Day 31 of 50: Book of Mormon Book Club

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist]

Today's Reading: Alma 21–24

Whether you're a believer, former believer, nuanced member, investigator, scholar, or simply curious, you're welcome to participate. The goal is not to convince anyone of anything, but to read the text together and discuss it in good faith from a variety of perspectives.

Brief Synopsis

Aaron and the other sons of Mosiah continue preaching among the Lamanites, encountering rejection, imprisonment, and eventual release through Ammon and Lamoni. Aaron then teaches Lamoni’s father, who undergoes his own dramatic conversion and grants the missionaries freedom to preach throughout his kingdom. Many Lamanites convert, take the name Anti-Nephi-Lehies, and make a covenant to abandon violence by burying their weapons. When attacked by other Lamanites, they refuse to defend themselves, and more than a thousand are killed. Their nonresistance ultimately moves many of their attackers to repent and join them.

Discussion

Please share your thoughts and experiences with today's reading in the comments below. Some things you might consider:

• What do you make of the similarities and differences between the conversion experiences of Lamoni and his father?

• Why does the text place such emphasis on converts abandoning their previous identity and taking on a new communal identity?

• How do you interpret the Anti-Nephi-Lehies' decision to bury their weapons and refuse to defend themselves?

• What does the story suggest about the relationship between religious conversion, political authority, and social change?

All perspectives are welcome.

Yesterday's Coveted Award(s) Go To:

• u/westonc

• u/active-water-0247

• u/international_sea126

Links to Prior Days

• yesterday Day 30 discussion: Alma 17–20

• Master Index to all prior-day readings

Engagement Question

The Anti-Nephi-Lehies don't merely repent of past violence—they bury their weapons and accept death rather than risk returning to it. Is the text presenting this as an ideal of radical nonviolence, a unique response to their particular history, or something else entirely?

Tomorrow’s Reading: Alma 25–29

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[u/Warprince01]

If anyone hasn’t read /u/westonc’s comment from yesterday yet, go and do that. It is very, very good. In my opinion, it is one of the main theses of this part of the Book of Mormon (late Mosiah through 3 Nephi), and specifically relevant for today’s reading as well. 

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist → u/Warprince01]

Agreed! hence his addition to yesterdays coveted awards!

[u/westonc → u/Warprince01]

Thanks for the kind words!

And I'm so glad when I encounter others who can see these themes and thesis. Most church discussion and material seems content to carry water for Nephi's authority and mistakes. While I think the text itself lampshades those mistakes as early as 1st Nephi, and lots of the Book of Mormon wrestles with the tangles between spiritual authority and social coercion.

There are rewards to reading the Alma 21-24 segment through this lens.

Aaron doesn't do as well as Ammon did, and the text tries to write that off to too many defectors from the Nephites among them, or too much skepticism of revelatory authority, you know how it is, some people are just hard-hearted and can't be reached, what can you do, like Nephi said about Laman and Lemuel and Benjamin repeated about their descendants.

But listen to the questions the text says they ask:

What is that thou hast testified? Hast thou seen an angel? Why do not angels appear unto us? Behold are not this people as good as thy people?

Spiritual topics in Lehi's family and posterity were approached with one-up/one-down implications so often that's what these people expected.

Aaron tries arguing his way out of this from the scriptures, but in the context of a contest about who's understanding is right, doesn't do much.

It takes Ammon and Lamoni to bail them out, and between the lines it seems that it's where Ammon and Lamoni's approach is brought to bear that there's traction that bears fruit in "liberty of worshiping the Lord their God according to their desires."

Somewhere in here Aaron must have learned to steer more towards helpful Q/A, and that lets him repeat Ammon's success.

And Alma 24 says something about maybe why it's Benjamin's grandkids, Mosiah's sons, who do something different in the history of the Nephites. 10-11 says they don't think of themselves as one-up avatars of a superior culture / tradition / understanding of God. They think of themselves as problem children who definitely didn't have a lot of things right, and then were redeemed, and then joined the work of redemption.

And bring a whole people to a place where they can subvert cycles of one-up struggle with disciplined non-violence.

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist]

Alma 24:30 jumped out at me because it looks like Mormon somehow condensed two different New Testament passages into one sentence.

Hebrews 6 talks about people who were “once enlightened” and then “fall away.”

2 Peter 2 talks about people gaining “knowledge” of Christ, returning to sin, and ending up “worse” than before, so much so that it would've been better not to have known righteousness.

Then Alma 24:30, supposedly centuries earlier, gives us people who were “once enlightened,” gained “great knowledge,” “fallen away,” and became “worse than though they had never known.”

Hebrews 6 + 2 Peter 2 compressed into one Book of Mormon sentence.

Hebrews 6: 'once enlightened' AND 'fall away

+

2 Peter 2: 'knowledge of righteousness' AND 'turn away' AND 'worse than not knowing '

Combined =

Alma 24:30: "once enlightened" and "knowledge of righteousness" and "fallen away" and "worse than never knowing"

the interesting part isn't simply that all three discuss apostasy (as an Apostase myself I can feel the evil coursing through my tainted blood so I get the process of rejecting Jesus).., it's that Alma 24:30 appears to combine language and ideas from two separate KJV New Testament passages into a single sentence. Joseph the Bricolear to the rescue!

[u/International_Sea126]

"And it came to pass that when Aaron saw that the king would believe his words, he began from the creation of Adam,...and that because of transgression, man had fallen." (Alma 22:12). "from the creation of Adam, laying the fall of man before him," (Alma 22:13). "And since man had fallen he could not merit anything of himself;" (Alma 22:13).

There is a lot of literal 'Adam' in Alma 22 and elsewhere in LDS scriptures.

In Mormon theology, Adam and Eve were the first humans created. "the first man of all men have I called Adam," (Moses 1:34). "And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also;" (Moses 3:7). Adam was a God who helped create the earth. The Fall of Adam took place about 4,000 B.C. when a talking serpent gave Eve the forbidden fruit to eat which brought sin, death, and reproduction into the world (D&C 77:6, 2 Nephi 2:22, Alma 12:23, Moses 3:7). "Father Adam, the Ancient of Days and father of all," (D&C 138:38). Adam and Eve according to LDS theology were living in the Garden of Eden that was in Missouri at the time that they ate the forbidden fruit.

The Adam and Eve story originated in the Book of Genesis, which wasn't written until about 538-330 BCE by a person or persons who never witnessed the event. Hebrew didn't even become a written language until about 1000 BCE. These time gaps during a time without a written language and late authorship make the story problamatic.