Book of Mormon Notes

This year my family and I will be studying the Book of Mormon with our church. This post will be the thoughts and impressions that strike me as we go through it, as I have done for the New Testament and Old Testament. The same disclaimer applies - these are new ideas that are not fully worked out and not necessarily things that I believe. I will add additional notes as they occur in reverse chronological order, newest notes on top. The first note is my a priori assumptions about the setting of the Book of Mormon.

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Note 23 Parallels to the Gospel of John in 3 Nephi Sermons

In 3 Nephi when Jesus visits the Nephites he delivers the sermon on the mount almost word for word. Changes are interesting. What I hadn’t noticed before is that in several places he is paraphrasing the gospel of John (or perhaps these the original words, and what we have in the gospel of John is a paraphrase). I think I detect the prologue (Ch11), the bread of life sermon (Ch20), and the intercessory prayer (Ch19) in there.

Note 22 Thy will and My will be done

The Lord tells Nephi (2) that because he has done whatever the Lord asked without resting or without regard to his own life that he, the Lord, would do whatever Nephi asked, because he knew Nephi would not ask for bad things.

Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments. And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will. (Helaman 10:4-5)

And in the subsequent chapters we see Nephi asking that the Nephite anarchy be turned to famine, and later when the people say they will repent the famine is ended. And it is done as he asks. Someone with less understanding might have assumed lots of other things about human nature, and done different things, that would not have worked. One has to know God, really know him, and trust him, to desire things be run the way they are. Perhaps an illustration of issues needing worked out before Jesus’ prayer in the fourth gospel that we be one with him and the Father the way they are one can be fulfilled.

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Note 21 The Word of God as a Seed

Alma’s “Experiment upon the Word” is a parallel metaphor to The Parable of the Sower, and The Vision of the Tree of Life. In all three the Word of God needs to grow or otherwise be advanced along in order to arrive at the fruit, which is the love of God, which is what causes the mighty change of heart. The Sower and Tree ones both have three groups who fail for various reasons. One of these is the weeds choking out the plant that grew from the word. The weeds represent the cares and concerns of the world. The Parable of the Sower leaves you to draw your own conclusions, but the most obvious idea is if we want to come into Christ we need to withdraw from the world, the Monastic approach. Alma’s talk about prayer suggests an alternative: Pray about your worldly affairs (flocks and fields). If we pray humbly these will convert from something distracting us from God to something that draws us closer to him, as they are an occasion for us to draw our hearts out in prayer to him. The risk is that God will have asks about said affairs. Alma caveats - We do need to help those around us, else our prayers will be in vain.

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Note 20 A Mighty Change of Heart

The book of Alma clearly was supposed to end at chapter 44, with the rest of it becoming First Helaman. Why it doesn’t is unclear to me - error in printing, translation, or Mormon forgot to put in the new book heading after putting in the ending and then just rolled with? It goes through all the things that are hallmarks of a Book of Mormon book coming to an end - a farewell, a handoff of responsibility of the sacred records. If we do this, a very clear theme emerges in truncated Alma - true conversion, what Alma calls a mighty change of heart. This conversion is not just coming to believe, joining a church, or even trusting in the Lord, it is a complete change. He also describes this as being awoken out of a deep sleep, waking unto God.

He asks the following self-evaluation questions to gauge if you have had this mighty change of heart:

Are you completely stripped of envy? (And pride?)

Do you ever make fun of your brother?

Have you been cleansed of all sin and your garments made white that you feel to sing the song of redeeming love? (Joy)

(Alma 5)

By these standards I would venture that most members of the church do not have hearts that are sufficiently changed. Good people, yes. Believing people, yes. Knowledgeable in the scriptures, yes. But not stripped of envy and pride. In Alma’s words they are in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity.

Their hearts have been touched from time to time, else why would they be in the church and struggling to keep the commandments, with its performances and ordinances? Yet the vital change of heart seems to be out of reach, for most of us, most of the time. I say ‘they’ but I am certainly included in this number.

I want to make clear that those who have this mighty change of heart, still keep the outward performances and ordinances even though these are not, by themselves, salvific, because they understand the larger underlying reality these point to. The Book of Mormon has many examples of this, because they are Christians, but still under the Old Covenant.

Alma details many stories of such conversions. And in chapters 32-34 he gives a master class in the process by which this is done. First is humility as this change comes from God, not by your own smarts, willpower, or spirituality. Second receive the word of God and ‘experiment’ with it to see if it starts to change your heart and nurture it by looking to God and praying about everything in your life. Prayer as a means to foster humility and looking to God. There’s lots more there, but those are what I consider to be the highlights. The whole should definitely be read and pondered as about an entire process.

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Note 19 Experiment upon the word

When Alma is talking about the seed, and experimenting on the word to see if it grows and if it is good, he ties it back to the tree of life’s fruit, saying that if tended diligently, it will yield fruit, sweet above all sweet, and pure above all pure, which how the fruit of the tree of life was described in the vision.

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Note 18: The Book of Mormon as a Gnostic text

I mean Gnostic in the sense there was secret important knowledge that the majority did not have, not in the sense that it lines up with Gnostic precepts. The Book of Mormon people followed the Law of Moses and the Book of Mormon prophets taught them about Jesus Christ, his atonement, and the plan of redemption. Yet it seems time after time, this was forgotten or rejected so that the understanding of the symbols of the Law of Moses was lost, and perhaps only imperfectly understood. I suppose it was secret, by hiding in plain sight, as the prophets openly declared it, but people would not accept it.

As Origen says, “Very many mistakes have been made because the right method of examining the holy texts has not been discovered by the greater number of readers, because it is their habit to follow the bare letter”

This serves as a guidestone of what to do with secret knowledge. The Book of Mormon rejects the common answer that the basics or ‘the bare letter’ no longer applies to those with understanding because they are beyond those petty details. Rather it says they should keep the letter strictly, while pondering the associated symbols and meaning that they can see with the knowledge they were able to obtain.

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Note 17: Meeting God

One of the main themes of the Book of Mormon is that after this death we meet God, and that this meeting will affect us like nothing else, either making us despair and be miserable or filling us with joy, depending on how it finds us. This view was so standard to Book of Mormon prophets, starting with Nephi and Lehi that when Nephi wants to say that Laman and Lemuel are driving their parents to an early grave by their lawless actions on the boat he says they were almost carried out of this time to meet their God.

