BOM 2 Nephi 3

Today’s reading, 2 Nephi 3, has bothered some because of the remarkable specificity of its prediction of Joseph the Seer, who would be named after his father.

Joseph Smith Jr. and Joseph Smith Sr., right?

Get it?

And that prophecy has caused certain critics a great deal of merriment because, on their assumption that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself, it seems so embarrassingly self-glorifying.

There’s not much that I can say in reply to the latter issue, because, of course, it rests on an assumption that I simply don’t share.  I point out, though, that Joseph’s authenticated personal writings don’t sustain the notion that he was an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur.

As to the first issue, well, I admit that it reaches a level of specificity (with regard to Moses as well as to Joseph Smith) that is pretty foreign to the Bible.  But I also suppose that, if you grant the existence of an effectively omnipotent and omniscient deity, such a prophecy seems pretty small potatoes.  If God was able to create the universe and to raise Jesus from the dead, predicting a name doesn’t seem all that big a deal.

But the question arises, Was God able to foretell this because he somehow saw it in advance, or because he was planning, in his superlatively competent and powerful way, to ensure that it would happen?

For very many cases of prophecy, if not for all, I lean toward the latter understanding.  And I incline to it here, as well.

But that’s a topic for another time or times.

I want to get to a different issue:

Plainly, this prophecy in 2 Nephi 3 refers to Joseph Smith Sr. (b. 1771) and his son Joseph Jr. (b. 1805).

Keep those names and dates in mind.

I happen to be a descendent of Joseph Knight Sr. through his son Joseph Jr.  Some have called the Knight family “the second family of the Restoration” because they played such a crucial role in the very earliest events of this last dispensation.  (Those with a reasonably good knowledge of Mormon history will immediately think of Newel Knight and Jesse Knight and others, along with former California governor Goodwin J. Knight.  See also William Hartley’s collective family biography, here.)

The Knight family lived in Colesville, New York, very near many of the most important sites at the beginnings of Mormonism; the Colesville Branch (essentially the Knights) was the first organized Church unit.  Joseph Knight Sr. was born in 1772, roughly eighteen months after Joseph Smith, Sr.  And Joseph Knight Jr. was born approximately two and a half years after Joseph Smith Jr., in 1808.

The question suddenly occurred to me one day, Were they a back-up team?  Ultimately not required — but in place, properly timed for such a role, properly named, and, as subsequent events abundantly demonstrate, very open to the events and claims of the Restoration?

I have no way of knowing.  And I won’t know until I meet them and others a few years from now.  But it’s fun to speculate.