Here’s some perspective on Nephite chronology. All I have done is take the events of Nephite history from the perspective of a Nephite at the time of Christ’s coming to the Americas and how far in the past it would have felt by relating it to events in our past from the perspective of 2024. I am just following the standard chronology in the Book of Mormon notes.
There once was a bird who wanted to go higher and higher.
The bird spent much of its time beating up into the sky. Its wings grew strong. It also became a master of currents and convection. It grew wiser and subtler in its knowledge of air. It even, in its desire to go higher, learned things and did things for high quality food surfaces–so that it could spend longer times trying to get higher before it had to come back down–than any bird had before.
But it grew old.
As it lay dying, struggling to launch itself for one last try, and failing, a wise old creature came by and told it sadly that in fact the air grew thinner the higher up one went and this is why the bird had in the days of its great success only been able to eke out a few more feet of height in each attempt. In fact, the creature explained, eventually the air grew too thin to breathe and vanished altogether.
“Then I will make more air,” the bird defiantly exclaimed. The dying bird struggled once more to get off the ground.
A voice from heaven said, “that is right. Soon you will come to a place where I have already created infinite air. The muscle you gained in your glory I will return to you along with all your knowledge. You will finally be able to soar like you were meant to.”
(ref Gen. 3:21, Moses 4:27)
What does the coat of skins represent?
The garment, obviously, although it would be more accurate to say that the garment represents the coat of skins instead of vice versa.
You hear less about authenticity than you used to. That’s not because our culture has stopped caring about it. It’s because its become so widespread that its just an unspoken assumption.
I’m feeling out a few ideas about being authentic that I think have a bearing on our current situation and on the Book of Mormon.
(Reminder that we have quite a bit of prior work on authenticity that many of our JG readers contributed to–
Fear, anger, depression, victimization, pleasure-seeking, “identity” are all aspects of authenticity gone so mainstream that its just an unspoken assumption. Lets start with fear.
We live in fearful times, with much to be fearful about. And that’s the point. Fear is always going to be authentic. (more…)
Two countries can have the exact same population but a very different age distribution. A population pyramid is a graphic way of showing what a population looks like. Many modern countries have population pyramids that are more like columns that taper at the top. Less developed societies historically looked like the Afghanistan pyramid above; a high birth rate and a high death rate meant the population was always on average very young.
We don’t know what the Nephite and Lamanite population pyramids looked like. It’s possible that the Nephite modernity affected birth rates, that’s a pretty common thing to happen in a society’s modernity and the Nephites do seem to be vastly outnumbered much of the time. On the other hand there is an absence of Book of Mormon prophets condemning birth limitations which is at least some evidence. And in historical societies undergoing modernity, the low birth rates were more concentrated in the upper classes and did not penetrate the lower classes and rural people (and they were still mostly rural people) as much as in our society.
So although we don’t know what their population pyramids looked like, we can at least speculate that they were something like a typical pre-industrial revolution agricultural society with a lot more youth than middle aged or old people.
If so, this helps explain why the Nephite society was so variable. And also the Lamanite society, its not as obvious because Mormon isn’t as interested in it but the Lamanites also are constantly making radical changes. (more…)
Mormon adds a note in 3rd Nephi 5:20
I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi.
He says ‘Lehi,’ not ‘Nephi.’ Mormon was aware that a lot of crossbreeding had happened with the Zoramites, the Mulekites, and with the surrounding peoples who were not descendants of Lehi. Though Mormon here seems to be acknowledging some Lehite Lamanite ancestry for himself. It may be Mormon’s Lamanite ancestry that makes him fair to the Lamanites from time to time despite being of the sole survivors of a genocide himself.
The second notable thing here is that lineage was very important for the Book of Mormon peoples, especially for elites.
Which leads me to my extremely tentative working hypothesis about race in the Book of Mormon.
There’s an ongoing story about a Kansas State fan joining the Church which may be the weirdest thing you’ve heard all week. It’s weird enough that I feel Joseph Smith and Brigham Young would approve.
Last week Kansas State football came to BYU. They were highly ranked and expected to trounce the unranked Cougs. Instead BYU did the trouncing, 38-9. With a fair amount of what looked like divine intervention along the way.
(Link if the embed doesn’t work)
It so happens that before the game some Kansas State fan was so confident he said that if the Y won he would get baptized. He got a lot of joshing after the game which he silenced by saying, ‘nope, I’m meeting with the missionaries and reading the Book of Mormon now.’
https://x.com/koltonemaw/status/1838766011337539598
All-knowing Cougarboard has been able to verify at least part of his story.
My theory is that this guy was already meeting with the missionaries and the whole thing was just a lark by him, but who knows?
I picture K-State fans in heaven cussing up a storm when this kid made his rash promise and they looked over to see the angels of intervention smirking at them.
The winnowing of modernity accelerates. In thirty years, you will be either a radiant saint or a raving addict. Your attention is already the apple of discord over which every corporate body (government, MEGACORP, religion) on earth fights. The “rules”, such as they are, will be evolved to aggressively exploit simple compliance. If you have in place discipline and the ability to be disagreeable, then you have in place at least some defenses. AI will only sharpen the assault on your attention. (The “open” in “OpenAI” must be of the same nature as an “open marriage”.)
-thus a friend of the JG
On the sweetness of Mormon life
In your small rural ward on the high plains, its your resident Britisher’s turn to speak. She talks about when she was a free-spirited hippy student at art school back in England. She had a dream. She was walking with two dowsing sticks. The sticks came together and light erupted from the ground. The light went before her to a quarry. When she went down to the quarry, she found that the rock walls were painted with animals and trees. Then Christ came out to greet her.
After she graduated, she got a job at a natural history museum. She worked in a kind of open air well in the center of the building with exhibits and displays all around her. She decided to check out the local LDS church for curiosity. She tried to sneak in inconspicuouly but didn’t succeed (hippy, torn jeans, tank top, frizzy fro, one wonders why). As the missionaries were talking to her one day she learned about the stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph. The Spirit told her that was her dream.
She then went old school LDS talking about light both physics and metaphysics. Her inner artist was showing. She concluded—this was obviously very important to her—that we spirits had come to earth to be bodies because bodies gave us more ways to interact with light.
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.
Czeslaw Milos
Or for our mediocrity
Rabbinical Judaism, Islam, most midwit varieties of christianity, and voodoo are all solutions to the same problem. The death of God. In other words, the problem that the Almighty no longer seems to be speaking (and that if he did speak, it would not be what we want to hear).
I was reading a high level anthropological survey of voodoo and of related West African religious systems. Their basic structure is a belief that there is in fact a creator who rules and has the power, in other words, God, but who is very remote and inactive in human affairs.
The solution is to make deals with lesser spirits.
The normal abrahamic religion response to the same problem is to get scholarly with scripture and philosophy. The difference just seems to be if you are in an educated area with written materials and a scholarly tradition or not.
“While most bridge-jumpers are attempting to commit suicide, and others fall accidentally, it should be noted that there are two further groups of voluntary jumpers, both gamblers in a sense. The first of these are those, usually young males, who jump on a bet. Strangely enough, we have only one case of a known ‘bettor’ who has been killed. But frustratingly enough, there are seldom records of such cases, and the individuals usually, presumably clutching their winnings, elude official searchers. In recent cases of this nature, a Rhode Island youth leaped 60 feet from a bridge while his companion stood by yelling encouragement, and another jumped 135 feet and was last seen swimming to a pier. In Ohio, a 17-year-old boy jumped 65 feet, and in New York a 32-year-old man jumped 107-feet — for the third time — from a bridge on which 67 other jumpers have been killed.”
from Survival of High-Velocity Free-Falls in Water by Richard G. Snyder, Ph.D., April 1965, Federal Aviation Agency, Office of Aviation Medicine
And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;
15 And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;
-thus 3 Nephi 2:14-15
If you believe in God’s power but also in history and anthropology, its difficult to know what is going on here. Is a major widespread miracle where a people jump across a major demographic divide possible–or at least where they just change skin color? Sure, miracles are miracles. (Though this one wouldn’t be my first guess). Is God perfectly capable of performing miracles that seem offensive or meaningless to us because it makes sense within the world view of the people he’s working with? You bet. Read the Old Testament some time.
On the other hand, we have too many examples to count of the petty narcissism of small ethnic differences. The Hutus and the Tutsis, for example,are both Black by American standards but are actually very physically distinct by historic standards. Equally bitter hatreds have been founded on much less.
Paul Kagame, a Tutsi (who are ‘light-skinned)
Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu (i.e., ‘dark-skinned’)
We also have too many examples of the way ethnicity can be tied to culture and practices in ways that are not always clear to the people living them to be confident that what happened to the Lamanites was a miraculous change of skin color.
I would love, love, love to have various secular histories of the Nephite cultural area.
ON the sweetness of Mormon life–Primary Program Edition.
My fave-whit part of da Book uh Mormon is when da angel come and say STOP MAKING BAD CHOICES
There is a scripture that perfectly combines ambition and humility. Two virtues we usually think are in tension with each other.
For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.
-thus 2 Nephi 28:30
Humbly learning bit by bit, always recognizing that you don’t know as much as you could, is not the opposite of ambition. It is the core of ambition. It is the stuff of which divinity is made.
Accounting for the difference in stations, this is morphologically the same as God saying
Worlds without number have I created…. The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine.
And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.
For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
The original insight was not mine. It was a family conversation. Let me tell you how it came about.
I don’t remember how it started out. Maybe some silliness about Canada. Yeah, that was probably it. We were probably laughing about that Babylon Bee headline, If Elected Trump Promises to Create a Cool New Slur for Canadians.
President Polk
