Talk:Mosiah 12:17-17:20

Chapter 14: Breaks in Isaiah

Thanks for asking this question, Robert. I've been asking myself that question off and on for a year or two, but I have never taken the time to sort it out. Perhaps this is a good time to do so. Any thoughts (I'll gather mine in the meanwhile)? --Joe Spencer 18:17, 14 June 2007 (CEST)

I noticed an interesting chapter by John Welch in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon (ed. Parry and Welch). On p. 295 Welch cites a couple scholars (Orlinsky and Whybray) who argue that this conventional (53:1) starting point is the correct unit break. I requested the references and will let you know when I get a chance to look them up. Do you have this book? It might be a while before I get a chance to read it, I'm way behind on some stuff.... --RobertC 00:05, 16 June 2007 (CEST)

I'm working ever so slowly through Welch's chapter, I'll probably jot a few notes down here. He conjectures that perhaps Abinadi did not quote Isa 52:7-10 because it was basically too late for the priests of king Noah (i.e. they already continued being unclean despite his warnings earlier in, cf. Mosiah 11:20-25; 12:36-37]]), and that "they would not respond favorably to righteous counsel" (though I think this raises the question: would they respond favorably to correct doctrine?).

Welch next discusses similarities between Mosiah 16:9 and Mosiah 13:9 with Isa 52:13, and Mosiah 13:8 and Mosiah 13:34-35 with Isa 52:14 concluding, "The evidence thus sustains that Abinadi was very familiar with the Isaiah text between Isa 52:10 and 53:1, for he used its elements in bridging the question of the priests with the answer of the Lord" (p. 297). I personally don't find Welch's case particularly compelling here.... --RobertC 16:47, 16 June 2007 (CEST)

Chapter 15

Mosiah 15:1 Gives one of the greatest messages of all time. That Christ is divine, not just another prophet. Christ had to be divine, the son of God, to effect the atonement. He had to have the power to save himself, but submit to the will of the Father to pay the price for the sins of the world.--Travis Justin Kamper 04:57, 20 Sep 2005 (CEST)

Children of Men

Surprisingly, I'm finding this phrase puzzling. It's not something I've thought of before, but its primary usage in Psalms seems to indicate that it may have some sort of context that I haven't noticed before? Perhaps something more than just a colloquialism for "people"?--Rob Fergus 23:14, 22 June 2007 (CEST)

Abinadi's explanation of Father and Son

My reading of these verses is that Abinadi is being very careful to explain how the Father and the Son are separate personages, but indeed one God. The explanation seems unnecessarily confusing to our post-first-vision ears, but Abinadi was probably being very careful to explain the truth (which I think Abinadi understood as we do) to an audience that had only ever heard the doctrine of one God preached. --RobertC 16:44, 4 Dec 2005 (UTC)

This is a lot to ask, but I would love it if you could explain sometime your reading. I like the idea of this reading and haven't figured out how to get there myself. --Matthew Faulconer 13:16, 5 Dec 2005 (UTC)

To really support the claim I'm trying to make would require a careful analysis of the the people's conception of God at this time, tracing it back to the common Old Testament writings that we have and they had access to. My thinking is that since Moses seemed to have such a hard time getting the children of Israel to worship only one God, the more sublte concept of distinct personages in the Godhead was probably not taught. But I'm also not very clear about the title Jehova and how it relates to the peoples in the old world and new world, which I think is important first step in understanding all this. At any rate, if one thinks about Abinadi talking to an audience that only understands Jehova as the one true God, explaining how God's Son will come and redeem mankind might require some phraseology that seems weird to those of us who've read Joseph Smith's vision of distinct personages. --RobertC 22:26, 5 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I would be extra-careful trying to triangulate Nephite beliefs from the current Old Testament books that we now have. We know that these books have been altered quite a bit over the years, we don't have a good understanding of when most of them were actually composed, and the Nephite record indicates that they had other books that we don't now have. Our best source would probably be the full Brass Plates, which have been promised to us if we are faithful. Until we get those records, we're going to be looking through a glass darkly, and I'm afraid its a very dark glass at that.--Rob Fergus 12:19, 6 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I was thinking Old Testament b/c that's all we have access to. But I guess my claim really would still be pure speculation regardless of what could be shown about beliefs in the Old Testament. --RobertC 18:14, 6 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this has much to do with trying to distinguish between the Father and the Son. I think that if we find the Father (as we use the term) alluded to in this text, it is only once or twice and in a peripheral fashion. As I read this text, it seems to come closest (in terms of expression) to the Definition of Faith expressed at the Council of Chalcedon in which this same issue seems to have been discussed -

