Book of Mormon Study Blog

KnoWhy #6 “Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records, and bring them down hither into the wilderness.” 1 Nephi 3:4 As Nephi describes movements back and forth between Jerusalem and the wilderness, he consistently describes going up while moving toward Jerusalem, and going down while moving away from Jerusalem.   Hugh Nibley was among the first to notice this subtle detail. “The Book of Mormon employs the expressions ‘to go down’ and ‘to go up’ exactly as the Hebrews and Egyptians did with reference to the location of Jerusalem.” Archeologist Jeffrey R. Chadwick elaborated on this point:    It is important to remember that in the idiom of Nephi one always went  up to come to the Jerusalem region, and one always went  down  when exiting the Jerusalem region. This is also the Hebrew idiom employed in the Bible, where persons in both the Old and New Testaments typically are...

The Book of Mormon “title page,” which was translated by Joseph Smith, ends with a rather intruiging disclaimer for a book of scripture. “And now if there be fault, it be the mistake of men. Wherefore condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment seat of Christ.”  By its own admission the Book of Mormon is not a perfect text, something the book’s authors and compilers themselves frequently insisted. Although the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as contained in the Book of Mormon remain correct, the text itself suffered some problems and difficulties not only in its initial recording by ancient prophets, but also in its transcription, typesetting, and transmission from edition to edition in the latter days. Even so, as Wilford Woodruff recorded in 1841, “Joseph said the Book of Mormon [is] the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than b...