We are saddled with the task of sorting out the whole of Abinadi’s speech in a single lesson. That’s devastatingly difficult, particularly because Abinadi’s speech marks the—and I mean the—turning point in the history of the Nephites, and in about a dozen ways. We’ve got to look very carefully at those details. That’s all the more difficult, given that the historical setting still needs some serious work, even after last week’s lesson and associated notes, and given that we’ve also got to do some serious theological work on the text as we work through it. There’s too much to be done on Abinadi’s speech.

But we’ll get started and see what we can’t do here. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s say that this lesson serves as a kind of bridge between Benjamin and Abinadi. At least, that’s how I want to take it. There’s much to learn as we cross this bridge, but my principal aim will be to set up as well as possible Abinadi’s speech and circumstances. We’ll see why especially in the next lesson.

So what are we looking at here? Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post, I worked through Mosiah 1-3, the first “half” of Benjamin’s speech. Now we have the remainder—Mosiah 4-6—to work through. I’ve already commented in my previous post on the fact that Benjamin has taken us, thus far, through a discussion of the creation, then of the fall, and finally of atonement. What follows in the remainder of the speech is very interesting in light of this progression.

But there’s no need to go back to review. Benjamin begins this next part of his speech with a most important review of what he’s already had to say. Let’s take a look at that. Read the rest of this entry »

King Benjamin’s speech in two lessons? Well, it’s a bit slower than we’re usually forced to go, but there’s anything but the necessary space here to deal adequately with Benjamin’s pregnant words. In many ways, Benjamin’s sermon is the Sermon on the Mount of the Book of Mormon, the presentation of the hard, practical demands of the gospel of Christ. It’s here that one finds the equation of service to others with service to God, the most overt obliteration of every idea of salvation by works, the divine demand to be like a child, the requirement to see oneself as absolutely nothing and God as everything, the condemnation of those who reject beggars because they brought it on themselves, the unavoidable importance of the covenant, etc. It is here, first and foremost in the Book of Mormon, that the theological rubber meets the road of everyday living. We would do well to pay the closest attention to Benjamin’s words.

Here’s what I want to do is the following:

(1) Deal a bit with the setting of the sermon (drawing in part on the historical work of my last post)
(2) Analyze the opening of Benjamin’s speech—his analysis of kingship and servitude
(3) Work at some length through Benjamin’s discussion of grace
(4) Touch lightly on the presentation of Mosiah as the new king
(5) Say a few words about Benjamin’s warnings against contention, etc.
(6) Tackle very carefully the words Benjamin attributes to an angel: the doctrine of Christ

That should keep us quite busy. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re on our way from the small plates to Mormon’s abridgement, and that way is paved by several short books. What I’ll do in this lesson, mostly, is attempt to set the stage for the Book of Mosiah. I’ll have relatively little to say about what’s usually talked about in Enos and Jarom, and I’ll get rather quickly to the details of the discovery of Zarahemla in Omni and the Words of Mormon. After all that, I’ll have a handful of things to say about the small plates as such, also drawn from Omni and the Words of Mormon. And then I’ll leave the small plates behind to turn to King Benjamin. Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned in last post, I’ll be tackling all of Jacob 4-7 in this post. I noted last time that chapters 1-3 form a unit, while chapters 4-6 form a distinct unit, and chapter 7 forms a unit all its own. So I’ll be addressing chapter 4 in connection with chapters 5-6. And I’ll add some notes about chapter 7 as well.

I’ll be frank at the start that I don’t much like writing or talking about the allegory of the olive tree. Largely that’s because I find that it’s one of few places in the Book of Mormon where Latter-day Saints have done seriously dedicated work to understand the text. (If only we collectively used the same sort of care in reading Isaiah!) I’m mostly happy to let people work on those already productive readings. It’s also, though, because I find the dominant interpretation a bit overpowering. I suspect there are other, quite important things going on in the allegory than a kind of basic map of covenantal history, but I have a hard time finding my way out of the dominant approach.

But my task remains my task. We’ll see what can’t be learned by coming to it again. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first of the two lessons dedicated to the relatively short Book of Jacob. The task here is to tackle chapters 1-4, while the next lesson tackles chapters 5-7. I’ll arrange my notes slightly differently. It’s quite clear that chapters 4-6 make up a single unit (chapters 4-5 were a single chapter in the original Book of Mormon, at any rate), so it seems strange to me to couple chapter 4 with chapters 1-3, which also form a single unit (with chapters 2-3 being a single chapter in the original Book of Mormon). So, in this post, I’ll tackle only the first three chapters of Jacob here.

As the original chapter breaks suggest, it’s probably best to take chapter 1 on its own, and then to take the pair of chapters 2 and 3 together. That’s what I’ll do. Read the rest of this entry »