrative that we were dragged out of Jerusalem, we were wrongfully usurped of the rulership and also we were robbed. Nephi stole those sacred emblems that legitimize both our political authority and our religious authority. That we have the right to, as you mentioned, like the revelations from God, this messianic heirship, that we are the ones that inherit that divine, chosen of God-ness.

Welch: Yeah, that's right. And so important are sort of these stories and beliefs in the foundation of the Nephite and Lamanite peoples that for Nephites at least, the acceptance of that narrative of Nephi's legitimacy, that pretty much constitutes Nephite identity. So we see again and again through the Book of Mormon, Nephite dissenters who leave the Nephites. And almost always it's because they dispute, they've come to dispute those founding narratives. And once they reject those narratives, in the eyes of the remaining Nephites, they become like Lamanites. They have left the Nephite people. So acceptance of, again, both the political claims and the religious claims that Christ will come are central to Nephite self-identity and group identity.

Gimenez: For sure.

Welch: Well, as you mentioned, Jasmin, Reynolds wrote this wonderful article in 1987, or that's when it was published. And then it was, let's see, over 20 years later, when this book came out, Understanding the Book of Mormon by Grant Hardy. I'm not sure for my video watchers whether that will be backwards or forwards, but this is the book, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide by Grant Hardy. And Hardy takes a method that is similar to Reynolds in the sense that he starts from inside the text. And he uses the motivations and the intentions of the principal narrators of the Book of Mormon, who are Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni, as the lens to make sense of why and what is happening in the Book of Mormon.

This was a groundbreaking work. One of the reasons why Understanding the Book of Mormon was so novel is that Hardy did have a slightly different intention than Reynolds. I think Reynolds was largely writing for Latter-day Saints and believers in the Book of Mormon, as I am and as you are. And this podcast is primarily intended for those who are believers in the Book of Mormon. Hardy is a believer in the Book of Mormon, but he wanted to find a way to place the Book of Mormon before non-believers in a way that could garner respect and interest. And in particular, he wanted to create a language where people who believe in the Book of Mormon and who don't can both talk in a constructive way about the text. Before that time, when believers and nonbelievers would talk, it would often just degenerate into arguments about truth claims around Joseph Smith's legitimacy as a modern day prophet. And the context, the actual content of the Book of Mormon was often ignored in those arguments, not always, but often it would be just simply ignored. And so Hardy found this really rather brilliant way to create a space where all interested readers of good faith and good will could come and talk constructively together about the Book of Mormon. And his realization was that you can start with the narrators because the study of narration and narrative devices is suitable for both history, like the Book of Mormon, as believers in the Book of Mormon see it, and for fiction, as non-believers in the Book of Mormon would see it. For both insiders and outsiders, they both can ask why did Book of Mormon prophets write the way they did? What kinds of experiences and motivations and personalities might have resulted in the narrative as we have it in the Book of Mormon now? What did they choose to omit? What did they choose to include and why?

So, Hardy is asking the same kinds of questions and he's using a similar method starting from inside the text of the Book of Mormon, but he's doing it with a slightly broader intention here. Even for those of us like you and me, Jasmine, who accept the Book of Mormon as the Word of God and as historical and who accept Nephi and Mormon and Moroni as real people, we can still learn so much from Grant Hardy's work and his approach to the Book of Mormon. And as you say, it really dovetails, his reading of First Nephi dovetails really quite nicely with Reynolds' reading of the Book of Mormon.

He makes a couple of important points. First of all, he points out that Nephi's genre is didactic narrative. When I say genre, I mean the kind of writing that Nephi is wanting to produce is didactic narrative, not realism, not psychological realism in the way that as modern readers we might expect to see. So when we come to the text and we see what might seem as sort of one-dimensional characterizations of Laman and Lemuel, there might be something inside of us that says, hold on, most people are more than that, right? They're not these kind of one-dimensional villains and a true kind of realistic psychological portrait of Laman and Lemuel would be much richer. That's probably the case, but we have to remember that Nephi isn't going for psychological realism. He is trying to teach us something. And his effort to, his rhetorical efforts to persuade us are paramount. So we have to keep that in mind.

The second is that Nephi's method in these small plates is a subtractive method. So he started with the large plates, the full account of sort of his reign and the ways and the history by which the political state, I don't know if state is the right word, but the political body of the Nephites came to be. He starts with that full account in the large plates and then he takes things out to shorten it and make this more condensed, abridged account in the small plates that focuses only especially on the things of the ministry. So what that means is that we can ask questions about what gets left out and why, and we can infer motivations and reasons, and these inferences can shed a lot of light on what we see happening here in First Nephi. So Hardy argues that Nephi deliberately draws these portraits of Laman and Lemuel so as to dissuade us as the reader from taking their point of view seriously. It's important that as readers, we identify with Nephi and we come to accept his political claims but also and paramount his religious claims about the coming of Christ and his prophecies, especially about the redemption of Israel in the last days.

