Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: 2 Nephi with Joshua Sears

Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies Podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Joshua Sears, who is an Assistant Professor of Ancient Scripture here at Brigham Young University. Today, we are focusing on the book of 2nd Nephi, and we are really zeroing in on the text of 2nd Nephi. We want to prepare you to open this book of scripture, be ready and raring to go, understanding the context and the themes and the characters and the forms and the structure. So Josh, you are going to be our guide, our intrepid guide today through this, and let's jump right in.

Sears: Yeah, I'm excited. Thanks for having me here.

Welch: Tell us what we need to know about any context for opening the Book of 2nd Nephi and getting up to speed with what's happening.

Sears: I guess the most obvious thing to say is that this is a sequel to 1st Nephi. Most people pick that up, but it's important to recognize Nephi set this up into two books. And we had a great discussion from Kim Matheson last time where she set up 1st Nephi. So I'm hoping we can just kind of continue to build on the foundation she laid here with 2nd Nephi.

Welch: Hahaha. Yeah, yeah, that's right. You know, it's interesting that 1st Nephi ends kind of with a lovely moment in 1 Nephi 22, where it seems like there's a kind of rapprochement between Laman and Lemuel and Nephi. They've come together, right? And there's a moment where Nephi is effectively teaching them how to understand Isaiah and Zenos. And it's kind of a beautiful place to end the book of 1st Nephi. But in the book of 2nd Nephi, things are gonna be different and they're going to get darker and we're gonna see these divisions become entrenched. So it's almost as though Nephi has led us to this beautiful ending point in 1 Nephi in order to highlight, really, the tragedy of the family division that we're about to witness.

Sears: Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. And it's, I think, provocative that 2nd Nephi opens with Lehi announcing, I've seen a vision, and now it's not just something we knew was coming, but it's in the past, Jerusalem has been destroyed. Meaning this family is now completely cut off from where they came from. There is no going home because home is gone. So it really sets up the drama of this moment that they are on their own and they've got to make this work and the stakes are higher.

Welch: That's right. So they're cut off and divided from their larger ethnic kin, the Jews at Jerusalem, and now their internal family is also fracturing and dividing. You can imagine this sense of distress and alienation that Nephi and Jacob would have experienced, especially because, as we're about to see, their patriarch is about to die as well. You can see why the emphasis on Christ as our salvation and our support and our light in the darkness is so needed in this book of 2nd Nephi.

Sears: Yeah, maybe it would be helpful to give a quick structural overview of the whole piece of literature here. So 2nd Nephi divides in kind of three major sections. As I look at it, there's chapters 1 through 5 form their own little distinct unit. And this is where Nephi is telling the history of the family, like you said, as they slowly dissolve. Lehi gives his deathbed sermons and admonitions. Then he dies, you get a little bit of Nephi's psalm of lament over what's going on.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: And then you get the report of Laman and Lemuel trying to kill him. And we get the split, the creation of Nephites and Lamanites and wars and contentions that began and all of these things is up through second Nephi chapter 5. And what's significant is at the end of chapter 5, Nephi gives us some clues that we have now as readers caught up to him in literary time. He's always been older looking back on his past when he was young and we'd be getting closer and closer to him. And at 2nd Nephi 5, right at the end there, we now catch up to him, which explains why moving forward, there's practically no history in the rest of 2nd Nephi because there's no more history to tell, we've caught up. And so, starting at 2nd Nephi 6, we look forward prophetically to the future by and large. So then the next major section is chapters 6 through 30, which is broadly Nephi, Jacob and Isaiah weaving their prophetic voices to talk about the future gathering of Israel and other amazing things that are gonna happen. So chapter 6 through 10 has Nephi quoting Jacob's sermons, interpreting Isaiah. Then you get the big block from chapters 11 to 24 of Nephi quoting Isaiah, and then chapters 25 to 30 of Nephi, then using Isaiah and Jacob as he prophecies about the future. Then we conclude the last three chapters, 31, 32, and 33 are something of a conclusion. They seem a little bit separate, because Nephi ends pretty definitively at the end of chapter 30. But it's like Nephi is now at the end of his life, he's getting ready to close, and he's thought of some additional experiences and sermons from his people that he thinks are useful, so we get this beautiful conclusion on the doctrine of Christ and his final farewell. So that's a broad outline of the book.

Welch: Yeah, that's so helpful. And I think it's worth pointing out for our listeners that there's not only one way to understand the structure of any particular book of scripture. There are always different ways that it could be sliced and diced. So the point is not to kind of arrive at the one definitive way to structure it, but it's just a really helpful way to grapple with the text, to wrestle with it a little bit and to understand it better. So I always love to kind of outline the book as a whole just for myself and whether my outline would look like yours or whether it would be different, it's helped me to think more deeply about intertextual connections here.

Sears: Yeah, good point.

Welch: It's interesting, as you note, a lot of this book consists of these undated, kind of contextless excerpts. And even when he quotes Jacob's discourse in chapters 6 through 10, he kind of treats it as more like a text because he doesn't give us any clues as to when it was delivered. He gives us no historical setup for this text. He just drops it in there. And then as you say, he uses it alongside his lengthy quotation of Isaiah as a kind of text for likening, right? His own unique process or technique for prophesying, which is to immerse himself in the words of another prophet and then use those words as the medium for the spirit to speak to him to bring forth new revelations. So he sets Jacob's discourse alongside Isaiah. And this whole, you know, more than half, last half, this last large section of 2nd Nephi, takes place kind of in a timeless, in a timeless space of Nephi's own prophetic mind. And it's an incredibly rich place to be. And we're gonna see in just a moment, it seems as though immersing himself in the words of Jacob and Isaiah has just set his prophetic imagination on fire. And these chapters of 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, they just keep on coming, so rich and just packed with Nephi's signature prophetic themes of deliverance, of Christ, of the last days, of scripture, of likening scripture and the delight of scripture. So this is a high concentrated dose of Nephi's prophetic mind, and for me it is indeed delicious.

Sears: Yeah. And you've painted a very positive picture there, I've got to say, of 2nd Nephi, more positive than a lot of readers think of this book. You know, we have jokes in the church about this, that, you know, bullets, if they're shot at the Book of Mormon, can't make it through 2nd Nephi, all these things, because it feels like such a barrier to readers to get through this. And, of course, the biggest reason so many readers think of 2nd Nephi as being kind of a slog and a barrier.

Welch: Fair. Yeah.

Sears: It’s all the Isaiah that we got in some smaller doses in 1st Nephi to prep us, but boy does it come thicker in 2nd Nephi. So it always saddens me when Isaiah becomes a barrier to readers appreciating the richness of Nephi's work because I very much feel like Nephi felt like Isaiah was the key to this whole thing and that it was essential to include Isaiah to really hit the…

Welch: Yes.

Sears: It's sad that so often we see it as the opposite.

Welch: Yeah, I agree. And just as a practical tip, something that's really helped me is to use an edition of the Book of Mormon, and Grant Hardy has done this in several of his editions, where during those chapters, 25 through 33, where Nephi is really deeply interpreting Isaiah, he has bolded all of the direct quotes from Isaiah. So that makes it so easy to see Nephi's process. And I think it brings the Isaiah chapters alive as well. So I really recommend, you can do it on your own, right? Just with a search function, although it would be laborious. But visually allow yourself to see how it is that Nephi is using Isaiah's prophecies. And I think that makes it a lot easier to appreciate it and not just get through, but to see the richness and to see why Nephi is so obsessed with Isaiah.

