A Dream, a Rock, and a Pillar of Fire Adam S
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Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Maxwell Institute Publications 2017 A Dream, a Rock, and a Pillar of Fire Adam S. Miller Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi Part of the Religious Education Commons Recommended Citation Miller, Adam S., "A Dream, a Rock, and a Pillar of Fire" (2017). Maxwell Institute Publications. 2. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/2 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maxwell Institute Publications by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. A Dream, a Rock, and a Pillar of Fire The Proceedings of the Mormon Theology Seminar series is based on a novel idea: that Mormons do theol- ogy. Doing theology is different from weighing history or deciding doctrine. Theology speculates. It experiments with questions and advances hypotheses. It tests new angles and pulls loose threads. The Mormon Theology Seminar organizes interdisciplin- ary, collaborative, theological readings of Latter-day Saint scripture. Seminar participants with diverse backgrounds closely explore familiar texts in creative ways. In partner- ship with the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, the Mormon Theology Seminar presents these experiments upon the word to foster greater theo- logical engagement with basic Mormon texts. Series Editor Brian M. Hauglid Other Mormon Theology Seminar books include: Adam S. Miller, ed., An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32 Joseph M. Spencer and Jenny Webb, eds., Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: 2 Nephi 26–27 Julie M. Smith, ed., Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21–22 Jeremiah John and Joseph M. Spencer, eds., Embracing the Law: Reading Doctrine and Covenants 42 Adam S. Miller, ed., Fleeing the Garden: Reading Genesis 2–3 mi.byu.edu/pmts A Dream, a Rock, and a Pillar of Fire Reading 1 Nephi 1 Edited by Adam S. Miller Brigham Young University Provo, Utah A Proceedings of the Mormon Theology Seminar book Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Provo 84602 ³maxwellinstitute.byu.edu © 2017 by Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. All rights reserved. Permissions. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means or process without the formal written consent of the publisher. Direct all permissions requests to: Permissions Manager, Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mormon Theology Seminar (2014 : London, England), author. | Miller, Adam S., editor. | Mormon Theology Seminar. Proceedings of the Mormon Theology Seminar Title: A dream, a rock, and a pillar of fire : reading 1 Nephi 1 / edited by Adam S. Miller. Description: Provo, Utah : Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University / [2017] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017032610 (print) | LCCN 2017036002 (ebook) | ISBN 9780842530132 (ePub) | ISBN 9780842530149 (Kindle) | ISBN 9780842530125 (print : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Book of Mormon. Nephi, 1st—Congresses. | Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—Doctrines—Congresses. | Mormon Church—Doctrines—Congresses. Classification: LCC BX8627 (ebook) | LCC BX8627 .M67 2014 (print) | DDC 289.3/22—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032610 ༈ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). ISBN 978-0-8425-3012-5 Cover and book design: Jenny Webb and Andrew Heiss Printed in the United States of America Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix Summary Report xv Huldah’s Long Shadow 1 Julie M. Smith Burnt Offerings: Favor, Afflictions, and the Mysteries of God 17 Adam S. Miller Dreams, Visions, and Foolish Imaginations: Alternative History as Sacred History in the Book of Mormon 30 George B. Handley Potent Messianism: Textual, Historical, and Theological Notes on 1 Nephi 1:18–20 47 Joseph M. Spencer Tender Mercies in English Scriptural Idiom and in Nephi’s Record 75 Miranda Wilcox v vi Contents Joining the Heavenly Chorus 111 Michaël Ulrich The Missing Medium: Rereading Revelation as Interruption in 1 Nephi 1 124 Benjamin Peters Contributors 139 Acknowledgments Our thanks to Brian Hauglid and the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, and James E. Faulconer as a Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University for their gener- ous support of the Mormon Theology Seminar. Without their support, the live, two-week format for the seminar would not be possible. More, a special thanks to Brigham Young University’s London Centre and James E. Faulconer for their willingness to host this Mormon Theology Seminar on 1 Nephi 1. vii Introduction For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to build something big. But right from the start this impulse took less practical forms. Rather than framing houses or designing cars, I set my heart on making books. And more than just wanting to write books, my attention fixed on building a kind of collaborative machine that would itself make many, many books. I wanted shelves full of books. I wanted books by the yard. I wanted a project that would work on a scale of decades rather than days and that could, as a result, matter for a hundred years. The Mormon Theology Seminar is one product of this impulse. And this seminar in particular, A Dream, a Rock, and a Pillar of Fire: Reading 1 Nephi 1, marks a tipping point in the pursuit of that goal. Any success on this scale requires more than work. It requires talented partners and a measure of good luck. In 2006, during my second year as a philosophy professor at Collin College, I got a note from Joseph Spencer. Spencer, whom I had never met, was a former stu- dent of James Faulconer, a friend and philosophy professor at Brigham Young University. Spencer wanted to start an email list called LDS- HERM. The idea was to create a space where big, brawling, technical discussions of phenomenology and hermeneutics could cross-pollinate with Mormon ideas. The list was a potent incubator for new ideas. Unfolding over a couple of years, those early discussions generated a lot of heat and light. More, they welded us together as friends. Apart ix x Introduction from the handful of people on that list, who else would spend months with any one of us talking about Jacques Lacan and the sealing power, Martin Heidegger and the nature of revelation, or Alain Badiou on St. Paul? But these private discussions only whetted our appetite. Soon, we wanted to try something bigger, something formal and public. This led to a beta version of the Mormon Theology Seminar in 2007. We piloted a seven-month online seminar focused on Abraham that offered close, collaborative, theological readings of the Abraham narratives in Gene- sis, the Book of Abraham, Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death. Seven people participated, but the project, though beautiful, turned out to be too ambitious by half. For a second try, we narrowed the scope of the seminar to just a single chapter of scripture, dropped the philosophy readings, and con- tracted the scale of time. Robert Couch, James Faulconer, Julie Smith, Joseph Spencer, Jenny Webb, and I then spent three months online reading Alma 32 together, working through the text word by word, line by line, verse by verse. This version of the seminar was a substantial success. It culminated in a public conference at BYU in 2008, and its participants formed the core group that to this day serve as the semi- nar’s executive board. We wanted then to find a publisher for this collection of conference papers. Knowing that the project was too narrow for a typical academic press and too scholarly for a trade press, we tried Brigham Young Uni- versity’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. But the timing was wrong. Empowered by the revolution in print-on-demand books, we plunged ahead and founded an independent academic press of our own. With this press, we wanted to stake out ground for the kind of work we were doing at the intersection of theory and scripture, and we wanted to offer solid evidence that, in practice, our approach was not only possible but potent. Thus, Salt Press was born. Co-owned by Robert Couch, Joseph Spencer, Jenny Webb, and myself, Salt Press opened for business in 2009. In December 2011, Salt Press published the proceedings of that first Mormon Theology Seminar as An Experiment on the Word: Read- ing Alma 32. It simultaneously published those of our second seminar, Introduction xi Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: 2 Nephi 26–27. One month later, in Janu ary 2012, Salt also published the first edition of Spencer’s book, An Other Testament: On Typology. Four more online seminars with a variety of new participants were held over the next few years, address- ing Doctrine and Covenants 42, Revelation 21–22, 2 Nephi 2, and Genesis 2–3. Proceedings from most of these seminars, together with a number of other solicited titles and submitted monographs, were to be forthcoming. However, in March 2013, the Maxwell Institute approached Salt Press with an offer. Sold on the work that Salt Press had managed to do on its own, the Institute’s pitch was straightforward: we have resources and you have content. Let Maxwell take over the resource-intensive work of actually publishing and distributing the kind of content you’ve championed, and you can return your full attention to the work of cre- ating and soliciting that same kind of content.