Gimenez: Yeah, and if I can just butt in, I think it's a really important point that you made about approaching the text from the text in so that you can draw common ground with other people. You at the Maxwell Institute are more in the, you know, Mormon studies academic world, and so you have a slightly different audience, whereas I am very staunchly in apologetic world where I'm constantly trying to help people who are struggling with their faith. And so the constant question is, is this true? And so that is a frequent question that is right in the forefront that we're always trying to answer. Is this true? Is this true? Is this true? And so we're doing some triage in some ways and trying to help people with that question. But when people who are struggling get so hung up on is it true, they really can miss the beauty and the content of the Book of Mormon. And then they're not getting touched by the message, which is where the power of the Book of Mormon really is, is this is a testament of Jesus Christ. It is the word of God. It has the power to transform lives and to change hearts. And when we're so fixated on is it true, is it true, is it true, and you get bogged down in the doubts and questions of that, you can miss that. And so I love that what Grant Hardy does is he kind of helps to just open that door to say, let's just not worry about that for now, but let's look at the text as literature, let's look at the text and see what we can discover and find out that it's sophisticated. It's beautiful. It has a lot of richness and depth to it as he explores in this narrative with Nephi. And, you know, how does that make you feel? What does that make you think about the Book of Mormon? And that can open doors to understanding the message more about the Book of Mormon. And like you mentioned, he has a very specific perspective of Nephi and he's trying to kind of peel back and deconstruct the layers of what Nephi is doing here. And I did find as I refreshed my reading of Grant Hardy, I found on my first time when I read it, I thought it was just like really paradigm shifting and I thought it was so brilliant. And this time I found myself thinking it was a little bit more skeptical or cynical of Nephi than I personally have come around to thinking these days. But it still is such an important thing to help us peel back those layers of what's Nephi trying to do so that we can then reconstruct. And how does this build our testimony of Jesus Christ? Is he persuasive? Did Nephi succeed in persuading you that Jesus is the Christ? And if so, then, you know, he accomplished his goals. And I think that's an important thing to remember as well. But anyway, sorry to kind of sidetrack you there.

Welch: No, no, that's great. And I'll say, I also may disagree just a bit with Hardy's reading of these opening chapters of First Nephi, or at least with the effect of them. Because the reality is that, in the end, whatever Nephi's intentions, I think many readers still do end up being able to see Laman and Lemuel's point of view. I think a lot of readers do say, hang on, this portrait seems a little bit, maybe a little bit overdrawn. And they must have had some reasons for what they were doing. So there's a way in which, I don't know whether Nephi intended that or whether that marks kind of the failure of Nephi's authorial control over this material. But in some ways, I think we do end up sort of saying, well, if I were in Laman and Lemuel's position, maybe I would actually sympathize with them in a little bit, in a way, right?

And Kim Matheson on our last episode where we took a deep dive into the text and content of First Nephi made a point that has really stuck with me. And that is that Laman and Lemuel are Nephi's first pupils. Nephi is given the promise that if he keeps the commandments he will become a ruler and a teacher over his brethren. And we see throughout First Nephi as he practices becoming a teacher and he grows over time. In some cases, he's not super successful in being a teacher, but actually First Nephi ends at a beautiful moment where he is successfully teaching Laman and Lemuel and they come to him and they ask him to explain the prophecies and he does so in a beautiful way. So Laman and Lemuel in many ways are stand-ins for us as the readers who likewise are hoping to learn from Nephi.

So it's important in some ways that we can identify with Lehmann and Lemuel, at least to the extent that we can put ourselves in the position of a learner and put ourselves at Nephi's feet. Hopefully we are a more receptive audience than Laman and Lemuel generally are. As I said, they have their moments where they're able to listen and to learn. More often, of course, they reject what he says. But it's important, at least to the extent that we, as readers, see ourselves also as learning from Nephi, who is growing into his role as a teacher here in the Book of First Nephi.

Gimenez: Well said.

