In his commentary on 2 Nephi 32, Brant Gardner offered the following proposal concerning the four stages in Nephite religious development during Nephi’s lifetime:
The Nephite community has at its
foundation an Old World Jewish religious culture, transformed and redirected by
revelations about the coming Messiah. Nevertheless, ritually, they remained
Jewish (2 Ne. 5:10, 25:24). Thus, the law of Moses dictated their religious
behaviors, rituals, and laws. I therefore hypothesize four stages in the
Nephite religious development during Nephi’s lifetime:
Stage 1: Individual. This stage occurred during the departure from
Jerusalem, journey to the wilderness and to the New World, and up to the point
of Lehi’s death. Nephi’s religious foundation and practices are Jewish rituals
but informed and reshaped by personal revelation. Nephi’s youthful revelatory
experiences shaped his personal development, an important process for him. But
even though he explained his understanding to his brothers, his revelation did
not change the group’s religious practices. The family still worshipped at the
altars Lehi built.
Stage 2:
Incipceint society. This stage
occurred after Lehi’s death and after the Nephites withdrew from the Lamanites.
That division was made along religious boundaries. Nephi interpreted these
internal family pressures as a fundamental difference in the willingness of the
two groups to follow Yahweh. If my hypothesis is correct that the religious
split between Nephi and Laman and Lemuel followed at least some of the lines of
the pre- and post-Josian reforms, then the Old World conflict was transplanted
to the New World. The Nephites were a Jewish community in public and private
ritual, with a theological emphasis on the Atoning Messiah. However, the urgent
needs of a new colony dictated that most of the innovations during the early
period—which may have lasted perhaps five to ten years—would be secular, not
religious.
Stage 3: Stability. This stage comes perhaps five to ten years
after the separation, and would last for perhaps twenty years. After achieving
economic, agricultural and social stability, the Nephites could develop their
society. Here social differentiation began with Nephi serving as king and Jacob
as priest. Such specialization betokens a relatively stable society, one that has
passed the point of struggling to survive. The most logical reason for Jacob’s
sermon was the influx of local natives into Nephite society. . . . As noted in
the discussion of that sermon, it appears to have been given perhaps forty
years after the departure from Jerusalem. That would place it well into this stable
phase, and perhaps indicates the ending of the stability through the growth of
internal tensions.
Stage 4:
Prophetic innovation. After a number of years as a stable and even
prosperous independent city, Nephite society appears to destabilize. If we see
in Jacob’s speech an effort to build acceptance for the integrated “Gentiles”
coming around forty years after the departure from Jerusalem (therefore thirty
or less in the New World), then by that point there would be internal tensions.
These tensions erupt into more serious conflict in Jacob 2 and 3. Perhaps Nephi’s
discourse on baptism comes somewhere around the time of Jacob’s discourse
(beginning in 2 Ne. 6). When the later King Benjamin faces a similar
integration problem in Zarahemla, he introduces a new covenant. . . . Perhaps
Nephi’s emphasis on baptism is Nephi’s similar attempt at this earlier point in
time and is a similar response to the need to unify a mixed people. (Brant A.
Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of
Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007], 2:449-50)