Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: 2 Nephi Scholarship with Timothy Farrant

Rosalynde Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute's Book of Mormon Studies Podcast. My name is Rosalynde Welch. I'm the host of the podcast and I'm joined today by my friend and my colleague, Dr. Timothy Farrant. Tim is a postdoctoral fellow here at the Maxwell Institute after completing his PhD in medieval theology at the University of Oxford, Pembroke College. So, welcome to the podcast, Tim.

Timothy Farrant: Hello, Roz!

Welch: Today we are going to be talking about some highlights of the scholarly literature that's been written on the book of 2 Nephi. And I'll start out by saying there is a big elephant in the room, or there's a big elephant not in the room, which is the question of Isaiah in 2 Nephi. That is a big question. And I've decided that I'm going to record a whole dedicated episode talking about Isaiah in the Book of Mormon that'll air later in the season. So we're not going to address any of the issues of Isaiah intertextuality in 2nd Nephi today--which I'm kind of glad about because as fascinating as Isaiah and intertextuality is, there's so much more to think about in the Book of 2nd Nephi. It's one of the richest in the Book of Mormon. So we're going to focus on some other aspects of the book today. And Tim, you are going to start us off by giving us a taste of one of our other colleagues, Terryl Givens', brief theological introduction on the book of 2nd Nephi. So give us a sense for what Terryl is doing in that little book.

Farrant: Perfect. Thanks for the very kind introduction. I must say. Oh, I also have my copy here of the book. I must admit it's with relief that I received the news that we're not going to do sort of an in-depth textual analysis of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon because I think you know, there are people that are far more expert than I sort of in this but, I think I really enjoyed Terryl Given's brief theological introduction because it gives us a nice sort of clean, accessible way into the text and a way of making sense of the text as well. And I think that perhaps one of his most interesting developments in reading 2nd Nephi, or at least in my experience of reading 2nd Nephi, is that he says that there are two phases in Nephi's record. And he says that the first phase accompanies the Lehi's family throughout the wilderness in them leaving Jerusalem, but the second phase begins with the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Old World. And I think that there is a way of reading this that sort of lends itself to the beginning of understanding what the New Covenant means, so that the blending together of old and new covenants in the Book of Mormon. The importance of the person of Jesus, of Jesus Christ, and sort of the pre-Christian Christian understanding of Christ by Book of Mormon prophets.

Welch: So Tim, just to clarify for a second, so right here in the first chapter of 2nd Nephi is where we learn -Lehi prophesies- that Jerusalem has been destroyed. And so this kind of, inaugurates a second phase in the story of the Lehite clan's migration. And Terryl makes the really interesting suggestion that this is why 2nd Nephi starts where it does. There's not really another clear textual reason why Nephi would choose to divide the books right there, unless you read something very significant into the reality that now there's no going back to Jerusalem. They are genuinely in a new phase where there's no turning back and there's a kind of new covenant--or a new era in the story of God's covenant relationship with the Lehi peoples. Is that what Terryl is getting at?

Farrant: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that this becomes a really valuable sort of observation because there's lots that we can do with this. Now, I've also read this article on the moral risks of reading scripture by George Handley and I understand we're probably going to get to this later. Right.

Welch: We’ll get to that a little later, yeah, but feel free to bring something in now if you'd like to.

Farrant: Yeah, yeah, there's one thing that I like, that I think is relevant to this discussion that George Handley touches upon, and that's introducing the figurative reading of scripture. And Terryl's big on, you know, the pre-existence in Christian thought, thinking about the pre-existence seriously in relation to the Book of Mormon, in relation to other Latter-day Saint forms of scripture. And I think that this idea of the destruction of Jerusalem –we can either read this historically, and I think we absolutely should. There's historical precedence for understanding the captivity of Jerusalem and the destruction of it. But I also think that there's a way of reading this figuratively. So destruction meaning that there's no going back, right? So whatever sort of existence was experienced by Lehi's family, or is experienced by us before coming into the wilderness, right? So travels throughout the wilderness that could be likened to our mortal existence, right? That first phase of existence has come to an end. There's no turning back. And so now we have this obligation to create a Zion-like community, right? Whether that's in the wilderness or whether that's traveling towards like this hoped for promised land.

Welch: So since we can't turn around and go back to kind of the holy city that's already been built, figuratively speaking, as we're all sort of a part of Lehi's journey on our own journey through the wilderness, we have to build our own holy city now, kind of where we are or where God leads us to, rather than relying on what's been done in the past. Is that the idea?

Farrant: Yeah, so when Terryl actually gets to the text of 2nd Nephi, he talks about Lehi's original dislocation. This is a quote from Terryl, right? So “Lehi's original dislocation in Exodus becomes a prelude, not to a new geographical gathering, but a shadow of the permanent reconstitution of Zion into spiritual refuge.” And there's sort of talk of temple building here, right? There's talk of baptism that comes later at the end of the book of 2nd Nephi. And there's ways of understanding what it means to form covenantal relationships within a community to relate rightly to one another after experiencing this intense dislocation. And so I think all of this points, like this break in the text there, I think Terryl rightly points to, all of this points to what it means to establish a Zion-like community, right, and what it means to engage in Zion-like, um, covenantal sort of obligations with others that inhabit this same space.

