I don't want to spend too much time on chapter 9 in my blog here. I read it, of course. The chapter is brief and basically reiterates that Nephi is (in case you hadn't caught on by this point) abridging his father's records. He does say that he's doing this at god's command--without knowing why god commanded it, but obeying him anyway--and this does help a little...sort of. It does give Nephi a plausible reason for abridging his father's accounts, even though he's repeatedly said space on these plates is at a premium. It also connects his abridgment with the Lost 116 Pages and the threat that they would be altered and brought forward later as proof that Joseph Smith had not translated the Book of Mormon but instead made it up. This would be a plausible reason for God to command Nephi to abridge his father's records and Smith to translate the abridgment the second time around, except for a couple of problems. First, if the official story is true and the pages were stolen by evil people who intended to alter them to discredit Smith, then translating an abridgment wouldn't have helped. The evil people could have still come forward with altered copies of the original, changing details that even Smith's abridgment would have to include (for instance, they could have changed Sam's name to Shem, thereby casting doubt on Smith's account). Second, evil people never did come forward with the lost pages, and the pages remain lost to this day, with the most logical explanation for their disappearance being that they were simply destroyed immediately and that no one ever had plans to alter them at all. Would God really go to all the trouble of arranging Nephi's abridgment if He knew it would represent an insufficient solution to a non-existent problem? God is no fool, and I think Smith's fears that his own memory would prove unable to recreate his first draft were the real culprit.
But in any case, Nephi does two other noteworthy things in chapter 9. The first is to talk about how his writings (the four books of Nephi, I presume?) are divided between secular and religious histories. He even says that both of them are called Nephi (telling us four times in one sentence that he named them after himself). It's odd to note that Nephi named his books in the Book of Mormon, but that in the Bible the names of books (with the possible exception of the Song of Solomon) were assigned later, over generations. Perhaps this is a result of the Book of Mormon not having actually had generations to develop. Certainly, it is a strange contrast with the Hebrew naming tradition as seen in the books of the Old Testament.
The other thing Nephi does is announces that he is done abridging his father's records (by which I guess Smith meant he'd reached the end of the material covered in the lost first draft) and that he is now going to talk about himself and his own life. Chapter 10, however, immediately deflates this announcement, when Nephi says that "to proceed with mine account, I must speak somewhat of the things of my father, and also of my brethren." He proceeds to spend the chapter describing Lehi's messianic prophesies, making it as obvious as he did before that he's abridging, saying things like "and much spake my father concerning this thing" (1 Nephi 10:8) "and after this manner of language did my father prophesy and speak unto my brethren, and also many more things which I do not write in this book" (1 Nephi 10:15), etc. It seems very odd indeed that a writer should announce he's done summarizing a previous source (why announce it at all?) only to turn back to it immediately to summarize some more. Again, I see Smith as the author being the most likely explanation. He might well have wanted to mark the end of the summarized first draft as an important milestone, only to remember that he'd left something important (messianic prophesies, in this case) out of the recap and have to toss it in at the end.
But its the Messianic prophesies I want to focus on. They take up most of the chapter and are extremely detailed. They explicitly say the Messiah will come 600 years after Lehi left Jerusalem, that the Messiah will be "a Savior of the world" and "Redeemer of the world," and that all the world will remain "in a fallen state" unless they rely on Him. The prophecy mentions "a prophet who should come before the Messiah," describes his message (with an almost exact quote of the Gospels), and describes the place and circumstances of his baptism of Christ. It then goes on to say that the Messiah would be killed by the Jews, who would dwindle in unbelief while the Messiah made Himself manifest to the Gentiles, using the analogy of grafting them into an olive tree, after which the Jews would also be grafted back in.
There are a number of problems here. The first, and not the least of which, is that the math for Lehi's 600 years just doesn't seem to add up. The Book of Mormon says that Lehi was still in Jerusalem during the first year of Zedekiah's reign (1 Nephi 1:4). The Bible tells us that Zedekiah reigned eleven years in Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:18), and that his reign ended with the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzer (2 Kings 25:1-2). Cross-referencing with the historical records of the Babylonians, we can firmly date the beginning of Zedekiah's reign to 597BC and the siege's end (that marks the eleventh year of his reign) to either 587 or 586BC, both of which combine with the Book of Mormon account to say Lehi could not possibly have left Jerusalem before 597BC, and that he could not have left it after 589BC (when the siege began--since Lehi's lack of mention of the siege and the ease with which his sons were able to complete their fetch-quests indicates that the siege of Jerusalem had not yet begun). This puts the 600 year mark somewhere between 4 and 12AD (there being no year zero). This presents a problem, since this date is all wrong for predicting either the birth of Christ or the beginning of his ministry. While there is some scholarly debate as to exactly when Christ was born, the range of dates is (at most) between 7 to 2BC (the idea of Jesus being born in 1AD being a popular misconception; it was indeed the whole point of the Gregorian Calendar to fix year 1 at Christ's birth, but by cross-referencing with records not available when the calendar was set, scholars have found that whoever set year 1 goofed and set it too late). Accordingly, His ministry began somewhere between 27 and 29AD. This means that the 600 years of Lehi ended in a year with exactly zero prophetic significance. The friendliest explanation that I can think of is that the 600 years is meant to be a round number rather than designed to yield the precise year of Christ's birth or ministry. However, giving a vague round number here contrasts strangely with the highly specific nature of everything else in the prophecy. An alternative explanation is that Smith goofed with his math when he made it up.