Sears: Yeah, so you can get that in Grant Hardy's the Maxwell Institute Study Edition of the Book of Mormon that's a little bit older or his newer volume, The Annotated Book of Mormon from Oxford University Press. Either of those, like you said, will format the Isaiah as poetry and it will, when Nephi's talking, it'll bold the quotes from Isaiah so you can instantly see what's Nephi, what's Isaiah and see how those are woven together a little bit easier.

Welch: Wonderful. All right, anything else you'd like to add about structure before we move on to characters? Okay, so there aren't a lot of characters as we've been talking about. There's not a lot of history. So the cast of characters is pretty restricted, but I think we get a new view of characters we've come to know already in 2nd Nephi. So tell us who we've got before us here.

Sears: That sounds great. Well, we open with the family, right? We still have Lehi and Nephi and Sam and Laman and Lemuel and everybody. The thing to especially keep in mind at this point though, is that again, like we said, Nephi has always been writing this as an older man with the perspective of seeing how things are gonna play out. So by the time we get to second Nephi five, when we've watched the family dissolve and break down into armed conflict, we realize that Nephi the entire time is known about this. And retroactively, that can help us appreciate a little bit how he's framed Laman and Lemuel in such negative terms throughout 1st Nephi. The narrator is never wondering, oh, I hope that they'll repent and come around this time. He knows from the beginning where this is going. And he set himself up as a foil to Laman and Lemuel, who of course are lumped together. And that's why we say Laman and Lemuel has a single word. Lemuel's not even a real character, right? But as a foil to who has the proper right to leadership here.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah.

Sears: We finally appreciate getting into these chapters why Nephi has been setting it up this way.

Welch: Yeah, that's right. So we've got the family. For me, reading these first chapters of 2nd Nephi with Lehi's final blessings to his sons, it opens my heart to Lehi as a father because you really see that he never ever gives up on Laman and Lemuel until the very end. He has known since his dream, when he saw in his dream that Laman and Lemuel did not come towards the tree, he's known that there's a division in his family. But I feel like he never gives up the hope that Laman and Lemuel will sense the light and power in the new revelations that are coming to him and Nephi, and that they will start to grasp onto that iron rod and come towards the tree. Although that doesn't happen, Nephi, and Nephi, as you say, has a bit of a more hardened feeling towards his brothers, understandably. I love to see Lehi's paternal, unending, and unconditional paternal love for his sons. Do you see that as well in these chapters?

Sears: Yeah, and it makes sense why at the end there he blesses Laman and Lemuel's children, right? Because if they're not gonna come to the covenant path, his hope is that his descendants will have that ability. So his heart kind of turns towards the future, hoping that his family in the long run can make it with him. And I think a similar process happens to Nephi too.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: He doesn't give us a lot of details about how the Nephites are doing, but you read 2nd Nephi 33 as Nephi closes and he says he goes to bed every night and waters his pillow with his tears aching over his people. That doesn't sound like they're doing fantastic. And that might also explain why Nephi spends so much time thinking about the future and the last days and prophecy. Because when his short term family troubles are so burdensome, looking to the future and having that long term perspective about family and knowing that it's going to be okay in the end probably gave him some comfort with his present reality.

Welch: I think that's true. I've just been so struck this time through reading these first books of the Book of Mormon at Lehi's fear that his sons will be cast off and cut off from the presence of the Lord. That haunts him. I think it haunts any parent. And yet that contrasts for me with his, as I said, unconditional paternal love. He will never cut Laman Lemuel from him. And I think maybe by the end of his life, I think Lehi is coming to understand that Christ will never cut any of us off from him. It's really, it's our own choice to walk away from the Savior. But the Savior's love is always available to us, just as Lehi's love was never withheld from his own sons. So it's been, anyway, it's been very moving to kind of see that struggle, I think, within Lehi himself with regard to Laman and Lemuel. I also, as you said, was very moved at the portrait of Nephi as an older man. He no longer has to put himself in the mind space of that kind of confident, brash, idealistic young man. And he really is his mature self. And it's a beautiful picture to me of somebody who finds delight and joy in the scriptures, but at the same time is very realistic about the burden and the heaviness that he carries. And I go way back to the moment in 1 Nephi 11 where he is wanting to know about, he's wanting to receive and see what his father saw. And there's a moment where the angel asks him, what do you want? Are you sure you want this? And he says, I want to know. I want to know the interpretation thereof. Somebody that I've read has pointed out that is a moment like Eve at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, where Nephi chooses to know, to know the good and to know the bad and the hard. And that showed tremendous courage. It comes with the cost. And he saw there, he has seen the eventual demise of his people, exactly what it is that causes him to water his pillow with tears every night. And he's carried this burden with him, but he's had tremendous courage in carrying it and has never become embittered.

Sears: Now that knowledge comes with a cost, right?

Welch: he has never turned away from the Lord, but instead has turned to the scriptures. And it seems to have been part of what has impelled him to these heights of prophetic richness that we find at the end of 2nd Nephi.

Sears: Yeah, great.

Welch: Anything else you'd like to say? Any other characters? We hear the words of Jacob, but we really don't see much of him until the book of Jacob. Anybody else you'd like to draw attention to?

Sears: I guess just Isaiah. Sooner or later, we're gonna wind up at that rock.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What do you want to tell us about Isaiah as a prophet and as a person?

Sears: Well, this has been interesting for me because here at BYU, I teach classes on the Book of Mormon. So we cover these chapters every semester and I teach classes on the Book of Isaiah. So I, you know, I hit this from several different angles. What's been interesting to me over the last several years is I always enjoy watching the students reactions to when we get to these chapters and see what are their expectations and how do I get to play with those as we continue through the class? Because as a body as an institutional church group, we have a fraught relationship with these Isaiah chapters sometimes. Like I said, they're sometimes the brunt of some jokes. And I know a lot of students have told me that their experience in seminary is to go through these chapters as fast as possible to get through them. And that's been kind of my Sunday school experience as well. I've had more than one time going through the Book of Mormon and Sunday school, not to put blame on any teachers who I know are doing their absolute best here. But we'll have a lesson on the Isaiah chapters. And we mostly go to 2nd Nephi 5 and read some Nephi's comments on Isaiah. And we spend a whole lesson talking about greater the words of Isaiah. And we finish the lesson without having read any of the words of Isaiah. Because we all suspect that these words are great and that there's more there than meets the eye. And yet, it's hard to actually dive in and make, not only make sense of this, but to have it then be useful. So people struggle with that. And I get it.

Welch: Hahaha. Yeah.

Sears: And one thing that has done for a lot of my students, I think is they've been kind of programmed through Sunday school and seminary and their family study experience to view the Isaiah chapters of first and second Nephi as expendable, as superfluous, as bonus stuff that Nephi threw in there that's good if you can get to it. Rather than treating these as I think how Nephi saw these as at the core of the main messages that he was trying to communicate to Latter-day readers. So there's a kind of a little bit of a mishmash of expectations there where Nephi expects this to be so crucial and yet my students are often really resistant to seeing it that way. And I'll see this manifest itself both in the class and in some of the student comments that I honestly get at the end of the semester. So I actually printed out a few student comments. These are real to read for you. And here's a disclaimer before I read these.

