Category: Gospel Doctrine

Atrahasis, an ancient mesopotamian creation and flood story.

Come Follow Me: Ether

November 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

A few general introductory notes about the Book of Ether.

First, unlike the other two Book of Mormon migratory peoples, the Jaredites (as we call them) are not under the Law of Moses. Abraham>Isaac>Jacob (Israel)>>>>Moses. They’re not Jewish nor even Israelite (also a late term) nor Canaanite, but Mesopotamian, probably. So they are operating under a different set of religious ideas, different language— Sumerian, Akkadian, something else? Hebrew isn’t an option— and different cultural background than the rest of the Book of Mormon. And indeed, Ether has a different feel to it than the rest. It’s largely political history, stories of wars between scheming royal families, imprisonment, regicide, etc. All very Game of Thrones-y. Continue reading

War. Public domain

Come Follow Me: Alma 43-48 aka “The War Chapters” Part I

August 14, 2024 /

As I’ve pointed out previously, the Book of Mormon moves at different paces in different places. We’ve spent the last few weeks making a slow section even slower, and that means that with today’s chapters, we’ve likely forgotten some important history relevant to today’s readings. After six chapters of doctrinal exposition, we hit the famed “war chapters.” Continue reading

Come Follow Me: Mosiah 12-17

May 25, 2024 /

I want to plug Book of Mormon Central for collating published scholarship on lessons- See here for today’s links and summaries. (What they have is partly based on my own old work.) Most of today’s chapters involve Abinadi, his preaching, his words. We tend to read our scriptures without regard for where they came from, or how we got them, but that kind of context is often important. We tend to read direct speech (e.g. “And Abinadi said…”) as verbatim records, but should we? And what difference does it make? Continue reading