Interpreter apologists wrestle with Nephi’s transoceanic vessel

[Shulem]

I want to have fun. I'm a teen at heart, yeah baby!

Can you dance like an Egyptian on TikTok? That could out teenage the Midnight Mormons.

I can do better than that. I can show how Nephi mistreated his own mother and forced her to go without a hot bath and a decent meal. I can show how Nephi usurped his father's authority and kept him from going up to the holy mount to find out where to find food and get revelation for the whole family about building a ship. I'm willing to bet that Nephi tied his father up and even hit him in order to subjugate him and keep him quiet. I'm willing to show how Nephi pushed his older brethren around just because he was LARGER than them and often beat Lemuel up. Nephi claimed to shock his brethren with his holy power but in reality simply punched them in their faces and twisted their limbs because he was a bully. He even broke Laban's arm. I'll forebear in telling about how Nephi used to beat his wife. Sad story. Very sad.

Would you like to know more about The Church of Nephi?

[Moksha]

Would you like to know more about The Church of Nephi?

Don't keep us in suspense, just tell us in six lessons or less.

[Physics Guy]

The Book of Mormon is obviously written in the Biblical tradition. The most famous travel myth aside from the Exodus (which the Book of Mormon refers too repeatedly) is Noah building an ark on the command of God to survive the flood. The Book of Mormon has two similar stories: Nephi constructing a ship, and the Jaredites building barges. Both episodes are miracle tales. The Jaredite version is more obviously miraculous (vision of God), but both are miraculous.

I wasn't talking about the ship-building as such, which indeed has enough precedent to be a mini-genre, but about the teased detail of ore and smelting and tool-making. The story descends to the specifics of banging rocks together to make fire (even though this is so absurd that it must immediately be excused with fire having been arbitrarily forbidden by God for the past eight years and everyone eating raw food that was miraculously made sweet), and yet simply cuts to the next scene past all the potentially interesting stuff about mining and forging and making adequate bellows from hides.

Metalwork is a preoccupation of the text, because, hey, the book itself is supposedly made of metal plates. Smith operated in an environment in which there is a certain mystique to finding precious metals and working with metals. Oh, gee, I wonder why he focuses on Nephi working with metal!?!?!?! This preoccupation comes out of the treasure digging and bogus making operations that were clearly a big topic of interest at the time.

All the more reason to show us some interesting detail about this mining and smelting and forging, then, and not just breeze past them. As I tried to emphasize, my beef is not with addressing the mining and bellows and smelting and forging, but with raising the issue that they would obviously be problematic under the circumstances, and then failing to deliver any interesting or informative story about how the problems were overcome. If you're writing a story that puts the characters in a graveyard, and you know your audience loves zombies, then you might certainly throw in a graveyard struggle with zombies, but you don't just say, "What about zombies? We got rid of the zombies and drove to Vegas."

The possibility that the mention of metal working in this account is *only* for the purposes of verisimilitude is fairly low.

Mentioning Nephi's metalworking difficulties does serve the purpose that is called, at least in one school of criticism, "lampshading". That's when an author tries to excuse an obvious plot difficulty by drawing attention to it, in an effort to reassure the reader that the story isn't just stupid. Lampshading doesn't need to do more than point out the issue; merely pointing out the issue rather than actually dealing with it is what lampshading is. I can't think of any other narrative purpose that is served in this passage by merely mentioning these metalworking issues, as Nephi does, as opposed to either skipping over them blithely or giving a more interesting account of how they were handled.

But perhaps I'm just arguing from poverty of imagination. What other purposes could be served by the mentioning that Nephi gives these issues, without the further treatment that he does not give them?