Welch: Let's talk about another take that grows in some ways out of Grant Hardy's method. This is Joseph Spencer's Brief Theological Introduction to the book of First Nephi, which was published by the Maxwell Institute in 2020 as part of a whole series of Brief Theological Introductions to each book in the Book of Mormon. Joe is very much in the mold of Hardy in the sense that he is a reader who starts from the inside out, rather than an outside in approach to the Book of Mormon. So he, there's probably never been a reader of the Book of Mormon who can more closely parse everything from word choice to punctuation choice at the micro level to things like large structures that organize big blocks of content throughout the Book of Mormon. He's incredibly sharp at reading at the micro level and the macro level, and by really focusing on what is there inside the covers of the Book of Mormon, he's been able to find all sorts of remarkable discoveries in the book.

In our last episode, listeners will remember that Kim Matheson shared with us Joe Spencer's understanding of the structure of First Nephi. And it appears to be actually very, very carefully structured in two parts. You can go back and review that episode if you're interested in that. I wanted to focus here just for a minute on Joe's reading of the slaying of Laban. This is a powerful, often problematic, but crucially important episode right here at the very beginning of the Book of Mormon, and it has been the occasion for much, very careful work trying to work through the ethics, the theology, the political meaning, and the cultural meaning of the moment when Nephi slays Laban to obtain the brass plates. No doubt our listeners are familiar with the basics of that episode, so I won't necessarily review those basics, but I'll share with you Joe's reading, which I find compelling, and then Jasmine, you can tell me what you think.

First of all, at the largest level, this episode shows the crucial importance, the urgent importance of scripture. Without the brass plates, without the prophecies of Isaiah and Zenos and Zenock, the Nephites would not be able to keep the commandments of the Lord. And this is the foundation of their covenant relationship with God, is their ability to worship him through keeping the commandments. So at the broadest level, this episode shows us how crucial it was for the family of Lehi to obtain the brass plates.

But specifically, how can we make ethical sense of this moment when Nephi slays Laban? Well one possibility is that this is a kind of Abrahamic test, where in the moment of direct command by God your religious and covenant duty to God exceeds any other kind of ethical obligation. So just as at the moment that Abraham is ready and on the point of slaying Isaac, his obedience and faith in his relationship with the Lord overcomes and sets aside for a moment the ethical, the abundant ethical qualms of sacrificing your own child. And in the same way, Nephi's experience is a kind of Abraham experience where the religious command exceeds the ethical demand in that moment.

But Joe has actually a different reading than that. And he points out something very important. In chapter two, Nephi is given two conditional promises. One is a group promise. And this promise is that if as a family, as a group, you keep the commandments, you will all together prosper in the land of promise. And the second commandment is a personal commandment. It's to Nephi himself. And it's that Nephi, if you yourself keep the commandments, you will be made a ruler and a teacher over your brothers. That's in verse 22 of chapter two. So right after receiving these two promises from the Lord, Lehi sends his sons on this quest back to Jerusalem to obtain the plates. And Nephi sees this as his moment to prove his obedience. He is going to prove that he will keep the commandments and so he is going to be made a ruler and a teacher over his brothers. This is his moment to make that happen. So he starts to focus specifically on the promise that was given to him.

Joe reads Nephi's performance on this plates quest as actually rather disastrous in certain ways. Nephi's first plan fails where he suggests that they go and get their riches from the land of inheritance and try to buy the plates from Laban. That fails. Nephi then fails to convince his brothers on his own that they should keep on going. It takes an angel who comes to get them back in line. But Joe sees the arrival of this angel as a kind of turning point. At that point, Nephi realizes, my own efforts to make this happen, to succeed on this quest, aren't enough on my own. My plan hasn't worked. And now we read in chapter four, verse six, Nephi is led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. So he's a bit humbler. And in this more humble and open state, he comes across Laban, drunk and passed out in the street. And the spirit at that point constrains, we're told, it's very interesting, he's not commanded to kill Laban, but he's constrained, the Spirit constrains him to kill Laban. In that conversation with the Spirit, there's this very famous moment where the Spirit says something like this, it's better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. And on the surface, it can seem like this is a sort of utilitarian rationale, that the Spirit is saying, well, you know, there's a greater good here. So in the moment, you know, we can, it's ethically expedient and, you know, it's okay that this one man should perish. But Joe has a very different reading of that moment. He sees, and I find this to be very persuasive, that in that moment, when the Spirit says, it's better that one man should perish than that an entire nation should dwindle in unbelief, that serves to remind Nephi of the first obedience promise given in chapter two, the one that applied to the whole people. And it helps Nephi realize that what matters most in this moment is the welfare of his entire people, not just his own status in relation to his own brothers. And so with that in mind, and seeing, as we've already mentioned, the crucial importance for his people of obtaining the brass plate so that they could have the messianic prophecies. In that moment, Nephi sees what he has to do and for the good of his people, not for his own personal status, he slays Laban.

