We come now, as I’ve been saying from the beginning and have reiterated again and again, to the most privileged and central part of Nephi’s record. To miss Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is to miss the Book of Mormon.

Here’s how I’d like to proceed: Read the rest of this entry »

We come, now, to what I called in my preliminaries post the “Atonement” stretch of Nephi’s record—twenty-five chapters focused on prophecies concerning the eventual reconciliation of the Lamanites with the Lord (see some details setting this up in my last post). The first part of these “more sacred things,” the crucial and only commanded part of Nephi’s record, is Jacob’s sermon in these five chapters: 2 Nephi 6-10. I’ll be taking these chapters in three parts, since they originally appeared as three chapters in the Book of Mormon: Chapter V (now 2 Nephi 6-8), Chapter VI (now 2 Nephi 9), and Chapter VII (now 2 Nephi 10).

Obviously, we’re most generally wont to spend all our time in 2 Nephi 9 when we look at Jacob’s speech. There’s something right about that: 2 Nephi 9 is perhaps the most remarkable sermon on atonement to be found in the Book of Mormon, and its profound connections with 2 Nephi 2 deserve close attention. But there’s also something wrong about our insistence on spending all our time in 2 Nephi 9: we focus there because it helps us escape the task of making sense of Isaiah in 2 Nephi 6-8, 10. We need to be spending our time dealing with Isaiah, as I hope I’ve already begun to make clear in an earlier post (and elsewhere). To avoid Isaiah is to miss entirely the point of Nephi’s record.

So here’s my plan: Read the rest of this entry »

Just as with my last post, I’m here again free to spend a bit more time focused on details, since only three chapters are being considered here. After this lesson, we’ll be doing some racing again, and unfortunately through the most important part of Nephi’s record (one week on 2 Nephi 6-10, one week on 2 Nephi 11-25, and one week on 2 Nephi 26-30). Since I’ll be frustrated by the necessity of racing later, I want to try to relish the experience of taking my time with 2 Nephi 3-5.

To work, then—but with the reminder that the preliminaries post remains important (indeed, becomes quite important again at this point). Read the rest of this entry »

At last, a lesson that covers only two chapters, thus allowing me to do some close textual work and theological development! This lesson covers only 2 Nephi 1-2 (and the one after it only 2 Nephi 3-5), so this should be some fun.

The situation, of course, is Lehi’s instruction to his children and others just before his death—all of this apparently happening on the same occasion during which Nephi recounted and commented on Isaiah 48-49 (see 2 Nephi 1:1). Chapter 1 is dedicated principally to Lehi’s words to Laman and Lemuel (together, interestingly), but it contains also Lehi’s words to Zoram. Chapter 2 is entirely dedicated to Lehi’s words to Jacob. Quite nicely, for once, the content of the lesson made up a single chapter (Chapter I) in the original Book of Mormon. I think that works quite nicely.

My plan is to work through 2 Nephi 1 in relative brevity, and then spend the bulk of my time on 2 Nephi 2. Hopefully there’s the same theological interest among others that there is in me. And, as always, I recommend a close reading of my preliminaries post. Read the rest of this entry »

This lesson is supposed to finish off First Nephi, though chapters 19-22 are something of a tack-on (included only under “Additional Teaching Ideas”). I’ll tackle all seven chapters, I guess, though I’ll have to be a bit more spare than I’ve been in the previous couple of posts. I’ll proceed as follows. First, I’ll address briefly the parallel plot lines of 1 Nephi 16 and 1 Nephi 18. Second, I’ll give a bit more attention, at the theological level, to 1 Nephi 17. Third, I’ll add a brief discussion about the wrap-up of 1 Nephi 18 and its complex relationship to 1 Nephi 19. Fourth, I’ll say a handful of things about 1 Nephi 19-22 more generally. Fifth and finally, I’ll take up 1 Nephi 20-21, that is, Isaiah 48-49.

