Abinadi and the first and second Moses

In his book, "Understanding the Book of Mormon", Grant Hardy writes about the connection between Abinadi and Moses.

The tale of Abinadi includes a number of parallels to the Exodus story, beginning with God's command "Go forth and say unto this people, 'Thus saith the Lord...'" (Mosiah 11:20). The injunction to "say (un)to [someone], 'Thus saith the Lord'" is fairly common in the Hebrew Bible, where it recurs more than fifty times, but the first - and most memorable - usages are in the story of Moses' confrontation with Pharaoh at Exodus 4:22, 8:1, 20, and 9:13. Although King Noah may unwittingly play the part of Pharaoh, Mormon recognizes the pattern and narrates accordingly, though it was God himself who first spoke to Abinadi in the same language he had used long before with Moses. It appears that both Mormon and God want us to perceive Abinadi's preaching not just as doctrinal discourse but as a reenactment of sacred drama - Abinadi is a New Moses, giving the Law once again (as when he recites the Ten Commandments) and standing up to a recalcitrant, faithless ruler. The verbal correspondences become more distinctive as the story progresses, though it adds yet another layer of complexity to note that the narrator never reports God's words directly; we always hear them as quoted by Abinadi

Hardy then goes on to give many examples of textual connections. Given the uniqueness of many of the shared phrases between the Exodus and the Abinadi story and sermon, I think they are significant. I cannot go into the same amount of detail as Hardy, but will just list the shared phrases or themes here

• "shall know that I am the Lord" (Mosiah 12:3) is a key phrase in Exodus
• "a jealous God, visiting the iniquities" (Mosiah 11:22) only occurs in the Abinadi story in the Book of Mormon and as part of the Ten Commandments in the Bible
• "Who is Abinadi, that I..." (Mosiah 11:27) reminds us of Pharaoh's "who is the Lord, that I..." in Exodus 5:2
• hardened hearts (Mosiah 11:29) is a common concept in the Book of Mormon but in the Bible it is ovewhelmingly associated with Pharaoh
• The Lord distinctly commands Abinadi to "stretch forth his hand" (Mosiah 12:2) as a prophetic gesture as he does five times in the Moses/Pharaoh story
• threats of hail, east wind, insects and pestilance in Mosiah 12:6-7 remind us of the plagues over Egypt

Then, in what may seem an effort to remove all doubt that these connections are intentional, Mormon narrates about Abinadi that

his face shone with exceeding luster, even as Moses' did while in the Mount of Sinai, while speaking with the Lord (Mosiah 13:5)

It is hard to tell how obvious these parallels were as they happened or to what degree Mormon creatively connected the words and events in his abridgement. In any case, they are quite interesting. Hardy does not really attempt to provide an explanation or speculate about why Mormon/Abinadi/God would draw these parallels. But I like to speculate, so here goes...

Lately I have read a bit about the old Jewish idea about the Messiah as a second Moses. See this article, for instance. Many Christian scholars also see these parallels between Moses and Christ. They are also present in the Book of Mormon around the time of Christ's coming to earth, see this blog post.

In another previous blog post, I noted that the first half of Abinadi's sermon is about Moses and the old law. Note that all the parallels to Pharaoh/Exodus are in Mosiah 11-13. Then, at a transition point in Mosiah 13:31, the second half of the sermon (Mosiah 14-16) is all about Christ, the second Moses, and salvation through Him. This makes me wonder if the Messiah as second Moses tradition is older than 600 BC and the Book of Mormon prophets had it. Perhaps this tradition is basically as old as Moses because he said himself that

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers (Deuteronomy 18:15)

Compare with 1 Nephi 10:4, where Nephi talks about his father's prophecies

Yea, even six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem, a prophet would the Lord God raise up among the Jews—even a Messiah, or, in other words, a Savior of the world.

This sounds like a reference to Deuteronomy and Lehi clearly understood this prophet to be the Messiah. When Christ is among the Nephites he identifies himself as that prophet.

Behold, I am he of whom Moses spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me (3 Nephi 20:23)

Realizing that the Nephites probably had this understanding of the Messiah as a second Moses, it is interesting to note that Abinadi's sermon was split into a first part about the first Moses and a second part about the second Moses the way he did. Thus all the references to Moses in the first half of his talk, both the Exodus and the Law, make sense. I don't think the point with these parallels was to just compare Abinadi with Moses. Abinadi is there to point the way from the first Moses to the second Moses. 

But one may wonder, why Abinadi and his sermon? It started with a question from King Noah's priests about the meaning of a scripture in Isaiah. What does Isaiah have to do with all this? I don't know if this scripture triggered Abinadi's choice/inspiration to give the sermon the way he did, or if it was the fact that King Noah's priests told him that they taught the people to live the law of Moses. Perhaps both? In the Isaiah scripture that they queried him about, we read:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation (Isaiah 52:7 / Mosiah 12:21)

Two keywords in bold: Mountains can lead our thoughts to Mount Sinai, where Moses stood. Abinadi seizes the opportunity to ask if they think salvation comes through the Law of Moses. When they respond that they think it does, Abinadi explains how the first Moses and the Law merely represented "types of things to come" (Mosiah 13:31) and went on to talk about the second Moses, whose feet would stand on Mount Zion and publish salvation. 

I'm still not sure if I should credit Mormon or Abinadi or both for this brilliant allusion to the idea of a first and second Moses in this story and sermon, but in the end I believe the Book of Mormon is the inspired word of God and that he has left an abundance of treasures for us to find in the scriptures as we study.