Review
Title: 1st Nephi: a brief theological introduction
Author: Joseph Spencer
Publisher: Brigham Young University ; Neal A. Maxwell Institute
Genre: Scriptural studies
Year Published: c2020
Number of pages: 146
Binding: Paperback
ISBN10:
ISBN13: 978-0-8425-0007-4
Price: $9.95
Reviewed by Dennis Clark for the Association for Mormon Letters
I occasionally have reservations about books I have asked to review. My reservation on being chosen to review this book was that I wasn’t sure there was a theological structure, theo- or -logical, to 1st Nephi. From having read the book a number of times, I was familiar with the familial elements, and reading it aloud this time with Valerie, my wife, we had noted the many instances when Nephi seems like an arrogant twerp. I am using the Maxwell Institute Study Edition of The Book of Mormon, edited by Grant Hardy, formatted in paragraphs and punctuated for careful study. She is using her Journal Edition formatted in the versification first pioneered by Orson Pratt in 1879, with her notes from a lifetime of study transferred from other editions and written on the journal lines in the margins. So I wondered whether we needed a theological introduction to 1st Nephi.
I no longer wonder. I do need it, and with it, Joseph Spencer has provided a remarkable start to this series. In his “Conclusion,” Spencer notes that he owes a great debt to Hugh Nibley and his “remarkable portrait of Nephi,” and hoped to emulate Nibley, but “God pressed me toward another field of research. I’m a theologian who specializes in the close reading of texts” (118). By the time I reached Spencer’s “Conclusion,” I had no doubt of that. His close reading convinces me that Nephi was aware, in writing this book, that he might indeed have been an arrogant twerp.
But first to that close reading. Spencer introduces his book by taking seriously Nephi’s own title, “The First Book of Nephi: His Reign and Ministry.” He begins by describing his own volume’s layout. First, he will describe the structure of 1st Nephi, then its theological purposes. Then he will discuss “What questions are most pressing right now,” based on what worries his students “as they read” (4). These questions form the second half of his book, in three chapters centered around “the slaying of Laban,” “Nephi’s difficult relationship with his brothers” and “1 Nephi’s women, so close to invisible in the narrative” (4-5). I would not have been able to follow, if not fully accept, Spencer’s answers to those vexing questions without having read and accepted his description of the structure of 1st Nephi.
Spencer makes the common-sense observation that, having “spent decades reflecting on events before he wrote them” down, and “as much as a decade giving shape to the record…. we should expect to find [Nephi’s] writings tellingly organized” (12). It is easy to forget that Nephi didn’t start writing 1st Nephi until after Lehi’s death, after he had taken his followers and fled into the wilderness, and after he had been keeping a record “upon my plates, which I had made, of my people thus far,” a record of the “thirty years” that “had passed away from the time we left Jerusalem” (2nd Nephi 5:28, 29). So when “the Lord God said unto me, ‘Make other plates'” and a different kind of record (verse 30), he did, and by the time he had brought it up-to-date, “forty years had passed away, and we had already had wars and contentions with our brethren” (verse 34).
At that point, Nephi is roughly 54, and he turns the record over to Jacob and to Isaiah for roughly 24 chapters. And it is roughly, because Spencer relies on Nephi’s original chapter divisions, which were preserved in the 1830 edition from indications in the original manuscript — that is, they are Nephi’s chapters, not his translator’s. Spencer is a careful reader not only of the text, but of its textual history, and it is easier to follow in Grant Hardy’s edition than any other I have used. But to return to Spencer’s text: by adhering to Nephi’s original chapter divisions he identifies two parts of Nephi’s record, as Nephi has promised: “I make an abridgment of the record of my father, upon plates which I have made with mine own hands; wherefore, after I have abridged the record of my father then will I make an account of mine own life” (1 Nephi 1:17).