Welch: So it's not about being in one particular place that is designated to be holy for one reason or the other, but instead what it means to be in Zion means to have a particular quality of relationships and a particular quality of community wherever we might be located on planet Earth.

Farrant: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is where Christ comes majestically into the conversation as well, because Christ represents what it means to engage in these covenantal relationships, in these covenantal obligations. And this will eventually lead to the establishment of sort of formal covenants through baptism, right, and through temple ordinances and sort of recovering this idea of the Abrahamic promise of gathering the human family. They also reveal significant elements of Christ's mortal ministry, his passion, his death, his resurrection, the atonement of Christ, understanding or providing Christ is, or Christ becomes a way of understanding this narrative of fall and what restoration really means, right? So restoration in Christ. And so I like that the way that Terryl approaches the book of 2nd Nephi, which, if I'm perfectly honest, I see myself on the same sort of faith journey and study journey as everybody else, right? Sometimes it can be difficult to get into the text and to understand sort of what's happening with the scriptural narrative. I think Terryl Givens provides this wonderful way of sort of approaching the text where scripture begins to resonate with, that will resonate with the very fabric of our own lives and our own sort of faith understandings.

Welch: I like that. And you said something that made a connection for me when you mentioned that you know Christ--when Christ really comes into view in 2nd Nephi. Of course we received the beginnings of the messianic prophecies in 1st Nephi, but here in 2nd Nephi, especially in chapter 25 and chapter 26, we see a real theology of Jesus Christ and theology of salvation in Christ. And so he really steps into view. And it strikes me that Christ and covenant are really a partnership or a pair in Second Nephi, right? Sometimes people, traditionally Christians may have thought that there was kind of an old Mosaic covenant and then Christ came and inaugurated an entirely different and new covenant. But I think what Terryl shows us is that the Book of Mormon is doing something much more integrated, right? That throughout salvation history, from Adam and Eve to the present day, Christ and covenant are always working together to save us, as partners. In other words, covenant is the way that Christ uses to save us. And so just as the Book of Mormon shows that Christ is one, right, that he was the pre-existent God, he was the pre-mortal Jehovah who led the Israelites; and then we see these prophecies of his mortal ministry; and of course, in third Nephi, we see him as a majestic, resurrected divine being. And it shows us, you know, all those phases of Christ's ministry as one. In the same way, it shows us that God's covenant with his children as one from the beginning. That it's not as though the Abrahamic covenant was only good for a time and then it ended and now we're onto something new and better. No, there's one covenant, the new and everlasting covenant, that has been God's intention to save his children and bring us back to him and provide the conditions wherein we can become like him from the very beginning. And that covenant is still in effect and it still provides the structure through which we relate to the Savior and can ultimately return to be with him.

Farrant: No, yeah, absolutely. I think in this respect, this is at least prompts my thoughts in the direction of why Latter-day Saint Scripture is unique or what's like this sort of unique quality of Latter-day Saint Scripture. And I think one of the unique qualities of Latter-day Saint Scripture is Christ is fully present, right? He's fully present in pre-mortal existence. He's fully present throughout, you know, the Old Testament in the in sort of the rewriting of Genesis in Moses, right? In sort of the writings that we have about Abraham, but then also in the Book of Mormon in this remarkable way. And I think, at least my view is what's happening in the book is that there's a distinction is being drawn between Lehi and Nephi and Jacob, right? So Lehi absolutely prophesies of Christ. He prophesies of the coming of a Messiah who's going to redeem people from their sins and that this is going to be a future event. But I think Lehi's prophecies are actually very nonspecific, right? They don't have the sort of specificity that Nephi and Jacob developed. And so when Lehi recounts his vision, for instance, to Nephi, He's trying to articulate what it means, right, for Jesus to come in the flesh, for the great condescension of God to occur. And what it means for us who are sort of traveling through this mortal wilderness to encounter Christ in the wilderness, right? And, and, um, sort of find this hope of salvation. And when he recounts this to Nephi, Nephi doesn't really know what to do with any of this imagery, right? He doesn't understand it in the way that that the Lehi presented to him. And so what Nephi does within the text is that he engages in dialogue with the spirit to sort of explicate all of this imagery, like in greater detail. And so he sees the Virgin giving birth, right? He sees the passion and suffering of Christ. He sees the crucifixion, right? He sees all of these things sort of envisioned. And then in order to instruct his brothers and his people within the promised land when they get there, him and Jacob both take on the task of reimagining Isaiah but finding Christ fully present and specifically present within the text. And then you get mention of Jesus Christ, right? Then you get very specific expositions on the atonement of Jesus Christ, very specific expositions on the mortal ministry of Jesus Christ. The specificity that arises, I think, in the text is distinct from Lehi's prophecies, at least sort of in my reading of the Book of Mormon. And I think that demonstrates that Christ comes to occupy a space within the scriptural record in the Book of Mormon in this very powerful way, right, that resonates with all of the readers, that Christ isn't just incarnated in this like one specific space and time, right, for a period of 33 years, but the incarnation of Christ and the presence of Christ's incarnation can be more keenly felt by all humans, right, wherever they find themselves.

