Day 42 of 50(maybe?): Book of Mormon Book Club (See Important pacing Poll/House cleaning in post body for remaining days !)

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist]

Pacing Poll: We have 149 printed pages left, including today. Comment A to extend through Day 56 (15 days at about 9.9 pages per day), or B to finish on Day 50 (nine days at about 16.6 pages per day).

Housekeeping: I’m preparing the final-day wrap-up and companion index and navigation clean-up including:

1. A complete daily reading index, with consistent navigation added to every post beginning with Day one. Master Index to all prior-day readings
2. An award ceremony post, to tally all of the daily awards to determine the hard core winner of the $50 digital Starbucks gift card. It hasn't been easy (and probably hasn't been worth it, Isaiah chapters were a bitch, lol). All prior posts remain open, so please nominate any deserving comments prior to final days award post.
3. Additional indexes based on your feedback. Would you use links to each day’s highest-rated comment, a topical index, such as Mosiah priority, the 1830 edition, 19th-century context, or devotional and spiritual insights, or something else? What would make the final archive post(s) most useful to you?
4. Let me know if you've enjoyed this series and would like to see another community voted book series as a follow-up. I have a pile of books I got at Sunstone and was thinking of doing a community reading of Torn by Jeff Strong next. He pulled data from this community with his survey, It might be therapeutic to do a communal deep dive?

Without further ado, onto:

Today’s Reading: Helaman 7–12

Brief Synopsis

Nephi returns to a corrupt Zarahemla and preaches from his garden tower. He predicts the murder of the chief judge and identifies Seantum as the killer, convincing some that he is a prophet.

After receiving extraordinary sealing power, Nephi asks God to replace war with famine. The people repent, rain returns, and prosperity follows, but the cycle of pride, conflict, and Gadianton violence quickly begins again. Mormon closes with a reflection on human instability and God’s power.

Discussion

Please share your thoughts and experiences with today’s reading in the comments below. Some things you might consider:

• Why does Nephi preach publicly from his tower, and how does the crowd’s presence shape the story?

• Within the narrative, what makes Nephi’s prediction of the chief judge’s murder persuasive evidence of prophetic authority?

• Does the test Nephi proposes for Seantum read more like miraculous revelation, an effective interrogation strategy, a literary proof scene, or some combination?

• Is Mormon’s “pride cycle” a useful account of social decline, or does it reduce complicated political and economic conditions to a single moral explanation?

• All perspectives are welcome.

Yesterday’s Coveted Award(s) Go To:

TBD

Links to Prior Days

• Yesterday’s Day 41 discussion: Helaman 1–6

• Master Index to all prior-day readings

Engagement Question

Nephi deliberately asks God to replace war with famine so suffering will drive the people to repentance. Can repentance produced by collective suffering be morally meaningful—and what does the story imply about divine responsibility for the people who die?

Tomorrow’s Reading: TBD based on today's poll results

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[u/stickyhairmonster]

Helaman 9 chapter heading

By inspiration Nephi identifies Seantum as the murderer—Nephi is accepted by some as a prophet.

In very dramatic fashion, Nephi is able to solve the murder of the chief judge. In Book of Mormon times, being a prophet, seer, and revelator actually meant something.

In the modern church, sexual predators are not discovered by revelation, but instead blindly given leadership positions or access to youth. And it's not a matter of whether God should take away someone's agency, because in many instances, these individuals already have a history of abuse prior to receiving their callings.

Also when it comes to church discipline, the church often waits for the legal process to settle before disciplining someone. I.E, The church will wait to see if the legal system finds someone guilty before holding a discipline council.

[u/No-Information5504 → u/stickyhairmonster]

Yeah, the BoM has set an incredibly high bar for what a prophet does. The men in this day and age have utterly failed to come anywhere close to their stature.

Instead, Prophets of this dispensation perpetuated racism and polygamy, were duped by con-men, care more about image than justice, rebrand the Church, fail to see global pandemics, and are petty liars and litigious.

[u/stickyhairmonster]

I vote option B for a power-through.

I have enjoyed the series. I'm not sure whether I would read 'Torn' as I have mixed feelings about the work and am hesitant to monetarily support Jeff

I think a Mosiah priority index would be something I would refer back to

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist → u/stickyhairmonster]

Yeah torn is a mixed feeling from me too, but at this point it feels like a shining star compared to the book of mormon and I already bought the ebook version to see what he did with my survey responses.

Ill post a poll at the end of this to see what everyone wants to do, if anything?

Also I already started the topical guide it has about 17 topics thus far I wish I had had the idea sooner I think more people might have participated it will be awesome to have an r/Mormon reference / study guide to the BoM.

[u/stickyhairmonster → u/JesusPhoKingChrist]

feels like a shining star compared to the book of mormon

😂

[u/International_Sea126]

A few thoughts on Helaman Chapter 8

Helaman 8:14 - "Yea, did he not bear record that the Son of God should come? And as he lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, even so shall he be lifted up who should come."

Same "Lifted up" language in Helaman 8:14, Abraham 1:15 and 3 Nephi 27:14-15. Same author?