So his bottom line is that the Laban episode has to be read in the context of Nephi's own maturing faith and trust in God, he needs to get over his own ambition, think about what is better for the people as a whole. So we can see this as a part of what in literary studies we would call a bildungsroman. That's a type of narrative that shows the spiritual education and maturation of the protagonist. And here we see the moment when Nephi realizes that the communal and the covenantal needs to come above the individual.

So what do you think about that? What do you think about Joe's reading of this moment?

Gimenez: I think it's very interesting. I wish I had a very profound take on the slaying of Laban, because it is definitely an ethical question that a lot of people have. I'm fairly agnostic on the various different takes. I haven't been completely sold on any specific one, but I think many of them have very good things to contribute to the conversation of, you know, why did Nephi have to kill someone? I'd be remiss if I didn't mention John W. Welch's article on the legality of the slaying of Laban, which Joe does mention in his book where when Nephi is about to kill Laban, the spirit constrains him and says, I've delivered you into, or God has delivered Laban into your hands, essentially, which is an allusion and quotation of an Exodus passage that is discussing the legality of when it is permissible to take a life, which is A, that God has delivered the person into your hands and B, it's not premeditated. And Nephi makes very clear to state that I did not know what I was doing beforehand. I was being led by the spirit. And so you've got a couple instances that can show that at least in the law of Moses, in Nephi's worldview, it was legally permissible. Now obviously the question of legality is very different than the ethical question of is it right or is it good or is it ethical. So what Joe does here is bring up a lot of interesting possibilities. He presents several different solutions that people have brought over the years.

One that I find really interesting is what Don Bradley comes to the table with in his book, The Lost 116 Pages. And it is speculative in nature because it's relying on certain second or late, secondhand or late sources that potentially hint at the idea that this episode is taking place at Passover in Lehi's milieu. But I think that setting is really attractive from a typological standpoint. It all of a sudden frames this story as a Nephi's, like you said, coming of age maturation, but it's setting it in a very Exodus specific setting as well where you've got different parallels to the murmuring Israelites, the wanderings in the wilderness. And then you've got Laban, which is kind of taking the role of the great Pharaoh who is refusing to let my people or in this case the plates go. And then Laban also takes this double role of being this sacrificial firstborn Egyptian In the biblical narrative God's final plague is killing the firstborn Egyptian of every single home, except the Israelites who had painted the blood about the door, lintels. And so here you've got Laban being delivered into Nephi's hands and through his sacrifice, we're now allowing Nephi's people to go to abscond to the promised land and to take their religion with them, to take the brass plates, to be able to have that record. So I like that typological casting a lot, I think it paints an interesting picture of not just Nephi's development, but also God's big picture, what he's trying to do with this people. This is new Israel trying to establish themselves. And in order for that to happen, this needs to happen as hard as it is. And as you mentioned, there's also maybe Abrahamic overtones to doing something very ethically difficult, but something that God commands. So like I said, I don't have any particular strong feelings of how we want to resolve this issue, but I know it's one that people struggle with and I think there are multiple ways we can approach it to come to some understanding of what might be going on here. And certainly Joseph Spencer's is a really compelling one.

Welch: Yeah. This issue of typology is really important. And it's something, it's so evident in the Book of First Nephi, where the story of the Exodus is pervasive, both explicitly and implicitly, in the story of the Lehite family leaving Jerusalem, journeying through the wilderness, and entering a land of promise. There's also strong typological overtones with the story of Joseph, who leads his family, ironically, into Egypt and the sibling rivalry and violence that occurs there. Talk to us a little bit about ways that scholars have made sense of biblical typology in the book of 1 Nephi.