Welch: Yes, yeah, that's a really important theme throughout. From Nephi on the one hand, you know, 600 years before Christ comes to Moroni at the other end of the Book of Mormon, 400 years after Christ comes, I think they're both keenly interested in how it is that people who are not in the immediate presence of Christ can nevertheless come to be in relation to him and come to develop a kind of saving faith in him. And I think both of them center on this idea of covenant in the end, as covenant is the way that we do that. I love the distinction you've drawn out here and I see it. And I'm grateful for both. I'm grateful for the plainness with which Nephi and Jacob give us to understand who Christ is, or who he will be from their perspective. On the other hand, I love Lehi's dream as well. And you kind of pointed to this. Because it's a bit more open-ended, there's a way in which it invites us into it, right? And it invites us to identify with that figure of Lehi who's wandering lost in the wilderness and cries out to the Lord and ultimately finds deliverance in him. So I appreciate both of those prophetic modes that we see on display there early in the Book of Mormon.

Farrant: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think there’s no coincidence in the arrangement of the, you know, at least the printed, the final printed copy of the Book of Mormon. Because, I think there, the text is received in a very different way. I think it begins with Mosiah, but the way that we read the book, it begins with 1st Nephi and 2nd Nephi. And so, my reading of this is that Nephi, and Lehi, and Jacob are really presenting like, or providing this case of, how do we read the imagery of scripture? When we're presented with this, with scriptural ambiguities or with imagery that may be unclear, how are we supposed to engage with it? And I think that's one of the major distinctions between the small plates and the large plates is that the latter are concerned with the history of these people, but the former are concerned with this sort of special purpose. And so it's almost as if the historical critical method is not going to help us, right?

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Farrant: But engaging in the text, but what will help us is an understanding of scripture as a distinct text from all other texts, right, and the fact that we can have this transformative experience with scripture, right, if we engage in, I think, the figurative language and the spiritual nature of its imagery all alongside the sort of realization of the historical nature of the text itself.

Welch: Well, you're setting us up nicely for the piece that you're going to lead us through a little bit later. But first, I'm going to intervene here. I think Terryl Givens is very elegant and clear exposition of the way that the Book of Mormon integrates the Old and the New Covenants, the Old and the New Testaments, and shows it really as one everlasting covenant. That resonates really well with a piece that I wanted to share, and I think it's very timely and important and provocative in certain ways. It's this book by the scholar Bradley J. Kramer, and it's titled Gathered in One, How the Book of Mormon Counters Anti-semitism in the New Testament.And even just that title may get some readers wondering, what does that mean, anti-Semitism in the New Testament? What is he talking about? So he starts out with this real interpretive problem for readers of the New Testament who hold it as scripture. And the problem is that there are elements within the New Testament that have been interpreted and used as pretext or justification for anti-Semitic attitudes and vile anti-Semitic actions as well. So what are we to do with those elements in the New Testament? How can we change our frame of reference so that they don't yield such bitter fruits to those who read and revere the text? This is the problem that Kramer undertakes in this book and he sees a really promising, I think, solution in the Book of Mormon. So maybe just to start out, for a lot of listeners, they might be saying, what, how could the New Testament be anti-semitic? Jesus was a Jew, and that's true. There are really just a few kind of particular points that historically certain Christian readers of the New Testament have latched on to, to justify anti-Jewish sentiment. One very specific one is in Matthew 27, verses 23 to 25, and this is sometimes called the blood curse passage. And this is when Pilate, the Roman official, finally acquiesces to the multitude. In Matthew, in the King James Version, it says, all the people then demanded that Jesus be crucified and his blood be on us and on our children. And this passage was incorporated into Good Friday services in many traditional Catholic denominations for many centuries. Now the intent probably was to increase devotion for the suffering Jesus and to remember his passion on Good Friday. But unfortunately, the effect has often been to incite a kind of generalized hatred against the Jews, a kind of stain on Jewish identity itself, transcending time and place. And it's been used as the pretext for many antisemitic actions. Second, we can see in the New Testament a sort of negative portrayal of Pharisees. And anybody who's read especially the synoptic gospels, well, and the gospel of John, will recognize this, that Pharisees are portrayed very negatively as hypocritical, judgmental, rule-bound, superficial, spiritually blind, and prideful. And there's a way in which the Pharisees, because there's really no other distinct set of Jewish people who are emphasized, the Pharisees tend to kind of stand in for the entire Jewish people. Another issue in the New Testament that sometimes has been interpreted in anti-semitic ways is the way that the law of Moses is portrayed, especially in the Gospel of John, where those who obey the law of Moses and observe it are sort of shown to be kind of legalistic and kind of trivially minded. John 5 is a good example of this, where Christ heals the man at the pool of Bethesda, but Jewish leaders can only focus on the fact that the man picked up his mat and carried it on the Sabbath day, which was an abrogation of the law. And finally, kind of at the largest level, there's this idea that's called “super-sessionism.” And this is the idea sometimes gleaned from, I think, an incorrect understanding of the epistles of the Apostle Paul, that Christianity has superseded or displaced the nation of Israel as God's covenant people and that the new covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant which was exclusive to Jews. And here you can hear echoes of what we were talking about with Terryl. So those are four issues in the New Testament that unfortunately have lent themselves to kind of anti-Jewish interpretations and understandings. So how do non-Latter-day Saint Christian scholars deal with this? Many scholars in good faith have done their best to try to understand how as Christian readers of the New Testament, we can make sure that we are reading this text responsibly. And they suggest mostly that we need to put the New Testament in its historical context. We need to understand that when it was written, eight or nine decades into the common era, it was written at a time when Jewish-Christian tensions were rising, and when Christianity was a tiny minority in the Roman Empire that depended on, for its survival, on Roman tolerance.