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

In this regard, if we do a simple substitution of "immortal God" (I prefer this to the "truly God" from Chalcedon) and "mortal man" (instead of "truy man") for "the Father" and "the Son" that Abinadi uses, we get a different reading which, interpreted in this fashion, isn't as ambiguous -

And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall bcome down among the children of men, and shall credeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of Eternal God, being Eternal God and Mortal Man — Eternal God, because he was conceived by the power of God; and Mortal Man, because of the flesh; thus becoming Eternal God and Mortal Man — And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Mortal Man to the Eternal God, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people. ... Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Mortal Man being swallowed up in the will of the Eternal God. And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Mortal Man power to make intercession for the children of men - Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon ahimself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and bsatisfied the demands of justice.

In this way, there isn't a separation of persons being talked about here, but the distinction between the natures of God (the Son) - he is both God and man, and this last part above highlights something really fascinating. While it is the divine nature which lets him work the miracles, and to be resurrected from the dead, and so on, it is the suffering of the mortal man - a meaningful suffering and death - which allows God to break the powers of death in the person of the Savior as mortal man. In many ways, Abinadi is saying much the same thing as the Council did. And God the Father (as we understand the term) really doesn't make an appearance here except perhaps, as I note, peripherally where just "God" is spoken of. So "the son" and "the father" aren't referring to separate persons, but to separate natures, and how they coexist, and how this makes the Son of God an appropriate vehicle of salvation, a message which is often lost as we stumble through Abinadi's labels. The atonement could only be made by a man (who could suffer, who could die, and so on), even if that man is also God. Traditional orthodoxy loses it when they focus on the divine and how the Son of God is different from us - we LDS tend to move a different direction (as perhaps Abinadi was doing here) and focus more on how the Son of God is more like us.

Also, the idea of Christ as "eternal father of heaven and earth" seems to stem more from Isiah 9:6 (everlasting father). The compound name there is replaced in Nephite religious thought by the compound name presented in Mosiah 3 by this - "And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning;" - a compound name which is used consistently in either a longer or a shorter form in the Book of Mormon, and which seems to have developed a liturgical use in Nephite worship (although I would punctuate it just a little differently as Jesus, Christ, etc.).--Benjamin McGuire 20:45, 16 June 2007 (CEST)

Thanks Ben, for posting this. I find this explanation by far the most satisfying of any I have read or heard. --Cherylem 23:28, 16 June 2007 (CEST)

I like it. Now I need to go back and read this whole section again carefully in this light. Thanks. --Matthew Faulconer 15:23, 18 June 2007 (CEST)

Father & Son and pre-modern ontology

My recent dabblings in philosophy have made me very self-conscious about the way I just wrote the lexical note in terms of the Father and Son as "separate persons." The problem is, if the Father and Son are one in some meaningful sense, what sense does it make to talk about them as separate persons? My tendency is to think in terms of, say, marital analogies--it used to be common to refer to a man's wife as "Mrs. John Doe" because it implies separate persons and yet oneness also, at least in some rough sense. But perhaps this tendency leans too heavily on our modern notion of a "person" as a separable entity. It's hard for me to get beyond this question of whether Abinadi is thinking of the Father and Son as separate persons/beings, but somehow I think this question is distracting me from thinking about more important issues at play in these verses.... --RobertC 22:49, 13 June 2007 (CEST)

Robert, thanks for the lexical note. The references are especially helpful. I do think we shall have to work on this passage textually a great deal before we can even begin to take this up in any post-First-Vision manner. So, for now, I think the phrasing of your lexical note is just fine. --Joe Spencer 18:12, 14 June 2007 (CEST)

explanations of others

Joe and others, Are you familiar with Monte Nyman's piece on "Abinadi's Commentary on Isaiah?" (It's in Mosiah, Salvation Only Through Christ). If not, I can give a summary of his thoughts and try to transfer a couple of charts that he uses here. Also, my friend/mentor Mack Stirlng taught a few things regarding these verses that I could transfer here. In both instances, I am still left somewhat confused, but I could post these thoughts of others if you'd like (and if you are unfamiliar with them).

