Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

1:5-12 - We know that Abraham was ordained to the priesthood by Melchezidek because he sought out the blessings of the Fathers, but not from his father, which we can deduce means that his father was not worthy of educating or ordaining Abraham to such an office. Indeed Abraham states “my fathers, having turned from their righteousness… unto the worshipping of the gods of the heathen.” Abraham’s father had an affinity for “the god of Elkenah, and the god of Libnah, and the god of Mahmackrah, and the god of Korash, and the god of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” With all these different gods, it begs the question, why does there have to be so many, why couldn’t Terah just choose his favorite and stick with that one? The answers has more to do with his motivation “for their hearts were set to do evil” than it does for any practical purpose. The worship of these gods consisted of “offering up their children unto these dumb idols… (and) endeavored to take away my life by the hand of the priest of...

As things settled after the Lord confused the languages at the tower of Babel, we circle back to Ether 1-3 and 6-7 where Jared and his brother and their families and friends were granted the ability to stay together and speak the same language. We have the account of the Jaredites being led away from the main population where they are commanded to make barges and travel across the ocean to the American continent. There are hundreds of years’ worth of records of this people living in the Americas before Lehi and his family showed up. As Genesis goes through the generations from Noah to Abram, there is simply the statement that Terah took his family “and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran, and dwelt there.” We learn from modern revelation that it was instead Abram who took his family into the new land at the command of God, but when we go back to Abraham chapter 1, we get a more in depth account of what really happene...

11:10-26 – As the population of the world grows and the people spread out over the land, the languages change and I assume that the cultures and spiritual beliefs did as well. These 16 verses go through the many generations that happened between the time of Noah’s son Shem and Abraham. I’m not going to go into it, but there are a couple of points to be made. The first is that “Shem lived long enough that he was contemporary with the next ten generations. In other words, he was still alive when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were born. This circumstance is one of the reasons why some have wondered if Shem was also Melchezidek.” I hadn’t heard that some people considered Shem and Melchezidek to be the same person and it’s interesting to consider. It’s also interesting to consider just what role Shem played as the family patriarch to the faithful throughout the generations. Another interesting point comes up with the mention of the birth of Eber, Shem’s great-grandson. The IM comments, “Many ...

11:1-2 - It’s hard to speculate the extent to which people spread out over the earth’s surface when the generations are listed but then we have statements like verse 1 which says, “and the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” As far as I know, languages change over time resulting in accents and eventually into something completely unrecognizable to the original. That everyone spoke the same language indicates to me that there weren’t that many people and that they all lived relatively close to each other. It’s also noted “as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.” I don’t know if this is referencing all the people alive on the earth at that time or just a small population that this story is tracking. Interestingly, the fact that the people dwelled in a “plain” or valley type place is significant. The article from this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com quotes “the Jewish historian Josephus” as noting that the des...

10:1-9 - After Noah died, his sons and their families dispersed throughout the land, I was going to do a big chart thing with all the people listed, but I don’t want to. There’s several good ones online, so I just left it at that. There are a couple of items of note in chapter 10 that I want to cover, first is Nimrod, the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham. Nimrod only gets 2 verses but it appears that he was pivotal in the reestablishment of wickedness among humanity. Nimrod’s verses, 8-9 simply say, “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” The important part comes from a JST that changes “a mighty hunter before the Lord” to “a mighty hunter in the land.” Ok, still doesn’t seem to be that big of a change, why is he so important? Hugh Nibley, a scriptural scholar, studied the ancient Jewish traditions and apocrypha that gave a distinctly different p...

9:1-17 - Now that the ground was all dry, Noah and his family got out of the ark with all the animals and started planting. God “blessed Noah” and gave them dominion over all the animals of the earth. God uses the phrase, “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth,” which seems pretty crappy for the animals, but the footnotes link the word “fear” to Genesis 1:26-28 where God gives Adam “dominion” over the animals to take care of and use for his necessary purposes. They don’t have the law of Moses yet, so a dietary code hasn’t been explicit yet, but God does give the command to not “eat” blood, which a lot of cultures do so that was probably happening before the flood. Interestingly, part of the dietary code that God gives them is expanded on in the JST, where instead of just “every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you” and “don’t eat blood,” there are five verses that clarify what is meant by “meat.” Some of the highlights are, “blood shall ...

8:1-4 - The water came out of the sky and the ground and flooded the whole earth for 150 days, the “God remembered Noah, and every living thing… and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged.” I think this is a case of translation without context, similar to how it said that God repented of making man, etc. It’s not possible that God flooded the earth and then “forgot” that he had done it, and the way that this is written gives us a sense that God is oblivious or too caught up in his own wants, needs, or desires to keep track of what we’ve got going on down here. Obviously, this isn’t the case, and again, I think that this is just a translation miscommunication or maybe even Satan’s active influence to make us believe that God isn’t really interested in us after all. Just as the earth took some time to flood, it also took some time to get rid of the water, and as the water level dropped “the ark rested… upon the mountains of Ararat.” The IM notes that “no locatio...