And so that, they suggest, kind of explains how it is that these these portrayals of, for instance, the trial of Christ, tend to give a pass to Pilate while putting the blame on Jewish people, that it reflects in the moment the kind of embattled state of the new Christian church and that we should understand and take into account those possible biases of the writers of the New Testament when we interpret these chapters. And the other thing they suggest is that any particular passage needs to be read and interpreted in the light of the New Testament as a whole. So we can't zoom in on just one particular passage and take that as kind of justification or pretext for sweeping anti-Semitic conclusions. So I think these are both very well taken. But Kramer worries that we can erode the authority of the New Testament too much. If we start chipping away at it and saying, you know, we have to set aside certain passages or we have to reread them in different ways, that this can kind of erode the moral authority of the New Testament as a whole. And so he shows, and it's his thesis, that the Book of Mormon works to counter the anti-Semitic elements in the New Testament, but it's able to do so without undermining the religious authority or the spiritual reliability of the New Testament. And it does that simply by adding new information to the Christian canon, but without specifically challenging or undermining the New Testament. And so I think this is a really fascinating suggestion. And he has sort of a handful of particular ways that he sees the Book of Mormon doing this. And I'll just briefly touch on a few of these. Thinking about this question of a kind of inherited guilt for the crucifixion of Christ that somehow stains the identity of all Jewish people, Kramer points us to 2nd Nephi chapter 10. And this is Jacob who's writing at this point. And he shows how Jacob actually very specifically absolves the vast majority of Jewish people from any guilt for Christ's death by specifically narrowing the responsibility to those who were at Jerusalem -so excluding all diaspora Jews- and further narrowing it down to just a few Jewish priests and leaders, not the general Jewish populace. I think that's a powerful observation. He also, thinking about the way in which kind of portrayals of the Pharisees in the New Testament can be be parlayed into a sort of anti-Jewish negativity more generally. He points out that in the Book of Mormon, any negative portrayals of pre-captivity Jews, like we do see in 2nd Nephi 25, Nephi places them very deliberately in the past tense. He says, for these pre-captivity Jews, the ones who expelled Lehi, he says, “theirs were works of darkness” and “their doings were doings of abominations.” So there's no way that you can, on the basis of the Book of Mormon, generalize that small group of Jewish people to a kind of overall temperament or nature of the Jewish people. And he, on the contrary, the Book of Mormon, he sees doing something very, very interesting. Just as the New Testament kind of sets up a group of bad Jews and good Jews –the Pharisees and then followers of Jesus. The Book of Mormon in a way does something similar, right, with the Nephites and the Lamanites. But what's different in the Book of Mormon is that from the title page, we see God's commitment and love to even the group of Jewish people who were lost for a time, right, the Lamanites. And you see that God will never cast off His people, even when they are estranged from him for a time. So that totally changes the interpretive lens and disallows an interpretation of the New Testament that says, well, the bad Jewish people there have permanently broken their relationship with God. We see from the Book of Mormon that relationship is intact and that God remembers his covenant with the House of Israel. On that message, of course, on that theme, the Book of Mormon writ large is one huge denial of the idea of super-sessionism because the whole premise of the Book of Mormon is that the Jewish people, the house of Israel, are permanently and presently and continuously remembered by God as His covenant people. And it rules out any possibility of God's rejecting the house of Israel because the restoration of Israel and the gathering of Israel is its great theme. And then just finally, the Book of Mormon also very effectively counters the portrayal of the law of Moses in the New Testament as something that is legalistic or primitive or childish, because in the Book of Mormon, observance of the law of Moses is shown very, very positively and shown to go hand in hand with the recognition of Christ as the Messiah. In Second Nephi 5, Nephi tells us, “we did observe to keep the judgments and the statutes and the commandments of the Lord in all things according to the law of Moses.” So the law of Moses in the Book of Mormon is shown as a gift of grace from God. It's a preparation and a kind of spiritual lens that helps the obedient to see Christ in all things. It is fulfilled in Christ and suspended when Christ comes, but it is never portrayed in a negative way. In fact, we see in the Book of Helaman when the Lamanites come to be converted to Christ, they begin to observe the Law of Moses. So far from faith and salvation to Christ being opposed to observance of the Law of Moses, there in the Book of Helaman, we see them working together hand in hand. So in all of these ways, I think Kramer very persuasively shows, related to the work that Terryl Givens is doing, how the Book of Mormon integrates and unites and places hand in hand the witnesses of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And it does it in a way, I think, that is respectful of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, that affirms their moral authority and affirms the goodness of the writers of scripture who produced and preserved these records for our use today, but gives us a broader understanding and a broader context so that we can properly interpret the portrayal of Jewish people in the New Testament. So what do you think of all that, Tim?

Farrant: I think that was expertly done. I actually envy your ability to sort of gloss an entire text so proficiently. I do think though, that it sounds like Kramer's book, which I haven't admittedly, I've not read this. Is it University of Illinois Press?

Welch: No, it's published by Kofford Books. Yeah, Kofford Books, yeah.

Farrant: Oh, by Koford. I knew it would be one of the sort of Latter-day Saints, sort of publishing arms, if not University of Illinois. But this, anti-Semitic readings of the New Testament become a serious problem, especially throughout my period in the Middle Ages, where Jews are constantly held to account for the death of Christ. And it's almost this sort of original sin-like transmission of guilt to a particular people. And without detracting from your gloss of Kramer's book, I think this reminds me of the idea that we're, so in the second section of Terryl's brief theological introduction, it's titled, They are not cast off, right? And he really brings home the idea that we're refugees, you know, perhaps after this treacherous sea crossing and the loss of a former land, we find ourselves as wanderers, right, in this new landscape. And Terryl makes the point that this would appeal to the 19th-century Latter-day Saints, many of them have migrated or emigrated across the sea in search of a new Jerusalem in comparable circumstances as Lehi and Nephi leaving the old world behind in search of the new. But I think this idea of us relating to people that have been continually dislocated and displaced is really important in the modern tradition. And a couple of years ago, I think actually it was 2016, which only seems like a couple of years ago, but Elder Patrick Kieran gave this general conference address called Refuge from the Storm. And within it, he says, as members of the church, as a people, we don't have to look back far in our history to reflect on times when we were refugees, violently driven from homes and farms over and over again. And then he leads to this sort of conclusion. The Lord has instructed that in the stakes of Zion, or that the stakes of Zion are to be a defense and a refuge from the storm. We have found refuge. Let us come from our safe places and share with them from our abundance, hope for a brighter future, faith in God and in our fellow man, and love that sees beyond cultural and ideological differences to the glorious truth that we are all children of our heavenly father. And I think that this message is like really captured within the narrative of the Book of Mormon. But it's so important, right? Especially in the modern present sort of historical moment that we find ourselves in, where there's increasing prejudice, whether that's sort of religious prejudice or otherwise, right, there's increasing forms of Islamophobia and anti-semitism. And there are, you know, the conflicts within the Middle East continue, continue to seemingly get worse and worse and worse as we as Western nations sort of like look on, right? And I think that this is an incredibly important message for us to recognize that we're all connected to the same human family, right? And God has the same love and concern for each of us as individuals. And the communities that we build ought to incorporate every member of the human family, none are excluded. And that so that there shall be no poor among us.

Welch: Yeah. Well, it really strikes me that this might be one of the reasons for which the Book of Mormon was brought forth in our day. We talk a lot about how the Book of Mormon was meant for our day, but do we really ask ourselves why and how? And you are so right that the Book of Mormon as a whole is the story of a refugee band –and not just one, but multiple groups of refugees who find themselves homeless, far from their place of origin, lost and looking for refuge. And they ultimately find refuge in Christ, but they rely on the people around them to give them physical refuge. And this may be one of the great themes that is supposed to come into focus now, today, and is supposed to act on the hearts of us as its latter day readers now. Well, Tim, this discussion has led us kind of perfectly to the next piece that we're gonna talk about, this one is a little bit more abstract, but in some ways it's the most relevant of anything that we've talked about. So I'll warn our listeners that it's gonna get a little bit abstract, but I'll promise you that it's gonna be worth it to stick with us. Tim, you're gonna walk us through a piece by our colleague here at Brigham Young University, George Handley. So give us an overview of what George does.

Farrant: Yeah, no, I'm more than happy to. I'm not as convinced that the segue into this chapter can be the case for it can be made quite smoothly as you've made the case for going from Givens to Kramer, right? But the title of this chapter appeared, I believe, in the proceedings of one of the Latter-day Saint theology seminars from a few years ago.

Welch: That's right. It was the book Reading Nephi, Reading Isaiah, 2nd Nephi 26-27, so the volume of the LDS theology seminar focusing on 2nd Nephi 26-27.

Farrant: Yeah, and I believe that's available on the BYU Scholars Archive, right? And so George Handley contributes a paper that becomes a chapter and it's on the moral risks of reading scripture. He presents these two theories of reading, and one of them are sort of secular theories of approaching the text and uses the term sort of historical critical, right? And then the other is sort of this sort of entrenched defensive mode of reading that sometimes emerges within religious traditions. And the sense that the text is static, right, and there's no negotiation of the message.

Welch: And that there's like, there's some--there's something that's true and it's there in scriptures and we already know what's true. So when we go to scriptures, our job is to look for it and to find it and maybe underline all the stuff that we already know is true. Is that kind of what you're describing?