This is linked to the Book of Mormon’s unique take on the fall of Adam and Eve - that it was part of God’s plan, and was necessary that we be separated from God and put into a state with opposition (experiencing both good and evil as a matter of course) that we might be free to choose good or to choose evil. The separation we experience in this life can be partially ameliorated if we seek him and accept his spirit into our hearts - but we can only be fully reunited with him after death and resurrection, and only because Jesus Christ blotted out our sins with his atonement. It says no unclean thing can be brought into the presence of God, and we will be made temporarily clean (At least) to meet him after our death and resurrection.

The Book of Mormon says: “our knowledge shall then be perfect. Wherefore, we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, uncleanness, and nakedness; while the righteous shall enjoy a perfect knowledge of their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even with the robe of righteousness.” (2 Nephi 9)

Perhaps God’s judgment is in part self-judgment. In God’s presence, we see Him and his glory and holiness and truly see ourselves for the first time. If we don’t like what we see, there is nowhere to hide, no mental gymnastics to obscure the truth from ourselves, when in the presence. The purpose of the Gospel is for our sins to be covered by the atonement of Jesus Christ and for us to become like him, and all the commandments and ordinances have this as their object.

The Book of Mormon has several instances of people falling to the earth and being comatose for several days, while they undergo visions. This should be understood as meeting God, but much reduced, so they could remain alive on this Earth and fulfill their missions in this life. Alma Yr, who was not repentant records that his soul was wracked with his guilt and memory of his sins, and a wish that he could be destroyed or never born. Others, penitent and having made peace with God, described being filled with joy and the glory of God.

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Note 16: Early Nephite Population Numbers

My assumption has been that the Nephites were not completely alone in the Land of Promise. Besides the Mulekites, there were a few other people, though much below carrying capacity, and not sufficient in number to form an underclass. I was convinced by the arguments that Sherem not knowing Jacob, and polygamy among the Nephites implied more numbers than could be accounted for by natural increase. I will go through the math of that and examine this assumption.

1. The Nephites land in 590 BC. Numbers are unknown but 30-100 seems reasonable. I’ll go with 50.

2. Let’s assume a growth rate of 1.05% per annum. This is high, exceeding peak Amish rates of a little higher than 1.04%. I’m thinking the Nephites lived longer, with an expanded fertile window. Nephi noted this for his parents Lehi and Sariah. If this had continued, it would not have been nearly as noteworthy for Jacob. Besides outright miracles, the reason for expanded lifespans may have been a reduced disease burden. I recall accounts of the Spanish on some of the uninhabited islands 60-130 miles out into the Atlantic enjoying unusually good health and longer lives. And their reduced diseased exposure would not have been as great a reduction as for the Nephites. Epidemiologists say you need a pool of 300,000 people for continuous diseases (such as colds) to circulate around indefinitely, so what diseases they brought with them may have died out completely. The Book of Mormon talks about diseases later, and also mentions the excellent remedy against fever the Lord had prepared for them, but their populations would have grown considerably at that time.

3. The year Jacob preached against Polygamy. The LDS chapter headings puts this as between 544 B.C. - 421 B.C. That’s a big range and puts Jacob somewhere between 50 and 175 years old. I’m going to assume lifespans of 120 years, consistent with the Jaredites. I’ll also assume that the final Chapter of Jacobs's life took place 20 years after this, just before he died. If so this happened at 495 BC, or 95 years after landing.

4. The calculation is Pop=50 x 1.05^(95). That gives us a population just a little higher than 5000. That would be for all the Lehites, so dividing it in half gives us a Nephite population of 2,500. That is small, but sufficient for polygamy. The Barrons and FLDS have done it with similar numbers. The way they do it is to kick out a lot of young men, marry the girls young, while men have to wait. That could go along with the emphasis they had on being rich and seeking gold. Gotta amass gold to get a wife, the market is tight because of some rich guys taking a lot of wives. Plus, one assumes some male mortality in the Lamanite wars.

5. At the time of Sherem (Jacob is assumed to be 120 years old), pop is around (50/2) x 1.05^(115) or almost 7000 Nephites. Sherem and Jacob could have gone their whole lives without meeting each other, especially if people were spreading out to claim lands of inheritances. That is, I expect Sherem would have gone up to the temple often but could simply be another face in a rather large congregation. And a frail Jacob may not have been receiving audiences or going out that often.

6. In conclusion, there doesn’t have to be a pre-existing population. A few more people do make the numbers work out better, but its not essential. There certainly doesn’t need to be so many that the Nephites are a small class of elites among a sea of natives. Just a few families joining them would not pad numbers but not be enough to create permanent classes. This would also explain how Coriantumr was absolutely the last Jaredite about 200-300 years later, just like Ether had prophesied. These few families became Nephites and ceased being Jaredites. It appears Jaredite names became common later but that could be from Mosiah publishing some of his translations of the Jaredite records.

The other part of this argument for pre-existing population is the language drift of the Mulekites. The Mulekites and Nephites could not understand each other when they first met, 400 years after landing. The argument is that the languages should not have drifted so much, in small and isolated populations. In The Stick of Joseph in the Hand of Ephraim, the authors argue that the reason for this was the Mulekites were originally speaking Aramaic not Hebrew, and as evidence they point out that Book of Mormon names after the meeting and union have Aramaic versions of name endings, and the transliterated Aramaic words Rabbanah, and Raca appear in the text. They cite 2 Kings 18:26-28 as showing the educated knew Aramaic, as they dealt with Babylonian influence and learning while the commoners spoke Hebrew and the two were mutually unintelligible. They hypothesis that an educated pro Babylonian group woul

A prophecy in Ezek. 17:1-24 speaks of a “tender one” or “twig” transplanted to a “mountain” to flourish elsewhere. If this is about Mulek then Mulek came out of Babylon with a group of exiled, and probably highly placed Jews, who certainly would have been speaking Aramaic as the default language of Babylon.

I suppose you could also cite Nibley’s idea that they had foreign ship crew that spoke Carthaginian and Egyptian. In either case, there are good explanations for why they could not speak to each other, without introducing an existing civilization that the Book of Mormon fails to mention.

7. As a postscript having populations at carrying capacity or no population at all is more likely than having some number in between, and requires an explanation. This situation was what Europeans encountered in the Americas and the reasons are as follows: 1. Mexico was devastated by disease, suffering something like 90% mortality within a generation. 2. In North America disease was also a factor but a bigger factor was the endemic warfare and lack of central authority. This created thousands of no-mans-lands where nature flourished, but man could not safely go (like the current DMZ in Korea). In this case, the Book of Mormon tells us that the land of the Nephites (Much north of the original landing) was a hunting preserve and people weren’t allowed to settle there. Purposeful population control like this requires a strong central authority and I wonder if it wasn’t also a bit of clever statesmanship, to keep the people close and curtail the centrifugal tendencies of having distant population centers. The Jaredites occasionally had dissident kingdoms, but generally were united, their divisions looking more like civil war, rather than truly separate sovereignties.

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Note 15: The Wild Grafts.

In Jacob 5 and Romans 11, some of the Gentiles coming to believe in the Jewish bible, and working in that tradition is compared to wild branches being grafted into an olive tree with strong roots. Jacob 5 goes on to say that these wild branches will eventually start bearing strange and bitter fruit and that the Lord will then restore the natural branches to the tree, which we believe is the purpose of the Book of Mormon - an instrument that God is wielding to this effect.

One detail that had escaped my attention before is that the Lord does not reject the wild branches that are grafted in, except only the most bitter ones

Wherefore let us take the natural branches of the trees which I have planted in the nethermost parts of my vineyard, and let us graft them into the tree from whence they came, in place of those branches whose fruit is most bitter. This will I do, that the tree may not perish, that perhaps I may preserve unto myself its roots….

And they took from the natural trees which had become wild, and grafted into their mother tree. The Lord of the vineyard said unto the servant, pluck not the wild branches from the trees, save it be those which are most bitter; and in them ye shall graft, according to what I have said. (See Jacob 5:52-66)

The ‘branches’ in this allegory are understood to be churches, and also nations. I think we can see that a lot of the old Christendom is starting to be pruned, both as churches and as peoples - not through violent active means, but through a loss of will to reproduce themselves - both culturally and biologically speaking. Examples that come to mind are the old mainline protestant churches in the US, and European peoples all over the globe.

Still, they won’t be entirely lost, just the most bitter parts. In this allegory, I think we have to consider the churches springing up in Africa and Asia, as fresh wild branches, the processes cleanly described in Jacob, overlapping messily in real life.

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Note 14 : Pointing our souls to Christ

Jacob tells us: “We had a hope of his glory, many hundred years before his coming, and not only us, but also all the holy prophets which were before us.

Behold, they believed in Christ, and worshipped the Father in his name; as we also worship. We keep the law of Moses for this intent, it pointing our souls to him. For this cause, it is sanctified unto us, for righteousness, even as it was accounted unto Abraham in the wilderness, to be obedient unto the commands of God, in offering up his son Isaac, which is a similitude of God and his only begotten Son.”

Abraham offering his son Isaac is often explained as a test of obedience and faith. Critics deride this as being blind faith, and some go so far as to argue that the test God was doing was not see if Abraham would obey, but to see if Abraham would choose good over sacrifice. There are a number of scriptures in the Old Testament putting love and understanding above sacrifice, even commanded sacrifices. The one quoted by Jesus was, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Abraham failed this test, these critics say, or at best passed with low marks.

All well and good, but apart from the second half of acts the New Testament writers are pretty clearly there to bury the Law of Moses, despite some praise. Yet they hold up Abraham as the example of the gospel and of the faith required by the gospel. This is because he was clearly righteous, but also never followed the Law of Moses, having flourished before it was given.

Jacob’s explanation that Abraham did it because he knew that it was pointing his soul to Christ, and he had some awareness of who Christ was paints this in another light. Yes, there was an element of obedience, but Abraham knew what this was about, and was deliberately willing to do it, to understand better the central act of God’s plan, which ultimately, he knew, would defeat death. Yes, an act of faith, but not blind. A faith born of understanding, and of experience with God that led Abraham to trust God, and want to be more like him, and walk in his footsteps as much as it were possible.

What we forget is that this really was a sacrifice on the part of God of his beloved son. True, God knew that the death would not be temporary, but even so, death is bitter. And don’t forget that Jesus also had to experience the second death - being cut off from the presence of his Father in Heaven, who had always been with him, because he had never been in rebellion against him, as we often are.

Are there things like the Law of Moses today? Things whose purpose is, or ought to be, something that leads our minds and hearts towards Christ?

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Note 13: A Lazy and Indolent People

The Lamanites are cursed so “that they might not be enticing unto my people (The Nephites)”. Two effects of this curse are mentioned: 1. ‘a skin of darkness’, and 2. ‘they become idle.’ The skin color has received a lot of attention because that’s the sort of thing our current culture obsesses about. I tend to the camp that this is a religious thing, primarily, because I don’t see that different skin color is all that effective at keeping people from being attracted to each other. Be that as it may.

#2 is interesting because it clearly says that this idle and mischievous nature of the Lamanites is a result of the curse. And lazy people are not at all appealing to an industrious people.

But if it’s a curse, it’s not the result of the Lamanites having poor moral fibre, and making poor life choices. Indeed, the Book of Mormon makes clear that the Lamanites would have been righteous if it weren’t for their first parents teaching them to hate the Nephites. This is the opposite of how we normally think of things - someone who is hardworking is virtuous, while a lazy person needs to choose better, but in this case it seems God is the author and the people his medium.

I’m reminded of Romans 6, where Paul talks about a curse (which we normally think of as a sin) given because of unbelief. And similarly we are all under the curse of the fall.

I’m reminded of the scripture that says God gives us weaknesses so that we may come unto him. As such they are part of this life only, when we have the unique opportunity in our eternal careers to see what things are like without God, to one degree or another.

Returning to the Lamanites, whenever they are converted to the gospel Mormon notes that they do become very industrious, and that they become a fair (beautiful, white) and delightsome people.

I want to add that that scripture really is about coming unto Christ. If your heart is set on all your weaknesses being taken away, well, you will get your wish, but most often that will be in the next life, not this one.

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Note 12: King Benjamin’s Sermon

All the people gather to the temple and King Benjamin delivers a remarkable speech on the atonement of Jesus Christ, and how it delivers redemption. It notes the families are gathered in tent. So presumably this is happening during the festival of tents. As per my stack on the 7 feasts of the law, the festival of tents is the culmination of the fall feasts sequence and points to us being resurrected and living forever in God’s presence, after God reveals himself with trumpets (‘this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God’), and after Judgement Day / The day of Atonement.

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Note 11: The Parable of the Olive Orchard

I recall reading this as a kid and my eyes glazing over and it is seeming somewhat incomprehensible. My kids did great, getting and telling me which of the grafted branches it talks about is the Lehites. Perhaps I set them up by continually telling them, once again they are quoting the Isaiah chapters about Israel will be scattered, and then gathered again. But I am proud of them.

One thing I did not notice before is Romans 11 uses the same imagery, and it’s from a similar point of view - that of an Israelite who loves Israel and mourns that it will be scattered and separated for so long before its redemption. Did Paul have access to Zenos’ writings, perhaps just preserved in an oral tradition? Maybe next time we read this, I will go over Jacob 5 again so they can see the parallels, and the ‘likening scripture to ourselves’ in practice.

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Note 10: Prophecy, Free Will, and Multiple Fulfillments

In Notes 9 and 7, where I wonder if some Book of Mormon prophecies have yet been fulfilled or are being fulfilled in the way we typically think. I see prophecy in the following way:

Free Will

People are free to choose, at least in some ways and some of the time. That means the prophecy is proscriptive, not descriptive. The Lord is saying, I will make this happen, not, I have seen the future and here it is. Others have different views. But I consider free will to be essential. If free it can't be predicted. If not free there is no value in actually running the scenario, and there would be no point for us to cross through the vale of tears which is mortality. Yet here we are.

*To clarify, resurrected immortal beings do not have free will. They are the same yesterday, today, and forever. In our first pre-mortal childhood we had free will, but of a limited variety afforded by growth only without death. Change in a forward direction only without being able to go back. That had run its limits by the time of the Grand Council.

What that means for prophecy though, is that it might be fulfilled messily. Key people might derail the first attempt to make it come to pass. People under condemnation may repent or show enough signs of repentance that the Lord stays his hand. People who were promised great things may not live worthy of actually receiving them. The atonement wrought by Jesus Christ is of course the central thing, on which all God’s work rests. I suspect there is literal truth, not just poetic truth in the phrase "The lamb slain before the foundation of the world". Until Jesus had made those choices it wasn't safe to proceed with the fall. In some real sense, I suspect the first act in the creation was in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the cross. How I don't know. I don't otherwise put any credence in time travel working in a significant way.

Prophecy therefore might be kept vague so that it can be fulfilled for sure, one way or another. Also, as we learn in the New Testament, God keeps plans secret so that Satan cannot frustrate his plan but rather plays into it - as we know happened in both the fall and in the atonement. And is there not great glory in God being able to call his shots, and make them come to pass even through the unreliable medium of mortal men, all while opposed by demons?

Something like this:

Multiple Fulfillment

Many prophecies have dual or even triple fulfillments, typically an immediate fulfillment, and then the primary fulfillment. For example, Isaiah's prophecy that "unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given" is immediately about the dynastic and international situation of ~700 BC. It can be read and interpreted that way without error, though one might wonder why Isaiah, normally no respector of persons, was gushing so enthusiastically about this king. But its primary meaning and fulfillment clearly was and will be in the flesh and person of Jesus Christ.

For Isaiah, the immediate fulfillment of his words established his prophetic bona fides. Yet the primary meaning is what made his message of value to all times and all places, who would read it because the Jews had concluded that he was a true prophet and his words worth preserving.

Likewise, the Lord appears to do things in patterns - so prophecy is a guide to what he might do, even if a specific prophecy is not in the picture. Consider the Jews who were restored by the Persians to their homeland and who rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem and the temple. Could they not reasonably conclude that Isaiahs's prophecies about the return were being fulfilled, and so the millennial reign of the Messiah was not far off? Their restoration was complete with Gentile elites giving them aid and succor, just like Isaiah had said. Yet from our vantage point, it appears this was not that prophesied gathering, but rather a preparation for the 1st advent.

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Note 9: The Gathering

The Book of Mormon talks about the gathering more than any subject, and reading the foreward with related material in book, it is safe to say that the kicking off the gathering is the main purpose of the Book of Mormon. The timeline it presents is this: the Book of Mormon comes out (it doesn't clarify between the sealed and non-sealed portions). The gentiles have a sort of sifting, and some are made white (pure). For comparison, Nephi refers to his people being white during what is clearly the 4 Nephi period. It’s safe to say that despite the best efforts of prophets and apostles, that has not happened yet.

Then the scattered remnants of Israel (including but not limited to the Jews) will come to believe Jesus is the Christ and will be gathered by the mighty (and white i.e. sanctified) gentiles, who will lead them with great care (as parents) and power (kings and queens) and miracles back to their lands of inheritance.

Digression:When reading that, I was quite moved that the Gentiles (who I see as us members of the church and Christians in general) would be made white (pure), like in 4 Nephi. I understand better Jacob saying, “And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge concerning these things, let us remember him, lay aside our sins, and hold up our heads, for we are not cast off.” That is indeed a comfort and a Joy, and the day of the Gentiles is clearly winding down, and it’s quite stirring to know there are some great things for us before the end.

The standard interpretation one hears in the church is that the gathering is missionary work, and once upon a time gathering to the Rocky Mountains, and the Israel portion of that was Orson Hyde dedicating the land, and the miraculous restoration of the state of Israel, and the once dead language of Hebrew. That story seems true, and miraculous, and to me it is clear the hand of the lord was in it. But it doesn't jive very well with what Isiah, and Nephi, and Jacob, and Moroni were prophesying, AFAIK. So, I am at a bit of a loss. Are we still in the very early days of the gathering/restoration, and also we don't know squat about the Book of Mormon?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding but one part of the gathering prophecy seems clear - they believe Jesus is the Christ before they are gathered. Then there is D&C 45:51-52 (what are these wounds in your hands…) which implies the Jews will be at Jerusalem, and Jesus will come and save them from destruction at the hands of their enemies, and they will be surprised to learn who he is. I am at a loss. I need to learn the scriptures better. Perhaps them saying so is a bit - Oh hey this is the moment that was prophesied, I get to be the one to say the line.

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Note 8: Possible Linguistic traces of Book of Mormon peoples

1. There is a group called Lihyanites in northern Arabia. The Gulf of Aqaba was once called the Lihyana Gulf. D&C talks about Nephi and Lehi preaching diligently in the wilderness. Nephi acknowledges his account skipped some things.

2. The Uto-Aztec language family has several words in common with Semitic (Aramaic, Hebrew, or Egyptian), and with Egyptian.

Linguist Brian Stubbs presents the evidence:

> Not enough to class it in one of those families, but enough to suggest there was significant contact. Below is a map of the Uto-Aztec language family's place of origin. It appears to have its origins along the Pacific coast - places where the Mediterreanean farming package would have done well.

Related: I have read several accounts about the Hopi having prophecies of the white man bringing a book containing the story of their origins, which will give them the power to rise up to the white man’s level, and similarities between their mysteries reserved for priests and some Book of Mormon stories. See here.

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Note:7 Lehi’s farewell prophecy

1. Lehi mentioning the Lord will bring others to the land, and they will only come to the land if the lord leads them. This clearly refers to the Mulekites and the condition of the land before the Gentiles overrun it. It is not a long-standing term and condition of the land as I had previously thought. ( 2 Nephi 1:5) )

2. Joseph of Egypt’s prophecy and Lehi’s addition, directed toward his son, Joseph. Lehi blesses Joseph that his descendants won’t be destroyed, unlike his older brother Nephi. He also says the great one, the seer, that he is talking about will come from his son Joseph’s descendants. (2 Nephi 3 )

I always read this passage quickly, assumed it was about Joseph Smith Jr., and moved on. I had thought JS Jr. was of the tribe of Ephraim, through one of the lost ten tribes, but Lehi says the seer in this passage will be from his son. We don’t think of Lehi’s descendants as being in the UK or Ireland, so this is my closer examination of this prophecy and scoring JS Jr. as having fulfilled it.

The prophecy about a Seer out like Moses.

1. Descended from Joseph of Egypt.

2. Will do a work among Joseph of Egypt's descendants (Lehites by implication) that they will know the covenants again. He will be highly esteemed by them.

3. Shall do no other work than 2.

4. Made great like Moses.

5. Power to bring God’s word to JoE descendants and also convince them of it, and God’s word that had already gone to them.

6. This will result in the Word written by Judah (The bible?), and the Word written by JoE descendants (North Kingdom prophets, Nephites?) working together to remove false doctrine and contention from JoE descendants

7. Those who seek to destroy the Seer will be confounded.

8. The Seer’s name will be Joseph, son of Joseph.

9. The thing the Lord brings forth by his hand shall bring his people to salvation

10. The Seer will write the JoE descendant’s writings (for other JoE descendants) and the JoE descendants spokesman will declare it. These writings are the Book of Mormon, of which we currently have 1/3rd.

11. One of Lehi-Joseph’s descendants will be mighty in restoring the seed of his brethren (Lamanites), and the house of Israel.

How well does Joseph Smith Jr. match this prophecy?

8 and 10 certainly look like JS Jr. 4 is plausible. 1 is plausible as I wrote above. 9. Could be plausible, though a work that is not finished or even close to finishing, if thing = priesthood or church.

2,3,5 - This did not happen with JS Jr, his work among those we consider to have Lehite ancestry (Native Americans) was limited, and when he died he was essentially unknown among them. He was not particularly convincing to them AFAIK.

6 - JS Jr may have started this, but did not finish - contention and false doctrine still abound among the church and Lehite’s descendants.

7 - JS Jr. was killed by those seeking to destroy him. Perhaps they were surprised the church didn’t completely collapse, but they ran what was left out of the state - not much of a confounding IMO.

10 - Is the spokesman the same as the Seer? Do they work directly together or is this like the Apostles being told the prophets of old have sowed and now they would reap? I gather JS Jr had spoken with Nephites, and seen them in a vision and could have been their spokesman but doesn’t seem to have been other than bring forth the Book of Mormon. Is that all that was meant by that?

11 - I don’t see how JS Jr. could be descended from Joseph son of Lehi. Perhaps this refers to the spokesman.

In conclusion, to make this entirely about JS Jr. you would have to conclude that he is still fulfilling this prophecy beyond the grave and that he is somehow a descendant of Lehi through Joseph. Could be, I suppose.

The alternative is that we are expecting another Joseph Jr to be an especial witness to the native Americans, who is one of them, who will do some world-changing work in making their origin known, restoring ancient writing, and restoring them and the rest of Israel.

This reminds me of the rabbinic Messiah Ben Joseph. This does not come from the Old Testament but may trace its origin back to writings that were had before the Babylonian captivity. If they did have a common origin they have diverged significantly.

Notes on Messiah Ben Joseph:

From the Talmud: Is a war messiah from the tribe of Ephraim. Will fight the enemies of God and Israel. Will help rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Will die and his body will be left unburied. Israel will then suffer a period of great calamities. Then the Messiah ben David will restore their fortune and reign during the period when God will resurrect the dead.

From the Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q372: a ‘Joseph’ king figure, who having sinned in setting up a competing temple to that in Jerusalem, cries out to God in his death-throes as ‘My Father’ quoting Psalm 22, and predicts he will rise again to do justice and righteousness.

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Note:6 The Tree of Life and Nephi’s vision

The large and spacious field, as if it had been a world, is not where the people are coming from - it is where the iron rod leads them to, after the Tree of Life.

The rest of Nephi’s vision continues the elements of Lehi’s dream - the actual history that is being represented by those symbols. The field represents the land of promise. The field is less emphasized in Nephi’s version of the dream, perhaps because the land is promised to Lehi’s descendants forever but not necessarily to those of Nephi.

*Living water is pure moving water. I gather the fountain is the tree, like in the Book of Revelation - As Nephi said, it is at heart the same revelation.

I created this table by establishing correspondence through similar adjectives. Some explanation for the justice of God. It is a gulf in Nephi’s explanation. But it appears to be associated with water (gulf is filled) and earthquakes (which causes gulfs?). It is also described as a bright flame. The thing linking these is something that divides and seperates.

Of especial interest is the strong connection between purity and charity, (‘white’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘love of God’). It is that which prompted me to put in the cell about the Bride with what ‘being made white’ implied as far as our relationship with God. It appears it got snipped when copied, so I had put in the church finally loves Christ back.

The blank cells for the tree column could be filled in with ‘and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain.’ which refers both to Lehites and Gentiles who followed Christ and were made white (pure). Strictly speaking, I think the ones who are made white are probably represented by the fruit which also represents the process. Remember Lehi’s version included the Allegory of the Olive Orchard. Given the parallels here, and it seems deliberate, I expect the Gentiles (or some of them) will have their 4rth Nephi moment the generation(s) before the day of the Gentiles passes - the fullness of the Gentiles. Then the miraculous gathering of the House of Israel Nephi and Jacob quote from Isaiah with gentile nursing kings and so forth will happen.

On reflecting on this emphasis placed on Mary, I felt moved to create a logo for her, similar to the Christus logo which is the symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I will add some text here on Mary that was from a comment on the abandoned ‘Taking the Book of Mormon seriously’ blog:

The tree is the Love of God, and represents the mother of Jesus. The principle here may be that love must be between at least two people (and for the highest form a male-female dyad). That is it must be reciprocated, as one-sided love will go bad. In the book of Moroni, we learn Jesus is our pure source of love. I suspect that for him to be a source of love he must be in an established perfected loving relationship, such as a mother-son (or possibly husband-wife.) That's why it is identifying the tree (love of God) with Mary (most beautiful corresponding to most desirable, also fair and white like the fruit) and also with Jesus (sheddeth abroad (children of men) corresponding to going forth among the children of men, also word of God like the iron rod).

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Note 5: The Book of Jeremiah

Lehi recounts that he is given a book by an angel as part of his commission to warn the Jews of Jerusalem’s impending destruction. This note is to document language between 1+2 Nephi and the Book of Mormon. H/T to Wm_Jas_Tyconoviech from whom I got this idea and the first two examples. My assumption is that Lehi was given a book from which to preach, similar to other Old Testament prophets, and so the language was similar. I also assume that Laban did not have the book of Jeremiah engraven on the brass plates, which Lehi later got, and so parallels to Jeremiah but not other OT books would establish that Lehi got the Book of Jeremiah. This might tell us a little something about how prophetic callings worked in ancient times.

1. Nephi’s Summary of Lehi’s preaching, and matching phrases from the book of Jeremiah.

   And he read, saying: Wo, wo, unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine abominations! Yea, and many things did my father read concerning Jerusalem—that it should be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof; many should perish by the sword, and many should be carried away captive into Babylon. (1 Ne. 1:13)

   I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! (Jer. 13:27)

   …he shall carry them captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword. (Jer. 20:4).

   Jerusalem . . . and the inhabitants thereof… (Jer. 23:14)

2. The ‘Arm of Flesh’. Nephi says that he knows that he who puts his trust in the arm of flesh is cursed, which pretty clearly is citing Jeremiah. This phrase is also in 2 Chronicles, which is documenting history prior to Jeremiah, but probably was written by Ezra the scribe from sources, and in saying the Assyrian trusted in the arm of flesh likely is his summary, not a direct quote. In any case, Nephi is clearly thinking of the Jeremiah version, not the chronicles version.

   O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm. (2 Nephi 4:34)

   Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. (Jer. 17:5)

   With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles. (2 Chron. 32:8)

   As an aside, it is interesting to think that Ezra the scribe, Daniel, and Nephi would have been all of the same generation, with the Nephites being an isolate of this generation, grappling with the same problem of Jerusalem being destroyed and the chosen people led into captivity, and being given similar visions - See the tree in the book of Daniel.

3. Other potential links:

   …my father, Lehi, as he went forth prayed unto the Lord, yea, even with all his heart…(1 Nephi 1:5)

   And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)

   But I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered. (Jeremiah 11:19)

If Lehi was given the Book of Jeremiah, it implies scripture doesn’t just contain light but that the exact wording has an importance in itself. That’s not to see that it is mistake free or infallible, we know they are not. But perhaps they contain

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Note 4: Liberty in the Book of Mormon

Liberty (and Captivity) in the Book of Mormon don’t mean exactly the same thing that we mean by those words. The Nephites weren’t children of the enlightenment, after all, and reading a classical liberal understanding into those words distorts the text, especially of Nephi’s vision and Cpt Moroni’s handling of dissidents. Nor do they mean the same thing as the ancient Greeks who meant freedom from foreign rule. I am convinced that what they meant by them is above all religious freedom, though still not exactly what we meant by that. What they meant by it was freedom to keep God’s commandments.

This is the key to understanding the Great and Abominable church seen by Nephi. It is that which oppresses and slays the true followers of Christ. This is a state-enforced single religion for all, either for purposes of the state or because some church has captured the state. With that understanding and knowing that its desires are wealth, finery, whores, and powers, we can identify the G&A church with Babylon the Great, and with the secret combination that has been active in the entire world at least since the Book of Mormon came out. Perhaps it is also the Great and Spacious building in Lehi’s vision while he was sleeping.

Having religious freedom as the main freedom that matters makes sense if you believe it to be the source of all freedom, such as John 8:32 “…and you will know the Truth, and (he) the Truth will set you free.” After all what does any civil right matter, if you are wholly enslaved by sin? They are meaningless and possibly an actual harm to you.

This also provides a satisfactory explanation (at least to me) of why God found the creeds to be an abomination. It isn’t the subtle differences between the trinitarian version of the Godhead and the D&C 128 version - it’s it’s context. It is and was part of the attempt to force all people to follow the same religion and persecute those worshipping the Father in truth and spirit. The theological differences do have major implications, but that’s for theologians, not practitioners, and is irrelevant to salvation as far as I can tell.

What then? Is God pleased with the confusion of religions that exist in the world? Wouldn’t he be better served by a unity of the faith? I submit that he is the author of the confusion of religions just as he was the author of the confusion of languages, and for the same reason - to prevent the necessity of destroying a world unified against the good, beautiful, and true - again.

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Note 3: Gaining your own witness

Nephi believed his Father was getting revelations from God because his heart was softened, not because he had a question or doubt answered, or never had doubts.

1 Nephi 2:16 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, … having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father…

His two brothers reacted in this way:

And it came to pass that I beheld my brethren, and they were disputing one with another concerning the things which my father had spoken unto them...
...and they being hard in their hearts, therefore they did not look unto the Lord as they ought. (1 Nephi 15:2-3)

His brothers knew the scriptures, they had heard them being read in synagogue, and they reacted to their Father’s prophetic words with reason, and their knowledge - that is in arguments. This did not convince them, and more importantly it did not change them in any significant way. Nephi did convince them in this way once or twice, but it didn’t stick for very long. And Nephi identifies hard heartedness as the fundamental problem.

That ultimately was the difference between him and his older brothers, hard heart v. soft heart. Cursed is he who puts his trust in the arm of flesh, Nephi later wrote, and perhaps he was thinking of how he and his brothers had started with the same advantages but ended up going very different paths because they trusted in their flesh (their own minds - their fleshy brains.)

will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.

In pondering this the analogy occurred to me that as our knowledge and understanding increase it is like an expanding circle of light in that as it expands the contact with the dark increases. As we learn we become more aware of things we don’t know, and we have more reasons to doubt. Perhaps that is what 2 Timothy 3:7 is referring to:

ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the Truth.

Or perhaps this Calvin and Hobbes strip on neo-cubism and perspective has a better explanation of why learning and uncertainty so often go hand in hand - there is an uncanny valley between the first-person perspective and God’s eye view.

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Note 2: How did the Book of Mormon fit on the gold plates?

This is my back-of-the-envelope calculations and response to this question being raised here. tl;dr, we don’t know, but I find the calculations interesting.

