Stratovania

I have finally finished reading the Book of Mormon, and I can't say it was a particularly enjoyable read. But I suppose I should finish up my review, even though the last few books are really quite confusing. Well, okay, the book of Mormon (yes, there's a Book of Mormon WITHIN the Book of Mormon; how's that for complicated?) isn't so bad. It merely continues the narrative from the last book, describing how the fourth century was marked by all-out wars between the different groups of descendants of Lehi. Yeah, that sounds a lot like the rest of Joseph Smith's imaginary history, doesn't it? Smith also continues his odd habit of referring to all of Judea as "the land of Jerusalem," and reiterates how the tablets were written in Reformed Egyptian because Hebrew wouldn't fit, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The next book, that of Ether, provides a lot of history with no real context. Maybe I missed something, but it's not clear when all of the kings mentioned in this chapter actually ruled. We are, however, given many curious anecdotes, including that King Emer had elephants, and King Riplakish established debtors' prisons. We're also told of a character referred to as "the brother of Jared," apparently because his own name isn't important, even though he's the one on whom the story focuses. This brother built barges under the direction of God, made a mountain called Zerin vanish, and saw the Lord's flesh-and-blood finger. The title character is a prophet, who predicted that the New Jerusalem will be built on England's green and pleasant land in America.
The same guy spent some time hiding out from his persecutors inside a rock. And we meet a ruthless war leader named Shiz, who is eventually killed by someone named Coriantumr. Was the former commander the source for the name of the Gillikin city in Wicked? I couldn't say.

The last book is a short one that gives rules for the Church of Latter-Day Saints to follow, most of which aren't particularly different from those of other Christian denominations. We are told that Mormons support infant baptism, though. The Book of Mormon as a whole ends slightly after 420 AD, but this wasn't the end of Smith's writings. I think I'm going to take a break from the whole Mormon scene before even attempting the Pearl of Great Price, however. Actually, I'd appreciate any input into what religious text I should try reading next, even though it might be a little while before I start on any of them.

Also, as a bonus, because I don't feel like making another post about it, I'm going to describe my dream from last night. I really can't remember the order, and I think there were occasional callbacks anyway, which makes the whole situation that much more confusing. I believe it started out as another dream about being back in high school and not being prepared for my math final. Also, there was something about not having a German final at all because of the way the exam schedule was arranged, and I was wondering why the teacher hadn't already given it. I was at my dad's old house, looking for something to eat and getting ready to drive to school (when, in reality, it wasn't until after college that I even learned how to drive). My mom called to tell me that it was really icy outside, which worried me until I realized that it didn't make any sense for there to be ice on the roads in June. Later (or perhaps earlier; I already told you that I can't remember the order), I took a bus to a Sunday School picnic, and found out that another bus that was supposed to join us had gotten into a wreck. At some point, a guy in a Devil costume stepped on me, and the kids at the picnic (including me) crawled through a cave. This somehow changed into a house with secret passages (like in Clue, I guess), and some kid wanting me to help him use a secret passage to play a joke on the person in the room at the other end. As it turned out, though, the other guy was one step ahead of the kid, and used first a chair and then some Homer Simpson toy to block the passage. Also in the dream was something about Christmas, and having to clean up after it was over. Somebody was trying to make me sort through old cassettes, but I came to realize this was a dream and I didn't have to spend it cleaning up. So I left the house and hitched a ride with a girl in a Jeep-like vehicle. I guess I didn't have as much control over the dream as I had hoped, however, as we were soon attacked by a gang. I think we got away from them, but I don't remember there being any more to the dream after that.

Now we come to the book of Alma, which just goes on and on, mostly discussing endless wars between the Nephites and Lamanites in what I guess is supposed to be the first century BC, when the Nephites have judges instead of kings. Early on in the book, the Nephites go to war with a splinter sect called the Amlicites, who marked their foreheads in red, and were eventually eaten by wild beasts in the wilderness of Hermounts. We get a lot of invented geography here, with one passage reading, ""Now the Zoramites had gathered themselves together in a land which they called Antionum, which was east of the land of Zarahemla, which lay nearly bordering upon the seashore, which was south of the land of Jershon, which also bordered upon the wilderness south, which wilderness was full of the Lamanites." And there's something about the northern land being called Desolate and the southern Bountiful, the latter of which is the name of a town in Utah, which was the hometown of that Mormon girl from the second season of American Idol. Characters include a reformed critic named Zeezrom, the Nephite war leader Moroni (who apparently isn't an angel yet), and a King of the Lamanites named Ammoron. I wonder if the common element in those last two names was a not-so-subtle hint about how seriously Joseph Smith was taking his new religion.