Farrant: Yeah, yeah, no, I think so. And, and what Handley points out is, or at least to me, introduces these really important questions, right, about what happens when we approach a sacred text, and what makes a text sacred, right? And I've been thinking recently about the Anthon episode that Handley references. And I think my traditional sort of approach to the Anthon episode is that…

Welch: So remind our listeners what the Anthon episode is that you're referring to.

Farrant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, my traditional approach is that Martin Harris wants Joseph Smith to copy down some characters, right, from the original characters of the Book of Mormon, prior to their appearance in English, right. And he wants them to take a trip, I think, to Columbia University and to visit some academics in New York City to get this academic verification, right, of the translation. Ultimately what happens is that Martin Harris leaves without the academic verification that he sought, right? And there are different narratives that emerge in relation to this. Charles Anthon and Martin Harris produced very different explanations. Terryl Givens would say that the result is whatever happened in the exchanges, right? That Martin Harris was willing to mortgage his farm and fund the printing of the Book of Mormon. So he comes away entirely satisfied, right? –from this interaction.

But I think what this suggests to me is that the fact that we no longer have the gold plates, right? The fact that the academic verification, for whatever reason, doesn't pass down to us, right? Suggests that the Book of Mormon is a text that is not simply just a linguistic translation from a historical record, but it's a text that emerges in a miraculous way. And that our reading and engagement with the text requires some sort of miraculous transformation of the self in the very act of reading it, right? And I think what I like about the Anthon episode is that it's an especially sort of compelling case of this, but it relates directly to the mention of the learned man who cannot read a sealed book right in 2nd Nephi. And that's sort of taken out from the book of Isaiah, right and reused in 2nd Nephi. And I think that this is a compelling case for reading. I mean, me as sort of a trained academic scholar like to think that, you know, I have the interpretive tools of approaching a text and analyzing it and asking questions of who's it about and where were they and can I locate geographically where they were at this time?And I think I've come to the conclusion that, while, there is some merit to that. I think there's greater merit to taking the book seriously as scripture and allowing us to have this sort of transformative experience with the text. It reminds me actually of book eight of Augustine's confessions when he has this conversion, right? And so, Augustine is sat in this Milan garden and Augustine is like this, uh, a fourth, fifth century Bishop, right. And, um, he's, uh, born in North Africa and he's educated in Italy and he sort of travels extensive extensively in Italy. He joins a few, uh, um, different groups and sects. He becomes a retort. And so he teaches, um, he teaches logic and rhetoric, right. And, and…To begin with, or at least initially, he has a very poor view of the Bible or of scripture. He sees it as unsophisticated and unrefined compared to sort of philosophical writings of the day. But then he has this sort of gradual conversion experience leading to a conversation that he has with a friend in a garden in Milan. And then a time where he feels overwhelming grief for the sort of, the sort of happenings of his life, right? The recent happenings of his life for his sinful nature and condition. And as he's experiencing this, he hears a boy or a girl playing and they say this Latin phrase, tolle lege, which means take up and read and take up and read. And he doesn't know if it's a game, can't record, can't ever record children sort of saying this phrase before, but this prompts him to go and read a passage in the New Testament that he had read before. And it's almost this sort of instance of a bibliomancy. And he says, he read silently the first chapter that his eyes lit upon and it says, not in partying and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and shamelessness, not in fighting and jealousy, but clothe yourself in the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh concerning its physical desires. And he says, as soon as he's read this, he says, I neither wanted nor needed to read further. Immediately, the end of the sentence was like a light of sanctuary poured into my heart. Every shadow of doubt melted away. And I think that this really is what I get from reading Givens and reading Handley on how to approach 2nd Nephi or how to approach the Book of Mormon in general as scripture. It becomes this sort of material object with letters that are etched out across the page in ink, right, that requires us to know the alphabet, us to know how to read, us to know how to sort of turn the page, right, and make some sort of sense of the words and the sentences and the paragraphs that we perceive. And then in this material object, right, there's this, this ever sort of, uh, this, uh, what's the word for this? This sort of, this opportunity for us, I would say, this opportunity for us to experience the divine light and grace of Christ, right? For us to read the text and then to have an, have an experience that points us beyond the text itself, right? Beyond the paper and the ink and the material nature of the page. And like Augustine, we can too experience a light of sanctuary poured into our hearts where every shadow of doubt melts away. And I think that that's really what I've gotten from my reading of these two fantastic pieces of writing by Handley and also by Givens.