The second problem is that Lehi's prophecy is pretty blatant plagiarism of the Bible. He lifts direct quotes from the Gospels in describing the words of John the Baptist (compare 1 Nephi 10:8 with Mark 1:3 & 7). His "olive tree" metaphor is plainly an interpretation on Paul's analogy in Romans 11 (compare 1 Nephi 10:12-14 to Romans 11:17-25). Now, it's not a problem for scripture to quote and interpret scripture: it happens all the time in the Bible. The problem here is that the Book of Mormon is quoting and interpreting scripture that hasn't even been written yet! Lehi shouldn't be able to build on and interpret the words of Paul, because Paul hasn't been born yet and his words are thus unavailable. But clearly that is exactly what he's doing. It does not work to say it's the other way around and Paul was referencing Lehi because the Book of Mormon (even assuming that it isn't a 19th Century hoax) wouldn't have been available in the Old World at the time Paul wrote Romans. To say that two prophets would come up with exactly the same analogy independently is very strange, since the Bible is full of original analogies given to individual prophets. However, if Smith is the author, it makes prefect sense for him to reference as much of the Bible as he can in order to authenticate his work as scripture, without realizing that his plagiarism of books his characters should not have had access to will break the careful reader's suspension of disbelief.
The final problem is really the most interesting. Compared to the Bible, Lehi's prophecy is extremely detailed and forthcoming. Isaiah 53 (one of the foremost Messianic prophesies of the Bible) is comparatively vague and difficult to understand at first glace (even though, on closer analysis, the Isaiah prophesy actually gives more accurate, specific details, such as Jesus being executed among criminals and buried in a rich man's tomb in Isaiah 53:9). Lehi's prophesies spell out exactly what's going to happen in such plain language that really, after reading his account, there wouldn't be much point in including an account of the actual events themselves, since Lehi has already plainly said exactly how it's going to happen. Isaiah's prophesies, however, are difficult to understand and only really become clear in their meaning after the events have taken place. In story-terms, the difference between Lehi's prophecy and Isaiah's is the difference between a spoiler and foreshadowing. Isaiah is like Yoda and the vision in the cave in The Empire Strikes Back, giving Luke ominous warnings that bad things will happen if he faces Darth Vader; Lehi is like someone wandering in from off stage with a copy of the script and saying, "Yeah, Luke, if you fight Vader, you'll lose your hand, your buddy Han will wind up encased in carbonite, and--by the way--he's actually your father." The former builds anticipation, the latter gives away all the surprises.
But does that matter? Isn't Lehi's prophecy better simply because it's more clear and explicit? After all, what could the benefit be in having vague prophecies?
That is indeed a worthy question. A quick look over a list of messianic prophesies in the Bible reveals that none of them were completely clear an explicit at the time of their writing. All of them hinted at things to come, and their full meaning only became clear after the fact. In other words, they are all foreshadowing, not spoilers. Why are so many Bible prophecies this way? Wouldn't it make for better prophecies to just spell everything out, spoiler style?
Would it? That gets us down to an even deeper question: what, exactly, is the purpose of prophecy? If the purpose of prophecy is for the benefit of our knowledge, sating our curiosity about what the future holds, then clearly the more explicit a prophecy is and the easier it is for us to understand, the better it will be. In this case, Lehi's prophecy is clearly superior. But this is a very human-centered view of prophecy. It basically says that God gives us prophecy entirely for our own sakes. Is there a higher cause?
According to the Bible, I think there is. In Isaiah 41:21-29, God confronts the idols (or idol-worshipers) and challenges them to give prophecies: "Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods." According to this, the purpose of prophecy is to act as a proof of divine power. As the passage goes on to say, "Who declared it from the beginning, that we might know, and beforehand, that we may say, 'He is right'?" This is in keeping with the themes of the Bible as a whole, where God does many, many things for His own sake, so that people will know and honor Him as God (which is His right). While there are a number of passages saying or implying that God is revealing something beforehand so that, when it happens, people will know that He is God, there are really none saying that He reveals the future for our own sole benefit.
So, what kind of prophecy best fits with this purpose? I would definitely have to say the foreshadowing kind. It gives hints of the future, but does not reveal it outright. It forces us to trust God in the interim when things are unclear, before finally revealing how the masterfully-hidden pieces of the puzzle fit together. Spoilers are clumsy by comparison and leave us to trust ourselves and the explicit knowledge of the future they have given us.
Of course, all of this assumes that Lehi's messianic prophesies are actual prophesies (which, given the plagiarism and date discrepancy, seems unlikely). It's also possible that Smith penned the 'prophecies" after the fact with the Gospels (and evidently Romans) to reference. If that's the case, it makes perfect sense that the "prophecy" would be way more explicit than any found in the Bible, to the level of becoming a spoiler instead of foreshadowing. After all, Smith had all the information he needed to spoil every surprise in the Gospels, and it is admittedly difficult to be poetically subtle and vague the way prophecies in the Bible are.
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