The Condescension of God

 If you have been reading my blog this year so far, you know that I have been asking "When did Nephi learn that the Messiah would be their God, Jehovah, incarnate?"  This week while I was listening to my podcasts I found the answer in 1 Nephi 11.

Nephi has prayed and asked to know the meaning of his father's vision.  He is caught away in the spirit and an angel shows him the scene Lehi described.  First he sees the tree with the fruit (v 8).  The spirit asks him what he wants to know, and he answers "to know the interpretation thereof." (v 11)  The angel then shows him a vision of the virgin Mary and asks "Knowest thou the condescension of God?" (v. 16).

Nephi replies that he doesn't understand that concept, and the angel says, "Behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh." (v 18). Or did he?

Two of the podcasters I listen to mentioned that in the original 1830 version of the Book of Mormon, the verse read, "the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh." (see 1830 version of the Book of Mormon in the Joseph Smith Papers.) They said that Joseph Smith went back later and changed it to the current reading to avoid confusion. Later, in Chapter 11 an similar "clarification" was made.  It now reads, referring to Mary's baby, "Behold the Lamb of God, even the Son of the Eternal Farther!" but it in 1830 it read, "Behold the Lamb of God, Even the Eternal Father." (ibid)  Joseph Smith doubtless made this correction because in his day, people understood that Mary's baby wasn't Heavenly Father, but Jesus Christ.  He didn't want anyone claiming that he was suggesting that Mary's son was Heavenly Father. 

In Nephi's time, however, the Israelites didn't believe that Elohim was one god, and Jehovah was another god.  There was only one god, or elohim, that was called, "Jehovah." They believed a Messiah would come but they also did not know that Jehovah would come to earth and become the Messiah, the suffering servant described by Isaiah (Isaiah: 53)  They had no clue about the condescension of God. It is not until the New Testament that there is an idea of a "Son of God," and really, only John who suggests that Jesus was the creator God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. (see John 1:1-9)

The original translation of 1 Nephi 11 suggests that Nephi got the message centuries before the rest of the world.  It makes it clear that Nephi understood, from very early in his ministry, that Jehovah, himself, the creator of the world, and God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would condescend to become an infant child of mortal woman, and would willingly suffer and die to atone for the sins of his people.

1 Nephi 6-10

 A few things stood out to me this week as I read 1 Nephi 6-10 and listened to my regular podcasts.  This week we see Nephi and his brothers go back and get the family of Ishmael as brides and we get an account Lehi's dream about the tree of life.  

Lynn Wilson from Scripture Central suggested that Lehi and Ishmael probably had arranged marriages between their families before all this happened.  This would make the whole story of Ishmael's response to the request to join Lehi's group in leaving Jerusalem much more understandable.  Having Ishmael's older sons, who were already married, come along would also add some needed genetic diversity to the offspring of the group as a whole.  

Last post I mentioned that Tyler Griffith had suggested that Lehi saw the rulers of the temple in Jerusalem as corrupt.  He mentioned that they were probably the ones that threatened Lehi's life for his preaching. This week Brother Griffith suggested that the "great and spacious building"(v 26) mentioned in Lehi's vision might have represented, or suggested to Lehi, the temple in Jerusalem.  This would make sense, since it was the leaders of the temple that probably mocked Lehi when he was preaching in Jerusalem, and the temple was probably the biggest and most grand building Lehi knew about. Likewise, Lehi left Jerusalem and entered the "dark and dreary waste" (v. 8) or the wilderness to escape the established religious leaders. In this context the Lehi's dream could be seen as symbolically recounting and justifying Lehi's exit from Jerusalem and his quest to find the promised land (represented by the tree) and the true gospel, (represented by the fruit of the tree). The iron rod represented faith in the revelations Lehi had received and the mists of darkness represented the trials they would go through.  Of course, I don't see this as the only possible interpretation of the dream, but it might of been one that would have easily come to the mind of Leman and Lemuel.

Finally, I have been noticing references to Jesus in the text this year.  In 1 Nephi 10, Lehi prophecies about the coming of the Messiah.  The idea of a Messiah had been a part of Israelitish philosophy for a long time, but it was not emphasized until the time of Isaiah, 100 years or so before Lehi. In vs. 4-6 Lehi shows that he is beginning to understand what the prophesied Messiah would do.  In Israel the Jews thought that the Messiah would free Israel from political captivity and oppression.  These verses show that Lehi understood that the promised Messiah would offer spiritual salvation instead of political salvation. Since Lehi calls him the "lamb of god" (v. 10) I believe Lehi understood that the Messiah would have to suffer and die to make salvation perfect. I don't think they yet understand that Jehovah and Jesus are the same being. Do they ever figure that out?  We will have to wait and see.