Welch: Okay, let's have them.

Sears: You know, in a class like mine, we move through the Book of Mormon at a few chapters a day. We got to cover the first half of the Book of Mormon in a semester. So it's anything from 1 or 2 to 4 to 5 max chapters is on average what we have to do to get through everything. And when I get to the Isaiah chapters, I honest to goodness, don't go through them any faster than I do or any slower than I do anything else. We're about the same pace as anything else. So some 2, 3 chapters, sometimes more. But that's on average what I would do with Nephi building the boat or any other part of this. And yet I consistently have students who feel like I'm really being slow and taking a lot of time. So like, here's a couple of comments from my student reviews. A lot of time felt like I was in the Old Testament class instead of a Book of Mormon class. On a test, we had to answer questions about King Pekah and Ahaz, and that didn't seem to fit the Book of Mormon. And even though to point out, these are two names that appear in 2nd Nephi 17, but this is not real Book of Mormon. Someone else says, "'We focused too much on the Isaiah chapters of 2nd Nephi. "'It made it seem like a class was Old Testament "'instead of Book of Mormon.'" Someone else says, "'I felt like he spent a lot of time in Isaiah "'instead of the Book of Mormon itself.'" Now, to appreciate those comments, you gotta understand we are not reading the Book of Isaiah. We are simply reading these chapters of 1st and 2nd Nephi at the same pace as anything else. But I suspect what's going on is they've been so prepped through their previous life experiences to think that you either skip these chapters or go through them really fast in one setting, that when we continue at the same speed, that to them feels like I am being slow because that's not what they're used to. And I'm especially fascinated by comments that say, why are we studying the Old Testament instead of the Book of Mormon? Because I realized they're treating, say, 2nd Nephi 12 through 24, as if these are not real Book of Mormon chapters. They see them as something other, which I think is just interesting from a pedagogical kind of point of view. So my job is to try to overcome that and help them see this as part of 1st and 2nd Nephi. And obviously from the student comments, I'm not always successful at selling them.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: to them, but I think part of it is what they come in expecting.

Welch: I think that's right. And that, I mean, that would just break Nephi's heart. I'm so glad. I hope Nephi isn't listening in because that would break his heart to know that, you know, he laboriously engraved and copied in these excerpts for us and to know that people skip them or consider them somehow extrinsic or dispensable to the Book of Mormon, to his project is pretty heartbreaking.

Sears: Yeah, and some students have told me, well, why don't we just cover this in the Old Testament year rather than here? And my sense is that if Book of Mormon authors know we have the Bible, and yet they quote entire Bible chapters anyway, that's sending a signal that these are more important to engage with, not less. Like when Jesus quotes Malachi 3 and 4 and 3 Nephi, Jesus knew we'd have that in the Bible. And yet it's there, because he didn't want to limit our exposure to those chapters just to our Old Testament Sunday school year.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: To put it in modern terms, right? But now we're hitting it more often. So I think we really ought to be seeing Nephi's inclusion of whole chapters as an invitation to engage more deeply, not less.

Welch: I agree. And, you know, as the Book of Mormon consistently does, it pulls back the curtain on the way scripture is made. In the Old Testament and the New Testament, even to a certain extent in the Doctrine and Covenants, you don't get to see actually how the Book of Scripture is put together. But Book of Mormon authors are so generous, especially here in the small plates, of letting us see how they do it. And this is Nephi showing us how he does it. He's showing us his source materials and inviting us to read them for ourselves. And to check his work, right? We can read them ourselves and check his interpretations. He's showing us how he does it and how tragic would it be just to ignore that, the generosity of that gesture, of that prophetic gesture.

Sears: Yeah, and the fact that he's being so explicit about what he's doing and why, gives us very little excuse to see these chapters as just something he threw in there because he had time to kill, right? He's very clear about signposting the fact that he sees Isaiah as very crucial and something that we need to understand.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what else is there anything else that you'd like to, I'm sure there's a lot more you would like to talk about with Isaiah, but before we move on to talking about the literary forms, anything else you'd like to cover about Isaiah?

Sears: Well, I've got some like maybe tips for not being so panicked about these. Do you wanna hit those now? And okay, well again, this is based on my years of the students and I'm always asking them, hey, what's been your previous experience with this? And I pay attention to what questions they ask and what they say, because I'm trying to gauge where the students are coming from as they do this. And then I've got Cindy's tool experience and all the other typical experiences and everything. So based on that,

Welch: Yeah, let's hit those now. Yeah.

Sears: One thing that I think creates a barrier for a lot of people is they assume that these Isaiah chapters are not really about something, that it's just a kind of hodgepodge of prophecy this and a little bit of that. What I'm trying to say is they fail to understand that the Isaiah chapters are actually telling a story. It's describing specific points in the history of ancient Israel. And that when you recognize what stories it's telling, that gives you a huge interpretive boost in figuring out what Nephi's doing with them because Nephi knew what these chapters were actually about. So here's just a silly example. Let's say that President Uchtdorf was giving a talking conference referencing his childhood, talking about World War II. And in the space of a few paragraphs, he references say the name Hitler and something called Pearl Harbor and something called D-Day. But let's say you have…

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: someone reading his general conference talk and for whatever reason, they have never been exposed to any knowledge of World War II. Those paragraphs are not gonna make complete sense if you don't know who Hitler is, that he's a leader or Germany or that he's a bad guy. You need that kind of background or these paragraphs are just not gonna make sense. I have a lot of students and others I see who struggle with these Isaiah chapters and they tell me, well, I've tried praying and fasting and seeking the spirit and I still cannot figure these out. And I'm thinking, well, if you have this President Uchtdorf talk and you were praying and fasting for illumination, you can pray and fast a lot. And those are great things, be sure you're doing that. But 10 minutes reading a Wikipedia article on World War II is gonna do so much to help you go, oh, that is what President Uchtdorf is talking about.

Welch: Yes. Yes.

Sears: And honestly, that's the secret for these Isaiah chapters. They are describing real stories that happened in Old Testament history. And a little bit of know-how about what was going on in these stories can make you go, oh. Now, maybe people are expecting a huge revelation or an angel to come down and explain the history to them through fasting and prayer. But I don't know why they do that. If you can simply go look it up quite easily, if you know where to look. Same reason an angel wouldn't have to come down and be like, well, this is what World War II was all about. You've got plenty of options to go figure out World War II. In this case, so in 2nd Nephi 6 through 10, for example, Jacob is quoting Isaiah chapters 48, or sorry, 49 and 50, 51, a little bit of 52. These chapters are all describing a particular moment in Israel's history when the Jews are in captivity in Babylon. It's actually taking place about the same time Jacob himself lives where the Jews are over in captivity in Babylon.

Welch: Hahaha.

