Lucifer's Lantern

According to the Book of Mormon, a family of Israelites claims to be inspired to flee the city of Jerusalem and embark on a transoceanic voyage to somewhere on the American continent, which their chief patriarch, Lehi, asserts is a "promised land" for them and their posterity. What follows is my reconstruction of Lehite history by using the chronology described in the Book of Mormon text, which is replete with mentions of the years that have passed "since Lehi left Jerusalem," as well as its dating method when its government shifted to a judicial republic, known as "the reign of the judges." I will be treating this as a history as written . That means that I will attempt to fill in gaps of relevant information with the most logical timeline, especially the ages of the various patriarchs featured in the narrative.  Some events, when summarized, will sound more absurd or strange than they do in the more flowery prose presented in the text. I have attempted t...

We need to talk about the current apologetics attempting to downplay the Lamanite curse. Nephi Sees Our Day In preparation for my next topic, I was reading 1 Nephi 13:15 , where Nephi sees a vision of the future for his own civilization and the European conquest of America. This passage stuck out to me: And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain. This is in direct contrast to 1 Nephi 12:23 : And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations. You might notice that there is ample ambiguity in both passages, but in juxtaposing these two peoples, we see a contrast that I just can’t reconcile if the curse is only “symbolic” or “spiritual.” In comparing Gentiles to Lam...

I felt closer to God when I finally stopped believing in Him.  Let me explain. When I was a kid, I’d sit in church and listen to people talk about God as if he was real . I say “he” because God was also defined as a male, and that definition supposedly came from thousands of years of tradition. God was like me : he had feelings or grief and joy; he wanted me to be happy; he had ambition and plans for me, just like I did for myself. What a wonderful thought that a Supreme Being had me in mind! But God was also “He.” I say that because the title implied a king, nobility, and sovereignty. God was not like me : He was omnipotent; He knew better than me; He was always in control; He wasn’t flawed like me; He didn’t make mistakes; He knew the end from the beginning. I couldn’t ultimately know God, but He wanted me to draw close to Him.   According to the traditions I grew up in, the way we approached God was through “righteousness,” aka, doing good things and avoiding bad things....

Never has any passage of scripture come with more scrupulosity to the heart of man than Mosiah 3:19 has to me: For the natural man is an enemy to God , and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever… It’s a passage which seemed to enter with great shame into every feeling of my heart. I heard this passage mentioned and quoted again and again - it appears in General Conference addresses a total of 347 times, over half of which occurring in my lifetime (according to the LDS General Conference Corpus ). It’s a passage that implies a divine curse on not just one people group, not on one continent, but on the whole of the human species - an original sin, as it were. Mosiah 3:19 would have you believe that you and I are God’s personal enemies, because we are the posterity of Adam and Eve. Depending on how you read LDS theology, I either did or didn’t have a choice here, a subject too dense to get into just yet; and either way, an omniscient God supposedly laid the groundw...

  In the last article we looked at how Magnalia Christi Americana demonstrates how early Americans saw themselves as a covenant people in a covenant land. To demonstrate how that same worldview shaped Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon, we’re going to walk through the purposes behind both books. Luckily John Higginson spells out the goals of Magnalia in his introduction to Cotton Mather’s work. Once you compare those intentions to the Book of Mormon , the influence is hard to miss. The First Purpose of Magnalia Christi Americana: First, That a plain scriptural duty of recording the works of God unto after-times, may not any longer be omitted, but performed in the best manner we can. ( Magnalia Vol 1, pg 10) Higginson meant this in a very literal way. Puritans worried that if they didn’t record God’s works, their children wouldn’t know how God had acted among them, and the community could lose sight of the guidance they believed God had provided.  Mather builds his entire project...

In Part 1 of this essay miniseries, I laid out how, if we are to believe that the curse of Laman wasn’t not related to skin color - as was the assumption for most of the history of the LDS church - that there is zero evidence for any of it. In other words, all of the "curse" can be explained naturalistically with no divine intervention and therefore no cause for the Nephites to assign one to them. LDS scripture, however, does not stop at describing a Lamanite “curse.” It describes two other divine generational judgments: a “curse of Ham,” and a “curse of Cain.” Here’s the scriptural precedent for both other curses:

There is a very distinct moral rhythm that drives the entire storyline of the Book of Mormon. This is often referred to within the church as the “pride cycle.”     It goes something like this: When the people remember God, they live peacefully and prosper. Their obedience brings material success and national stability. Then, wealth and comfort begin to shift their focus. Pride replaces gratitude. The people start to divide into social classes, persecute the poor, and boast of their own strength. As pride spreads, the society grows corrupt. Prophets warn them to repent, but their voices are ignored or mocked. Eventually, destruction comes through war, famine, or internal collapse. Suffering drives the people to humility. They remember God again, repent, and the Lord blesses them with peace and prosperity. Then the cycle restarts. This pattern is repeated continually from the beginning of the Book of Mormon and is claimed to be the direct result of covenant with God. That when ...

The Book of Mormon seems obsessed about the concept of tradition – the teachings and ideals handed down from one generation to another. In the Bible, the concept only emerges in the Hellenistic period, where the Jewish world was preoccupied with recouping and guarding their beliefs from the surrounding Greco-Roman supremacy. It’s interesting that the later Gentile gospels of Luke and John don’t talk about tradition at all, while Matthew and Mark (the two Judaising Gospels) bring it up to assert that Jesus had the “right ideas” about what Judaism should look like. The primary focus for the term “tradition” is in reference to the culture war occurring between the Messianic Israelites in America known as “ Nephites, ” their apostate brethren, and the disenfranchised Lamanites. This seems to be distinct from the “ curse ” divinely appointed by God to those who abandon the Nephite civilization – it isn’t proclaimed to those secular Nephites who merely did not participate in the true ch...