Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Maxwell Institute Publications 2004 Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 1: Transcripts of Lectures Presented to an Honors Book of Mormon Class at Brigham Young University, 1988-1990 Hugh Nibley Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi Part of the Religious Education Commons Recommended Citation Nibley, Hugh, "Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 1: Transcripts of Lectures Presented to an Honors Book of Mormon Class at Brigham Young University, 1988-1990" (2004). Maxwell Institute Publications. 70. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/70 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]. Semester 1 Lecture Scriptural Reference Topics Page 1 Introduction The Book of Mormon— 1 Like Nothing Else 2 Introduction Nephi’s Heritage 11 3 Introduction Geopolitics and the Rule of Tyrants, 23 600 B.C. 4 Introduction Setting the Stage, 600 B.C. 35 5 (Jeremiah) Insights from Lehi’s Contemporaries: 47 Solon and Jeremiah 6 1 Nephi 1; Jeremiah 29 Souvenirs from Lehi’s Jerusalem 59 7 1 Nephi 1; Jeremiah The Days of King Zedekiah: 73 “There Came Many Prophets” 8 1 Nephi Escape from Doom 85 9 1 Nephi 1–3, 15 In the Wilderness 97 10 (Dead Sea Scrolls) The Book of Mormon and 111 the Dead Sea Scrolls 11 1 Nephi 4–7 Scripture and Family 123 12 1 Nephi 8–11 The Tree of Life 137 13 1 Nephi 12–14 Nephi’s Vision 151 14 1 Nephi 15–16 The Liahona and Murmurings in the 165 Wilderness 15 1 Nephi 17–19, 22 Toward a Promised Land 179 16 2 Nephi 1–4 “Encircled . in the Arms of His 193 Love”: Oneness with God and the Atonement 17 2 Nephi 2 The Law and the Atonement 207 18 2 Nephi 3–8 Lehi’s Family: Blessings and Conflict 221 19 2 Nephi 9 Jacob’s Teachings on the Atonement 235 and Judgment 20 2 Nephi 25 The Jews and Jerusalem 249 21 2 Nephi 25–28 Nephi’s Prophecy of Our Times 261 22 2 Nephi 29–31 Scripture and Canon 275 23 2 Nephi 32–33; Jacob 1–2 Rejecting the Word of God 289 24 Jacob 3–4 Filthiness and the Atonement 303 25 Jacob 5–7; Enos The Olive Tree; 317 The Challenge of Sherem 26 Enos; Jarom; Omni The Struggle of Enos 329 27 Omni; Words of Mormon; The End of the Small Plates; 343 Mosiah 1 The Coronation of Mosiah 28 Mosiah 1–2 King Benjamin’s Speech 357 29 Mosiah 3–5 King Benjamin’s Speech 371 TEACHINGS OF THE BOOK OF MORMON HUGH NIBLEY Semester 1, Lecture 1 Introduction The Book of Mormon—Like Nothing Else Would it be all right if I put on my trusty hat? The doctor says I’m to wear this hat at all times, so here I am. Nothing but the Book of Mormon would put me up to anything like this; you know that. This is ridiculous, and here we are. But the Book of Mormon is worth it; it’s worth absolutely anything. At this moment everybody asks certain questions, and the questions we all ask are, “What should I be doing? What am I doing here?” Charles Adams has a famous book on that subject, “What am I doing here?” You find yourself in the most ridiculous situations, and you say, “What am I doing here? How did I possibly get into this mess? What should I be doing?” That is the question, you see. We know the world is in confusion because many people are doing things they should not be doing. And many people are not doing the things they should be doing. Now the shocking thought comes to us: Is it possible that nobody is doing what he should be doing? The answer is yes. It’s not only possible; that’s the situation. When the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in the Grove, according to the oldest and best account of all—that of Frederick G. Williams, written in 1832–33 and dictated by Joseph Smith when he was only 26 years old. It’s different from the one we have in the Pearl of Great Price here because the Lord speaks in the first person. In the account we have here, it’s an indirect quotation (what the Lord told Joseph), but here the words to the Prophet when he was only fourteen years old are, “The world at this time lieth in sin, and there is none that doeth good—no not one. Mine anger is kindling against the inhabitants of the world to visit them in this ungodliness.” There are those who do well and have good intentions, but that is not what it means. It means to do what they should be doing—the best possible thing. If you break an arm, I might with the best of intentions try to mend it, but I could be doing a lot of damage. I’m not doing any good. I’m doing more harm probably, though I mean well and get credit for that. The fact is we are not in a condition where anybody can do what he should be doing because we are not living by the heavenly order anymore. We are not living by the order for which the earth was designed and created; we are a million miles away from it, completely independent. So the Lord says, “There is none that doeth good, no not one and mine anger is kindling.” Many of us are not where we should be. For example, everyone goes to college now. When I was young, very few people went. We don’t have anything else to do. There’s Goethe’s famous line in Faust. Remember old Faust says, in the second Faust: “Here I am an old moss-covered gentleman still studying because I can’t do anything else.” We just get into the study habit and we can’t do anything else. We write absurd articles, and we go on collecting things. Anatole France wrote a wonderful story about that, but we won’t go into that. However, there is a lot of relevant material we are going to bring in here that you may not have heard before. We will slap it on the board, and maybe we will require you to remember what these words are someday, if they are important. The thing is that this is where the Book of Mormon comes in. It’s like nothing else. It’s the only answer you are 1 ever going to get to that question in this dispensation. In reading the Book of Mormon no one is ever doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Most of the time he would be doing probably the best thing he could possibly be doing. If it is not itself the best thing to be doing, it will quickly put you onto the best thing to be doing because it will have a direct effect on you. It will change you; it will work on you. It is a personal, intimate document. It will hit you. You can’t just read the Book of Mormon and nothing else. It immediately puts you on the high road to what you should be doing, like no other book. And it will lead you directly into a course of thought or a course of action of the greatest significance to yourself and to the world you live in. In other words, it will enable you to break loose as nothing else can. Only the Book of Mormon breaks loose because it does break loose. It’s like nothing else. Now we have the direct revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, etc., but the Book of Mormon was brought by an angel, a tangible thing. He gave it to Joseph. He gives this clinical description of how the angel was. This is something completely different. I was going to ask the question, how many have read the Book of Mormon? It’s an utterly absurd question. It’s like asking, have you seen the moon? Or have you been to North America? The answer is “yes,” I suppose, but you haven’t told me a thing. How much did you learn from that? With the Book of Mormon, it can mean anything. You can say, “I read the Book of Mormon.” I remember when I would say that, and it didn’t mean anything, of course. It meant I had piled up so many pages and got my gold star; that was it. That’s not what we are reading it for now. Oh, what would we do without the Book of Mormon! The Book of Mormon is like nothing else. It is totally different from the Bible by virtue of its genesis. Look at the Bible. It took hundreds of years to give us the Bible—thousands, actually, if you include the Old Testament, of course. The documents had to trickle in from different times, different places, and different writers. The Tanakh, the Torah; Nebiim, the prophets; and the Kethubim, the literary writings. These are the three things that make up the Bible—all from different authors. Some parts are poetry, some parts are prophecy, and some parts are history. There are lots of chronicles, etc.