Welch: Well, there's so much there, another point you made that really jumps out to me is the problem that confronts scholars like you and me, but people of all--modern people of all kinds who are knowledge workers and who have inherited a particular way of thinking that tends to treat knowledge and information as something kind of neutral. And we strive to take a kind of neutral evaluative position in relationship to knowledge. And it's possible to read the Book of Mormon that way, in a very detached way, and say, oh yeah, look, this is history, this is where it belongs. But the Book of Mormon doesn't want to be read that way. It wants to draw its readers into a non-neutral relationship. It wants to draw us into an experience of conversion like the one that you shared with Augustine. And so for scholars like you and I, it's our challenge to, when we're reading scriptures, put away that other epistemological framework that wants to treat knowledge as something neutral, objective, and detached, and instead let ourselves relate to scripture in this different way. When we do take up this different way of reading scripture though, if I'm hearing what Hanley says, it can be dangerous. It can be a dangerous way to read and there's a real risk. And the risk, if I understand it correctly, is that we will impose ourselves on the text. Because we're not neutral anymore, right? We're not detached from the text. We want to merge with the text in some way. We're tempted just to impose ourselves on it. But that's so risky, just as we saw earlier in the Kramer piece that I shared, we might inadvertently kind of read our own prejudices and our own biases into the text and then mistakenly find fodder for them there, right? So there's a risk to reading scripture in a non-detached way, but there's also an incredible potential reward. And that's what you've been gesturing here to the end, which is that when we open ourselves to scripture, if we can avoid imposing ourselves on it, scripture can give us a new kind of self. It can give us an experience with God that regenerates ourself, regenerates our understanding of who we are and our understanding of our relationship to God and to our fellow beings. So it can give to us a whole new perspective, a whole new light and a whole new life. If--if we let it. But only the--only the courageous should attempt it because it is risky as Handley said.

Farrant: Yeah. And I think the point of it is that, you know, it's supposed to be risky business, right? Reading scripture in the sense that there's no such thing as a perfect way of reading scripture. Right. So I think that in my own scripture reading, sometimes my reading is mundane. Sometimes I don't understand what's going on. Sometimes I think I project too much of my own interests into the scripture page. But…But now and again, there's these moments of brilliance in reading. And I think it's in this, if we stay the course and we continue reading and we continue practicing in our devotional routines, reading the words of Latter-day Saint Scripture and reading the words of Old and New Testament Scripture, I think that this gives way or gives rise, at least, to these transformative experiences. And that's what scripture is all about. You know, it's about remolding and reshaping and reconstituting the self and each day beginning the process anew and doing that again. And I really like what you said about the Book of Mormon. Every term stubbornly resists being read as merely a historical document. And it reminds me of--it reminds me of an address that Dallin H. Oakes gave a few years ago, I think maybe going back 20 years ago. This is a Book of Mormon. It's not primarily a book of geography or a book of history, right? It says, while, it can be considered these things. Primarily, this is a book of scripture that points us to Christ. And I think that is the overwhelming message of the book. And it resists all of those other things in order to achieve this end with each individual reader. The book only comes to life when a human being picks it up and engages with it and has an individualized sort of transformative experience that then points them into right relation with the rest of their community, the rest of their religious community and the human family.

Welch: Well, amen to that, Tim. And you've served me up a beautiful segue into the final piece of scholarship that we'll be discussing today, which has to do with what is our relationship to Christ. The Book of Mormon wants to invite us to Christ to find salvation in Him. What does that look like? And whereas the three previous pieces we've been talking about have been pretty broad in applying to the Book of Second Nephi and to all of scripture generally, this piece is very, very specific. It was written by a scholar named Daniel McClellan. It's an article that appeared in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies in 2020, volume 29 of that journal. And the title of the article is “2nd Nephi 25:23 in Literary and Rhetorical Context.” So it's a whole article, just about one verse. And here is that verse, if you don't remember, off the top of your head, 2nd Nephi 25:23. It reads like this: “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God. For we know that it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do.”So it's not an especially complicated or long verse at all, but its meaning has been fiercely debated over decades. Throughout the course of the 20th century, we saw very different readings of this verse, and especially of the final phrase, “after all that we can do.” And what McClellan wants to do is he wants to say, can we gain any insight into what that phrase means-- “after all we can do”–if we put it into a kind of literary and rhetorical context of the moment in which the Book of Mormon came forth? So that's what his task is. First of all, he does a brief history looking at various interpretations of this verse, and he finds Elder Marion G. Romney in 1955 quotes this verse and says, "'For after all, it is by the grace of Christ that men are saved. After all, they can do, the thing they can and must do is repent.' So here he seems to be drawing on a beautiful verse from Alma chapter 24, verse 11. Where it says that “it has been all that we could do to repent of all of our sins.” So that's one kind of interpretive lens. What does it mean, after all we can do? All we can do is repent. But as the 20th-century moved forward, a different interpretation of the scripture was advanced. And the common understanding started to be that what this phrase means--”after all”--we must exhaust every last bit of our own effort before Christ will offer us his grace. I think one reason why this interpretation has become powerful is because as Latter-day Saints, we rightly want to distance ourselves from what the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has called cheap grace, right? We want to emphasize the fact that we are asked to give our all to Christ. And we're asked to consecrate all that we are and can do to him. So we want to make sure that is true. And we want to encourage our brothers and sisters to give all that they have to the Savior. But the effect has sometimes been a kind of sense that the atonement is inaccessible to us, that Christ is far away and that we can't access his atoning grace because if we really look at ourselves, have we really done everything that we possibly could have done? That's a really, really high bar to meet. And so I think a lot of people, when they understand the verse in that way, they're left feeling very hopeless and discouraged. Like, I know the Savior is there, but he's not for me because I haven't yet given absolutely everything that I can. So then, McClellan starts to look at a new emerging kind of interpretation in the 21st century of this Second Nephi 25:23. He looks at Elder Uchtdorf in 2015, in his general conference talk, “The Gift of Grace.” And Elder Uchtdorf said there, “we must understand that after does not equal because. We are not saved because of all that we can do. Have any of us done all that we can do? Does God wait until we've expended every effort before he will intervene in our lives with his saving grace?” And the answer to that question, of course, is no. That Christ is always there and his grace is always on offer to us wherever we are. So McClellan says, what happens if we take a look at the literature of the time in which the Book of Mormon came forth, and understand the way that the language worked, the language that Joseph Smith himself would have used, and see if that helps us to determine between these two options, right? We have these two interpretive options. How do we decide between them? Well, maybe the literary and historical context can help us. And what he finds is, in fact, that it does. He finds many, many instances of this particular construction. After all that something can do, such and such, right? And so he looks at these different examples and, and infers from their, what their meaning is. And he finds that, um, in context, this idiom clearly means something like “despite all that such and such can do.” So it's not a temporal thing. It's not saying like Christ will help you only after, you know, only, only---not until you've done every single thing that you possibly can, but on the contrary, Christ in His grace will save us despite everything that we can do. We give all that we can, but in the end, it is Christ's grace that saves us despite everything that we are able to give and can do. And so he kind of piles up example after example after example of the way that this idiom is used in context. And he makes a very persuasive case that in fact, that is the original intended meaning of 2 Nephi 25:23. “It is by grace that we are saved despite all we can do.” After all we can do was an idiom with this established meaning in circulation at the time that Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon. And so understanding that, we can now know what it would have meant as those words fell on the ears of Joseph Smith and his scribe, how would they have understood that? And they would have understood it to see Christ as gracefully, generously, and tirelessly extending his grace to us at all moments in time, accepting our best efforts, taking our hand and helping us become more than we can be on our own. So I thought it was both a clever way to solve the interpretive problem and a very beautiful reassuring and hopeful reading of that verse in 2nd Nephi 25.

