The Gospel According to Jeffrey

A woman on Twitter just referred me to page called Difficult Questions for Mormons to Answer . I thought the page was so concurrently sad and funny, I just had to post the questions (and my responses) here. Enjoy. If the Book of Mormon is true, why do Indians fail to turn white when they become Mormons? (2 Nephi 30:6, prior to the 1981 revision). The Book of Mormon isn’t about Indians; it’s about the descendants of a Bedouin sheik. You’ll notice that the Lamanites whose skin became “white” are not all those who joined the Church, but those who actually amalgamated themselves into Nephite *society*. This is completely consistent with Bedouin culture, which regards city dwellers as “white-skinned” and nomads as “dark-skinned,” presumably at least in part because of the dirtier lifestyle of the latter. If the Book of Mormon is true, then why has the Mormon church changed it? Examples are: 1 Nephi 11:21; 19:20; 20:1 and Alma 29:4. Compare these with the original Book of Mormon....

“…and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God…” As I pointed out in my last post (seven months ago! Wow! How did that happen?!), education was obviously very important to Nephi. Given the fact that we are reading scripture, though, it should come as no surprise that his education includes more than just secular learning. What may surprise us, though, is how fully this integrates into the dichotomy expressed in 1 Nephi 1:1. For those that have read the Book of Mormon before, the subtle hint that Nephi has “seen many afflictions” is a subtle use of understatement. While he indubitably lived much of his life in happiness, the scriptures rarely teach us of mundanities, preferring instead to focus on the major events of the prophets’ lives. Thus, we read of many trials through which he passed, the “ refiner’s fire ”of his mortali...

“…because he prophesieth unto the people concerning their iniquity and they seek to destroy his life.” When the prophet Jeremiah—arguably the President of the Church in Lehi’s time—wrote of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, King Jehoiakim was, shall we say, not pleased. He burned the record and commanded that Jeremiah and his scribe, Baruch, suffer a similar fate ( i.e. imprisonment, if not death; see Jeremiah 36:21-26 , cf. 37:4 ). While Jeremiah was not there to hear the king’s words, the Lord gave him the sound-byte version: “Why hast thou written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast?” ( Jeremiah 36:29 ). It didn’t take long for Jeremiah’s prophecy against Jehoiakim to come true, and Zedekiah was installed as his successor—and succeeded where his predecessor had failed ( Jeremiah 37:15 ). So when Nephi says that the people sought to destroy his father, he knew what he was talking ab...

“The Lord warns Lehi to depart out of the land of Jerusalem….” Over the years, I’ve had plenty of run-ins with those who would seek to destroy the Church. Some call them “anti-Mormons”; others, avoiding that colloquialism, use “contra-LDS” (as in Michael Ash’s Shaken Faith Syndrome ) or simply “critics.” Regardless of what they be called, these people often come back to an argument that they think proves the falseness of the Book of Mormon: that Alma 7:10 states Jesus shall be born in or at Jerusalem. While we’re obviously a few thousand verses away from Alma 7:10, it occurs to me that right here in the headnote to the First Book of Nephi, we see just why Alma would reference “Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers”: that’s what Lehi did—and with good reason. The late Hugh Nibley points out that: Though he “dwelt at Jerusalem,” Lehi did not live in the city, for it was after they had failed to get the plates in Jerusalem that his sons decided to “go down to the land of ou...

One of the things that has always fascinated me about the First Book of Nephi is the first phrase of the headnote: “An account of Lehi and his wife Sariah and his four sons, being called, (beginning at the eldest) Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi.” The Small Plates of Nephi were written long after most of the events therein, indeed some 30-40 years after the family left Jerusalem (see 2 Nephi 5:28-34 ). So realizing that Nephi is now an older man, why does he only speak of Lehi’s “four sons”? Why not “six sons”? Nephi obviously wasn’t trying to hide his 30ish-year-old brothers, Jacob and Joseph; heck, in the same chapter as he makes the plates, he “consecrate[s them] that they should be priests and teachers over the land of [his] people”! ( 2 Nephi 5:26 ). So what gives? A couple of weeks ago, this concern was brought to mind as I was reading Understanding the Book of Mormon . In his section on Nephi, Grant Hardy deals with Nephi’s characterization of others. As he points out: “Aside f...