[Shulem]

The story descends to the specifics of banging rocks together to make fire

Which is an important point to show that once they reached the seashore and established a camp on the actual coast they were able to survey the land to the right and left and know they were truly alone. The whole point of the thread was to suggest the idea that they were not alone but there were natives or other people in the vicinity that could have assisted them with shipbuilding. But being pinned in on the coast leaves them with just three cardinal directions in which to see because the ocean was like a wall in front of them. They had to know what was behind them when they first entered Bountiful and they could clearly see up the coast in both directions. They were all alone! There wasn't any other peoples settled on the coast with them. The story says nothing about others. If so, they would have been intruders encroaching on territory! We would have been informed of that.

So, Nephi comes off the mountain and tells them they have to build the ship. They have to mine for ore. They have to build a bellows. All that takes time and work. THEN, after that is accomplished they light the fire by striking two rocks together to create the spark. THAT is all we need to know that they were all alone and that fire was nowhere to be found. It's really that simple. It's those two rocks that prove there was nobody else there when they pumped up the bellows and began forging tools for their ship. The apologists aren't going to have the luxury of suggesting that their were others in the vicinity that were able to lend them a hand. They couldn't even get a light, not even a Bud Light. End of story. And that was my main point.

[Shulem]

Would you like to know more about The Church of Nephi?

Don't keep us in suspense, just tell us in six lessons or less.

You just want the dirt.

But suppose the story told a different narrative in which Nephi was actually a goodly man rather than a tyrannical power hungry control freak such as Joseph Smith the author of the story. Suppose that when they entered Bountiful (Oz of Arabia) that Nephi looked kindly on his dear old suffering mother who had spend 8 years in the desert without a bath or a decent hot meal. Wouldn't it have been splendid if after setting the tents up and wading on the seashore for fresh seafood (permitted by the Law of Moses) that Nephi provide some comfort for his poor mother? Wouldn't it had been nice had he gathered a little wood, a wad of dry straw, and strike two stones together to start a fire? Boil some water and cook something nice for his mother!

But no, that's not the story. Nephi has to climb a mountain somewhere (God knows where) and everyone must wait for him to return with God's word. Lehi's hands were tied and told to keep his mouth shut because Nephi was the new patriarch of the entire clan. Laman and Lemuel were pushed around and treated like dirt by their LARGE brother who loved to punch and shock his brothers for kicks. This serves to reminds us of how Joseph Smith used to wrestle others and "THROW" them to the ground. Does it not? You see, Moksha, Nephi was really Joseph Smith playing a fantasy game. Everything is always about Joseph Smith! That's the key to understanding the real message of the Book of Mormon and the mystery in which it was written.

[Shulem]

You see, Moksha, Nephi was really Joseph Smith playing a fantasy game. Everything is always about Joseph Smith! That's the key to understanding the real message of the Book of Mormon and the mystery in which it was written.

Do you think Joseph Smith might have been slightly jealous of Nehor?

And it came to pass that he did teach these things so much that many did believe on his words, even so many that they began to support him and give him money.

Two can play that game:

89 Whoso receiveth you receiveth me; and the same will feed you, and clothe you, and give you money.

90 And he who feeds you, or clothes you, or gives you money, shall in nowise lose his reward.

And *THAT* is the reason Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon with a little help from his friends. It was about the money. It's always about the money. Money is the bottom line. Always.

[Chap]

I have just read through this thread - fairly rapidly, I admit, but then I am a quick reader and I think I have the key points. I have also in my time read the relevant parts of the Book of Mormon. Divergent points of view have been expressed, but it seems to me that nothing has been said that gives me grounds for radically reconsidering my view of 1 Nephi 17 and 18, which is as follows:

(a) This text, like the rest of the Book of Mormon, is an early 19th century piece of writing by Joseph Smith, a person of much imaginative fertility but limited education, who set out to produce a text that the people around him would accept as being truly ancient and 'like the Bible'. It was clearly not a literary amusement like "The Late War", but was intended to be accepted as a genuine ancient text miraculously translated.

(b) Smith had the good fortune to have a potential readership containing a significant number of people who were eager for religious novelty, and who because of cultural limitations were not equipped to be hyper-critical of what he offered them. What is more, the text he produced had a major Unique Selling Point for his readers, in that it was "'The Bible part 2: what happened in America".

