[Nibley on Wisdom Literature]
The Title of Liberty
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Flag of Kawe
36 Alma 45:23,24 We are on Alma 46. I said it before and I say it again. If this was all Joseph Smith ever left us, it would be very powerful evidence to his being a true prophet. It starts out on a theme that has become painfully obvious today. Remember, we began at the end of the preceding chapter with a coalition of protestors, an action group. They felt their wealth was threatened, and they were going to undertake desperate measures. Who were they? Well, we can find out who this group was in Alma 45:23-24. We mentioned who they were. “And now it came to pass that after Helaman and his brethren had appointed priests and teachers over the churches that there arose a dissension among them, and they would not give heed to the words of Helaman and his brethren; But they grew proud . . . because of their exceedingly great riches; therefore they grew rich in their own eyes.”
36 Alma 46:4,5 Amalickiah desired to be king, and those who supported him “were the greater part of them the lower judges of the land, and they were seeking for power.” Upwardly mobile, career people here. In verse 5 he promised to make them rulers; he promised careers. They were going to have a spoils system. When I get in you will all have better jobs [he said]. He has a backing here, and he is very skillful in manipulating it. Then in Alma 51:8 we also have reference to who comprised this particular support group he had. It wasn’t strong enough to hold on, as you soon find out. “Now those who were in favor of kings were those of high birth [as you would imagine], and they sought to be kings; and they were supported by those who sought power and authority over the people.”
36 Alma 51:17,21 Ambition all over the place is the point. All the ambitious, the rich, the upwardly mobile people of high birth, the snobs. Then in verse 17 of the same chapter: “And it came to pass that Moroni commanded that his army should go against those king-men, to pull down their pride and their nobility.” Verse 21: “And thus Moroni put an end to those king-men; and thus he put an end to the stubbornness and the pride of those people who professed the blood of nobility.” They were brought down to be humble. So we get a very good idea what kind of a coalition this was. It’s typical Near Eastern, Central American—you name it. Anywhere you get this combination—the landowners, the powerful group that gets together and wants to rule the land, as against a popular leader leading a popular cause.
36,37 Alma 46:7-9 We read in verse 7 that “there were many in the church who believed in the flattering words of Amalickiah.” They were taken in because they were more impressed by political and economic arguments than religion. People always are. They had just gotten through a hard war, and the affairs of the people of Nephi were “exceedingly precarious.” They were exhausted after the war. They are split down the center now, and this is the last thing in the world that Moroni wanted, of course. Moroni wasn’t the head of the church; [Helaman] was. We mentioned this before; we see how quick these things happen.
37 Alma 46;:8,9 Verses 8 and 9 belong to what you call “wisdom literature.” It was very characteristic in Lehi’s day. More studies are being made on wisdom literature than any other field today. It has to do with the common ground of the Egyptian and Hebrew wisdom literature. The Wisdom of Solomon is found in the “Wisdom of Amenemope” word for word. The wisdom literature of the [Egyptians] and the wisdom literature of the Hebrews is like that. Nobody was willing to admit it until very recently. You are very suspicious when you find the Bible in Egyptian writings, but there it is. They have finally broken down and admitted it.
37 It’s not surprising the Book of Mormon is written in Egyptian. It’s much more concise and easy to handle. They tell us if they could write in Hebrew they would, but it is too large and takes up too much space. At this time demotic writing was the official writing. It had only been in for a hundred years, but it was the new shorthand. Everybody was using it because it was very convenient. It was so much shorter than anything else discovered.
37 In room 35 (I think) of the Cairo Museum there is an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, Egyptian demotic writing, and Greek. The Greek and Egyptian take up so much space. The demotic takes up just about seven lines. All the other inscriptions take up half a wall, but this one is just like that. It’s amazingly economical That’s why they were using it. If they could write in Hebrew, they would be more understood.
37 Alma 46:10 Then we go on to verse 10 and talk about the tricks here—Amalickiah’s cunning and flattering words. That’s the secret. All through the Book of Mormon you see that’s what does it. Public relations do the thing. As Joseph Smith said, the devil is an orator. He flatters them and tells them the things they want to hear. Samuel the Lamanite said, when someone comes and tells you what’s wrong about Zarahemla you stone him, cast him out, and say he is a false prophet. If he tells you what’s right about Zarahemla, you carry him on your shoulders, dress him in costly attire, and parade him around the city.
