“Nephi and Isaiah on the Nations”

Newly up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  Conversations with Interpreter:  “Matthew Bowen and Upon All Nations: Nephi and Isaiah on the Nations”

For this episode we talk with Matthew L. Bowen about his article “Upon All the Nations”: The gôyim in Nephi’s Rendition of Isaiah 2 (2 Nephi 12) in Literary Context.” Dr. Bowen discusses places where Nephi’s version of Isaiah 2, preserved in 2 Nephi 12, differs from Isaiah in the received Hebrew. He argues that this reflects Nephi’s focus on all nations and desire to spread the gospel message to everyone, everywhere. This strongly reflects the vision of the Book of Mormon as a book to all nations and also gives readers of the Book of Mormon cause to reflect on the great mercy of Jesus Christ. One of Nephi’s primary messages is that the redemption and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is available to all of humanity, showing a wideness of focus that reflects God’s love for his children.

The article is available for reading at https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/upon-all-the-nations-the-goyim-in-nephis-rendition-of-isaiah-2-2-nephi-12-in-literary-context.

In the fall of 1974, a BYU philosophy professor of mine was back on the east coast for a conference or something just prior to the dedication of the Washington DC Temple.  While there, he picked up a copy of the student newspaper at Georgetown University that recounted a student-journalist’s visit to the Temple’s public open house, and he shared the article with me.  It was, as I recall, deeply contemptuous.  Surprised and mightily displeased because the vast temple didn’t feature the enormous cathedral-like interior that the reporter expected but was, rather, divided for the most part into many smaller rooms, the article referred to the Temple as “God’s hotel-motel in suburban Maryland.”

I remember, too, the article’s contemptuous mockery of Edward E. Drury, Jr., who would go on to serve for four years as the Temple’s first president.  As I recall, President Drury had retired as an executive with the company that made Singer sewing machines — we don’t have a professional clergy — and the student-journalist from Georgetown found his career in business solid ground to deride him.

I’m guessing that the author had been invited to attend a special day at the beginning of the Temple’s open house for journalists and/or VIPs, because President Drury was there personally to greet the visitors, which was almost certainly a special thing.  (The open house drew more than three quarters of a million people.)

Anyway, the Georgetown article mentioned shaking hands with President Drury, remarking that the Temple president’s hand had almost certainly sold lots and lots of sewing machines over the years.

That ill-natured jibe has remained in my memory for all of the decades since.  Since Georgetown is a Jesuit school, I wondered if it had ever occurred to the writer of the article that the hands of the apostle Peter — aka, the first pope? — had probably mended a great many fishing nets in his day.

I despise such elitist snobbery.  And I thought of that piece from decades ago yet again when I saw this article in National Review, to which you may or may not be able to gain access:  “Jimmy Kimmel’s Grating Contempt for the Working Class: His mockery of Markwayne Mullin was revealing.”

Jimmy Kimmel made light of the new Secretary of Homeland Security because the former congressman and senator now turned cabinet secretary has only an Associate in Applied Science degree in plumbing from the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology and actually worked as a plumber in his earlier days.

Now, I’m not necessarily a fan of either Markwayne Mullin or the current Department of Homeland Security, but I absolutely detest such arrogant nose-in-the-air disdain for Lesser People.  And I couldn’t help but think of a famous quotation from the late great William F. Buckley Jr. (who was himself a wealthy patrician who had been educated, among other places, in France and England and at Yale University):  “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory,” Buckley once said, “than by the Harvard University faculty.”

I don’t think that he was merely reflecting the traditional rivalry between Harvard and Yale but, rather, that he was commenting on the assumption of proud academic elites that they know better, and actually are better, than the common herd.  I don’t share that assumption.  Given my own “class background,” I could hardly do so.

Although I’ve never watched so much as five seconds of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, my inbox is routinely cluttered by news of scandals and intrigues and backstabbing among the show’s cast.  I wonder if the Brethren have ever regretted calling these particular women to serve as the Church’s official representatives to the mass entertainment media.  Does anybody want to bet that they’ll be released at the coming General Conference?

We went to a wedding reception tonight in American Fork, and, yesterday evening, to a wedding reception down in Nephi.  People seem to be marrying all over the place.

We spent the morning and much of the afternoon in Sandy, in a meeting of the Interpreter Foundation’s board of directors.  It’s amazing how much is going on under the auspices of the Foundation, especially given its prophesied death back around the beginning of 2014.

Yesterday, I attended a pair of lectures in the Tanner Building at Brigham Young University that were sponsored by BYU’s chapter of the Adam Smith Society.  The first speaker was Dr. Gale Pooley, whom I had never met.  He read a paper on Adam Smith, modern economic theory, and Joseph Smith that I really, really liked.  I hope to see it published eventually for a Latter-day Saint audience.  The second speaker was my friend Mark Skousen, who had notified me of the lectures.  He addressed the question of whether or not Joseph Smith was a utopian socialist.  His answer?  Joseph was a utopian socialist, and he wasn’t.  Joseph’s views changed over time, he argued, and they moved away by the end of his life from an early interest in communal living.  On the other hand, he contended, Brigham Young remained interested in such ideas — which is an interesting view, given the fact that Brigham is often (wrongly) condemned by some of his critics as having been a greedy, materialistic, and self-serving man.