Creating a covenant people

In this post, I will just elaborate on something Lord Wilmore wrote in his series on the endowment pattern. Here, he explained how new names are part of this pattern. I will just repeat and extend the quote from the NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

If creation is the act of bringing something into existence, we must ask what constituted existence in the ancient world. In our culture, we consider existence to be either material (i.e., having molecules/taking up space and extending to energy and subatomic particles) or experiential (e.g., abstractions such as love or time). Those definitions, however, are culturally determined. By contrast, in the ancient world something existed when it had a function -- a role to play. In Mesopotamia one way to accomplish this was to name something, because a name designated a thing's function or role...In Egyptian accounts existence was associated with something having been differentiated. The Genesis account includes both of these concepts as God separates and names. (NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, "Creation and Existence")

The creation account is an account of opposites. This explanation of the cultural background helps me understand why. By separating water and dry land, both came into existence and got a role to play. The same with light and darkness.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (Genesis 1)

Obviously, this was Lehi's worldview.

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

12 Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. (2 Nephi 2)

Without division leading to opposites, all is compound in one and has no purpose.

This is all just meant as an introduction to another kind of creation: The creation of a covenant people. The first symbol of Lord Wilmore's endowment pattern is a warning to depart. This is a separation of the righteous from the wicked. They each have a role to play but not when they are "compound in one". For instance, the Lamanites "scourge unto [Nephi's] seed, to stir them up in the ways of remembrance." (1 Nephi 2:24). Very early in Nephite history, there is a separation of Nephites and Lamanites (see 2 Nephi 5). Only then can the endowment begin because otherwise the temple is defiled. This pattern repeats as Lord Wilmore has pointed out but I wanted to elaborate on the examples of King Benjamin and his people and the converted Lamanites in the context of separating and naming. We should not be surprised that the endowment pattern resembles the creation.

King Benjamin explains

And moreover, I shall give this people a name, that thereby they may be distinguished above all the people which the Lord God hath brought out of the land of Jerusalem (Mosiah 1:11)

This is happening in Mosiah 5. The people enter into a covenant and get a new name. The creation of a covenant people happens by separation and naming, just like the creation of heaven and earth. The same thing happens with the Lamanite converts in Alma 23

16 And now it came to pass that the king and those who were converted were desirous that they might have a name, that thereby they might be distinguished from their brethren; therefore the king consulted with Aaron and many of their priests, concerning the name that they should take upon them, that they might be distinguished.

17 And it came to pass that they called their names Anti-Nephi-Lehies; and they were called by this name and were no more called Lamanites.

In the next chapter they enter into a covenant and later they physically separate from the Lamanites as they obtain the land of Jershon in Nephite territory.

These are two examples of the creation of a covenant people. I find it interesting that they are created by separation and naming, just like God does in the creation account. This gives them a new purpose, a role to play. The name indicates what this purpose is and it relates to the covenant. King Benjamin's people receive the name of Christ and covenant to keep his commandments. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies take a new name that we don't know the exact meaning of, but it obviously indicates a sympathy with the Nephites that replaces their former animosity. This is suitably marked by the covenant token of burying their weapons in the ground.