I tried reading the Book of Mormon once before (if your curious why I'm doing it now, see this introductory post) but didn't get very far. I think I may have made it as far as chapter 12 of 1 Nephi before giving up in disgust, and I confess to skipping a lot before that. This time, to fulfill the premise, I'll be reading it through.
As I recall, the early story-line runs something like this: Lehi becomes a prophet in Jerusalem, God tells him and his family to leave, they go hang out by the Red Sea, then Lehi's sons have to go back for something, then they hang out by the Red Sea some more and a section of visions and prophesies ensues. Yeah, I don't remember it all that well. The only part of the book I remember very clearly is the impression I got from its writing style. It's clear that it tries to imitate the style of the King James Version of the Bible, but since I grew up on the KJV (literally learned to read from it--which was about as hard as it sounds) the imitation sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I can tell the difference between old writing and poor writing. For instance, there's the overuse of "and it came to pass." Many people have commented on it through the years. Mormon apologists have given the defense that it also occurs frequently in the KJV Bible--and they are right: it occurs there 452 times...to the Book of Mormon's 1,424. Apologists have further said that it occurs more frequently because (1) the Book of Mormon is historical narrative--where the phrase is more likely to occur--whereas the Bible contains a mix of genres, and (2) the actual Hebrew word translated and it came to pass occurs 1,204 times in the Bible, but its translators went with alternate translations most of the time (and, presumably, Smith did not). Unfortunately, a little word-count undermines this logic. The historical books (Genesis-Esther) in the KJV contain 311,209 words. Even assuming that every occurrence of the phrase was in those books and every occurrence of the Hebrew word was retranslated, that would still leave that portion of the Bible with fewer occurrences--spread across a significantly larger word-count (43,046 words--the size of a small novel). And that's the poor writing I remember being grammatically correct...
Then, there's the use of inappropriate words. Not vulgar words, of course, but words that, in and of themselves, are anachronisms that shouldn't appear in the text. I spotted one today: the word church used in 1 Nephi 4:26. Both characters in the scene (and the narrator himself, Nephi) are Jews living in (or, in the case of the narrator, from) 7th Century BC Jerusalem and one of them assumes the other is talking about church. In the Bible, the word church is not used in the Old Testament, only in the New. There's a very good reason for that. The word is Greek, invented by the Greeks, actually. They coined the words translated as church to designate their democratic gatherings of called-together citizens. Christianity appropriated it to denote the called-out assembly of the saints. Jews never used the term, but stuck with terms like "congregation" or "solemn assembly" in the Old Testament when they wanted to talk about their collective religious groups or gatherings. A 7th Century BC Jew would have used one of those terms instead of a Greek word that hadn't yet been invented. But of course, if the author was actually a 19th Century American, he might not recognize the anachronism...or he might simply care more about making his Jewish characters appealing to a predominantly Christian audience than portraying them as actual Jews.
But my main reason for writing this post was to make a more substantive comparison between the wisdom of God in the Bible and the "wisdom of God" in the Book of Mormon. The first few chapters of 1 Nephi contain parallels (deliberately highlighted by Nephi at one point) between the Jewish Exodus (in the book of Exodus, of all places) and Lehi's departure from Jerusalem. Lehi leaves Jerusalem in 600BC to escape the coming destruction of the city. Thereafter, while living with his family in tents by the Red Sea, he receives another command from God in a dream telling him he must send his sons back to Jerusalem to obtain a "record of the Jews" and of Lehi's genealogy from Laban, one of the city's inhabitants. Oh, and of course these are written on metal plates made of brass, because everyone wrote in metal books back then (rather than scrolls, as Jeremiah--who also lived in Jerusalem at the time--used). One might ask why Lehi didn't get these records in the first place, or why he specifically had to get them from Laban (the only copy?--seems like a bit of a stretch, but we'll go with it). However, since there seems to be some drama going on between Nephi and his brothers and Nephi himself is undergoing some character development, one might assume, as I did at first, that God intended it to be this way all along, so that Nephi and his brothers would have to undergo the trials of their father's fetch quest. Some fetch quests, after all, are vital to the plot.