Sears: As Jacob is speaking. So these Isaiah chapters are speaking to that group about how they've been wicked and how they've been allowed to be conquered by Babylon and they've been brought into captivity, but it's promising them redemption. It's promising them they can be forgiven. They can be freed from Babylon and that the Persian empire is gonna take over Babylon, help them go home and rebuild Jerusalem. And if you just know that much, a lot of passages in those chapters will make more sense. When we get to Nephi's bigger block of Isaiah, so this is chapters 12 through 24, those about dozen chapters there are describing a little bit earlier in the history, during the reigns of King Ahaz and King Hezekiah of Judah. So most of that Isaiah block is describing the reigns of these two kings, and the fact that the Assyrian Empire invaded Judah, destroyed most of the country, almost destroyed Jerusalem, but the Lord sent an angel and delivered them from the invading army and they were saved. And you can find this all in Second Kings chapters 16 through 19. And there it's explained as a narrative. So it's very easy to follow. You can figure out who the good guys are and the bad guys and what's going on. These Isaiah chapters are for the most part describing that same story, but just very poetically without dropping so many specific names. But if you know the story, you can piece together how this is all fitting into that chronology. So a little bit of know-how there, and you can read these chapters with brand new eyes and all of a sudden go, oh, this is talking about something. Something from history, it's not just prophetic mishmash of symbolism and things there, it's actually set in a certain time and place in describing something. And a little bit of know-how there and looking this up can actually help people make more sense of things. Cause I bet you, Nephi knew what this was talking about. And so if he included these and then wanted to elaborate on that,

Welch: Hahaha.

Sears: You've got to understand what these chapters are talking about in context to fully appreciate what, how Nephi is going to develop and liken this next.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, let's then talk about how these blocks of Isaiah show up in the Book of Mormon itself, along with other type of literary forms. As we've been talking about, scripture can take lots of different forms, literary forms. And when I say literary, I don't mean like fiction. I just mean different ways that you can express yourself, different modes of discourse. And Isaiah, of course, famously was a poet prophet. So his, we see these large blocks of poetry dropped here into 2nd Nephi. Now it may not look like poetry, it might just look like normal prose, but really it's poetry. Do you think it matters to know that Isaiah was writing in poetry in poetic form?

Sears: Mm-hmm. Very much so, and that's why we mentioned those new Book of Mormon editions by Grant Hardy earlier. That formats the poetry as poetry, so you can instantly see, oh, this is poetry. And we instinctively know that you read poetry differently than you do prose narrative. So just understanding that most of these Isaiah chapters is poetry should help us read it a little more informed that this isn't just straightforward discourse. Another thing that's helpful with that is recognizing that Isaiah is being poetic and that he's not writing this. A lot of people assume this is something like the book of Revelation, where everything is a secret cipher. So I'll explain the difference there because this is really crucial. Because again, I have students coming in and this is kind of how they've been prepped to see Isaiah. Because if you're reading, say, the book of Revelation, we know in Revelation, nothing is as it seems, right? Everything is this deep symbol. It's a secret code. If there's a lamb with horns and eyeballs, we know it's not a literal real lamb with lots of horns and eyeballs. I mean, you can Google it and find really grotesque photos of people creating artwork with this literally, but it's supposed to be symbolic. The horns represent something, the eyes represent something, the lamb that is slain represents something. So in the book of Revelation, you're always supposed to be thinking, this is not what it seems, what is it actually pointing to? And then people import that into the book of Isaiah and they think everything in here is a secret code and what I've got to do is figure out what it all represents. So I'll just pick an example from the first chapter of Isaiah here. I'll just read one verse that I've seen lots of people do something like this and I'm not exaggerating by much. Let's say, so verse two and three, hear, oh heavens and give ear, oh earth for the Lord hath spoken and then the Lord speaks. I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib. But Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. And some people again in Revelation mode, Book of Revelation mode, they start free associating here. What can all this really be talking about? And they'll look at, okay, there's an ass here. And they'll think what political party has a donkey as its mascot? And all of a sudden they're doing American politics, right? And that kind of free association where anything can mean anything can be fun.

Welch: Uh huh.

Sears: For personal study, but it's not gonna necessarily help you get into Isaiah and his original context and what he's thinking. So that's the kind of thing we have to be careful about. So instead of being a secret cipher, I invite people to always remember Isaiah is poetry. And usually he's got some kind of main point he's trying to make. And he expresses that point over and over again, using metaphor and simile and imaginative imagery. He's just got really creative ways of expressing it. And that'll help you, I think, stay a little closer to what Isaiah was trying to get at, rather than imagining this always has to be about the last days. It's always a secret code. I've gotta crack the code. If you just let yourself read the words and let Isaiah speak a little more plain sense, but as poetry, it'll just make a little bit more sense and we won't get off so far.

Welch: That is really, really helpful. Of course, Isaiah isn't the only place in the book of 2nd Nephi where we see a kind of poetry. Scholars have identified the last part of 2nd Nephi chapter four, and it's often called now the Psalm of Nephi because there, Nephi himself, speaking very, very personally and from the heart, seems to be writing in a kind of poetic mode. Again, in the original Book of Mormon, it wasn't formatted as poetry, but scholars have gone through and kind of reformatted it in a way that allows you to see the parallelisms and the movement of images and metaphors as Nephi in this beautiful poetic form of a Psalm expresses his deep anguish, his sense of failure and abandonment, and then reaches out to the Lord and describes how he has been strengthened by his trust in the Lord and by the joy and delight that he takes in the scriptures using Psalms-esque language, and imagery that is very reminiscent of the Psalms.

Sears: Yeah, and that's another great example of why you need to recognize this is poetry because you read it differently. If you read, Oh, wretched man that I am, the same way you read and I broke my bow, you might come away thinking, wow, Nephi is just wretched. He's a bad guy because you're reading it very straightforwardly. But if you recognize it's poetry and that this is a psalm genre and you know that overwhelming feelings of overflowing emotion and poetic license and exaggeration are part of that.

Welch: Yeah. Hahaha

Sears: Then you give Nephi the benefit of the doubt that he's kind of exploring the depths of his soul and not just giving you a straightforward report that I'm a bad guy.

Welch: Yeah, I would never think that of Nephi. What other any other literary forms that we can look for in the book of 2nd Nephi?

Sears: Well, maybe we should talk about, so Nephi quotes his big block of Isaiah, then he of course talks about it for some chapters, and it might be worth talking about what exactly he's doing when he talks about it. So I'll jump back to 1 Nephi chapter 19, verse 23, where he first introduces his first big quote from Isaiah. He says, I did read many things unto them which were written in the books of Moses, but that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer.

Welch: Absolutely.

Sears: I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah, for I did liken all scripture unto us that it might be for our prophet and learning." And then in 2nd Nephi 11, before his really big block of Isaiah, Nephi says something similar. In 2nd Nephi 11 verse 2, for I will liken his words unto my people. And then in verse 8, he has an invitation. Now these are the words, ye may liken them unto you and unto all men. Anyway, the point is whenever Nephi identifies his interpretive method, he always says that he is likening. To liken something is a word that's in the English dictionary, it's not just a Book of Mormon word, right? But it means to compare two things to show how they are like each other or how they are similar to each other. And this is really important because there's a way in which I think a lot of people misunderstand what Nephi's actually up to. I've seen people express in classroom settings and I've even seen it in print books. People make what I think is a little bit of an error where they say, you know what? Nobody understands what Isaiah is talking about. It's so mysterious and clouded in symbolism until we got the Book of Mormon. And now Nephi finally tells us what Isaiah was talking about. The problem is Nephi doesn't tell us, he doesn't say that he's telling us what Isaiah was talking about. He says he's likening. To liken something means by definition, you're comparing two different things. So to pick a simple example, I cannot hold up two apples and say, Rosalyn, how is an apple like an apple? There's no way in which apples are like or similar to apples, because in every aspect they are exactly the same thing. But I could ask you, how is an apple like an orange?

