Two new articles have gone up on the website of the never-changing and completely dead website of the Interpreter Foundation:
“The Man with No Name: The Story of the Brother of Jared as an Anti-Babel Polemic,” written by Walker Wright
Abstract: Within the text of the Book of Mormon, the name of Jared’s brother is never revealed. Various reasons have been offered for the lack of a name, but nothing conclusive has been offered. Taking a cue from the polemical nature of Old Testament theology, this paper argues that the opening of the book of Ether is a polemic against Babel, with the brother of Jared being contrasted against the people and ruler of Babel. Led by the mighty hunter Nimrod, the people of Babel refused God’s command to multiply and fill the earth. Instead, they gathered together, built a tower to reach the heavens, and explicitly sought to make a name for themselves. In response, the Lord confounded their language and scattered them abroad. In contrast, the brother of Jared was a mighty, unnamed man who communed with the heavens on top of a high mountain. The language of his people was spared, and they spread across the face of the promised land. Moroni’s abridgement of Ether thus may present the anti-Babel origins of the Jaredites.
“Interpreting Interpreter: An Anti-Babel,” written by Kyler Rasmussen
This post is a summary of the article “The Man with No Name: The Story of the Brother of Jared as an Anti-Babel Polemic” by Walker Wright in Volume 62 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreterseries is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.
The Takeaway: Wright argues that the story of the Brother of Jared is meant to serve as a contrast against the people and ruler of Babel, pitting an unnamed righteous man who communed with the heavens against the mighty Nimrod and the people of Babel, who tried to make a name for themselves and build their way to the heavens.
(A photograph in the public domain from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
I think that you’ll enjoy this nine-minute video, filmed onsite in the Arabian Peninsula: “One of the Best Book of Mormon Evidences: The Valley of Lemuel Location!”
As an Arabist, I have obvious reasons for finding the Arabian portion of the Book of Mormon in 1 Nephi of special interest. So it’s gratifying to me that that particular set of chapters holds up quite well to scholarly scrutiny. And I need hardly tell you that the youthful Joseph Smith almost certainly had no great expertise in the micro-geography of the Arabian Peninsula, nor many resources available to him on the subject in Harmony, Pennsylvania’s Graduate Research Library.
My wife and I were saddened to learn, just three or four days ago, of the death of our friend Jim Allen. He and his late wife, Renée, were already members of a regular reading group, the Gadianton Polysophical Marching and Chowder Society, before we were invited to join it. That monthly meeting has been a very pleasant regular fixture of our lives for decades now. Unfortunately, as actuarial realities predicted, the GPMCS has been losing members rapidly over the past couple of years and more. (At the time of our joining, my wife and I were, by at least ten or fifteen years [I think], the group’s youngest members.)
Jim served for several years alongside the late Davis Bitton — another member of the GPMCS and another good friend of ours — as one of the two assistant historians of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under the late Leonard J. Arrington. I’m very happy to report that I was able to interview Jim on camera several months ago for the eventual docudrama that we intend as a sequel to follow the dramatic film Six Days in August. Although he was already in his ninety-seventh year and a little bit worried about how he would do, he was sharp and well-informed.
“James B. Allen ranks highly among BYU Studies authors. Over many years he published articles, reviews and documents of great quality in great quantity. He was a founding father of scholarly studies of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, a kind and generous mentor, and a true disciple of Jesus Christ. BYU Studies expresses heartfelt condolences to Professor Allen’s family and loved ones. We honor him.
“We love him. We are grateful for all he has given us and taught us over the course of his brilliant career.”—Steven C. Harper, Editor in Chief of BYU Studies
Finally, as is the frequent custom here has been and continues to be, I close with yet another horror from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™. Actually, I close with a pair of related horrors.
Viewer discretion is advised. If you are pregnant or suffer from a heart condition, you should seriously consider not clinking on the following links:
The first was published in the Deseret News by the invaluable Jacob Hess: “College students active in their faith have better mental health, including sexual minorities: This is the definitive conclusion from the first study to directly compare religious and nonreligious campuses, analyzing over 135K students across 140 universities.”
And to make it all worse, “religious campuses” seem to be doing pretty well at the moment. In fact, the virus of theistic-influenced education may actually be spreading. Here’s an article from the Deseret News that was recently co-authored by Elder Clark G. Gilbert of the Seventy, Commissioner of Education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Together, they currently co-chair the Commission on Faith-based Universities at the American Council on Education: “Faith-based universities are growing for a reason: It’s the law of the harvest”
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In