But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy
One of Israel, they who have believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have
endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it, they shall
inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of
the world, and their joy shall be full forever. (2 Nephi 9:18)
Wherefore, we would to God that we could persuade
all men not to rebel against God, to provoke him to anger, but that all men
would believe in Christ, and view his death, and suffer his cross and bear the
shame of the world; wherefore, I, Jacob, take it upon me to fulfil the
commandment of my brother Nephi. (Jacob 1:8)
Both 2 Nephi 9:18 and Jacob 1:9 break the
genitival relationship between shame and the cross, in this way together
disagreeing with the apparent meaning of Hebrews 12:1-2.[29] That is to say, both
Jacobite references to shame and the cross refuse to countenance the idea that
the shame that is theologically in question is the shame of the cross.
Both passages speak of shame, and both speak of the cross or of crosses, but
neither passage directly makes the shame of which it speaks the cross’s
shame. (Joseph M. Spencer, The Anatomy of Book of Mormon Theology, 2
vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2021], 1:203)
Technically, the King James rendering of Hebrews
12:1-2 in English also does not directly deploy any genitival relationship
between the shame of which it speaks and the cross to which it refers. It
speaks instead of just “the cross” and “the shame.” The Greek word behind
“shame” is in the genitive case, but the verb that takes the word as its
object “(despising”) requires the genitive case of its object. This ultimately
leaves the grammatical role of “shame” in the verse ambiguous. Its genitive case
is required by the verb that takes it as its object, but does its genitive case
also signal that the shame in question is in fact that of the cross
(mentioned in the previous clause)? Some answer to this question must be
provided by every translator, but the underlying text does not decide the
question. It might be noted that most all recent translations assume a
genitival relationship between shame and the cross in this passage, rendering
the text along the lines of the New Revised Standard Version: “endured the
cross, disregarding its shame.” Despite this more recent general preference for
a reading that links shame and cross in a genitival relationship, it might be
suggested that the passages attributed to Jacob in the Book of Mormon explore
the non-genitival interpretation of the King James Version. (Ibid., 203 n. 29)