37,38 A German scholar, Friedrich Blass, wrote a massive work, a documentary on the proving and testing of ancient documents. Blass gives a number of ways by which you can test the authenticity of an ancient document. The most obvious is this. First, it can be a document [written by someone] like Clement of Alexandria, Philo, any of the apostolic Fathers, or any of the writers in the Patrologia—the Fathers of the church. All they are is commentaries, like science and health. Other people have written their bibles and their commentaries, but they are just commentaries on the scriptures. They are sermons, wisdom literature, etc. That’s fine. Joseph Smith wrote a history. Blass said the one thing you cannot fake is a history, and the longer it gets the more dangerous it gets exponentially. Every time you add an item, you make it that many times more difficult to get away with something, because you are tipping your hand if you are making it up. That’s very obvious. So a historical document is the hardest to fake, and a long historical document is impossible to fake. This certainly is impossible here. He said the best way of testing these is not the broad sweeping ideas and concepts, romantic descriptions, or things like that, but the little details of everyday life that slip in, little casual things. This chapter [Alma 46] is loaded with them, the things that you never suspected. They sneak in on you, those things that a person wouldn’t have known or faked.
38,39 Well, now we are going to have to refer to the Battle Scroll. You all know about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls aren’t daily news anymore. In fact, they have been suppressed ever since 1960. Neither the Catholics nor the Protestants liked what they said. We’ll see why. I must tell you something about them in that case. You know where they were discovered and all that In 1948 a shepherd boy by the name of Mohammed Dhib was the nephew of the majordomo in the house of President Barnes at the American University in Beirut. This all ties up. He was just a shepherd boy east of Jerusalem there, out in the desert along the Dead Sea.. He [the shepherd boy] was chasing the sheep (you all know this). The sheep went into a cave. He threw a rock in to see where it would land in the cave. Instead of a “clunk” he heard a “clink.” It hit a jar. They went in and there were all these jars stored there with documents in them. Then they discovered eleven caves in quick order. They went out there and got all excited. There was a big fight about what the documents were. They were buried there by some people who fled from Jerusalem at the time it was destroyed after the time of Christ, in the year 70 A.D. But even before that in 150 B.C. some people went out there, and earlier than that.
39 We are talking about the Battle Scroll that came from [one of the caves]. One of these scrolls was describing how Israel should go to battle in the last days and in their days, the sacred order given to them with the law, which we don’t have in the Old Testament. What is the sacred order of battle they have to use? Very important are these banners. They talk about their liberties and their families. They figure in the regular order of battle, and this plays a very important role here.
40 Alma 46:12 We have this Battle Scroll, and it’s interesting because of all this talk it has about the [banner]. Let’s read the rest of it “He rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of our God, our religion and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children. ... And he fastened on his headplate, and his breastplate.” Notice, he put on his ceremonial armor, his extra armor. “... and his shields [in the plural], and girded on his armor about his loins.” He is really heavily armed. Then he took the pole with the title of liberty and bowed himself down and dedicated it and the land to the Christians.
40 Alma 46:13 Let’s first take the Banner of Kawe and the background of the liberation of the people by the man with the banner. It’s the idea of it being his coat, because immediately we think of the coat of Kawe. The freeing of Israel is closely connected with the name of Cyrus, who was their great deliverer. It was Cyrus who brought them back from the Babylonian captivity after the days of Lehi here.
40,41 We have in the title of liberty episode a clear and independent parallel, for Moroni’s banner is just like the “Flag of Kawe” He was the legendary founder of the Magi. We are already into Hermetic literature here with the Magi, the same Magi who came from Persia to give gifts to the Lord because they had seen his star in the east. They had seen his star rising; they were astrologers. They play a very important part in the Cabala and in Jewish mysticism all the way through. The same thing happens in the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Battle Scroll, as we will see. We are dealing with one particular episode, with one particular phase of a culture, in which you have a rather complicated, rather exotic way of doing things. The Book of Mormon just matches up to perfection here.
41,43 The parallel with the story of Moroni’s banner is very striking here. The Dead Sea Scrolls provide the link here. We’ve got Kawe and his banner going. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the best control we have on the Book of Mormon, because here the Jews are doing things as they did back there. It matches the Book of Mormon in so many points.
43 In Qumran over 10,000 fragments have been discovered. Every book of the bible except Esther is represented there. [Fragments of Esther have since been discovered.] The “Milhamah Scroll” from the first cave tells about the order of battle. It’s worth the whole book, telling about how these people go to battle, how they raise the banner, what they prescribe on the banner, and how the leader takes over. There were five to eight hundred extremely diverse texts found in the Qumran caves, not just fragments but texts.