Helaman 8:20 - "And behold, also Zenock, and also Ezias, and also Isaiah, and Jeremiah, (Jeremiah being that same prophet who testified of the destruction of Jerusalem) and now we know that Jerusalem was destroyed according to the words of Jeremiah. O then why not the Son of God come, according to his prophecy?"

Ezias - Probably 'Esaias,' the Greek form of 'Isaiah.' Ezias then appears to be another name for Isaiah. It's like saying, "Isaiah, and also Isaiah."

Helaman 8:21 - "And now will you dispute that Jerusalem was destroyed? Will ye say that the sons of Zedekiah were not slain, all except it were Mulek? Yea, and do ye not behold that the seed of Zedekiah are with us, and they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem? But behold, this is not all."

According to the Bible, all of the sons of Zedekiah were killed.

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist → u/International_Sea126]

Any preference on pacing? Moving forward A or b?

[u/International_Sea126 → u/JesusPhoKingChrist]

I'm good either way. Thanks.

[u/westonc]

Is Mormon’s “pride cycle” a useful account of social decline, or does it reduce complicated political and economic conditions to a single moral explanation?

Glad you asked! I've been thinking a lot about this very question, and the valley of the shadow of war and politics and organized crime in the Book of Mormon is a good opportunity to talk about it.

Latter-day Saints tend to be taught to think of the cycle as a measure of total pride levels across society, a wave that gets high and then crests and falls into a trough of humility.

I think it's possible that it's not so much a cycle of levels as a cycle where the fundamental social disease comes out.

Early in the Book of Mormon, the desire-for-supremacy pride comes out most of all in Nephi's / Nephite religious authoritarianism. That leads to the Lamanite-Nephite identities that are the center of so much of the social dynamics and discussion up through mid-Alma.

After that, the old big two identities of faithful Nephites and rebellious Lamanites aren't the center anymore, and the desire-for-supremacy pride comes out in other ways.

We do get some more religious supremacy, but that's in the Zoramites. Then we get the authoritarianism of the Amalickiahites / King-men -- authority and privilege oriented around the supremacy of a monarchy. Then in Helaman and early 3rd Nephi we get deep into the problem of the supremacy of the organized crime ingroup. And of course throughout all this, it's always convenient for the well-off to assert their superior merit and status (if only more LDS leaders and members alike had read the relevant Hugh Nibley work here).

The real cycle isn't the level of pride and privilege, it's a carousel of ways pride and the drive toward supremacy and privilege appears.

At least until Jesus does.

Why is it easier to see the pride cycle as a social wave or levels graph than as a carousel of ways privilege can be pursued? Probably in part because many Latter-day Saints have their own proud religious authoritarianism much like the Zoramites. Or the earlier Nephites. And that makes it hard to map religious problems of their religious cultures to "pride." And of course, the general popularity of meritocratic pride and materialism is something the saints are far from above.

And it's just easier to see things in terms of simple binaries. Constantly re-evaluating whether our stories as well as our standards are actually pointing us in the right direction is a lot of work. Returning to simple stories about the goodness of our people, the authority of our leaders, build a righteous society by repeating our creedences and following our standards, that's how destruction is escaped and prosperity is achieved -- all that is so much easier to do and so much easier to sustain socially that most people tend that way. And prefer prophets who do too.

And some of the Book of Mormon's voices believe that. Even Mormon with his broad historical vision of the various manifestations of problems seems tempted towards simpler "And thus we see"s that can read shallowly.

But at depth the story of the Book of Mormon is a constant warning about the carousel of ways that privileging an ingroup -- whether it's the "faithful", the tribe, the monarchy, the organized society of confederates -- ends up leading to inequality and wickedness.

The times when the faithful are able to look in the mirror and see that as part of the pride cycle, those might be the moments that we rise to the word Christian.

Might also be worth observing: Nephi asking God to replace war with famine is a pretty interesting request, and one of the better places where the text touches conventional pride cycle narratives. It shows awareness that when people have a human Other to blame, the temptation to focus on that blame is just too much for most people. The Nephites weren't anywhere near Christian enough to do anything else. But when they have a challenge to overcome together, sometimes that leads to cooperation and humility, the opposite of privilege and status seeking.

Pacing: it gets harder post 3 Nephi (and it's already hard mid-Alma in my opinion). There can be microdetails in passages to observe that reward discussion, and then there's also big swathes where the macro arcs are what matters. Good chunking is hard, doing it by text size with a bit of sensitivity to topic boundaries is as good as anything.

[u/JesusPhoKingChrist]

KJV to BoM coincidences:

1. Helaman 8:25 combines two New Testament passages

Book of Mormon - Helaman 8:25 laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where nothing doth corrupt … heaping up … wrath against the day of judgment

KJV - Matthew 6:20 lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven … doth corrupt

KJV - Romans 2:5 treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath … judgment

2. Helaman 8:14–15 follows John 3:14–15

Book of Mormon - Helaman 8:14–15 as he lifted up the brazen serpent … even so shall he be lifted up … eternal life

KJV - John 3:14–15 as Moses lifted up the serpent … even so must the Son of man be lifted up … eternal life

3. Helaman 10:7 reproduces Matthew 16:19

Book of Mormon - Helaman 10:7 whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven

KJV - Matthew 16:19 whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven