Christ and covenants - Part 2

I wrote a post with the same name a while back, not knowing there would be a part 2. But this theme keeps popping up. To recap: The purpose of the Book of Mormon is stated on the title page, and can be summed up in two words: Christ and covenants. For me, this is the core message of Isaiah too and the reason, I believe, he is quoted so much in the Book of Mormon. After I had these thoughts, I read a post on Reddit, analyzing 2 Nephi 11. This short chapter contains repetetive resumption (marked with yellow) and several "my soul delighteth in..." in between.

2 And now I, Nephi, write more of the words of Isaiah, for my soul delighteth in his words. For I will liken his words unto my people, and I will send them forth unto all my children, for he verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him.

3 And my brother, Jacob, also has seen him as I have seen him; wherefore, I will send their words forth unto my children to prove unto them that my words are true. Wherefore, by the words of three, God hath said, I will establish my word. Nevertheless, God sendeth more witnesses, and he proveth all his words.

4 Behold, my soul delighteth in proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ; for, for this end hath the law of Moses been given; and all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of him.

5 And also my soul delighteth in the covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers; yea, my soul delighteth in his grace, and in his justice, and power, and mercy in the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death.

6 And my soul delighteth in proving unto my people that save Christ should come all men must perish.

7 For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time.

8 And now I write some of the words of Isaiah, that whoso of my people shall see these words may lift up their hearts and rejoice for all men. Now these are the words, and ye may liken them unto you and unto all men.

So basically, Nephi delighteth in Isaiah's words and the meesage they contain, which is all about Christ and covenants.

Lord Wilmore wrote a post yesterday about the meaning of the names of Isaiah's sons. Their names reflect the scattering and gathering of Israel, that is mentioned on the title page too and that I would sum up in this one word; covenants. Add to that, Isaiah's own name: It means "Jehovah saves" or "Jehovah is salvation". Although Isaiah doesn't use the name "Christ", which is only a Greek version of the Hebrew, "Messiah", the salvation that comes through Jehovah/The Holy one of Israel/The Lord of Hosts is a central theme in the Book of Isaiah.

Again, through the names of Isaiah and his sons we get the same theme: Christ and covenants.

After Nephi has made this introduction to Isaiah in 2 Nephi 11, he goes on to quote 13 chapters. When he is done, he comments on it in 2 Nephi 25:

my soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah (v.5)

And the Lord will set his hand again the second time to restore his people from their lost and fallen state. Wherefore, he will proceed to do a marvelous work and a wonder among the children of men. (v.17)

And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins. (v.26)

To get a little personal: Last Sunday taking the sacrament, I reflected again on these two words and realized that they sum up the sacrament too. We remember Christ and renew our covenants with him. These two are inseparably connected and the whole basis of our salvation. I believe that covenants is the only way given to us that binds us to Christ in such a way that we can receive the full effects of the atonement.

The Book of Mormon rocks

Sorry, I couldn't resist the temptation to use a word-play to create a click-bait title, it should read "the rocks in the Book of Mormon". For context, let me comment briefly on the use of rocks in the Bible. About 50% of the use is metaphorical and points to the Savior. "Rock of my salvation" is found multiple times in the book of Psalms for instance. Moses smote the rock and water came out. Christ is the source of living water and Paul is saying that the rock was Christ. The symbolism is fitting when we think about the steadfastness of the solid rock.

Even though they didn't have the New Testament story of Jesus at the well or Paul's letters, Lehi, Nephi and their righteous descendants definitely were familiar with this symbolism. One example is found in 2 Nephi 25:20

And now, my brethren, I have spoken plainly that ye cannot err. And as the Lord God liveth that brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and gave unto Moses power that he should heal the nations after they had been bitten by the poisonous serpents, if they would cast their eyes unto the serpent which he did raise up before them, and also gave him power that he should smite the rock and the water should come forth; yea, behold I say unto you, that as these things are true, and as the Lord God liveth, there is none other name given under heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby man can be saved.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Nephi uses the story of Moses smiting a rock as an example when he testifies of the salvation through Christ. As a side note, I also noticed the repetitive resumption in this verse and marked it in yellow.

We also see the "my rock and my salvation" and "the rock of my salvation" language from the Old Testament echoed in the Book of Mormon.

Psalm 95:1

O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

2 Nephi 4:30

Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation.

No wonder we refer to 2 Nephi 4 as Nephi's psalm. There are multiple other examples both from the Bible and the Book of Mormon and I will not list them all. But I actually started looking into this when I read 1 Nephi 13:36

And in them [the Nephite records] shall be written my gospel, saith the Lamb, and my rock and my salvation.

I was a bit puzzled by the way it was phrased. It seems that the verse is saying that "my rock and my salvation" shall be written in the records. This use of the expression would deviate a bit from the norm. Considering the fact that the punctuation was not part of the original text and placed there by the printer, E. B. Grandin, perhaps it would be better to drop the comma after Lamb. "saith the Lamb and my rock and my salvation", changes the meaning and is perhaps a better one, in my opinion, more in line with the other similar expressions in the scriptures.

We have seen before that Jacob seems particularly fond of the Book of Psalms and he uses this expression both in 2 Nephi 9:45

O, my beloved brethren, turn away from your sins; shake off the chains of him that would bind you fast; come unto that God who is the rock of your salvation.

and in Jacob 7:25

Wherefore, the people of Nephi did fortify against them with their arms, and with all their might, trusting in the God and rock of their salvation;

I will create another post tomorrow looking further into the use of rocks as symbol in the Book of Mormon.

Zeezrom as a metanym

There is evidence that Mormon intentionally inserted wordplay into names in the Book of Mormon.  So much evidence, in fact, that some scholars openly wonder if his use of this particular literary technique is significantly underrated.

Take the name "Zeezrom" as an example.  If we compare the structure of this name to "Zenephi" mentioned in Moroni 9:16, we end up wondering what an "ezrom" is.  It turns out Mormon goes out of his way to tell us what an ezrom is in the verses right after we meet Zeezrom:

12 And an ezrom of silver was as great as four senums. (Alma 11)

An ezrom is a measure of silver.  It is worth noting that Zeezrom is introduced into the narrative (see Alma 10:31) just three verses before this explanation of the Nephite monetary system begins. We learn that Zeezrom was a chief accuser of Alma and Amulek and an expert in the law.

Mormon comments in the very next verse about the object of the lawyers:

32 Now the object of these lawyers was to get gain; and they got gain according to their employ. (Alma 10)

We then get a 20 verse aside that explains that judges were paid according to the time they spent adjudicating disputes, as did the lawyers, and then a detailed explanation of the monetary system.  An "ezrom" is one of about a dozen names introduced in the aside.

The narrative starts up again with a repetition of the detail we got right before the aside (in other words, this is a great example of repetitive resumption):

20 Now, it was for the sole purpose to get gain... (Alma 11)

Perhaps all of this could just be a coincidence, but what comes next convinces me the name Zeezrom is intended to teach us a deeper meaning.  This expert lawyer and chief accuser of Alma and Amulek gets into a verbal exchange with the missionaries and proceeds to offer them money:

22 And Zeezrom said unto him: Behold, here are six onties of silver, and all these will I give thee if thou wilt deny the existence of a Supreme Being.

The man whose name relates to silver offers the missionaries silver to deny the existence of God.

The fact that after mentioning the name Zeezrom, Mormon immediately interrupts the narrative to offer us an explanation as to what the name means, only then to connect the man and the meaning of his name by his action indicates to me that all of this was intentional on the part of Mormon.

I can't help but also ponder how Joseph Smith (if you want to suppose he is the actual author of this book) accomplished this kind of complex multi-tiered wordplay into his story without any notes, in a single draft. Clever!

Hat tip: Brant Gardner.

Repetitive resumption in Ether -- Moroni used it, too.

These posts (here and here) discuss the ancient scribal technique referred to as repetitive resumption, or Wiederaufnahme if you want to get German about it. There are numerous examples of this in the Book of Mormon.

In this post, I'd like to give another example where Moroni brackets a long aside with details about the brother of Jared.

The final verse of Ether 3 and first verse of Ether 4 (originally part of the same chapter) read as follows:

28 And it came to pass that the Lord commanded him that he should seal up the two stones which he had received, and show them not, until the Lord should show them unto the children of men. (Ether 3)

1 And the Lord commanded the brother of Jared to go down out of the mount from the presence of the Lord, and write the things which he had seen; and they were forbidden to come unto the children of men until after that he should be lifted up upon the cross; and for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world until after Christ should show himself unto his people. (Ether 4)

We then get a long narrative aside about sealed writings, faith, etc., from Moroni himself (not part of the account he is abridging), after which we resumes the brother of Jared account in Ether 6:

1 And now I, Moroni, proceed to give the record of Jared and his brother.
2 For it came to pass after the Lord had prepared the stones which the brother of Jared had carried up into the mount, the brother of Jared came down out of the mount, and he did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared, one in each end thereof; and behold, they did give light unto the vessels. (Ether 6)

This is a really interesting feature of the text.  It is worth noting that repetitive resumption is found in the Old Testament, but it was not recognized and described by Bible scholars until long after the publication of the Book of Mormon.

This puts it into a similar (but distinct) category as chiasmus, as a literary technique which is also found in the Bible, but was not described by scholars until well after 1829 when the Book of Mormon text was laid down.  Unlike chiasmus, which has a poetic purpose, repetitive resumption has an editorial purpose -- it isn't beautiful, it is functional, and it makes the most sense when writing without modern-day symbols such as parentheses.

So if one wants to assert that Joseph Smith authored the book (which I definitely don't) it would be useful to come up with a way to explain how he managed to seamlessly insert many examples of two different forms of literary repetition, both of which were unrecognized by scholars of his day, both of which retain the underlying usefulness (poetic examples of chiasmus and functional/editorial examples of repetitive resumption). It would be helpful if a critic could point me to examples of repetitive resumption contemporary to Joseph Smith, or something similar.  (Some critics make exactly this type of claim about a literary technique known as "ring-form" to explain chiasmus, but I find their overall argument pretty weak).

The faithful perspective needs no such explanation, these literary techniques which had lost their usefulness in our modern language were very useful to scribes trained in a literary system without punctuation or even spaces between words.  Chiasmus allows the pattern of repeating characters to point the eye of the reader to a central message.  Repetitive resumption allows the reader to reorient into the main narrative flow by noting the repeated characters acting as parentheses around a side comment. Mormon and Moroni were trained in this scribal tradition, so it would be expected to find examples of these techniques in the text, which was revealed to, not authored by Joseph Smith.