(c) Unlike the non-prophetic parts of Bible, the text contains a significant amount of first person narrative. Some of this involves direct divine intervention, such as the deity enabling Lehi's party to live off raw meat, because (for some unspecified reason) "the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journeyed in the wilderness". Some of this involves Nephi himself performing unlikely technical feats under divine guidance, such as obtaining 'ore' that he was able "to molten" from which he tells us that he made tools. To a 21st century reader who knows something about metallurgy and its history, it is entirely implausible that a person in the 6th century BC with no craft training could even have got as far as producing a red-hot 'bloom' of iron mixed with slag using a primitive furnace (no-one in western Eurasia could produce iron in liquid form until some way into the middle ages), which would then have required much skilled work in order to produce any tools usable for wooden ship construction. And the text makes it clear that when he says he did something, he did it himself. This is not one of those self presenting 'leaders of men' figures who, when he says "I threw a bridge across the river" means "I ordered my highly trained and experienced engineers to do it". It takes him a lot of effort persuasion and divine backup to get his brothers to help at all, although finally "it came to pass that they did worship the Lord, and did go forth with me; and we did work timbers of curious workmanship".

(d) It seems likely that Smith introduced these 'practical' details because he knew that the people in his story had to get to America somehow, for which they needed a ship, and even the Old Testament deity does not do things like producing a fully equipped wooden sailing ship out of nowhere. Somehow he had to get Nephi and his group to make one. To some of his target readers, the 'technical' details Smith supplied for this purpose probably did make the story more convincing. To those who are sceptical and better informed, the effect is the opposite of what Smith probably intended.

[Kishkumen]

I wasn't talking about the ship-building as such, which indeed has enough precedent to be a mini-genre, but about the teased detail of ore and smelting and tool-making. The story descends to the specifics of banging rocks together to make fire (even though this is so absurd that it must immediately be excused with fire having been arbitrarily forbidden by God for the past eight years and everyone eating raw food that was miraculously made sweet), and yet simply cuts to the next scene past all the potentially interesting stuff about mining and forging and making adequate bellows from hides.

Since there is a consistent theme in the text regarding how God both requires things that create seeming difficulties and then provides the means to overcome them, I don't get why you bring this set of priorities to the text, other than your lack of familiarity with the text as a whole. Your disdain for the text oozes through every comment you make about it, as though your first impulse is to see ineptness and stupidity in it. Then you make judgments that are frankly off base.

All the more reason to show us some interesting detail about this mining and smelting and forging, then, and not just breeze past them. As I tried to emphasize, my beef is not with addressing the mining and bellows and smelting and forging, but with raising the issue that they would obviously be problematic under the circumstances, and then failing to deliver any interesting or informative story about how the problems were overcome. If you're writing a story that puts the characters in a graveyard, and you know your audience loves zombies, then you might certainly throw in a graveyard struggle with zombies, but you don't just say, "What about zombies? We got rid of the zombies and drove to Vegas."

You are not paying attention to what I told you. The focus is on the miraculous nature of these transactions between God and humankind, not on explaining the technical details for the reader.

Mentioning Nephi's metalworking difficulties does serve the purpose that is called, at least in one school of criticism, "lampshading". That's when an author tries to excuse an obvious plot difficulty by drawing attention to it, in an effort to reassure the reader that the story isn't just stupid. Lampshading doesn't need to do more than point out the issue; merely pointing out the issue rather than actually dealing with it is what lampshading is. I can't think of any other narrative purpose that is served in this passage by merely mentioning these metalworking issues, as Nephi does, as opposed to either skipping over them blithely or giving a more interesting account of how they were handled.

Thank you for giving me the background to help me understand why you ignored everything I said that cuts against this silly explanation. I gave you a number of reasons why the description of metalworking was not about "lampshading," and so I just point back to that explanation.

One really must look at Nephi's metalworking in the context of the Brother of Jared and the glowing stones of the Book of Ether and also the Liahona. It helps to know the text well enough to be able to contextualize individual episodes within the whole--even texts you consider to be amateurish, inept, and stupid.