Also . . . the Maxwell Institute has some stuff about this. Are we interested in looking at these? (I'm just trying to set some parameters here.)--Cherylem 04:13, 14 June 2007 (CEST)

I'm unfamiliar and interested. Explanations from others are great to help the discussion. Also they are often good to put in the related links section of the commentary page. For the exegesis section I believe it is best to move from "so-and-so says this" to "here's what these verses mean" or in cases where there isn't agreement "some people read these verses as saying this and here's why." But no worries, if you post it one way, I or someone else can always change it to the other if I/they want to and then you can see whether you think it still captures the important point. --Matthew Faulconer 06:38, 14 June 2007 (CEST)

For reference, here is the GospeLink link to Nyman's book. I had Nyman for an Isaiah class at BYU. I learned a lot, but can't say I was super-inspired by his scholarship, which is to say that I think there is a lot of room for original work to be done here! --RobertC 16:59, 14 June 2007 (CEST)

I was familiar with it. In the wake of Joseph Fielding Smith's comments some years ago, there seems to be a kind of universal consensus among LDS scholars that these verses are talking about Christ as a Father and Christ as a Son. But unfortunately, there is also a rather common naivete about such approaches: they are always overly apologetic about Abinadi's not being too clear, and this is quite obviously tied to an unwillingness to take the text up directly. I've found very little of the literature helpful. I think we need to take these verses up one by one, word by word, phrase by phrase, and see what comes out of that kind of an approach. What I think would be most helpful is if everyone can start writing questions, lexical notes, and exegesis, piling up so many clues, and then we can begin to work through the broader meaning of the passage. --Joe Spencer 18:15, 14 June 2007 (CEST)

Joe, good. That is reallly how I feel about these verses too. In the meantime, just to get it out of the way, here is Robert Millet: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/bookschapter.php?bookid=51&chapid=387--Cherylem 00:29, 15 June 2007 (CEST)

Traditional reading of Isa 53

Joe, if you purposely made a controversial claim (that Mosiah "recognizes that this idea would never be attached to Isaiah 53 in any kind of traditional reading") so as to elicit a response, it worked! I'm not sure the extent to which I disagree with what you said (perhaps, in the end, not at all...), but it's got me thinking hard about how Isa 52-53 might traditionally have been interpreted. If by tradition, you mean in the tradition of Nephi, then I'm inclined to disagree. I'm thinking in particular about the link between "the arm of the Lord" and "the rod" in Isa 11:1(/2 Ne 21:1). Actually, I feel very far from being able to respond to your assertion, but thanks for posting it. I'll try to get back to Mosiah here before too long, but I really need to do a lot more thinking about Isaiah first (see Isa 53:1-5 commentary page esp.). Needless to say, I am highly suspicious of almost every bit of commentary I've read on Isaiah (though you should know I don't really mean that as criticism per se...). --RobertC 19:29, 22 June 2007 (CEST)

Robert, I'm sure you know I love it when somebody takes me seriously enough to develop a real suspicion! I was writing that commentary with about a five-minute window, so I wouldn't put too much stock in it. But nonetheless, here is what I'm trying to think through there:

Abinadi's lengthy response to the priests is entirely a question of interpretation of Isaiah, so if there is any passage where we might take up the question of interpreting Isaiah within the scriptures, here it is. But does Abinadi interpret Isaiah? Or does he browbeat the priests by introducing a kind of typological trump card? I'm trying to sort this out. That he takes a broader, contextual approach is clear (they quote only four verses from Isaiah 52, but Abinadi quotes all of Isaiah 53 in response, besides connecting this Second Isaiah business up with the Exodus tradition by citing the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20, etc.). But is he doing anything like textual hermeneutics?