Gimenez: Well, from what I've gathered, we've got basically, you've mentioned several of them, three major biblical figures that Nephi gets compared to in this book. We've got the Exodus, which you see all throughout the whole book of First Nephi. I mentioned a little bit with how Don Bradley's explored the Exodus setting of the Laban episode. But as they're traveling through Arabia and they're trying to go to the promised land, you see over and over these motifs of wandering in the wilderness, God's deliverance. You even have God appearing as a pillar of fire in chapter one, and you've got, you know, the parting of the sea more metaphorically here. God is able to help Nephi find a way to cross the sea, whereas with Moses, he was more miraculously parting the sea. And over and over, you see these little motifs where it seems that Nephi is trying to make connections there to say that, as I mentioned, that this is new Israel. God is preserving this remnant of the House of Israel and going to bring them to a promised land to fulfill his purposes. And so he is trying to find significance and meaning by drawing back to these older archetypal stories of his own religious background. Crossing the sea, the pillar of fire, wanderings in the wilderness, murmurings in the wilderness over and over and over, and miraculous objects even. Where you've had the manna in the wilderness or the quail in the wilderness. And here we've got a Liahona that just shows up outside of Lehi's tent. And even things like Lehi's vision with the iron rod and miraculous objects that can help navigate and get them to where they need to go. But you also have scholars who have talked about other things like you mentioned Joseph, comparing Nephi to Joseph because I know Benjamin Maguire touched on this a little bit, because Nephi is this very precocious younger sibling who ends up taking over rulership and hegemony over the family in several ways. And Joseph of Egypt, he had a lot of, well, he was certainly precocious and he had a lot of presumption to rule over his brothers that his brothers did not appreciate. And that caused a lot of conflict, rift, struggles in Egypt that eventually came to a redemption cycle. And you see a lot of those same parallels with Nephi, who is this younger, precocious, maybe presumptuous younger brother who wants to prove himself to the Lord and prove himself to his brothers and grows and matures and eventually does become all that he said he would be. It's a little tragic though, that Joseph kind of gets his happy ending where he gets his reunion with his family, his reconciliation with his brothers. That's very touching, and Nephi never gets that. And it's a very tragic thing that he very, it's very conscious of as he's writing his narrative because he's writing 30 years after the fact, after he's already split. But not just that, after he's had a panoramic vision in first Nephi chapters 11 to 15-ish, where he's shown the history of the world and the future of the world and the history of his people. And not only does he see that his family is gonna rift, but that ultimately they're going to be destroyed. And so it's touching and it's heart rending to see Nephi's fingerprints all over his narrative comparing himself to Joseph, but knowing at the end of the day that he falls short of that happy ending that Joseph had.

But then in addition, you also have some comparisons to David and Goliath a little bit. Now it's a little tricky because in the Book of Mormon, the Nephites don't seem to have a terribly high opinion of King David and King Solomon. We see elsewhere that they have a lot of criticisms of them. But at least in this initial narrative in the slaying of Laban, you've got a little bit of a parallel going on between Nephi slaying Laban and David killing Goliath. You've got the underdog slaying the mighty captain of at least 50 soldiers in Laban's case and who, against all odds, miraculously is able to prevail and demonstrate that he is chosen of God. He's the anointed one, if you will. But like I said, later on, there's also some polemic against this Davidic ideology about Jerusalem, about Israel, about kingship. And essentially the Nephites kind of say that, yeah, David and Solomon, they certainly had the right to Israelite kingship, but they also were really wicked. We as new Israel are going to keep the commandments and prosper in the land and they really take that to heart. So those are some things that we've seen from scholars trying to compare Nephi to and his plates to from a typological perspective, trying to see vast patterns in the texts that harken back to biblical narratives to try to draw new connections, new meaning, and new symbolism that can help bring the Book of Mormon's messages and stories closer to home.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, there's two things there that I want to pick up on. First is what you just touched on, that this leads us towards another large category of Book of Mormon scholarship. And we might call that intertextual, or sometimes we might call it canonical scholarship. This is work that takes the Book of Mormon and sets it side by side with the Bible and finds the resonances between the two books. And they are manifold, just as you have shown between the Old Testament in the Book of Mormon through typology, through moments of ritual, through the Law of Moses, and through narrative resonances, through linguistic poetic devices such as chiasmus, and also the New Testament, because the Book of Mormon, of course, is a revelation of Jesus Christ. And so it stands to reason that we're going to see all sorts of echoes and theological resonances of Christianity as it was instituted and developed in the old world and as it was instituted and developed in the new world. So this is a whole other sort of bucket of scholarship that is very, very rich and we'll get back to this, especially in second Nephi, when we tackle Isaiah for real.

