The Plain and Precious Things

As I've read through 1Nephi 13, I have wondered, “what are the plain and precious things which were removed from the Bible?” You can't tell from just reading the Bible because you don't know what isn't there that should be, so how do you tell? The Book of Mormon helps, but it's still not a clear voice on what is missing. While I was pondering on this a couple of days ago, I came across a lecture by Hugh Nibley which he gave in 1964 at BYU. It does give some interesting insights. Here is a link to an MP3 audio of the lecture. Here's the print version.

In it, Bro. Nibley said the scrolls of Qumran and the books of Nag Hammadi Library give the answer to that question. The Dead Sea Scrolls as the scrolls of Qumran are also known, were written and collected by residents of a small community known today as "Khirbet Qumran". While it is not known for certain which religious sect they were, most think they were Essenes: they were Jews. They taught the Jews at Jerusalem were in a state of apostasy, so they were trying to get back to a more pure adherence to Jewish law and scripture. 

The residents of Nag Hammadi were Christians. It is located in Egypt on the Nile River about fifty miles north of Luxor. The documents in question are dated from about the first to fourth century after Christ.

What Bro. Nibley did is compare what was taught in the texts from these sites with what we have in the Bible today. He identified at least these four things:

1. The doctrine of literal resurrection of the body after death and marriage that transcends death. While Paul touches on it in 1 Corinthians 15, and the Savior often refers to Himself as the "resurrection and the life," the people of Nag Hammadi taught the doctrine much more clearly. They were branded by the church at Rome as heretics for this and other teachings.

2. The coming apostasy and loss of God's authority. According the Nibley, the people at Nag Hammadi were branded as heretics by the church in Rome for their beliefs. Nibley said they "buried" their records, as the people of Qumran did, in anticipation of a time when those records would be valued again. The Book of Mormon has its own version of this tragic loss of priesthood authority. Here we have two witnesses separated by vast distances of the same event.

3. The Savior’s post-mortal ministry (40 days) to the Jews at Jerusalem. I found this particularly interesting. The account Nibley cites gives additional insight into the Nephite's request to do for them what the Savior did in Jerusalem. See 3 Nephi 17:12-24. There's no way Joseph Smith knew of this in 1829, yet the close parallel is striking, even breathtaking.

4.    The "Church of Anticipation," or a group of people who were expecting a soul saving Messiah as opposed to a militaristic Messiah who would free Israel from bondage. This was the whole focus of the community at Qumran. The Bible doesn't mention any such thing, but that's the dominant theme of the Book of Mormon: a people looking forward to the coming Savior and His atonement for them. The community of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls are a clear Old World validation of this premise.

He touches on more than these items, but it is enough for me to answer the question: "what was taken out?"

Jarom to the Words of Mormon - The end of the record

I hope some day to read what was in the lost 116 pages about this time. The record fast forwards through time covering five generations of writers and several hundred years. And yes, I realize there are six writers during this period, two of them are brothers, so for me they count as one generation. During this period the Nephites fall into apostasy. One writer confesses he is a wicked man. Another says he knows of no new prophecy among the people. It’s interesting to me that they also quit mentioning how much time has passed. The last that’s mentioned is by Amaron, Jarom’s grandson, when 320 years had passed.

The narrative resumes, a couple generations later, when Amaleki closes it out with the story of the Nephites fleeing from the Land of Nephi. Amaleki’s story is a poignant one. On the one hand, he has no children. At the same time, he mentions a brother who leaves with Zeniff to go back to the Land of Nephi. He had no one to give the plates to so he makes the choice to give them to King Benjamin. Benjamin is a prophet-warrior-king over the amalgamated nation of Nephites and Mulekites.

Perhaps it’s just because of the brevity of the record, but it’s here we read for the first time of dissensions away from the Nephites to the Lamanites. Reading between the lines, you realize joining the two people was difficult. It required a lot of effort by the king or government leaders to keep it going. This thread of discord runs throughout the rest of their history until Christ appears.

Just a reminder: this is the last part of the record Joseph Smith translated. When they sent the book to be printed, he put this account in front of the rest. The day dreamer in me thinks that had the 116 pages not been lost, it would’ve been at the end of the record, after Moroni. Like an appendix in a modern book. We start next in the Book of Mosiah. You’ll note, it doesn’t begin like any succeeding book with an introduction by Mormon: that was part of the 116 pages.

We don’t even know if it was originally named Mosiah by Mormon. Given the seminal event of Mosiah I fleeing into the wilderness it could be named after him. It may have been named Benjamin for the work he did in uniting the two people. It may even have been part of the Book of Lehi. Whatever the case, I’m certain Mormon did not name it after Benjamin’s son Mosiah II.

