In the Assyrian text “Vision of the Netherworld” (VAT 10057), we read of the following, which might add some light on the issue of “black” and “white” in the Book of Mormon and other texts:
The “Vision of the Netherworld”
was first published by EBERLING ([Tod und Leben nach den Vorstellungen der
Babylonier I] 1931: 1-19). . . . The content of the “Vision of the Netherworld”
is as follows: It opens with the identification of the report as a night-vision
or dream. In autobiographical style the visionary describes fifteen hybrid gods
of the netherworld, as he starts to recount the contents of his dream. The enumeration
of these gods follows a static picture: “One man [ištēn eṭlu] his body
was black like pitch. His face was similar to that of an Anzu-bird. He
was wearing a red rob. In his left hand he was holding up a bow. In his right
hand he was hol[ding] a sword. [With his left foot he was treading on]” (line
50). In a new scene, the visionary watches as the warrior god Nergal is seated
on a royal throne to hold judgment over the dreamer, who is brought into the
presence of Nergal, who delivers a long speech. In the first part of this
speech the visionary is threatened with the death-sentence because he has dishonoured
Nergal’s wife. However the sentence is finally commuted—due to the intercession
of the divine counsellor—into the prospect that the visionary’s future will
bring disturbance, dishonesty, and rebellion instead of immediate death. The
second part of Nergal’s speech is introduced with a description of a spirit in
the netherworld who is the “exalted shepherd; to whom my father [], the king of
the gods, gives/gave full responsibility; whom from sunrise to sunset he allows
to look over the lands in their totality [], and he r[ul]es over everything; to
[w]hom in view of his priesthood, Aššur [decr]ees the celebration of the holy
New-Years festival in the open country, in the garden of fertility, an image of
Lebanon [] in all eternity” (lines 62B-64) This ideal king is then set in
contrast with a rebel king, the father of the visionary. Of both is predicted
that they will suffer together because of the crime they committed. As the
dreamer awakes he describes his feelings resulting from the just-experienced
dream to conclude his account with praises for Nergal and the divine queen. The
epilogue tells how the dream changed the scribe’s corrupt attitude into the
willingness to do all that Nergal commands. (Jürg Eggler, Influences and
Traditions Underlying the Vision of Daniel 7:2-14: The Research from the End of
the 19th Century to the Present [Orbis Biblicus et Orentalis 177; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000], 23 n. 77, emphasis in bold added)