The second thing that I wanted to pick up on what you just said is something that has really struck me this time through reading the book of First Nephi, and that is what a very sad story it is. I think in the past I've been too, I don't know, too quick maybe to focus on kind of the triumphant young Nephi, whether in celebrating that or maybe whether in looking at that critically. I think I haven't paid enough attention to the older Nephi behind the text, the older Nephi who's writing this text, the older and sadder Nephi who came to his place of sadness through great courage. There's this moment that Grant Hardy highlights that has really stuck with me. It's in 1st Nephi 11, where Nephi has asked the Lord to, has told the Lord that he wants to understand the things that his father saw in the dream. So the spirit comes to him and says, are you really sure that you want this? Are you really sure that you want to understand? What is it that you desire, Nephi? And Nephi answers, I desire to know the interpretation thereof. He wants to know. And in that moment, he is like Eve, who is willing to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the fruit of that knowledge was bitter, in many cases. Nephi saw that his family would split. He saw that he would never truly and adequately become the loving ruler and teacher over his brothers that he wanted to be for their good. He saw that his own people would ultimately be destroyed by the descendants of his brothers. Of course, there were wonderful views as well. He saw the coming of Jesus Christ and he understood the redemption. He saw the coming of Christ to minister to his people. So there were, of course, moments of light and joy. But in the end, Nephi is a somewhat isolated figure. He loves Jewish prophecies. He loves Jewish exegesis. He loves the ways of his people. And he's now in a new world where he tells us he's the only one who knows how to read texts in this way. He doesn't have an interpretive community anymore. And he's trying to teach his people. But in the end, I think he finds that he's going to have to liken the scriptures unto them and he's gonna have to build something new here. So I have come to recognize Nephi's sorrow and to recognize the courage that it took for him to be willing to know the things which he knew and then to share them with us the best that he could.

Gimenez: That's a really beautiful picture that you paint. And I 100% agree. I feel like I didn't start to really enjoy and appreciate the Isaiah chapters of 2nd Nephi until I understood how it's a reflection for him on thinking about the tragedy of his own people. It's a lot of excoriating Israel for their wickedness and their destruction, but Nephi is including it in a lot of ways because he sees his own people in that. And it's tragic to him and he never sees the fruition of the hopeful promises. But at the end of the Book of Mormon, you get just a tiny little hint of that hope when Moroni is concluding in Chapter 10, and he's alluding back to some verses of Isaiah where he's saying, arise from the dust, O daughter of Zion, and put on thy beautiful garments. And in the Isaiah chapters initially, the daughter of Zion is ashamed and she’s ravished and she's destroyed and it's a very shameful picture and that's reflective of the Nephite status. But then at the very end, Moroni kind of just says, we know our people were destroyed. It didn't end up the way we were really hoping, but we know that ultimately, beyond our lifetimes, beyond our eon even, there will be a redemption for Israel and it's going to come, you know, in the latter days, it's going to come when the Gospels preach to them and our words finally reach our descendants again through the Lamanites, through the restoration of the gospel. It's this idea that the daughter of Zion is gonna be redeemed, just not in any of the ways that we thought it was. And it's tragic and it's heartbreaking and it really moves me when I read those passages. But it's hopeful because now it's on us as latter day Israel, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ to then try to share that and to give that redemption for the sad and sorrowing Nephi and for the sad and sorrowing Moroni.

Welch: I love that. That we can, our gratitude for what Nephi has given us can be expressed in the way that we value and share the work that he made possible. Jasmine, we're coming here towards the wrapping up time of our interview. I wanted to talk briefly about one more very special publication. This is called Approaching the Tree: Interpreting First Nephi 8. This is a brand new publication of the Maxwell Institute, hot off the presses. And it was edited by three wonderful scholars, Benjamin Keough, who is a young theologian in Scotland, Joseph Spencer, who has shown up here abundantly already today, and Jennifer Champoux, who is a scholar of art history.

What is so special about this book is that it is a book of essays, eight essays, all of them interpreting first Nephi eight, interspersed with original commissioned artworks depicting Lehigh's dream. We have artworks by J. Kirk Richards, by Annie Poon, by Megan Gileman. And there's also a wonderful review essay where Jenny Champoux reviews the history of artistic representations of Lehigh's dream. Here's a wonderful one by Rose Datoc-Dall.

So it's just a beautiful book for one thing, but it demonstrates something really important, which is that one thing that makes scripture different from other kinds of writing is that it is especially rich interpretively. Now, all writing is subject to multiple interpretations. That's just the way the written word works, right? We write something down. We send it out of its context, somebody else reads it in a whole different context, and they can't ask us what we meant. So it's subject to being interpreted in different ways by readers. But with scripture in particular, because it is our canon, because we recognize it as having a kind of religious and spiritual authority over us and speaking the divine word with God's voice, that makes it especially rich and fertile for interpretation. So an important point that I hope readers leave our interview today with is not that, well, I think that Hardy was right and Spencer was wrong, or I think that Reynolds was wrong and so-and-so was right. I hope it's clear that there are multiple interpretations that are available and enlightening of the same passage of scripture. Now that doesn't mean that anything goes. There are definitely some interpretations that are ruled out. We have to work within the parameters of what is written and what is true, as you said earlier. Nevertheless, Scripture gives itself to us individually as a site for personal revelation. And so it will yield interpretive fruits of all different kinds and varieties. And that is OK. And that is right. So there's no sense in which here we're searching for the one, the one single true interpretation or the one single true approach. With scripture in particular, more is good.

