Enos's Name

My favorite insight about the Come Follow Me reading this week came from Jared Halverson, in the Unshaken podcast.  He thought it was interesting that Jacob called his son's name Enos. The only person named Enos in the Old Testament is the grandson of Adam and he is only mentioned a couple of times in the recitation of genealogies.  Brother Halverson noted several similarities between the Biblical Enos and the Book of Mormon Enos.  That, in turn, suggests that Jacob saw similarities between his father, Lehi, and Adam. I had never thought of Lehi as a new Adam, but in many ways he was. 

Adam: Righteous patriarch of his family.  Driven out of the garden of Eden because of his own transgression. Taught his children to follow the Lord. One of his sons rebelled against the Lord and slew his other son.  Adam and Eve had a third, younger son, Seth who followed the righteous ways of his father.  Seth, younger brother of the warring older brothers, has a son which he calls Enos.

Lehi: Righteous patriarch of his family.  Driven out of Jerusalem because of the wickedness of the people. Teaches his children to follow the Lord.  Two of his sons rebel against their younger brothers and tries to slay them. Lehi and Sarah have another younger son in the wilderness, Jacob, who carries on as religious leader after Nephi's death. Jacob, younger brother of the older warring brothers,  has a son called Enos.

The two stories are not exactly the same, but there are a lot of similarities, enough that Jacob may have seen them and decided to call his son Enos because of them.

There are those who think Joseph Smith came up with the Book of Mormon on his own.  If he did, either Joseph Smith, at age 21, was a genius and remembered that Adam's grandson was named Enos, realized there were a lot of similarities between Adam and Lehi, Jacob and Seth, and used the name Enos here on purpose to call attention to the similarities. The other option is that the parallel's between this Enos' life and the Enos in the Old Testament was a coincidence. Enos was just a name that Joseph Smith threw in there. It isn't super common as an English name in the 1800's, but it wasn't unheard of.  Still, if it was a coincidence, it was a pretty good one.