1 Nephi 1-5

 This week we start into the text of 1 Nephi.  I have read 1 Nephi so many times, but somehow I always am surprised at Lehi's initial visions. My mind wants to jump into Lehi's family leaving Jerusalem and I forget that Lehi has two really significant revelations before they leave. In the first Nephi sees the Lord in a pillar of fire, and the Lord speaks to him, though we don't find out what he said.  Then he returns to his home and falls onto his bed and sees another vision.  This is a throne theophany, very like the one seen by Isaiah 100 years earlier. (Isaiah 6).  These two visions use symbols appropriate to the culture in Lehi's day to convey specific information.  The vision of the Lord standing on a rock reminds readers of Moses first seeing God in the burning bush, and then later when the presence of the Lord would be manifest by a pillar of fire appearing over the tabernacle. They communicate that 1. Lehi has been called as a prophet. and 2. the temple of Lehi's day was no longer the exclusive dwelling place of the Lord. The temple theophany establishes Lehi as a prophet, but also suggests that he will produce a volume of scripture. 

It is interesting that Lehi sees "One descending out of the midst of heaven,"  and "twelve others following him." (v. 9-10).  Since I am tracking references to Jesus in the Book of Mormon this year, here is one of the earliest ones.  The one descending is clearly Jesus, and the twelve following are his disciples. So how much did Lehi understand about the incarnation of Jesus?  At this point in the story, probably not much.  He was clearly familiar with the words of Isaiah because they are quoted extensively in both 1st and 2nd Nephi.  Isaiah gave a lot of foreshadowing of the Savior's incarnation but doesn't speak of if explicitly.  There seems to be an expectation of a Messiah, but at this point I don't think Lehi or Nephi understand that Jesus, the same God they worshipped as Jehovah, would come to Earth, take upon himself a mortal body, and save humanity for death and sin. That information is given to Nephi and Lehi gradually as they travel toward the promised land.  

One more interesting little insight from today's lesson.  In 1 Nephi 1:1-2 Nephi writes: "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in the all the learning of my father. ...Yea I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." One of my podcasters pointed out that in 1830, "goodly" could mean good, but could also mean "having goods," or wealthy.  If the meaning means "wealthy" it follows well that was why Nephi, as even the youngest son, was able to attend school and learn about the language of the Jews and the Egyptians.  So why would Nephi have to learn the language of the Jews?  Wasn't he a Jew himself? Actually, he was not.  The Brass Plates contained the genealogy of Lehi, and from these he learned that he was a descendant of Joseph, not Judah. He was from one of the 10 tribes that were "lost" or conquered 120 years earlier.  Lehi dwelt in Jerusalem, but he was a foreigner in Jerusalem, and perhaps spoke a different language at home than the "language of the Jews." His family were descendants of refugees from the Assyrian invasion in 722 BC, and perhaps still felt like outsiders in Jerusalem.  I think we will notice that Nephi speaks of the Jews with a degree of separation.  He and his family had lived among them "all of his days." but maybe didn't fully identify with them. That may have enabled Lehi to more easily see the corruption that had fallen upon the Jews.  Their ancestors had seen the 10 tribes ripen in iniquity before they were destroyed and maybe they now recognized the same symptoms. As Tyler Griffith points out in Scripture Central, they may have also seen the current temple as corrupt.  That is why they felt alright about building an alter in the wilderness and offering sacrifices, (2:7) even though such a thing was not permitted under the contemporary Jewish code. 

Beginning the Book of Mormon

 It is a new year, and with that comes a new course of study in Come Follow Me.  This year we are studying the Book of Mormon. 

I have mixed feelings about studying the Book of Mormon again. On the one hand, it is a wonderful book of scripture full of great stories with layers of deep meaning and symbolism.  On the other hand, I have read the book literally dozens of times before, and I am not sure what I can do this year to make it fresh and meaningful. I very much enjoyed approaching the Old and New Testaments in their original languages the last two years, but, unless someone has figured out reformed Egyptian and has a copy of the writing on the Golden Plates, that option is not open to me.  I have read it in Spanish before, and that was enlightening, but I am not sure doing it again would add new insight. 

I have been thinking and praying about it and have decided to use two study approaches that are often recommended by church leaders, but that I have never done before.  First, I plan to study the Book of Mormon this year with a focus on what it says about Christ. This has been suggested most recently by President Nelson, but I have never buckled down to do it. Second, I plan to make notes in my scriptures when I find those references. You may think, What? you don't make notes in your scriptures?  This is true.  I have not in the past made notes in my scriptures because I have not wanted past impressions t

o interfere with my current reading of the text. I didn't want to make "wheel ruts" in the road of my study that I would naturally fall back into when I read the book the next time. Plus, I am a librarian and the thought of writing in any book makes my skin crawl. 

Now, however, I read scriptures almost exclusively online.  With the LDS tools app, I can add notes that I don't have to see the next time I read the book unless I actually click on them. Somehow that feels better than writing in a book, and will still allow me to read the text unbiased by previous readings if I want. So I tell myself.  It is still hard to change a long standing practice, but I am committed.

So, here we go.