At least this much is very clear about his opening word here: the idea of God coming down personally to redeem Israel is nothing new. And I wanted to get that on the table. (Hmm... even as I write, I'm realizing more and more how much of an exodus question this might all be....) But who would have/who has read this personal—even physical, literal—redemption into Second Isaiah, especially by 100 B.C.? Is there a good reception history of Isaiah 53, one that details its reception among communities as dispersed as Qumran, Elephantine, Babylon, Alexandria, Jerusalem, etc.? I'll have to do some searching around about that, but it seems to me to be an important question.... --Joe Spencer 20:10, 22 June 2007 (CEST)

I too am interested in this reception history. However, I'm not planning to put much stock in whatever's found either way, given the 500 or so (??) intervening years of Nephite history, with many references the Son of God (very often in the small plates, and at least King Benjamin's speech in the large plates), and a seemingly strong tradition of reading Isaiah--add the two together and it's hard for me to believe that Abinadi would've been the first to make the connection (between "Son of God" and Isaiah's servant). --RobertC 21:08, 22 June 2007 (CEST)

Benjamin's Words

Rob, thanks for the lexical note. The timeline at work in Mosiah is unfortunately muddled (no "in the xth year of the reign of the judges" to keep things straight), and that causes some difficulties about working out relations between the doings in the land of Nephi (Mosiah 11-24) and the doings in the land of Zarahemla (Mosiah 1-10). I enjoy entertaining the possibility that Benjamin and Abinadi were speaking more or less on the same occasion, though I don't know how possible it is to make such a reading work. Since the people of Limhi and of Alma return to Zarahemla in the same year that Benjamin dies (three years after his speech), it seems unlikely at the very least that Benjamin gave his speech before Abinadi (even to suggest that they were roughly given at the same time would be a bit of a stretch, perhaps). But if it is quite clear that Abinadi delivered his words at some point earlier than Benjamin, then there would be little reason to see any borrowing at all: Benjamin's people clear have no knowledge whatsoever about the people of Zeniff/Noah/Limhi between Zeniff's second departure from Zarahemla and Limhi's arrival in Zarahemla in Mosiah 22. But couldn't this non-contact enrich our reading? Benjamin and Abinadi both preach the same idea. Curious that Benjamin's comes attributed to an angel (delivered in the night before the speech, in the tradition of Jacob in 2 Nephi 6-10), while Abinadi mentions no such source (though his speech is clearly to be understood as an echo of Jacob's speech in Jacob 1-3). There are some curious things at work here, but much still to be done. --Joe Spencer 15:44, 24 June 2007 (CEST)

Thanks Joe. You're right, I'm not sure how the timeline works here--but the language is so similar it makes you wonder what is going on. Something more than just quoting Nephi, I presume. Maybe Abinadi was the angel that visited King Benjamin? I've heard speculation that Abinadi was the lost brother Amaleki mentions in Omni 1:30. At any rate, Abinadi is a mysterious figure that maybe we can't know much more about with the text we have. --Rob Fergus 00:20, 25 June 2007 (CEST)

Or perhaps both are quoting a text they had access to but we don't (the same text that perhaps Nephi has in mind?). Thanks robf and Joe for this rich line of thinking.... --RobertC 01:29, 25 June 2007 (CEST)

Mosiah 15:13

Shows that the Lord is no repector of persons. Even those who have been chosen to be prophets have the stipulation that they cannot have fallen into transgression to be considered Christ's seed.--Travis Justin Kamper 05:08, 20 Sep 2005 (CEST)

Mosiah 15:25

tells of the innocence of little children. This is a major difference with our church and the world. I have never understood how anyone could look at a child straight from Our Father in Heaven's presence and see anything but pure innocense. Abinadi's message leaves no doubt about the state of children.--Travis Justin Kamper 05:16, 20 Sep 2005 (CEST)