Welch: Hehehe.

Sears: And you could tell me they're delicious, they're nutritious, they're round. We could come up with all sorts of similarities, but those similarities are only meaningful because there's also differences between apples and oranges. So when Nephi says, guys, I am about to liken Isaiah, and then he gives us an interpretation, that means by definition that whatever interpretation Nephi gave us cannot be what Isaiah meant. It has to be different or it would not be likening. Nephi is saying Isaiah was talking about this. I wanna prophesy about this over here. These are different events, different circumstances, but I want us to draw attention to ways in which they are like each other. How are these two different events similar? And allowing ourselves to see that is helpful because first it encourages us to actually pay attention to the Isaiah chapters and see what did they say in their original context, because that's what Nephi is building on, rather than just assuming. I'll read Nephi's interpretation and he's gonna tell me what Isaiah said anyway and therefore I don't have to do any work in the actual Isaiah chapters. And that helps us then appreciate the richness of Isaiah's comparison. Because in 2nd Nephi 25 through 30, when he's likening Isaiah both in specific passages and in broad strokes, the better you understand the original point of comparison, the thing Isaiah was talking about in its historical context. The richer and deeper and more appreciation you can get for the comparison Nephi makes when he's prophesying of the last days. And that's not to say that you have to understand everything about Isaiah to get anything out of these end chapters of 2nd Nephi, but it'll just be richer and deeper. It's like if president Nelson told us, hey everyone, you should read your scriptures like Dr. Johnson does. And we could now.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: If you don't know who Dr. Johnson is or what is her story or how she reads the scriptures, you can still take something from President Nelson's advice because you can take out of it, I should read the scriptures. That's a good thing. But if you knew what Dr. Johnson does in her scripture study, what does she do? Does she read every day? Does she have a set time? Does she highlight passages? Does she think of personal application? What does she do? If we knew what she does, then the comparison would be even better.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: Because we could get a little more specific in President Nelson's advice. And I think it's the same thing with Nephi. Plenty of people have read 2nd Nephi 25 through 30, gotten lots out of it as he talks about the last days. But the better we understand those Isaiah stories that he's kind of comparing and drawing connections to, the deeper his comparisons will be and the more we'll get, oh, that's what Nephi actually means by that. So it just adds richness to what we do.

Welch: Yeah, I really, I agree with that. I think oftentimes I've thought of likening as kind of application focused interpretation, right? Where I'm going to try to apply the scriptures to my life. But if I do that without a deep understanding or engagement with the script, with the original text of the scriptures, in the end I'm probably gonna come up with something that looks like my life already, right? In a way I'm gonna liken the scriptures to my life. And it seems on the contrary, what Nephi is asking us to do is to liken our lives to the scriptures. He wants, what he does is he pulls apart Isaiah, understands it so deeply, and then uses that universe of prophetic words and images and ideas to produce a whole new revelation that recasts his own history and his people's history in the prophetic mold. So his life is now remade.

Sears: Mm-hmm.

Welch: In the universe of Isaiah's prophetic utterances, right? And in the same way, I think that's what we should try to do is not make the scriptures reflect our own lives, but make our lives reflect the patterns in the scriptures. And to do that...

Sears: Yeah, see ourselves in terms of the story the scriptures are telling. It's not our story anymore. We're part of a bigger story.

Welch: Absolutely. We're part of that bigger story and we can't know what that story is without a pretty rigorous, or at least, I'm not saying it has to be scholarly, but as you're saying, it's gonna require some blood, sweat, and tears from us to understand what the scriptures are saying, but as we see in 2nd Nephi 25 on, the results are so rich when we do that. Truly, the universe opens to us and we can see our lives in new ways that were never available to us before.

Sears: Yeah. And again, understanding those historical moments in ancient Israel that the Isaiah chapters are talking about and going, okay, I can see what's there now. Can then you can see what Nephi does with it? So it just in very brief broad strokes here, each of these moments in history involves a remnant of Israel that's in trouble. You've got the Jews in captivity in Babylon. They've really blown it. They're suffering the consequences of their bad decisions. And there's this promise of redemption. God's saying, come to me.

Welch: Yeah.

Sears: I will get you out of captivity. We can rebuild your lives and I can lead you to prosperity and being blessed again. In the case of the Assyrian invasion of Judah, you've got people that are getting attacked and they're facing death and they're in real trouble here. And it seems like no one else can deliver them. But then the God of Israel is able to save this righteous remnant that comes to him and is able to liberate them from these attackers. And with these two remnant stories. Nephi sees, I think, broad patterns that repeat themselves in the lives of his own people and for us in the latter days, that today Israel is scattered, Lehi's family is dwindled in unbelief, we have people all over the world that have forgotten their covenant relationship with God, but the same God that saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians and the same God that brought them out of captivity in Babylon is the same God today who is reaching out to his children across the earth and gathering them home and inviting them to come back in covenant relationship with him. And Nephi just sees Isaiah, I think is just giving this wonderful model for the way that these same principles with their historical differences, right, replay today. And that once you can draw those parallels, you start to see all sorts of things that I think we can really get onto what Nephi saw was so exciting here.

Welch: Yeah, you know, another thing that might be worth mentioning while we're talking about Nephi's kind of characteristic way of prophesying, his “form,” is what he calls plainness, right? He talks about this a lot that plain and precious things have been taken out of the book that we now understand as the Bible, but that he wants to restore the plain and precious things and that he wants to prophesy with something that he calls plainness. And this time through, I've been paying attention to that and trying to put my finger on what exactly Nephi means when he says that he prophesies plainly and that some people don't appreciate the plainness and reject it. As far as I can tell, one thing is simply the very detailed nature of the Book of Mormon's prophecies and predictions about the life of Christ. So the Book of Mormon gives us far more information ahead of Christ's coming, about who he is, about his name, about his mother, about his ministry. So the life of Christ, the mortal ministry of Christ, and his post-mortal ministry are laid out very plainly. But I think it's a lot more than that as well. It seems like it also, part of what Nephi needs by plainness is that when he teaches about Christ and about the coming Messiah, he is doing so with an already developed theology of salvation. So the prophecies, the messianic prophecies…

Sears: Mm-hmm.

Welch: come bundled with a whole set of teachings about what it means to be saved in Christ as individuals and as whole peoples. And a big part of that in the Book of Mormon is the covenant context. So part of what Nephi means by prophesying with plainness is to reintegrate the notion of covenant, the new and everlasting covenant as we know it in the Restoration, that Christians have often excised from the gospel of Jesus Christ, right, or said that somehow the old covenant is over now. But Nephi shows us no, the old covenant is the new covenant. It's the everlasting covenant, and it's still in effect. And it seems like one...

Sears: Yeah, he calls it the covenant that's not gonna be fulfilled until the latter days, right? Jesus didn't fulfill it when he showed up in mortality. This is still relevant for us now.

Welch: Yeah, exactly. And it seems like one final element of plainness that you can look for throughout 2nd Nephi are these moments of self-awareness when it's as though the prophet looks up from his work and is looking right at us, the readers in the latter days. As I mentioned before, Book of Mormon prophetic authors are incredibly transparent about what they're doing and why, and occasionally they speak directly to us. Always they seem to have their future Latter-day readers in mind. So it seems like that kind of direct relationship between the prophet and his eventual readers is part of what Nephi has in mind when he talks about plainness.