Jacob 5-7 - Wrapping up Jacob

Reading through my notes on Jacob 5, I was reminded of a couple of observations. One is that verse 40 is Nephi’s day. This is when Lehi’s party was brought to the New World. Verse 61 is the start of our day, when the Gospel is restored and taught the last time.

The pruning and replacing of the evil fruit occurs in our day.

Chapter six, verse one is where Jacob gives his commentary and prophecy about what he’s just written. I think it’s instructive to note that speaking as prophet, his prophecy consisted of saying simply, “Everything I told you is the truth.”

So it can be for us today. A prophet is still speaking by the power of the Holy Ghost and prophesying when he says no more than, “this is all true.”

For those dealing with critics of the Church and its teachings, Jacob gives us the story of Sherem. Sherem’s arguments are persuasive. They seem to make sense. It’s clear that what he says is effective because many people, Jacob says followed after him.

He gives the antidotes to the Sherems of our day in verse five. He speaks of the many revelations he’d been given, even seeing angels and hearing the Lord’s voice. While this may sound extraordinary, keep in mind, Laman and Lemuel both had seen angels and God’s power in personal ways. It didn’t help because they were tone-deaf to the Spirit.

Jacob wasn’t. And that’s the key. If you’ve had experiences with the Spirit and you keep them fresh through regular study of the scriptures, you will be inoculated to the Sherems of our day. This may seem an audacious thing to say, but it is what I’ve experienced. With all that I’ve experienced of the Spirit and all that I continue to feel, the Sherem arguments that get thrown at me just bounce off. As long as I read the scriptures, go to the temple and attend church on Sundays, in other words as long as I make the Savior the rock on which I stand, none of this will destroy me. I love Helaman 5:12 for that reason.

4 Nephi and Mormon - A Fall from Grace

The most heartbreaking part of the Book of Mormon is in 4 Nephi and most of Mormon. They chronicle the Nephites’ self-inflicted fall from grace to abject apostasy and open rebellion against the Lord.

A few things that stand out to me in this section, namely how I wept for the Nephites when I first read this as a teenager. Another is Mormon 5:15 where he observes how the people became a dark, a filthy and a loathsome people, more so than existed at any time in their history prior to that. It’s a pretty clear indication the “darkness” spoken of wasn’t so much a changing of skin pigment but something more along metaphysical lines. I think you’d almost have to see it to comprehend it because there’s no easy way in our language to describe it. The closest I can come to explaining it is seeing someone who has turned away from the Gospel who once had its light in their countenance. In such cases, the best word to use is they’ve become dark. It’s quite a sad story.

The last observation is Mormon getting the plates from Ammoron. There are two reasons why he got them: Ammoron had no sons worthy of the role or the Lord told him to give them to someone else. Given the Nephite tradition, my guess is the former. It represents the end of a dynasty of prophets from Alma the Elder, down through seven intervening generations to Ammaron. For what it’s worth, the Book of Mormon is recorded by twenty generations of prophet-record keepers over a 1000 year period. In three generations, one brother gave the record to another brother, who then gave it to a son or nephew or in the case of Benjamin, the prophet-King.

By the end of Mormon 7, the Nephites are gone and Mormon and his son Moroni speak to generations of unborn people they know only through prophetic vision: us.

3 Nephi 6 - Our Day

In the keynote address of the April 1987 General Conference, President Benson said, "The record of the Nephite history just prior to the Savior's visit reveals many parallels to our own day." This chapter is the meat of that statement. As such it contains material that is cause for great concern with just a dash of hope.

The hope comes from showing what we must to do to remain faithful in such a wicked environment. In verse 13, he observes only charity: not returning railing for railing, being kind in the face of persecution is the only way the righteous remained so.

The rest of the chapter tells of wickedness being so prevalent and Satan's power over the people so great, the church is broken up. Eventually, it exists only among a few of the Lamanites. Later, when God wants to warn the people, He must choose righteous men since the church no longer has an effective voice.

We live in such days: we have many businesses, lawyers and a level of material wealth the world has not seen. Wickedness abounds and as Isaiah wrote, today that which God says is good is now considered evil. Debauchery and lasciviousness is considered acceptable entertainment. (50 Shades of Gray, anyone?)

Our government is disconnected from reality... many of us are. In my previous post, I commented on Giddianhi's letter. It's an outrageous declaration of beliefs not grounded in reality or sound thinking. But how different is it from what comes out of Washington DC?

The only safe path forward, is courageous, yet humble and committed adherence to Jesus Christ and His teachings.