So I would encourage listeners to pick up this book. I have an essay in it where I talk about what happens if you read Lehi's dream in two different contexts. This is kind of an outside-in approach. If you read it in one context, in a biblical, intertextual context, then a certain theological picture emerges. If you read it in a different interpretive context, the context of an early American agrarian farm, the context that the earliest readers of the Book of Mormon would have likely read it and received it, then a different kind of theological picture of God emerges. And you'll see that mine is only one of many wonderful theological approaches to Lehi's dream. And in particular, I draw attention, I won't take the time to review it now, but I draw attention to Joe Spencer's introductory essay where he reviews the history of interpretations of First Nephi 8. And he shows how that kind of works as a wonderful case study for understanding the large schools of thought that over, as I said, the past 50 to 70 years we have really opened up the Book of Mormon for us. From a kind of historical method, as we talked about, an outside in contextual method, to a literary method that starts from within the text and works outward, to a doctrinal method that uses the Book of Mormon, finds verses and moments in the Book of Mormon that illustrate doctrinal truths and uses as a moment, as a way to teach us doctrinal truths. Finally, too, a kind of theological approach that is probably, I think you alluded to this earlier, maybe one of the newer approaches to the Book of Mormon, which is very much an inside out, an inside first approach, reading the text of scripture deeply and carefully and in the expectation that there will be a variety of interpretive fruits that yield, that are harvested from that theological approach to the Book of Mormon.

Yeah, anything? Have you taken a look at this book? What do you think of this volume?

Gimenez: Yeah, so I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I have read some of the papers and I thought it was really interesting. I thought yours was really fun about taking an approach of an agrarian farm and how that lens changes the picture of the Tree of Life vision because I tend to be a very traditional, stodgy, like historical, ancient context sort of person. And so in the biblical world, exegesis is the interpretation of, you know, how would the original audience have received this? What was the original intent of that author? And in the biblical world, that means an ancient Near Eastern context. You've got to go outside in, you've got to take outside sources and figure out, okay, what's the context here? Because that's going to influence the interpretation of that original audience and that intention of the author. But the Book of Mormon is such a tricky issue because the authors we believe and hold are ancient, and they're coming from an ancient Near Eastern, maybe ancient American persuasion, but their intended audience is modern. Their intended audience is for us in the latter days, for the descendants of the Lamanites. And so they don't necessarily know what modern culture and context, they don't know how to communicate in that language, but they're trying to. And so in some ways, it's very important for us to also say, okay, well, how would the first audience, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Emma, those scribes that were scribing the dictation, how would they have received this? How would the earliest saints who took the printed Book of Mormon in their hands, how would they have maybe interpreted these images and symbols and how does that change our picture of the Tree of Life and does that have interpretive value? And so I think we could use a lot more of how does it fit in a 19th century setting? How would it have been received in a 19th century setting? And we need both approaches to say, okay, what did the authors intend? And then how is it received by the audience? And what's the relationship between those two? Um, I think was really interesting. And as you mentioned with, um, with the overview article about, uh, the history of the scholarship of first Nephi chapter eight was really instructive. I mean, he clearly is pretty well read on all of the approaches people have taken. And there are many. And I think it is really important to have that context and that background to know where we've been so we know where we're going. If we're going to start a new approach for the Book of Mormon, we probably should make sure it hasn't already been done before because chances are it has. I mean, we are still a really young discipline, but there's been a lot of great scholarship done over the last 40, 50 years. And what I think is so remarkable about Book of Mormon studies in particular is how accessible it is. I know we've been talking a lot about some insider baseball when it comes to scholarship, but the level of transparency and accessibility you get with Book of Mormon scholarship is fairly unique in, at least in the biblical studies world, you have to buy very, very expensive volumes and go to archives and libraries to kind of get access to some of the scholarship. Whereas with the Book of Mormon, because Latter-day Saints, lay Latter-day Saints have such an avid interest in understanding the sacred text, so much of this is available online for free.

You've mentioned the Maxwell Institute and the BYU Scholars Archive has many, many articles freely available online. The Book of Mormon Central Archive also has many articles available online, the Interpreter Foundation. There are just so many that want to make this accessible. This isn't about gatekeeping, this is about making it available so that everyone can feast upon the word. And so as part of demystifying the scholarship, I'd encourage anyone to look up any of these articles. And with the exception of the printed volumes, like Approaching the Tree and the Brief Theological Introductions, I think everything you can find available for free online somewhere so that you can dive in for yourself and just really take the Book of Mormon to a new level by diving into some of the scholarship because there are unique insights there and keen eyes that will uncover some of your blind spots you maybe never had considered before.