To make this next part clear, I will need to adopt the convention of referring to the original chapters by Roman numerals, and the current chapters by Arabic numerals. Part 1 of Nephi’s book — the original chapters I (now chapters 1-5) and II (now chapters 6-9) — are his “Abridgment of Lehi’s Record,” ending with Lehi’s dream of the tree of life. Part 2 are “Nephi’s Own Proceedings, Reign, and Ministry,” the original chapters III-VII, through to the end of I Nephi. The theological import of chapter I is that it contains the story of the obtaining of the Brass Plates; and of chapter II that it contains Lehi’s dream. That is part 1 of Nephi’s architecture.
Part 2 of 1st Nephi comprises five original chapters: chapter III is “Nephi’s Long Vision of Israel’s History” — the summary descriptions are Spencer’s — and chapter IV is “Nephi’s Explanation of his Father’s Dream to his Brothers” — the first part of his ministry. Chapter V comprises the “Desert Trek, Building of a Ship, Ocean Voyage, Prophecies” — Nephi’s reign, as it were. Chapter VI is Nephi’s “Quotation of Brass Plates Prophecies: Isaiah 48-49,” followed by Chapter VII “Nephi’s Explanation of Isaiah to his Brothers” — the second part of his ministry.
Spencer diagrams this on page 17, which makes it easier to follow. On page 19 he diagrams the interrelationships of the parts, so that on page 20 he is ready to discuss the theological purpose of Nephi’s writing: discussing “The Remnant of Israel” (among whom he counts his people), and “The God of Israel” in the next two chapters. They will repay careful study, as they are the meat of Nephi’s theological concerns. You should read them closely. But of equal interest are the problematic parts of 1st Nephi which are the focus of the last part of the Spencer’s text, chapters 4, “Laban’s Death”; 5, “Laman and Lemuel”; and 6, “The Women,” and it is to those that I will turn briefly now.
It is in these chapters that Spencer grapples with the nature of a prophetic calling, and with young Nephi’s perhaps overzealous desire to “keep the commandments,” which may so narrow his focus in all three areas that he acts without awareness of his limitations, and hurts others. For example, in facing the dilemma of Laban, he may misinterpret the whisperings of the Spirit. This may have led him to ignore other alternatives to killing a helpless man, and his acceptance of this whispering bothers me. I have always found it mildly ironic that the third justification Nephi hears is “It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief” (1 Nephi 4:13), for two reasons: Nephi will learn, not much later, that his seed will dwindle and perish in unbelief, but that of Laman and Lemuel and the sons of Ishmael will not; and, something Nephi would never learn during his lifetime, that this is the same coldly utilitarian justification Caiaphas offers for the killing of Jesus (cf. ).
In these three chapters, Spencer is least convincing, and follows the text less closely. In Chapter 4, “Laban’s Death,” he sticks most closely to the text, but still brings in such scriptural evidence as Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. In Chapter 5, “Laman and Lemuel,” he brings in the lament Nephi makes in 2 Nephi , as evidence that he feels anguish over his treatment of his brothers. But it is in his Chapter 6, “The Women,” that Spencer moves furthest afield, using Jacob’s strictures against polygamy, in Jacob , as evidence that the Lord had commanded Lehi that his people should not abuse nor humiliate their women, and arguing that this would have been one of the reasons he led them out of Jerusalem, because there, women were oppressed. But, Spencer argues, the Nephites did not obey that commandment from Lehi, nor heed Jacob’s warnings, and ironically the Lamanites did. This, he argues, is one reason they survived the final war when the Nephites did not. And it may have been a weakness in Nephi’s perception of, and relationships with, the women in the group. Again, these chapters will repay close reading.
In that brief summary I may seem to have quarreled with Spencer. Spencer quarrels with himself in those three chapters, because they address the worst weaknesses of 1st Nephi, if not the entire Book of Mormon, but one of the conclusions he reaches, in the chapter “Laman and Lemuel,” is this: “To see Nephi’s foibles–the foibles he himself shows us–might be to see how much more real the prophetic gift is than our caricatures suggest. …we follow the prophets precisely because of what God does through them, not because of what or who they are” (96). That is, our prophets are not celebrities; they are merely men.
If I am not entirely convinced by Spencer’s grappling with these hard questions, I stand in awe of his willingness to confront them, to face them head-on, rather than to sneer at them as I have done in the past. This is to me the real value of Spencer’s close reading, and I admire him for it.