Sears: Yeah. And ironically, that's one way in which I think readers run into trouble trying to make sense of 2nd Nephi and make it meaningful. Is sometimes Nephi is trying to say some pretty plain things to us, but we have our own agenda and our own questions and our own things we think are important that we try to use to guide our questions of second Nephi and then that's where some frustration comes. So here's one example. You mentioned Nephi in the Book of Mormon being very plain about the ministry of Jesus Christ, right? A lot of my students, when I asked them, what did your seminary teachers and your Sunday school teachers tell you about why the Isaiah chapters are in here in the first place? A very common response I get is, their teachers told them, well, Nephi quoted this big block of Isaiah because it prophesies of the coming of Christ, by which they mean, you know, his birth and his mortal life, his death and his resurrection. And so the teachers prime the students to think, these chapters testify all over the place of Jesus's mortal ministry, and that's what you gotta be looking for. And the teachers will give some sample verses to make that point, like 2nd Nephi 17 verse 14, quoting Isaiah 7 verse 14, you know, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. They're like, see, look, here it's doing that. Here's part of the problem is that Nephi is in 2nd Nephi, I think, trying to teach us about Jesus Christ. But I think if we just follow what Nephi says, plain and simple, we've got to recognize he's not that interested at this point of talking to us about Jesus' birth and mortal ministry. Usually that's not his focus. Nephi is usually focused on the Jesus Christ who is there in the latter days as the God of Israel, gathering his people home to him from the four quarters of the earth. That's the Jesus that Nephi wants to teach us about. Nephi knows that Jesus' first coming is in the past for us. He wants us to look forward to the future, to the second coming, and all the wonderful things going on right now. So elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, it's different. Like Abinadi, he interprets Isaiah to talk about the mortal ministry, and the atonement, and suffering, and death of Jesus. That's great. But sometimes we put on Abinadi glasses, and then go into 2nd Nephi, and that's all we're looking for. And that's where students sometimes get frustrated. And…if we use Nephi as our guide to what these chapters were in there, I don't think the birth of Jesus really rises to the top of the list because in 2nd Nephi 25 through 30, when Nephi is interpreting those chapters, he doesn't talk about the birth of Jesus. He mentions his mortal life in total, like in one or two verses, just in quick passing in super fast historical overview. So for Nephi, for his present purposes, that just doesn't seem to be where his focus is. When they read these Isaiah chapters are really just trying to look for that aspect of Jesus's eternal ministry. And you're just not gonna find it too often. So what I would recommend to people to is take off the Abinadi lenses, let Nephi guide you. With Nephi's focused on Jesus being the God of Israel gathering us in the last days, let that guide your questions you ask when you ask why the Isaiah chapters are here. When you're in the Isaiah chapters themselves, it's describing Jehovah saving these remnants of Israel and Jehovah we believe is the pre-mortal Jesus Christ. So we can look for the savior there in his Old Testament pre-mortal context, redeeming his people and helping them. And then Nephi likens that to how he's gonna redeem and rescue and help us in the latter days. So I'm not trying to dismiss the importance of Jesus' birth and mortal life, but I think that's just less relevant to in second Nephi, what Nephi is usually trying to do. So allowing ourselves to learn about the Savior at different times and places and not being so fixated just on the years of his mortal ministry, I think help us appreciate more of what Isaiah is actually doing and getting less frustrated that we can't find it very many places.

Welch: Yeah, that's really helpful. Any other particular type of literary forms that we should have our eye out for here in 2nd Nephi?

Sears: Hmm, I think we've out-covered the major ones, but unless you have an idea you wanna look at.

Welch: I would, yeah, if you'll indulge me, I'll share just one more, which is in 2nd Nephi 2, which is where I think we see something a little different than we've seen so far in the Book of Mormon. And this is a kind of propositional, sort of reasoned theology in a way that we haven't really seen so far, right? In 1 Nephi, there's dreams and incredible visionary passages and then there's wonderful interpretation and teaching. There's allegory. We haven't really seen a kind of reasoned laying out of a theological idea that proceeds from premise to premise to premise and is connected by reason. And we see something like that, I think, in 2nd Nephi 2 with Lehi's final words and blessing to Jacob, where he is talking about these themes of human freedom, of agency, of ontology, right? How is the world composed, what is it made of, law. He kind of uses this argument from nihilism, right? If there weren't agency and freedom and ultimately a messiah, there wouldn't be anything at all. So this is, I think, a new mode of discourse that we see here, and we'll see it picked up in other sermons. Alma occasionally will preach in the same way, but Lehi here sets an example for this particular kind of preaching. And then of course we see the sermon.

Sears: Yeah.

Welch: Although, as I mentioned before, Jacob's sermon or discourse in chapters 6 through 10, we don't have a lot of information. In fact, we have no information about it. Was it oral or was it written? I don't think we even know that. To me, it has some elements of orality, and I would think that it might have been delivered orally. So, we see the sermon form, which has its own kind of literary characteristics and the way that it appeals to one's emotions and really tries to draw the listener and implicate the listener in the movement of ideas from step to step.

Sears: Yeah. Yeah, as redacted by Nephi, who's now writing this down, right?

Welch: Of course, of course. Yes, that's right. That's why talking about what's oral and what's written in the Book of Mormon is always a very layered and sticky proposition. But good. Okay, well let's move on now to talking about some of the themes. And this is where we could spend an hour on every single one of these because especially these last chapters are so thematically rich. But for you, Joshua, what are some of the most salient themes that come out here in 2nd Nephi?

Sears: Well, Nephi, you know, he opens first Nephi chapter one, talking about the redemption of the world. We finished first Nephi, quoting Isaiah, where he says, I wanna talk about the Redeemer, in particularly, and I think that setup really plays out here in second Nephi, that Nephi's interested in redemption. His family's falling apart. We have Nephites and we have Lamanites. They have their own kind of scattering that's occurring within the broader scattering of Israel. And Nephi really wants to work through for himself how this is going to work in his family and reassure Latter-day readers that God has not forgotten the covenant and that the Redeemer of Israel who rescued his scattered people in antiquity is still there for us both on an individual level of families and the broader covenant people as a whole scattered all over the world that there is a plan here to gather everyone back and so I think that's permeating all of this and driving Nephi's hope for the future.

Welch: Yeah, yeah. There's a couple that I think are sort of related to that. One is a little bit of a darker one. In this sort of salvation history mediated by covenant where peoples--in the largest scheme, of course, it's about the redemption of the Lamanite remnant in the latter days and the redemption of the Gentiles through the act of serving and helping the Lamanite remnant, right? This beautiful passage that we come to again and again in the Book of Mormon from Isaiah. Joshua, you'll remind me where it's from, where the Gentile kings and queens carry the sons and daughters of the remnant on their shoulders as nursing fathers and nursing mothers.

Sears: Yeah, Isaiah 29, 22 and 23.