That’s a lot to tackle. But I’ll see what I can do here. Read the rest of this entry »

As I noted in my previous post, this third lesson on Nephi’s writings is meant to focus only on 1 Nephi 12-14, while the preceding lesson focuses on 1 Nephi 11 and 1 Nephi 15 (in connection with 1 Nephi 8). In order to follow as closely as possible what Nephi himself seems to be doing with his own chapter breaks and the like, I focused in my notes on lesson 2 on the whole of 1 Nephi 6-10, and I’ll take as my focus here the whole of 1 Nephi 11-15. I think it’ll become clear why it’s important to do that.

I have, nonetheless, thus split 1 Nephi 10 off from 1 Nephi 11-14, which is illegitimate in my eyes. The whole of 1 Nephi 10-14 is a single chapter in the original Book of Mormon (and thus according to Nephi’s own chapter breaks). And we should note the fact that 1 Nephi 11:1 opens with “For,” clearly indicating that the experience Nephi recounts here has to be understood in connection with what he’s just been saying in the final, transitional verses of 1 Nephi 10. I thus refer you back to what I had to say about 1 Nephi 10 in my last post. But here I’ll get to work on Nephi’s vision itself, as well as—more briefly—on Nephi’s exchange with his brothers subsequent to his visionary experience. Read the rest of this entry »

As promised in my last post, I’m planning on dealing here principally with 1 Nephi 6-9. My reasons, as I explained before, include the fact that 1 Nephi 6-9 formed a single chapter (the second chapter) in the original version of the Book of Mormon. I think Nephi’s own way of breaking up his text is of real importance. Not only does it set up the parallel I explored in my last post (between the stories of Lehi’s reading of the heavenly book and of Lehi’s reading the brass plates in 1 Nephi 1-5), it sets up a clear parallel between 1 Nephi 6 and 1 Nephi 9, two of Nephi’s texts about what he’s doing in the writing of his record, two texts that mark the opening and closing of what was originally Nephi’s second chapter.

Moreover—indeed, more importantly, in my eyes—Nephi’s way of dividing up the text separates more strongly than we are wont to do as readers of the Book of Mormon Lehi’s dream of the tree of life from Nephi’s vision of the tree of life. This is especially clear when one considers the strong break (again, discussed in my last post) between 1 Nephi 1-9 (Nephi’s account of his father) and 1 Nephi 10-22 (Nephi’s account of himself). These are two quite distinct “halves” of First Nephi, and it is of real significance that Lehi’s dream is to be found in one, while Nephi’s vision is to be found in the other. In short, I believe that we’re far too quick to equate Lehi’s and Nephi’s experiences in our reading of the Book of Mormon. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that there’s something illegitimate about reading 1 Nephi 8 through the lens of 1 Nephi 11, 15. It’s been done a great deal, and I suspect we’ve all learned a great deal from it. But it seems to me clear that there are other—and, I think, better—ways to read Lehi’s dream. I’ll try to spell that out today, leaving 1 Nephi 11 and 1 Nephi 15 for my next post.

And I should mention, before getting any further, that all of what I do here presupposes, as before, what I laid out in my “preliminaries on Nephi” post.

To work, then! Read the rest of this entry »

My task here is to say something about 1 Nephi 1-7 in a reasonable amount of space. I’ll see what I can do. Much of what I have to say can only be understood in the context I have already worked out at length in a post on Nephi’s record generally. I highly recommend it be read in connection with these notes.

At any rate, to work! Read the rest of this entry »

There are eleven lessons in the manual on the writings of Nephi. Nephi’s writings are so profoundly complex and remarkably rich that I can’t resist putting together an introduction to all eleven lessons. Ten weeks is enough time, of course, only to begin to reflect on Nephi’s record, but I’ll be providing too much information in my lesson notes anyway. This introduction will be, in many ways, crucial to making sense of anything I have to say about Nephi’s record over the course of lessons 2-11. Read the rest of this entry »