But of course, others aren't. In chapter 3, Nephi has an argument with his brothers, wherein he spells out God's logic in sending the four of them back for the book. God commanded Lehi to leave because of the immanent destruction of Jerusalem, so obviously he couldn't come back since "if my father [Lehi] should dwell in the land after he hath been commanded to flee out of the land, behold, he would also perish. Wherefore it must needs be that he flee out of the land" (1 Nephi 3:18). This is impeccable logic until one realizes two things. First of all, the city of Jerusalem is not in immanent danger. The Bible and history establish that it was besieged in 589BC and there's been no apparent passage of time since Lehi left Jerusalem (though the footnotes allow that it might be as late as 592BC, still well before the city was in danger). The lack of danger is apparent in the narrative itself by how easily Lehi's sons move in and out of the city multiple times (either that or the author failed to recognize the fact that walled cities like Jerusalem were specifically designed to be difficult to get into during times of trouble). Second, the logic of Nephi applies equally well to Lehi's children as to Lehi himself. Lehi was commanded to leave Jerusalem with his family. If him going back after being commanded to leave equals his destruction, then surely the same will be true of his family members, who were also commanded to leave. Despite these two glaring plot holes, Nephi declares the whole fetch quest "the wisdom of God" because getting those plates will allow them to "preserve unto our children the language of our fathers"--and some preservation it was, seeing as how Nephi spent so much time in chapter 1 explaining that he was writing in a totally different language altogether, which was part Egyptian. In other words, the "wisdom of God" is just being used to try to cover up obvious gaps in the logic of the plot.
Compare to the story of Exodus. Lehi, it seems, couldn't get everything the first time around moving a family of six three day's journey into the wilderness, though he left at his own discretion. Moses was tasked by God with moving over 600,000 men (about 2 million people altogether, by some estimates) a few hundred miles from Egypt to Canaan, with a side trip through the desert--and did we mention he couldn't even get started till a disagreeable and moody Pharaoh gave him the go-ahead? However, God never had to tell Moses, "Send somebody back, we forgot something." As a matter of fact, the level of preparedness and provision God demonstrates in the Jewish Exodus is simply mind-blowing. He starts out by having Moses tell all the Jews to be packed and ready to go--shoes on their feet, walking sticks in hand (Exodus 12:11)--on the very night the Pharaoh would finally decide to tell them to leave. As a bonus, he has all the Egyptian neighbors of the Hebrew people heap them with fine gifts of gold, silver, brass, silks, and skins, etc. Why would he have them do that? Isn't it just extra stuff to lug around in the desert? As a matter of fact, no, because later on those very gifts turn out to be exactly what the Hebrews needed to build their Tabernacle. God knew exactly what they would need, when they would need it, and where and when they could get it and He provided--even in the case of a couple million people needing to build a really fancy mobile temple in the middle of nowhere. That's the wisdom of God!
By contrast, god in the Book of Mormon doesn't seem to be able to get his act together. While one might think he deliberately had Lehi run off without the book so his sons would have to fetch it, Nephi's explanation shoots down that possibility by pointing out that god would have sent Lehi back for it personally if not for the fact he'd then be killed when Jerusalem fell (for some reason that escapes logic). At first the wealth of Lehi's family seems to have been left deliberately for the express purpose of being used to buy Laban off...but then the gold is stolen by Laban and vanishes from the narrative, not even reappearing once Laban has been killed (maybe he threw it down one of the plot holes). In the end, there doesn't seem to be a reason why any of this had to happen in the first place. Taken altogether, the god in this book seems to be improvising almost as much as the writer. It's a disappointment, and it doesn't compare to the wisdom of the God of the Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment