I saw the central message of that verse was, "obey the church even when it's wrong and asking you to murder someone."
Murder is by definition wrong, Nephi isn't commanded to murder, he's commanded to kill. The question is if killing Laban under those circumstances constitutes murder. In DCT, it's not murder because by definition what God tells you to do is right. Nephi's justification is utilitarian -- the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Whether or not the needs of the many really outweighed the one in that situation somebody would need to calculate, but it's not out of the question for a utilitarian, and most of us make utilitarian calculations all the time. Would it be wrong to kill Vladimir Putin on Feb. 19th 2022? People talk about the means not justifying the ends, but nobody lives in a world like that. We all justify the ends by the means.
I don't think the storyteller was sure about what they were trying to say. Even if the plates were that critical to the functioning of future society, it seems like they had alternatives. We've done more for oil, but we would have done less if we could have at the right price point. In this case, just knock the guy out completely and take his clothes. The excess is probably because the storyteller had this impulse to teach obedience to God as the bottom line. I think Laban needs to be crossed with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham and Isaac more effectively teaches the importance of obedience because Isaac was innocent -- it's much easier to justify killing a low-life on materialist grounds. But Abraham and Isaac didn't follow through. If obedience really is the first law of heaven, then the proper demonstration of that is killing Isaac, but actually killing him.
"if you can't admire Joe Biden as a person then it's probably, you got a problem." -- Lindsey Graham
I saw the central message of that verse was, "obey the church even when it's wrong and asking you to murder someone."
Murder is by definition wrong, Nephi isn't commanded to murder, he's commanded to kill. The question is if killing Laban under those circumstances constitutes murder. In DCT, it's not murder because by definition what God tells you to do is right. Nephi's justification is utilitarian -- the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Whether or not the needs of the many really outweighed the one in that situation somebody would need to calculate, but it's not out of the question for a utilitarian, and most of us make utilitarian calculations all the time. Would it be wrong to kill Vladimir Putin on Feb. 19th 2022? People talk about the means not justifying the ends, but nobody lives in a world like that. We all justify the ends by the means.
I don't think the storyteller was sure about what they were trying to say. Even if the plates were that critical to the functioning of future society, it seems like they had alternatives. We've done more for oil, but we would have done less if we could have at the right price point. In this case, just knock the guy out completely and take his clothes. The excess is probably because the storyteller had this impulse to teach obedience to God as the bottom line. I think Laban needs to be crossed with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham and Isaac more effectively teaches the importance of obedience because Isaac was innocent -- it's much easier to justify killing a low-life on materialist grounds. But Abraham and Isaac didn't follow through. If obedience really is the first law of heaven, then the proper demonstration of that is killing Isaac, but actually killing him.
I was a bit surprised by the suggestion that this was a story people were fond of. I only remember it as ugly. I went back and reread it because I did not remember anything indicating Laban had stolen the plates. What I read was a rather farfetched story in which the sons retrieved all the gold and silver they had left in Jerusalem(?) to purchase the plates. Laban steels this money so his death is a sort of just punishment for his being such a scoundrel.
I am not sure how to be exact but I have suspected that in some way accepting this story as a reader is a sort of compromising initiation. Perhaps a bridge from regular reality to a special reality where extra special things happen.
Perhaps what works in the Book of Mormon, certainly not poetry, but is this repeating bridge to the land of the marvelous.
Laban steels this money so his death is a sort of just punishment for his being such a scoundrel.
Right, he stole their money. He didn't steal the plates.
Reading it with the grain, I think the failure is to make Laban sufficiently reprehensible to kill. It's not just about how bad Laban is, but his personality. What goes a long way in selling disproportionate justice is making the villain dislikable.
As a kid I thought it was a great story. A fun one to act out because it's like a fantasy story right? Go obtain the secret treasure from the bad guy?
"if you can't admire Joe Biden as a person then it's probably, you got a problem." -- Lindsey Graham
I saw the central message of that verse was, "obey the church even when it's wrong and asking you to murder someone."
Murder is by definition wrong, Nephi isn't commanded to murder, he's commanded to kill. The question is if killing Laban under those circumstances constitutes murder. In DCT, it's not murder because by definition what God tells you to do is right. Nephi's justification is utilitarian -- the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Whether or not the needs of the many really outweighed the one in that situation somebody would need to calculate, but it's not out of the question for a utilitarian, and most of us make utilitarian calculations all the time. Would it be wrong to kill Vladimir Putin on Feb. 19th 2022? People talk about the means not justifying the ends, but nobody lives in a world like that. We all justify the ends by the means.
I don't think the storyteller was sure about what they were trying to say. Even if the plates were that critical to the functioning of future society, it seems like they had alternatives. We've done more for oil, but we would have done less if we could have at the right price point. In this case, just knock the guy out completely and take his clothes. The excess is probably because the storyteller had this impulse to teach obedience to God as the bottom line. I think Laban needs to be crossed with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham and Isaac more effectively teaches the importance of obedience because Isaac was innocent -- it's much easier to justify killing a low-life on materialist grounds. But Abraham and Isaac didn't follow through. If obedience really is the first law of heaven, then the proper demonstration of that is killing Isaac, but actually killing him.
The story also makes it very clear Laban was drunk and helpless. They had everything they needed, and the killing wasn’t necessary except for some vague justification about “the whole nation dwindling in unbelief” somehow due to Laban.
Just for fun, regarding the beheading of Laban: Immediately before Joseph Smith dictated this story, 4,000 copies of David Bernard's Light on Masonry (Utica, 1829) had been sold out, and a second edition was in preparation. Waterloo, Seneca County (3 miles from the Whitmer cabin) was a particularly antimasonic locale, and it would be hard to argue that Joseph Smith would not have had every opportunity to see this striking illustration at the beginning of Bernard's "Anti-Masonic Bible" . . .
Rick
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
― Cicero, De Oratore - Book III
Murder is by definition wrong, Nephi isn't commanded to murder, he's commanded to kill. The question is if killing Laban under those circumstances constitutes murder.
The essence of the Lafferty Defense. If commanded by God, then both Nephi and the Lafferty's have a solid LDS defense. Kirton McConkie attorneys would argue this vigorously in the Jerusalem courts.
I am not sure how to be exact but I have suspected that in some way accepting this story as a reader is a sort of compromising initiation. Perhaps a bridge from regular reality to a special reality where extra special things happen.
Perhaps what works in the Book of Mormon, certainly not poetry, but is this repeating bridge to the land of the marvelous.
Huh. That's a point, actually. The decapitation of Laban comes with God going out of his way to provide a moral justification to Nephi, which is another one of those too-much-yet-not-enough bits of detail. The New Testament God wouldn't command something like that, and the Old Testament God wouldn't deign to excuse it. This Nephite God was in the uncanny valley, an obvious retcon. For me that was a shark-jumping moment, to be sure; I couldn't take a faith based on this God seriously any more, let alone take this God seriously myself.
And yet it did make me curious to read further, to find out what this Machiavellian God might demand of his pliant followers next. It was like reading a wild re-boot of a familiar story; you can't accept it as canon but you want to see where it goes to make Batman a jihadist.
Maybe Smith did hit on a good trick of storytelling, something a little bit like breaking the fourth wall. If you make something just the right level of outrageous happen, you can pique the reader's interest instead of just making them throw the book down in disgust, by signalling that surprises will be in store because this story will not just be following the familiar conventions.