We still get a fair amount of bashing of those savage redskins, with Moroni getting them drunk yet again in order to rescue some prisoners, and the statement that they go into battle practically naked. On the other hand, the Lamanites DO have swords and horse-drawn chariots, so they're apparently not all that primitive. They don't have body armor like the Nephites do, though. Wow, all this relatively advanced technology in America over 2000 years ago, and archaeologists have found none of it. Nonetheless, some of the Lamanites are saved during the course of this book, and Alma predicts that they will eventually all come into the true faith. Ammon converts some of them by healing a dying woman, and the King of the Lamanites is nice enough to tell his people not to spit on the missionaries. So does that mean they normally DO spit on people? Alma also predicts, however, that the Nephites will "dwindle in unbelief" and die out.

The book of Alma also introduces a guy who might be the smartest person to appear so far in this book. Korihor, who is described as an Anti-Christ, says that there's no way to know that Christ is coming, and that the people are enslaved by the priests. The remarkably prescient Nephites, however, not only DO know that Jesus is coming, but even call themselves "Christians" before anyone in the Roman Empire does so. So Alma insists that Korihor is possessed by the Devil, and prays to God to strike him dumb, which results in Korihor's repentance.

Although belief in Jesus would have been revolutionary before the guy's actual lifetime, it was old hat by 1830, and so far the Book of Mormon hasn't given us a whole lot of doctrine that's different from mainstream Protestantism, aside from the whole thing about unbelievers getting darker skin. We do get a few tidbits in Alma, however. One is the rather Gnostic idea that the fall of man was necessary for salvation, and if Adam had eaten from the Tree of Life first, he would have lived forever but not been saved. This is one of the ideas that Good Fight Ministries criticizes, by the way. In Smith's words, "Now, how could a man repent, except he should sin? How could he sin, if there was no law? How could there be a law, save there was a punishment?" I don't think this logic really holds up, but then I'm not a Mormon. Also, the death caused by eating the forbidden fruit was only temporal. And at the time of the resurrection of the dead, people's bodies with be made whole, with lost hair and limbs restored. There's another bit of American exceptionalism in the episode where Moroni executes people who don't support a free government (and here I thought an important part of a free country was that you could criticize it if you wanted to); and a mention of our old friend Melchizedek, who is said to have preached repentance to the wicked people of Salem. And there's even a hint of Rastafarian teaching when Alma tells his son Shiblon, "I also knew that thou wast stoned for the word's sake." [1]

Our next book is Helaman, and it looks like Jesus might actually appear in this one. It's about time, Joe!

[1] You'd think there would be enough ridiculous stuff in this book without my having to resort to a cheap pun like that. And really, there is, but I still couldn't resist.

From Nephi himself, the Book of Mormon moves on to his brother Jacob, who tells us that he "cannot but write a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates." But that apparently didn't stop Nephi from engraving significant portions of Isaiah, nor does it stop Jacob from repeating a lot of the stuff that Nephi had already said. Jacob reiterates how the coming of Jesus was foretold by the prophet Zenos. Funny how we've never heard of this prophet outside the Book of Mormon, and his name doesn't look particularly Jewish, but more like a misspelling of the Greek term for "stranger." Another theme that Jacob touches on is monogamy. No, seriously. One passage reads, "And now it came to pass that the people of Nephi, under the reign of the second king, began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices, such as like unto David of Old, desiring many wives and concubines, and also David, his son; yea, and they also began to search much gold and silver, and began to be lifted up somewhat in pride." Hey, is Joe Smith planting prophecies about himself again? It's kind of weird that mainstream Christians and Jews tend to be opposed to polygamy despite the fact that I don't think there are any specific Biblical passages forbidding it, yet the religion most closely associated with polygamy claims it's a sin right in its holy book.

The next book, Enos (named after Jacob's son, and not Fry's grandfather), is a really short one, dealing primarily with what happened to the Lamanites when they turned away from God and Nephi. The Native Americans, whom Smith claims are descended from the Lamanites, are said to be "wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people; full of idolatry, and filthiness." That's right, Enos, get down with your racist self!

Our next alleged writer is Enos' own son Jarom, who must not have been as talkative as his ancestors. His brief book says a little about the wars between the Nephites and Lamanites, and how the former were eventually victorious. The Nephites then spent their time making buildings, machinery, and metal weapons, of which there is (surprise!) absolutely no sign in the American lands where they supposedly lived.