Welch: Jasmin, I could not agree more. Thank you so much for saying that. Yes, it is my hope throughout this whole interview that everything we've said has been intriguing and inviting. And I assure you that if you have a basic familiarity with the Book of Mormon as a Latter-day Saint who has been raised in our culture, you can understand this scholarship. And it will add and open your eyes to, and make the text new and fresh for you again as we approach it through this year. I hope that, what I'm hoping is that these podcast episodes will reinvigorate your own study and reopen your eyes to the treasure that we have in the Book of Mormon. I wanted to conclude here, Jasmine, by each of us just sharing a passage from the Book of First Nephi that has lifted us, inspired us, and strengthened our own personal faith. Would you like to go first? Sharing something that has meant a lot to you.

Gimenez: Sure. I, as I was thinking about this, I landed on 1 Nephi chapter 2 verse 16. This is when they're in the valley of Lemuel and Nephi is reflecting upon his father's visions and his prophetic calling. And he says that, I, Nephi, having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore I did cry into the Lord, and behold, he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father. And I really love that passage because it's very inviting. It's very empowering. We think of Nephi as this kind of superhero, triumphant character who always does what's right, and he's always just the archetypal good guy, but he didn't always start there. At least that's what this hints. And it always, it started with him with asking God, wanting to know the mysteries of God, wanting to understand what his father did and having that desire to learn is what led him on this journey to arrive where he was when he finally wrote his plates. And it's an invitation to me to also seek and learn. And there's an aspect of humility to it as well that because he sought to know the mysteries of God, his heart was softened.

Usually you might think, oh, if I can know the mysteries of God, I'll have this elite knowledge of God and I'll have this, I'll be superior because I'll have this insider knowledge of God and his revelations. But that's, it has the opposite effect for Nephi. Once he was inducted into the mysteries of God and God visited him, it resulted in a softening of his heart instead of an elevating of his ego. And it resulted in humility. And I think that tends to be how it goes for me. The more I think I know the more I learned that I really don't know very much at all. And so I really admire Nephi's willingness to humbly seek and to be further humbled by that process.

Welch: I love that, Jasmin. In our minds, we're definitely moving along the same tracks because the scripture that I chose is very much related. It's 1 Nephi 10, verses 18 and 19. And just as a brief intro, I had been thinking about the great commandment that Christ gives his disciples in the New Testament, right? He says all of the commandments can be subsumed under two great heads: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, and strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. So love in the New Testament is the great commandment. And I was thinking about what is the great commandment in the Book of Mormon? Can all the individual commandments be subsumed under one overarching imperative? And I think it can. And I think it's the commandment that, again, we see in the Sermon on the Mount to ask, seek, and knock: to ask of God that He will reveal His mysteries unto us. And so I think that's what we see here in 1st Nephi 10 verses 18, actually 17 through 19. I Nephi was desirous also that I might see and hear and know of these things by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek Him, as well in times of old as in the time that He should manifest Himself unto the children of men. For he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the way is prepared for all men from the foundation of the world, if it so be that they repent and come unto him. For he that diligently seeketh shall find, and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come, wherefore the course of the Lord is one eternal round. So it seems to me that the great commandment of the Book of Mormon is to ask, seek, and knock for the new thing that God is doing in the world. God has called a new prophet in Lehi and in Nephi. He has given them new prophecy. He has given them new scripture. The Liahona in this beautiful way symbolizes with the overriding, with the words that, the new words that would appear on the Liahona, it symbolizes the way that God's word is always coming to us refreshed and renewed. He's given them a new land, new nourishment in the wilderness and more than anything, He's given them a new revelation of Himself, a new revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that these are the mysteries that both in the passage that you chose and in this one that Nephi is open to knowing. He is open and is faithful and is diligently seeking for the new things that God is doing in the world. And it seems like this is what Laman and Lemuel can't ever quite get their mind around. They believe in God and they believe in past prophecies, but they can't quite believe that God is doing a new thing in the world now, and that he's inviting them to ask, seek, and knock to come into new and fresh and personal relation with him. So I find those, I have found those verses newly rich and newly inspiring in my own ongoing journey to ask, to seek, and to knock at the door of God.

Gimenez: That's beautiful. I really love that take.

Welch: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Jasmin, for being with us today. I think this was an invigorating and exciting romp through Book of Mormon Scholarship on 1st Nephi. Thank you so much for your expertise, for your great communication skills, and for your testimony.