44,45 In 1952 the “Copper Scroll” was discovered in Cave 3. It turns out to contain the record of where all the other scrolls are found. It was written by the person himself. The Arabs were constantly discovering these [scrolls] in the early centuries on Islam. They are lost now, we don’t know anything about them. [There was] widespread sequestration of books and valuable artifacts at sites scattered through out the Judean wilderness. These were Jews fleeing at that time everywhere. They had been doing this thing since 3000 B.C. Every time there was danger, they would flee to these caves. Remember, the Lord tells them, in that day flee to the mountains and don’t come back. That’s what they had always done when the enemy came in. We find more scrolls way down south here at Masada.
45 The moral of all this is that “Christian ideas we find here—predestination, election, the duality of the flesh and the spirit, darkness and light, falsehood and truth—evolved out of Judaism as a whole. [Because of the scrolls] Judaism and Christianity cease to be distant theological cousins and become much closer relatives.” That disturbed both of them. The Jews found it much too Christian. For example, they had to organize at Qumran in a meeting with a presidency of three and a council of twelve, and whenever they met they were supposed to have the sacrament, the bread and the wine, which would anticipate the coming of the Messiah. Well, this is Christian; this isn’t Jewish. It shouldn’t be here 150 years before Christ, but there it is and it’s Book of Mormon too. The Christians don’t like it at all because these people were Jews stealing their thunder. The Catholics say they have robbed Christianity of its originality. Christianity isn’t original in the Book of Mormon; it has always been chosen from the very beginning. The gospel has always been there. We find these two things running right together. This is so important for our [chapter 46] here because it starts using the word Christian all over the place. They took the names Christians, and they possessed the land for Christ. What would they call themselves then, if you want to anticipate? Well, they would call themselves Mashihi. The names Christ and Christian [are found] in verses 13 and 16 of Alma 46. In Hebrew and Arabic that is Mashihi/Masihi, but the Jews won’t use that word today. Christ means “the anointed one,” mashah is “to anoint,” and the Mashiah means “the anointed one.” It means exactly the same thing as Christ. Like the Moslems, they [the Nephites] don’t use the word Christ; they use the word Messiah. They don’t use the word Christian; they are the Messiah people. So these people in the Book of Mormon use the word Messiah, but Christ means the same thing. It’s very interesting that modern Hebrew avoids that. They won’t use that word Messiah because that is making a concession here. They call them the NOTSRIM; that’s the Nazarenes. It’s safe to call them Nazarians, but if you start calling Christians MASIHI, as the Arabs do, that means we are in real trouble here. We are admitting that they believe in the Messiah, the coming of the anointed one, which we believe in too.
46 Alma 46:13,14 Moroni consecrates the title of liberty. Liberty is DROR, HERUTH. This may sound like modern American language, something Joseph Smith was just lifting. But don’t fool yourself. After all, what is the inscription on the Liberty Bell? “Proclaim liberty throughout the land.” Where does that come from? That comes from Leviticus 25. That’s Old Testament. That’s Jewish, proclaiming liberty throughout the land. They are just following the procedures since the days of Moses. Under the law of Moses liberty was the name of the game. The Jews alone of all people held the Jubilee. Remember, every seventh year and then every seven times seventh year all debts were cancelled. All slaves were freed. Everything was wiped out. No other people had that. Now that was liberty, because as long as we are in debt to each other, as long as we are under contract to each other, as long as we have to pay off each other, we are not in true liberty. But they knew what real liberty was, and the Lord gave them that command, that every seventh year every slave should be let go. Not just let go. He should be provided for well for the rest of his life. They would take good care of him. All debts would be considered paid off. As long as we are in debt to each other, we can’t say anyone is free in particular. The Jews knew what freedom, HERUTH, was. They talk about it all the time here.
46,47 Alma 46:21 The titles on the banners are very interesting. There are quite a few of them. They always talk about these idealistic things. [such as the] apocalyptic, eschatological, and pseudepigraphic parts of the Bible—those prophets in general, and especially Isaiah, who is the favorite in the Book of Mormon, as he is in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Great equality is the influence here and the influence of apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic. That means this borderline literature that goes back to the Jews, that was lost and has just been found throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This Dead Sea Scroll stuff you would call pseudepigraphic. For example, this is called The Battle of the Sons of Light and Darkness. That’s the title that’s given to this, although the title page was missing. He says what we find on the banners are things like this: “Names and Positions of Michael,” “The Light and Darkness,” “The Angel of the Ancient World.” Then they talk about ‘The Day of God,” “The Place of Knowledge of Justice and Truth.” Finally there’s the calendar. They enroll by families. Everybody who enrolled under a banner had to sign his name exactly as they do here in the Book of Mormon, where it says [verse 21] they came running, and covenanted, and rent their garments. We will get to that, but I see the time is up now. There’s so much of this and it’s so condensed.