The title of the book of Omni is somewhat misleading, because only the very beginning is attributed to Jarom's son Omni, the rest being supposedly written by his descendants. And none of them really say much, making it seem like this book was just to allow for some time to pass in Smith's fictional...um, sorry, hidden history of America.

Next come the Words of Mormon, which basically just say that some guy named Mormon finished up the engravings on the plates and buried them. That's still not the end of the book, though. But you'll have to wait until next week for the next part.

I'll admit I don't really know that much about Mormonism. Sure, I've heard all the stuff about magic underwear, gold plates buried in New York, and Jesus hanging around in the American Midwest, but that's about the extent of it. So I've decided to actually read through the Book of Mormon. But first, I thought I should get a little background on the founder of the Latter-Day Saints, Joseph Smith, Jr. Throughout his life, he managed to piss a lot of people off, go into debt, get convicted of bank fraud, marry several underage girls, and have himself declared King of Nauvoo, Illinois. Sounds like a guy you can trust with spiritual truths, right? But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that followers of religious movements don't care how jerky their founders were. In fact, if they're being criticized, that just means they're misunderstood and persecuted.

Smith's claim is that the Book of Mormon was translated from some hidden gold plates that he found with the assistance of the angel Moroni. The plates were written in a language that he called "Reformed Egyptian," which was what King Tut spoke after getting back from reform school. No, that wasn't his actual explanation, but it makes about as much sense. In order to translate them, he used glasses made out of the Urim and Thummim, which he had found buried with the plates. These objects are mentioned in the Bible as items carried by ancient Jewish priests, and their description sounds like their use was sort of the priestly equivalent of flipping coins, used to answer questions with two possible responses. How such things could be used to translate a text isn't clear, but I tend to think that Joe just wanted names that sounded mystically Biblical, without really caring much about the original context. And he apparently hid the plates away again rather than, say, donating them to a museum so that their authenticity wouldn't be in dispute.

Anyway, since the Book of Mormon was originally published in English, I figured I wouldn't have the same trouble in deciding between different editions that I did with the Bible and other books written in foreign languages. Then I found out that there were quite a few edits over the years. So I decided to stick to a scan of the original 1830 edition, at least for the time being.

Having read 1 Nephi, it's obvious that Smith was going for a style similar to that of the King James Bible, but he wasn't really that good at it, and some of the passages look like they were written by an Elizabethan first grader. Take 1 Nephi 1:93-97, for instance:

"And it came to pass as they smote us with a rod, behold an angel of the Lord came and stood before them, and he spake unto them, saying: Why do ye smite your younger brother with a rod?...Behold thou shalt go up to Jerusalem again, and the Lord will deliver Laban into your hands. And after the angel had spoken to us, he departed. And after that the angel had departed, Laman and Lemuel again began to murmur, saying, how is it possible that the Lord will deliver Laban into our hands?"

Was it absolutely necessary to be that repetitive? How about at least a bit of variation in the word choice? There's another sentence describing a sword, whichcontains the word "thereof" four times.

Anyway, the book is narrated in first person by Nephi, an inhabitant of the Kingdom of Judah around 600 BC. He journeys out into the wilderness with his father and brothers. The brothers rebel against him approximately 50,000 times during the events of the book, but always end up coming back around. Before they begin their journey, however, they are told by an angel to retrieve the brass plates containing their family's history from some guy named Laban (same name as the father of Leah and Rachel in Genesis, but not the same guy). They fail multiple times, but finally Nephi kills Laban, and then impersonates Laban's voice in order to fool his servant. A prophet who's also a master impressionist? This guy MUST be good!

After getting the plates, Nephi and his family are directed through the wilderness by a "round ball" (I'd say that's redundant, but I guess a football counts as a ball, so maybe not) made of brass. Eventually, Nephi is directed to build a ship "not after the manner of men," which the family uses to sail to America, where they somehow manage to find horses and other animals that weren't yet known in the New World.

Also worth mentioning is that, before sailing to America, Nephi has a vision of the future, including the birth of Jesus to Mary, who is described as "exceeding fair and white." Later, European settlers to America are described as "white, and exceeding fair and beautiful, like unto my people." Wait, so they were Semites with the complexions of Scandinavians? But then, I've heard that racism was a central tenet of Mormonism until fairly recently, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Well, that's all for now. I plan to make this a weekly feature, but who knows how it will work out?