Farrant: Yeah, no, I really like that particular reading. It's sort of the “end of the day” reading, isn't it? So at the end of the day, despite our best efforts, it's Christ's grace that shines through, right? And I think that Christ models a sort of grace that we're able to extend to others in the Book of Mormon, right, in this remarkable way. I think that if we look at King Benjamin's sermon, right, where we find the face of Christ within the suffering, vulnerable human other. We can extend this by modeling the life of Christ. We can extend this same sort of grace to the other. And it becomes much less about merit, much less about the homeless or the imprisoned or the suffering who are sick, some how meriting or warranting, right, a help from another human in the community, but that we can literally be the hands of Christ and we can be the face of Christ and we can bring the grace of Christ in our interactions. And I think that that's why the covenantal sort of obligations within the Book of Mormon to mourn with those that mourn and to comfort those that stand in need of comfort, to sort of make sure that we're fully located or situated on the covenant path, right? And we're fulfilling the obligations to live a life of consecration in relation to other vulnerable suffering humans, right? It's so important because the sort of grace that Christ offers us, we can extend throughout the community by participating in the life of Christ.

Welch: Yeah. Oh, it's such a powerful insight. And close to home as well, in our own homes, in our own families, right? In the end, I love my husband, not because of all the things that he does for me. I'm grateful for whatever he gives to me and offers to me, but I love him because I am sealed to him and because I choose to love him and because that is what love is. It's a giving of myself to him, despite everything that he can do. I think it's a profound understanding of what love is, right, in all of its manifestations.

Farrant: Yeah, and what the pure love of Christ means, right, which the Book of Mormon sort of expounds upon, right, this idea of the pure love of Christ.

Welch: Yeah. Well, Tim, this has been such a great discussion. I really appreciate your preparation and your time. Tim, this has been such a wonderful and rich conversation. I'm so thankful for your preparation and for your awesome accent that makes it so fun to converse with you all the time. I always conclude these conversations by inviting my guests to share with me a scripture that has some personal meaning for you in our designated block, which today is Second Nephi. So do you have something you'd like to share with me and our listeners?

Farrant: Yeah, no, absolutely. I must say that my accent's only awesome over here, right? So it's not awesome at home. But I, I really like, 2nd Nephi 4 versus 20 and half of 21, I'm gonna, I'm just going to cut 21 short and I'll read it. “My God has been my support. He hath led me through my afflictions in the wilderness. He hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love.” And I really like this because it ties in so well to all of the themes that we were discussing, right? That we read scriptures, a way of situating the realities of our own life in this sort of wilderness landscape, right? That we go through, our lives go through many unexpected twists and turns. There are unwelcome tragedies that come to greet us, you know, at the most inconvenient of times. They can, there can be the most horrendous trials, right, that we don't ask for, or there can be the most harrowing of afflictions that happen to those that are closest to us, right. And, and we want to do anything to take those sort of afflictions away, right, even if it means, you know, taking them upon ourselves. And, and I think that throughout all of this, right, throughout the fabric of our mortal lives, understanding that God is present and aware is, I think, a beautiful thing indeed.

Welch: This has been wonderful, Tim. You've been full of insight. You've been a pleasure to listen to and to converse with and learn together with. So thank you so much for your time today and for joining us on the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies Podcast. Bye bye.

Farrant: You're most welcome. I hope that you'll have me on again. Bye bye.