Welch: There we go, thank you. So this becomes a touchstone, of course, for the history of the latter days, where God's intention to save or to offer salvation to all people will be realized through these big movements of peoples, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon to the Gentiles, and then the Gentiles' faithful offering of the Nephite and Lamanite record to the Lamanite remnant, and in that process of offering and sharing both peoples, it seems, will be brought to Christ. So that's the optimistic vision. But there's a kind of dark vision that comes out as well because we see in this broad salvation history that some people will fall away. The Nephites will dwindle in unbelief. The Lamanites themselves will dwindle for a time in darkness and unbelief. And so we have these ideas of hell and the devil, a lake of fire and brimstone, that are developed especially in the teachings of Jacob, especially in chapter nine, where he talks about these awful monsters of death and hell. Those aren't maybe passages that we love to dwell on, and maybe we spend less time on them now especially, but they do seem to be rather formative because we will see this image of the lake of fire and brimstone, and this kind of… Can I say harsh teaching or straight talk teaching, fear-based teaching, right, that shows the anguish and the pain that results from being cut off from the presence of God. I think it's offered in good faith. As Jacob will tell us in the book of Jacob, the prophets feel as though it is their heavy responsibility to make sure that their listeners understand the consequences of accepting or rejecting new revelation from God. And so they have to make it perfectly plain what is at stake. And so it's in service of that, that these teachings of the lake of fire and brimstone and hell and endless torment show up. Nevertheless, they can be a little bit hard to make sense of and they can be a little hard to hear. Would you have anything to add to that?

Sears: Yeah, I think you're right that you do have this dynamic of, hey, here's real consequences that can sound very severe and also these very hopeful messages. I think the Book of Mormon is pretty consistent with saying that because of the covenant, God is always willing to forgive as people repent and come unto Jesus Christ, but they do have to repent and come unto Jesus Christ. That is an absolute use your agency, gotta do it requirement at the end of the day. Like 2nd Nephi chapter 30, as Nephi's wrapping up his discussion, he's got talks about, you know, Gentiles can be numbered with the house of Israel and everybody can come into the covenant, all good things. But at the opening of chapter 30, he says, "'Except you will keep the commandments of God, "'you will all likewise perish. "'For I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles "'as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord.'" But as many and then covenant people, the Lord on the flip side as will not repent shall be cast off. For the Lord covenanted with none, save it be him that repent and believe in his son, who is the Holy One of Israel." So you do have these kinds of competing things. One thing I find interesting though, is with all these warnings about being cut off and the fear of being cast off from the presence of the Lord. This is just my take on it, I suppose, that the Book of Mormon is overall very hopeful that if we can just make the right choice to repent and turn to Jesus, despite all the challenges that are there, he's gonna find a way to bring people home. So on the title page, for example, I have my students memorize that Moroni's purpose statement for the Book of Mormon there. Moroni could have said, you know, the Book of Mormon is to show everyone that, hey, if you don't repent, your anguish will be like a, and torment will be like a lake of fire and brimstone. But instead there's this kind of hopeful twist on this. The Book of Mormon is to show under the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers and that they may know the covenants of the Lord that they are not cast off forever. So I find that to be very hopeful. And the fact that we have a hopeful note there on the title page rather than the warning of watch out or like a fire and brimstone, I think at the end of the day, I interpret that as Moroni letting hope be the final word. That we don't want to get discouraged. We need to recognize the reality of the need for repentance and that it's only through repentance and the Savior Jesus Christ that we can come unto him and be saved. But there's a lot of reason to be hopeful because of the sacrifice he's already made for us.

Welch: Yeah, I love that. And I think we get some of that beautiful language, especially in chapter 26, where Nephi wants to make it clear that all are alike unto Christ and that he denies nobody that comes to him. And even though we're talking in sort of large covenant terms about whole groups of people, in the end, it doesn't matter what group of people you come from. You are the same to Christ.

Sears: Yeah.

Welch: And all are invited to him, black and white, bond and free, male and female, all are alike unto God. Those are such powerful teachings, as you say, I think central to the most important message of the Book of Mormon, which is one of hope and salvation and redemption that is on offer from Christ. I think it's interesting that--I love those verses and we cite them often in 2nd Nephi 26:33, for instance--I have often been guilty of not really noting the context that they come in. But I noted it this time around, which is Nephi's prophecy of kind of the decline of Gentile Christianity in the latter days and the sorry state that churches will find themselves in, stratified by class and by all sorts of divisions and pride and superiority that in fact causes them to deny--or so repulses or repels some seekers that they are effectively denied--from finding Christ in Christianity. So, I think that's a real warning to speaking to us, those of us who are Christians in the latter days. He is speaking to us and saying, I see this tendency in latter-day Christianity to, for whatever reason, especially pride and wealth, to reject the humble seekers. But he says, no, he denies none. All are welcome to me.

Sears: Yeah, beautiful.

Welch: Yeah. All right. I'm trying to see here. I mean, as I said, there's so much that is so rich. The doctrine of Christ, of course, feasting upon the words of Christ here at the end of 2nd Nephi, truly scriptural riches for us. But we have to end this interview somehow, and I want to leave time for us each to share a passage that is important to us. But before we get there, Joshua, I just want to give you an opportunity to say anything else that you wanted to say, whether about Isaiah or anything else here in 2nd Nephi. Is there anything we haven't had time to get to that you'd like to make sure we cover? Okay, all right. Well, will you go first then and share something that you really love? Okay.

Sears: Well, let's look at some passages. Sure, well I liked what you were just saying about 2nd Nephi 26 and this worry about Gentile culture in the last days. Because one of my favorite parts of 2nd Nephi is precisely at that point there. So I'll go to 2nd Nephi 26.

Sears: And this is the kind of, I'll go to 2nd Nephi 26 verses 12 and 13. And this is where Nephi begins a prophecy of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. And that's because he learned back in his vision from 1 Nephi, the Book of Mormon has a crucial role in gathering the people of God and redeeming everyone who has strayed in the last days. So Nephi wants to really elaborate on that. And he's going to do it using Isaiah. So he's going to use Isaiah chapter 29 and liken that to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. This is another case again where some people have said, well, Isaiah 29 is a prophecy of the Book of Mormon and Nephi is showing us that, and that's possible. But again, since Nephi is always telling us he's likening and because you can make sense of Isaiah 29 being about things in Isaiah's day with the Assyrians, Assyrian invasion. I'm inclined to think that Isaiah 29 is about the Assyrian invasion and Nephi is likening its language to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, but you could see that different ways. But starting in verses 12 and 13, Nephi frames the coming forth of the Book of Mormon as having something to do with faith in Jesus Christ in the latter days. He says, and I spake concerning the convi- and as I spake concerning the convincing of the Jews that Jesus is the very Christ, it must needs be that the Gentiles- be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, and that he manifests himself unto all those who believe in him by the power of the Holy Ghost. Yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles, signs, and wonders among the children of men according to their faith. And we have this introduction to the idea that it's according to faith. And then I'm not gonna read most of chapters 26 and 27, but Nephi goes pretty systematically. Through the verses of Isaiah 29, and modifies the words and likens the words to different aspects of the Book of Mormon's coming forth. And one place that's actually kind of famous is in chapter 27, starting at about verse six and on, where he talks about this book that is sealed, right? That someone who is not learned is gonna take to the learned. And traditionally, we interpret this as Martin Harris taking...

Welch: Sample of the Book of Mormon translation to Charles Anthon, right, and the conversation they have. And I think that's part of this, but that it also goes deeper than that. Our colleague Joe Spencer has an article that he wrote about this passage, and it's for free on the Religious Studies Center website. It's called The Book, The Words of the Book, What the Book of Mormon Says About Its Own Coming Forth. So readers can go find that on there. But what Joe points out that was fascinating for me the first time Is that in?