But perhaps I'm just arguing from poverty of imagination. What other purposes could be served by the mentioning that Nephi gives these issues, without the further treatment that he does not give them?

The problem is not a poverty of imagination but a poverty of knowledge regarding the Book of Mormon.

[Dr Exiled]

I wasn't talking about the ship-building as such, which indeed has enough precedent to be a mini-genre, but about the teased detail of ore and smelting and tool-making. The story descends to the specifics of banging rocks together to make fire (even though this is so absurd that it must immediately be excused with fire having been arbitrarily forbidden by God for the past eight years and everyone eating raw food that was miraculously made sweet), and yet simply cuts to the next scene past all the potentially interesting stuff about mining and forging and making adequate bellows from hides.

Since there is a consistent theme in the text regarding how God both requires things that create seeming difficulties and then provides the means to overcome them, I don't get why you bring this set of priorities to the text, other than your lack of familiarity with the text as a whole. Your disdain for the text oozes through every comment you make about it, as though your first impulse is to see ineptness and stupidity in it. Then you make judgments that are frankly off base.

All the more reason to show us some interesting detail about this mining and smelting and forging, then, and not just breeze past them. As I tried to emphasize, my beef is not with addressing the mining and bellows and smelting and forging, but with raising the issue that they would obviously be problematic under the circumstances, and then failing to deliver any interesting or informative story about how the problems were overcome. If you're writing a story that puts the characters in a graveyard, and you know your audience loves zombies, then you might certainly throw in a graveyard struggle with zombies, but you don't just say, "What about zombies? We got rid of the zombies and drove to Vegas."

You are not paying attention to what I told you. The focus is on the miraculous nature of these transactions between God and humankind, not on explaining the technical details for the reader.

Mentioning Nephi's metalworking difficulties does serve the purpose that is called, at least in one school of criticism, "lampshading". That's when an author tries to excuse an obvious plot difficulty by drawing attention to it, in an effort to reassure the reader that the story isn't just stupid. Lampshading doesn't need to do more than point out the issue; merely pointing out the issue rather than actually dealing with it is what lampshading is. I can't think of any other narrative purpose that is served in this passage by merely mentioning these metalworking issues, as Nephi does, as opposed to either skipping over them blithely or giving a more interesting account of how they were handled.

Thank you for giving me the background to help me understand why you ignored everything I said that cuts against this silly explanation. I gave you a number of reasons why the description of metalworking was not about "lampshading," and so I just point back to that explanation.

One really must look at Nephi's metalworking in the context of the Brother of Jared and the glowing stones of the Book of Ether and also the Liahona. It helps to know the text well enough to be able to contextualize individual episodes within the whole--even texts you consider to be amateurish, inept, and stupid.

But perhaps I'm just arguing from poverty of imagination. What other purposes could be served by the mentioning that Nephi gives these issues, without the further treatment that he does not give them?

The problem is not a poverty of imagination but a poverty of knowledge regarding the Book of Mormon.

We should stop dwelling on the fact or fiction question, regardless of what the church or Joseph Smith says or said about it, and go beyond that issue, trying to get at the spirituality of the text? It is obviously fiction and so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater? There is worth in a work of fiction that was sold and is being sold to the public as actually having happened?

[Shulem]

The problem is not a poverty of imagination but a poverty of knowledge regarding the Book of Mormon.

I think Physics Guy makes sense and has point by point provided a reasonable look at problems with the Book of Mormon.

And don't dare (don't do it) tell me I have a poverty of knowledge regarding the Book of Mormon. From what I surmise, it's YOU that have a dearth of understanding what the Book of Mormon is really all about and Joseph Smith's motives. Yeah, you read a lot stuff and materials unrelated to the Book of Mormon and you think that makes you smart -- but I'm not impressed. Look, I know the Book of Mormon inside and out, yeah baby! Yeah!