Per the eyewitness, the Book of Mormon was 6 inches by 6 inches by 8 inches. According to the text it was written in ‘reformed Egyptian’ and not Hebrew because that wouldn’t fit. ‘reformed Egyptian’ also apparently limited what could be said in some way, because one of the authors complains that he couldn’t be clear in that language.

I've read about the eye of Horus being used in accounting and other things and various little marks would change the meaning/number. This is binary. A mark equals 1, and a lack of a mark equals a 0 at that placeholder.

Binary is the densest method of holding information that we know, with some caveats. Let’s calculate the area of the plates and how many dots they could have held, dots engraved with hand instruments and visible to the eye. This will give us an upper bound of how much information could reasonably be engraved by hand on the plates. I think we can safely say we could do a dot per 1 square millimeter.

2/3rds of the plates were sealed so we are looking at 2"x6"x8". If we assume each plate was 1/8" thick that means we have 16 plates of 6"x8" (or 48 square inches). Nephi could have made them thinner than that, to be sure, but I expect that they would be called sheets or leaves, plates imply it is rigid and not bendable with ordinary handling. 16 plates with 48 square inches per plate = 768 square inches. I'll assume they are double-sided for 1536 square inches to work with. 1536 square inches is about 1 million millimeters square.

How much text could 1 million bits hold? A quick Google search says it’s about 62k words (unitconverters.net). The Book of Mormon is about 275,000 words. So hey, we are at least within an order of magnitude. The website I used is not stating its assumptions but if we assume it is calculating straight ASCII without any compression, there is a lot more room we could get by reducing the character table. ASCII has 128 characters. If we reduce it to 32 characters, we can now encode 4 times as many words, which puts us at 228,000 words. Punctuation marks, capitals, spaces, &c. are all characters in this schema. There are other compressions we could do, such as abbreviating words, and speaking in telegraph style (omitting words like 'of', 'the', 'a'). These compressions all increase potential ambiguity. General compression can be done, like zipping files, that rely on the fact that certain letter combinations never occur and so the data is not filling the possible information space. These require a fair amount of computing to be done, and there is no longer a 1:1 correspondence between groups of marks and a word, and you want to calculate with all the data, not pieces to get maximum compression. Let’s ignore that, as that seems far beyond what Nephi had available (and he was the one who set the format for the plates). In slightly compressed binary the Book of Mormon just barely fits on 16 6"x8" plates. Therefore it's safe to assume that no known writing system would work, or even come close. Unless reformed Egyptian had functionally become an optimized binary encoding system, something else is going on here.

I'm imagining the following technique - make a steel guide with holes bored out in a millimeter grid. Clamp to gold plate and work surface and punch the desired holes. Of course, the eyewitnesses say the plates had characters, not dots, and the story of Professor Anton would get a little weirder if this was what was actually done.

Let’s also look at an analog system - phonographs. Off the top of my head, you could make a phonograph with material, methods, and understanding that was available in 600 BC, but as far as we know, nobody did. In our times the phonograph was an offshoot invention of instruments that are played via mechanical systems (such as a grinder organ). A minute of audio takes about 5 square inches. 1500 square inches would be about 300 minutes of audio or about 5 hours. The Book of Mormon clocks in at about 30 hours of audio, or six times too long. The Book of Mormon does have a substantial amount of KJV material in it, but probably less than 1/6th rather than 5/6th. In any case that does raise some questions as the KJV translation is not the one obvious way to translate the Old Testament. It implies someone decided not to directly translate those passages but rather put the KJV translation in there. Who and why are open questions, IMO. It also makes me wonder if sometimes BoM people are quoting scripture, or using words from scripture but we miss it, because those got translated differently than in the KJV.

As to how one could make a gold plate phonograph - record on a suitable clay at the optimal wetness. Fire it and then use it as a mold for your metal casting. It doesn't have to be a spiral pattern as we do it, it could be lines, as we scan the written page. That was a choice to make the phonograph simpler as it does one operation -follow the spiral, instead of two -follow the line, then jump to the next line.

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Note 1: Assumptions on the Book of Mormon setting

Geography

I assume that the Book of Mormon lands are Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. Looking at the general location clues of the Book of Mormon first and not getting bogged down in geographical details we note that the entire Judean agricultural package thrived in the promised land without any modifications to farming techniques. Thus the soil and climate of the landing site must be very similar to Judea. This rules out the Heartland and Meso-America. In the new world, good candidates would be Chile and California (really Baja).

The second big-picture geographical clue is that they colonized by ship both to the North and the West. I see this as being to South Mexico (known to the Natives as the Cloud People (Zapotecs)), with the other to the Pacific islands, after a long stay on Easter Island. This explains the relative success of some Book of Mormon missionary efforts (the old Mormon theory of ‘believing blood’).

The Hagoth-Pacific Islander connection has lots of folk testimony behind it. To be clear I speculate their main ancestral population is out of Tawain and spread east, and the Lehites thoroughly mixed with them later, following the doom of their first colony on easter island.

The near/current Zapotecs are a successor population and are roughly to the Lehite Zapotecs as the Visigothic Italians are to Romans. The Lehite colonists were for a brief time the leading light throughout North American civilization(s) as traders, scholars, missionaries, teknons, and so forth - similar to Hellenism post-Alexander. The doom of their civilization destroyed this meta-civilization and led to southward volkswanderung of northern savages (such as the Aztecs). Traces of this have been detected by Meso-Am theorists, and indeed here the Lehites could be considered to be elite lineages as theorized by Sorenson.

My big hand wave here, and it’s a doozy, is that the Amazon basin was submerged beneath a sea prior to the 33 AD cataclysm, and so Chile-Peru-Ecuador was an island of the sea as described by Jacob. The narrow neck of land was from sea-to-sea, but post-cataclysm became from sea-to-militarily impassable mountain chain. This also raised a land bridge connecting Mexico to Venezuela, although that is essentially impassable and didn’t have an effect on BoM history.

Other correspondences to the text for this location:

1. bio resources:

fever medicine - quinine,

grains - quinoa & Kiwichi,

animals - llamas & alpacas useful for mountain transport, fuel (dung), wool, and meat

medicinal herbs - tobacco is from here as well as S. Pacific islands and S. Mexico. (Or the family at least)

2. Rich in precious metals - check, this was one of the richest places on the globe. Still is, for copper. Lots of silver and gold was mined out of here. Peru dwarfed Mexico for gold as per the testimony of the conquistadors.

3. Mountains of great height, with volcanoes and active tectonics - check

Routes of travel

1. Lehi went on the fastest possible course from the Middle East to Peru. Go to the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, then travel by boat south to the roaring fourties current, then east on that current, following it up north alongside S. America. This route follows all prevailing winds and currents (if you sail in season.)

2. Jaredites - possibly the same, as traveling across Asia would be a ridiculous route. Still, perhaps the Lord intended for them to plant a colony in Manchuria or North China before heading on to the Promised Land. That would explain some Chinese legends perhaps inspired by the Jaredites and the occasional odd cultural similarity between E. Asia and the Andean coastline - such as: see link.

3. Mulekites - Again the most logical is the Lehite route. But I can’t shake the feeling there is something to Nibley’s idea that they went through the Mediterranean (from linguistic clues). The house of David did appear to keep a fleet for trade with Tarshish-Cadiz. They would have had to sail past some islands, either of the Caribbeans or parts of S. America that were not submerged at the time. Again, there would have had to have been some reason for the Lord to lead them on this circuitutous route instead of the quicker way.

Natives.

I assume there were some. No, they were never the bulk of the population or a direct cultural influence. The Mulekite story is essentially correct and the very name Zarahemla (spared son) attests to this. Sorenson’s elite lineage theory makes some of Mormon’s major themes into bloviating pretenses of an aristocratic warrior caste, which I do not accept. That would be an odd thing for the Lord to make such an effort to bring forth in modern times.

The main effects of others on the Lehites are as follows:

1. On the original Nephites (i.e. the founding by Nephi at the city of Nephi). The main effect here is polygamy, which I believe to be their original sin which ultimately leads to their destruction. We don’t have this record so this is major guesswork, but for polygamy to make sense there must be other people’s daughters to marry especially since they would have only been a few hundred Nephites at most. Polygamy also reduces fertility and weakens social cohesion* which would ensure the Lamanites eventually eclipse them - as did happen. I presume the city of Nephi and the Land of Nephi is in a quite defensible location based on Zeniff’s records. I’m doubtful Sherem is a foreigner. Perhaps he was one of the kids of a native nth wife to a Nephite polyg and that was ultimately the reason for the chip on his shoulder.

*Polygamy reduces overall fertility because although a man has more kids, the women do not. David and Solomon’s hundreds of wives certainly had far fewer kids than they would have had if they each had their own husband. There was a study done on this, including data from Deseret, and the rule of thumb takeaway is that each additional wife reduces the fertility of all wives by one kid. For David and Solomon’s women, the mode was certainly zero, and the mean was probably much closer to zero than 1/2. The social cohesion problem is that you have a lot of males without wives or prospects of getting one, and also that you have jealous wives passing on hate of their co-wives and kids to their sons. Whereas in strict monogamy, women rivals in their youth may ally with each other in old age, because their kids might marry.

Among the natives could be descendants of the Jaredites but these would be extremely oddball kooks, entirely alienated from their civilization. There were no mainstream cultural currents of late Jaredite civilization that wanted to stay out of war like in the Vietnam era USA. They were all drunk with rage. In modern terms something like a family or two squatting in a National park without any electricity or outside contact and evading park rangers because they are so remote.

2. Natives’ effect on the Neo-Nephites. (i.e. after the second founding by Mosiah I at Zarahemla). Jaredite records inspired the abolition of the Monarchy. King Noah was the main reason given in the text, but to even question the foundations of the society (Monarchy) seriously had to have come from outside. It had to have come from the Jaredite founders’ disdain for it. The Jaredite records would also give a substantial volume of data, that confirmed that Noah-like kings and succession problems were a regularly occurring feature of Monarchy, rather than a one-off. In convincing the people, Mosiah II would have used generally known history, not esoteric Jaredite history that he himself had translated, even if that had been critical to his own thinking. Judges would be their attempt to recreate the only other form of government they knew (from the brass plates) though their implementation turned out quite different, IMO.

The other major effect of the Jaredite records was military, specifically via CPT Moroni. According to a straight read of the text Moroni successfully implemented three revolutions in military affairs de novo* - armour, fortifications, and converging columns/(articulations), which allowed him to decisively defeat a much larger and quickly adapting enemy in successive wars. This would make Moroni a military supergenius, far above such morons as Napoleon, Caesar, and Alexander.

*four, if we want to count total war and the necessary instruments to support it - financials, logistics, organization, and mass patriotism/conscription.

A more parsimonious explanation is that he was getting his ideas from the Jaredite texts. My history-degreed sister suggests that Moroni was given revelations on these things, but I don’t think that holds water - first, when Moroni wanted a revelation about where the Lamanites would cross the Sidon he asked Alma, second this isn’t the Lord’s usual pattern. He usually lightens up the whole people at once via a couple of geniuses, a Newton and a Leibniz, rather than just flooding people through one mega-genius. You may counter with Joseph Smith, but I will block that by noting that J.S. also was using a lot of esoteric records and possibly had ancient tutors.

UPDATED INFORMATION: Jarom mentions fortifying cities, so perhaps Moroni was merely introducing historical (Old) Nephite practice to the Neo-Nephites, and perhaps this is true with armor as well.

The converging column that I mentioned was for a commander to divide his forces in order to strike the enemy from several directions simultaneously. This could be achieved by marching columns or with an ambuscade element such as Moroni+Lehi at the river Sidon or Hannibal at Trebia. Napoleon would sometimes do this. Napoleon was also very much a bookworm. Khalid bin Walid was the past master of this tactic, often splitting his forces into three or four columns. If pulled off successfully it is devastatingly effective, but it is difficult to get the articulated elements to work together in perfect unison. If they don’t, they will be defeated in detail. The commanders have to trust each other unreservedly even under conditions of no or limited communications. We of the video game generation tend to discount this problem because it’s generally handwaved away in our model battles. The best treatment of this tactic in the Book of Mormon is Antipas and Helaman’s Youth Brigade. The commanders have to be the man completely in charge of their element, but also be humble enough to be a cog in the bigger scheme. Humility is an exceedingly rare trait among generals. The Neo-Nephites used this tactic a lot starting with CPT Moroni, and it seems to be the only thing that the Lamanites did not immediately copy. With that in mind, one gets the massive phase shift that has taken place at the end of the Neo-Nephites by Mormon’s spare note that Ze-Nephi has marched away with his army.

The Jaredite record would also be responsible for wising up the Neo-Nephites and from them the Lamanites. Ammon and Lamoni’s initial conversations appear extremely naive - two hicks from the sticks matching wits, but that naivete wears off from the Lehites soon thereafter. That would also explain why the Lamanites make Nephite dissenters their officers and staff for a while.