In a recent
essay on the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Grant Hardy wrote the following on
the topic of (1) implicit interpretation and (2) theological innovation of the
Bible in the Book of Mormon
Implicit interpretations occur when biblical
phrases are used in new contexts or with novel meanings or grammatical twists.
Here are three examples:
(1) At Gen 6:3, the cryptic phrase “my spirit
shall not always strive with man” seems to refer to a limit set on human
lifespans; in The Book of Mormon it
indicates the point at which God gives up on his rebellious children (1 Ne
7;14; 2 Ne 26:11; Morm 5:16; Ether 2:15)
(2) Matthew 21:22 portrays Jesus as teaching
his disciples “whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive,”
but the verb believing has no obvious
object. In The Book of Mormon, the
comma after believing is consistently
replaced by that, to indicate that
Christians should pray in the firm belief that their prayers will be answered: “If
ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall
receive . . . surely these things shall be made know unto you” (1 Ne 15:11).
The injunction to “ask . . . believing that ye shall receive” also appears at
Enos 1:15, Mosiah 4:21, 3 Ne 18:20, and Moro 7:26.
(3) The book of Revelation famously condemns
the Devil and his followers to be tormented with fire and brimstone, whose
smoke ascends up forever and ever (Revelation 14:10-11; cf. 19:20; 20:10;
21:8). Despite Dan Vogel’s quite plausible identification of anti-Universalistic
tendencies in The Book of Mormon, in
three verses the Mormon scripture transforms the fiery phrases of Revelation
into a simile (“their torment is as a
torment of fire and brimstone”; 2 Ne 9:16, Mosiah 3:27, Alma 12:17) (the word as in 2 Ne 9:16 was added by Joseph
Smith in the 1837 edition), and at Mosiah 2:38 the lames are regarded as more psychological
or spiritual than literal: “if the man repenteth not . . . the demands of
divine justice to awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt,
which doth . . . fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is
like an unquenchable fire whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever.”
. . . There are many such cases where theological
innovation in The Book of Mormon can
be recognized from their connections with familiar phrases from the Bible.
Three examples follow.
(1) Both the Old and New Testaments use the
expression “blot out [one’s] name” to refer to physical destruction or being
deleted from God’s book of life. The verb “blot out” can also be paired with “sin”
or “transgression” to denote forgiveness. The
Book of Mormon continues these uses, but in one particular passage, it is
God’s name that should not be blotted out. King Benjamin tells his people that
they will be “called by the name of Christ” and that this name “never should be
blotted out, except it be through transgression; therefore take heed that ye do
not transgress, that the name be not blotted out of your hearts” (Mosiah 5:9,
11).
(2) The omission of “thy kingdom come” from 3
Nephi version of the Lord’s Prayer (cf. 3 Ne 13:10 with Matt 6:10) suggests
that Christ actually established his promised kingdom among the Nephites, with
significant implications for the problem of the delayed Parousia; i.e., that
Jesus actually did return to earth within a generation to establish his
kingdom, but that event happened in the Americas rather than in Judea.
(3) Later in his postresurrection appearance
in the New World, Jesus tells the Nephite Twelve that “whoso repenteth and is
baptized in my name shall be filled. And if he endureth to the end, behold, him
will I hold guiltless before my Father at that day when I shall stand to judge
the world” (3 Ne 27:16). The phrase “hold [someone] guiltless” is almost
exclusively associated with the Ten Commandments (“the Lord will not hold him
guiltless that taketh his name in vain”; Exod 20:7; Deut 5:11; Mosiah 13:15),
so there is a strong implication that being baptized in Jesus’ name, and then
not enduring to the end is one way to take the Lord’s name in vain. (Grant
Hardy, “The Book of Mormon and the Bible” in Elizabeth Fenton and Jared
Hickman, eds. Americanist Approaches to
the Book of Mormon [New York: Oxford University Press, 2019], 107-35, here,
pp. 127-29; one disagrees with Hardy's positive comments about Vogel's work, however; for a refutation, see Martin S. Tanner, Is There Nephite Anti-Universalist Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon?)