Sears: Verse 15, it says that she'll come to pass that the Lord God shall say to him to whom he shall deliver the book, take these words which are not sealed, deliver them to another, that he may show them unto the learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And the learned shall say, bring hither the book and I will read them. Verse 16, and now because of the glory of the world and to get gain will they say this and not for the glory of God. And what Joe points out is that it switches there from the learned in kind of the singular in the sense that we think of Charles Anthin, but it says they. It's in the plural. And that suggests that one way you can read this is that if this is about Charles Anthem, he's also functioning as a type for anybody in the last days who has a similar attitude to Charles Anthem where they say, you know what, bring me the gold plates, show me the proof, show me the hard evidence, and then I'll take this translation of this book that you've created seriously. And God goes on to say, In verse 20, the learned shall not read them for they have rejected them. Again, it's in the plural here. This has gotta be about more than just Charles' anthem. But he says, I'm able to do my own work. And he tells Joseph Smith, thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee. Which is just a great description of the translation process. Joseph is not using dictionaries or even looking at the plates. He's just given these words by revelation. He reads off things. And then the kicker is in verse 23. For behold, I am God, I am a God of miracles and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today and forever. And I work not among the children of men, save it be according to their faith. So you get that framing again about this is an issue of faith. And I think this is the answer to why God doesn't provide more physical direct evidence for the Book of Mormon. People ask why did that angel have to take the plates? If it only left the plates here, the Smithsonian could be analyzing them. We could have hard evidence for the antiquity of the Book of Mormon. But this is where God explains why He deliberately has not done that. He's not letting the learned approach this using their modern secular demands for empirical evidence. Instead, God is deliberately setting up the coming forth of the Book of Mormon as something that has a large part to do with faith in a God of miracles.

Sears: If you can't even muster up the possibility in your heart that there is a God or miracles out there The Book of Mormon is gonna be just be a non-starter for you And if you if God gave physical evidence like gave people the plates Then they might be intellectually convinced that the Book of Mormon is ancient or that it says true things But that's not the kind of experience that's gonna lead to real conversion that's gonna develop faith in Jesus Christ instead by design You have to approach this in a long learned way you have to go to God in prayer and ask for a miracle. You have to say, is this book true? Tell me by the power of the Holy Ghost. And that means that the only way to find out it's true is to have your own little personal miracle of revelation in which you exercise faith in Jesus Christ, even to ask a question like that. And as the Spirit comes to you, it confirms that faith and it builds that faith in Jesus Christ. So I think not just by what the Book of Mormon says, the words that are inside of it and the messages it teaches, but the very way it came forth was custom designed to challenge our secular assumptions in the last days and to force us to approach this from an angle of faith so that it actually builds our relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, rather than just leading us to an intellectual proposition that we now accept as true, which only gets so far. At the end of the day, knowing the Book of Mormon is true, who cares? The point is that is a bridge to developing faith in Jesus Christ and strengthening our relationship with Him. And I love this explanation here that the Book of Mormon, even by the way it came forth, when an unlearned translator doing this with seer stones as an unlearned ways you could think of to bring this forth, it does what it's supposed to do to lead people to Jesus.

Welch: That's right, I love that. It's the iron rod and it's great to grasp it and to know that iron rod is real, but we have to follow it to the end, to the tree, and eat the fruit. That is the point. That's so perfect, Joshua, because it leads perfectly in what I wanted to share here as we wrap up our interview. I had this insight as I was reading--again, I've talked about how struck I've been by the richness of chapter 25 on. As I was reading these chapters, I had this thought, What if Nephi, in a way, is still talking to Laman and Lemuel? What if he is still in some way pleading with them to open their hearts to the possibility that the revelations that their father and that he and that Jacob have received are real? Ultimately, Nephi was willing to forgive their violence towards him. I think the real wound in his heart was that Laman and Lemuel could never accept the revelations as real. So, as I was reading some of this in chapter 28 and 32, I had in mind Nephi speaking to Laman and Lemuel, and I think by extension to anybody who has that kind of closed, locked down secular worldview where God is distant, if he exists at all, and not involved in our lives day to day. So I'm going to read these and I want you to picture Nephi talking to Laman and Lemuel and see if they come alive for you the way that they did for me. Picture him where he writes in 28 verse 6 of the Gentiles, woe unto him that sayeth, a Bible, a Bible, we have a Bible, we do not need another Bible. That's exactly what Laman and Lemuel said. We have the law of Moses. We don't need anything more. And then moving on to chapter 32 in verse 4.

Sears: Yeah.

Welch: After I have spoken these words, if you cannot understand them, it will be because you ask not, neither do ye knock." And again in verse 7, they will not search knowledge nor understand great knowledge when it is given unto them in plainness. I think he's pleading with his brothers, if you would ask in good faith, if you would knock, if you would seek to know for yourself, you could know. And you could, then you could find the iron rod and it would lead you to the tree and you too could partake of the fruit. So the openness and the willingness to countenance the possibility of new revelation, to countenance the possibility that God could be speaking through the prophets and that he wants to speak to you as well, I think is the central plea of Nephi. And as I said in our first episode, it brings me back again so powerfully to the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7 verse 7, ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and the door will be opened to you for everyone who asks receives the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks the door will be opened. I think that is Nephi's testimony and he tells us as much in 2nd Nephi 4. I'm still working on what this means in my life. What does it mean? How am I asking and seeking and has that door been open to me? These are still questions that I'm discovering for myself. But the message of these first two books in the Book of Mormon has never spoken more powerfully to me than it has this year as I've read through it.

Sears: And that's a really beautiful way to think about Nephi's continued relationship with his brothers and how he views them. I've got a little exercise I do with my students sometimes where I ask them, picture Lamanites in your mind, close your eyes, picture Lamanites. And on the screen, I'll put a painting of a bunch of guys wearing loincloths with swords and axes and things. Like, is this kind of what you picture? And a lot of them go, yeah, those are Lamanites. And then I play a little video. It's from the church's Book of Mormon videos that they've made. 2nd Nephi 4 has this beautiful little video where Lehi is giving that final farewell to Lehman and Lemuel's grandkids and promising them blessings, you know. And at the end of his speech, all the grandkids run up to him and they have this big group hug. And he zooms in on Lehi's faces. He's clutching those kids so tight and he's crying and you've got those kids and even Lehman and Lemuel are there and it's just this big, beautiful moment of, and I pause the video and Lehi just clutching those kids so close and I say, those are Lamanites, right? And I think we got to reframe this, right? Because we think eliminate the bad guys, the enemies, but for Lehi, these are his grandkids. And for Heavenly Father, you know, even the most encourageable sinners, these are his kids. This is his family. And it's always worth fighting to bring family home. And it's always worth maintaining hope that family can come back. So I love how you've expressed how Nephi might've continued to hold onto that hope for his brothers that in the long run, maybe just maybe his messages can finally get to them.

Welch: Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone, right? Thank you so much, Joshua. This has been such a rich conversation. I'm excited to read 2nd Nephi again. I think I want to start over from the beginning. It's such a wonderful book. Thank you for your time and sharing your knowledge with us today. Bye-bye.

Sears: Yeah, thank you.