![\"Lake](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2024\/11\/467324931_10235299032002109_8316355608942575361_n-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>New, on the blog of the Interpreter Foundation, where nothing ever changes: \u201cThe Heartland Versus Mesoamerica, Part 5: The Narrow Strip of Wilderness,\u201d<\/a> written by Brant A. Gardner<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a small constituent part of a long-term project that I\u2019m working on, I\u2019ll be extracting notes over the next several weeks or (more likely) months from\u00a0John W. Welch, ed.,<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0(Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book, 1992)<\/strong><\/a>, and intermittently sharing them here. \u00a0They represent the state of the questions as of the early 1990s and, in many cases, they will need to be fleshed out with whatever developments may have occurred over the past thirty-three years. \u00a0(It\u2019s also possible that, in a few cases, subsequent developments will have negated them altogether.) \u00a0But that is a task for another time (or times). \u00a0These are notes \u2014 sometimes including bibliographical hints for future reading \u2014 that I\u2019m compiling for my own use, but I hope that some of you will find them of interest.<\/p>\n \u201cLehi\u2019s Council Vision and the Mysteries of God,\u201d by John W. Welch (24-27)<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1 Nephi 1:8-13, Lehi sees God seated on his throne among the divine council, the heavenly host, and is commissioned with delivering a decree of judgment upon the city and people of Jerusalem.\u00a0 This is consistent with the experiences of several other ancient Israelite prophets, who had visions of participating in a heavenly assembly where they receive the judgments of that council that express God\u2019s will regarding the world and those who live in it.\u00a0 (See, for example, 1 Kings 22:19-22; Isaiah 6:1-10; 40:1-8; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6; Zechariah 1:8-13; 3:1-7; 6:1-8; and Jeremiah 23:18). The theme was discussed at length by Theodore Mullen, in his The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature <\/em>(Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1980), which is very useful for understanding Lehi\u2019s vision in its preexilic Israelite context.<\/p>\n Jack Welch argues that it is significant that the Hebrew term for the \u201ccouncil\u201d is s\u00f4d<\/em> (\u05e1\u05d5\u05d3), <\/em>a word that, by association, has also come to refer to \u201ca decree<\/em> of the council.\u201d \u00a0It is, simultaneously, a confidential discussion, a secret or plan, a circle of confidants, or a council.<\/p>\n Because the council and its actions were private and intimate, closed to the general public, the decrees emanating from it were secrets.\u00a0 They were known only to the prophets. \u00a0In fact, access to these secrets was what made<\/em> a man a prophet.\u00a0 With that understanding in mind, the late Raymond E. Brown \u2013 in \u201cThe Pre-Christian Semitic Concept of \u2018Mystery,\u201d\u2019 Catholic Biblical Quarterly <\/em>20 (1958):417-43, especially\u00a0 421 \u2014 concluded that the Semitic background of the concept of the \u201cmysteries\u201d of God resides precisely in the idea of prophets (such as, well, Lehi) having been \u201cintroduced into the heavenly assembly and gaining a knowledge of its secret decrees\u201d(compare Amos 3:7).<\/p>\n Accordingly, it\u2019s worth noting that, in the Book of Mormon account, when Nephi described his desire to receive a personal confirmation of the truth of his father\u2019s words, he expressed it by saying that he wanted to \u201cknow of the mysteries of God.\u201d Those \u201cmysteries\u201d (s\u00f4d<\/em>) were apparently synonymous, in his mind, with the decrees and knowledge that Lehi had received in the \u201ccouncil\u201d (s\u00f4d<\/em>).<\/p>\n \u201cThe Book of Mormon and the Heavenly Book Motif,\u201d by Brent E. McNeely (26-28)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cHe saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, . . . and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read.\u201d \u00a0(1 Nephi 1:9-11)<\/em><\/p>\n The late Sterling McMurrin, a formerly prominent (nominal but unbelieving) Latter-day Saint intellectual, once dismissed the Book of Mormon with the confident assertion that \u201cyou don\u2019t get books from angels; . . . it is just that simple.\u201d However, according to the late, great Swedish scholar of comparative religions Geo Widengren, \u201cFew religious ideas in the Ancient East have played a more important role than the notion of the Heavenly Tablets or the Heavenly Books,\u201d which are \u201chanded over [to a mortal] in an interview with a heavenly being.\u201d\u00a0 (See Geo Widengren, Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book <\/em>[Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1950], 7.)<\/p>\n Elements of the \u201cheavenly book motif\u201d occur in the biblical books of Exodus, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation, as well as in more than a dozen books of pseudepigraphic literature (nonbiblical writings dating c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 200) and early Christian literature.\u00a0 The motif is also evident in Lehi\u2019s vision (as referenced above), in the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and, I would argue, in the traditional story of Muhammad and the Qur\u2019an from early seventh-century Arabia.\u00a0 The basic elements of the \u201cheavenly book motif\u201d include these four:<\/p>\n A divine being gives a book to a mortal; (2) the mortal is commanded to read the book; (3) he is then told to copy the book; and (4) he is commanded to preach the book\u2019s message to other mortals.<\/p>\n The brief article on this topic in Reexploring the Book of Mormon<\/em> examines occurrences of the motif in the Bible, the pseudepigraphic book of 1 Enoch, the early Christian Vision of Hermas, the Book of Mormon and the story of its own coming forth.<\/p>\n I liked this personal recollection from Jamil Srour very much, and I commend it to your attention: \u00a0\u201cA Latter-day Saint Palestinian remembers the Olive Harvest.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Olive trees and olive cultivation were very important in the ancient eastern Mediterranean and then, later, to the west, in Turkey and Greece, in Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, and, eventually, in California. \u00a0(See \u201cBook of Mormon Evidence: Botany and Jacob 5 [Overview]\u201d.<\/a>) \u00a0At the moment, however, I\u2019m writing this in a place where olives don\u2019t typically grow.<\/p>\n Posted from London, England<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 New, on the blog of the Interpreter Foundation, where nothing ever changes: \u201cThe Heartland Versus Mesoamerica, Part 5: The Narrow Strip of Wilderness,\u201d written by Brant A. Gardner. As a small constituent part of a long-term project that I\u2019m working on, I\u2019ll be extracting notes over the next several weeks or (more likely) months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":40989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,1200,21866,38674,2905,788],"class_list":["post-110329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-divine-council","tag-heartlander","tag-heavenly-book","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a>
(Painting by Kenneth Riley, from LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n