Style of Writing in the Book of Mormon
[Style of the B o M:: Sublime, Rapidity, Noble, Simplicity, Direct]
[Gain, Power, Popularity, Lusts of the Flesh]
11 This chapter we are looking at today (3 Nephi 6) is miraculous in its structure, its simplicity, and its directness. So why would we need a syllabus? I think it’s an impertinence to ask for a syllabus when we have the supreme syllabus in the Book of Mormon. It is a syllabus. Remember, this is the syllabus of hundreds of volumes of records. We are told that. So this is the syllabus, and this is the one we pay attention to. Let’s talk about the style of the Book of Mormon. What particular stylistic use do you find in the opening sentences of these two verses? [Answer:] “And it came to pass.”
13 Style is very important because Joseph can’t fool us. He may fool us with the history, which would be very hard, but the style is just as hard to fool us with. For one thing it is written in a number of styles. There are a number of books by a number of authors. They have been copied down and edited by Mormon and Moroni. This is another test.
13 So here we put things together and we find that these people [wrote in different styles]. Did Moroni write in the same style as Nephi did? For example, take the book of Ether. What do you mean by style in this case? How can you measure it objectively? Does it sound right? That’s important; you get the feeling. The feeling is a very important thing. But there are certain [details]. A certain person uses certain expressions again and again. He is fond of using particles that another person doesn’t use, he’s fond of using a different conjunction, or he may use behold a lot oftener than somebody else uses it. Another may prefer it came to pass—so it goes. There are all sorts of ways in which you give yourself away [in writing] if it’s long enough to form a pattern, and the books in the Book of Mormon, fortunately, are long enough—except for the short, dismal period after they settled in the New World and had a hard time, struggling along with all the short books. But you can measure them, and the styles of the Book of Mormon are very distinct. Each book was written by a different person. This makes it very clear, even though they were edited. But the style is important here. The style is not the form. It’s all formulaic. It all follows the same form, as we write in the English form, but everybody has his own style.
14,15,16 Jacob 4;14 The style bears the weight of the message here. You notice that the Gettysburg Address was sincere; it doesn’t [try to] fool you. But other speeches we get about standing tall, the new wind, morning in America, and all this sort of stuff—how far does that fool anybody? This is a very different sort of thing. Matthew Arnold in his classic work on the translation of Homer said, Homer alone is great for four qualities that he possesses, and no other work possesses them. Look at the Book of Mormon—look at the speed. Everything happens in 3 Nephi 6. You say, there’s nothing else left for the man to write; he’s told it all here. Where does he go from there? Remember, it begins like a tempest with a rush and a roar—the fall of Jerusalem, the terrible tensions going on there, all the running around in the dark, etc. And it ends up at Cumorah with the most appalling and staggering description of people wiping themselves out, a horrendous thing. All in between there’s never a moment’s relaxation, including the long sermons and passages taken from the scriptures. So these things are very important, and the first is rapidity.[The second [quality] is noble and lofty]. You have to admit the Book of Mormon is noble here, the way it moves. The third [quality! is that it is si
mple and direct in language— clear, simple, and direct. What is the expression the Book of Mormon uses? “In words of exceeding plainness.” And it is in words of exceeding plainness, so you can’t [misunderstand it]. The studies of Book of Mormon language all begin with a paradoxical fact. Shakespeare uses thirty-four thousand words; he contributed more to the language than any other person by far, including usages and everything else. This is what is phenomenal: The Book of Mormon uses only three thousand words. The fourth quality from Matthew Arnold is that it’s simple and direct in ideas—in content, in the stories he tells, etc. We certainly get involved in it, but these are human events—people speaking to each other and doing things to each other. But he never gets us involved in sophisticated arguments, never gets us into deep and tricky matters at all. Even when Abinadi is arguing with the priests of Noah and they try to trick him, it’s very simple and direct in ideas, language, and content. Anyone can understand it. We have children’s [versions of] the Book of Mormon. There’s no reason why you have to go to them—least of all these horrible animated cartoons, where Nephi, who is able to put on the armor of the mighty Laban, is a little kid about ten years old.
16 What else about the style? It does use what Martin P. Nilsson calls “the epic technique,” taking a breather between lines, etc. Why the archaic language? There are more letters written and more questions about that than almost anything else. Why the King James language? Well, when missionaries go out and preach the gospel in Germany, what do they use? They use the Luther Bible, of course. Is it inspired? Well, as a matter of fact, the translators of the King James depended very heavily on the Luther Bible; we don’t realize that. Luther beat them to the punch, and they borrowed a lot from Luther. It’s a great translation. If we have any questions of what it means, we can always revert to the “original.” We don’t have the original text of either testament. The oldest text we have of the Old Testament is from the ninth century A.D., the Ben Asher Codex. We have eight thousand different ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, none of which are exactly alike. You can take your choice among them, so we make our constructions. But the Book of Mormon sticks to language that follows the King James Bible, as long as it serves, and so does the Doctrine and Covenants. If it has to be corrected or changed, he doesn’t hesitate to give us the other. But we follow that. Why do we use the King James Bible? Because it is the accepted text of the Christian world. You are not going to preach the gospel without it.
16 3 Nephi 6:15 We’ve seen the style here, and we go on now. We come to this tremendous verse 15 in 3 Nephi 6. It tells us what’s wrong. Remember what happened first. The pattern is very simple. It says here the people had prospered; there was pride and wealth, class distinctions, and poverty. It tells us much more than that, doesn’t it? When they returned everything was lovely. They actually rehabilitated the robbers. As a result of the postwar boom there had to be a great deal of public works—lots of rebuilding of roads and cities. There was lots of work, lots of contracts, and a lot of people getting rich all of a sudden. So you have great postwar wealth which leads to the usual pride and boasting. It’s really pride although it doesn’t look like pride, such as the fashionable Yuppie culture, etc. The general contempt we have for those not in that particular culture, the feeling of superiority we have, and the subtle efforts to maintain ourselves as superior [are pride]. We have that in our society. A person wants to succeed. “I want it all and I want it now.” We get this all over the place. You have to have the signs; you have to wear the right clothes, etc. What makes it real pride is the impression that you are above others.
17 Mosiah 4;11-12 We don’t realize that we are all in the same boat; we are all a bunch of slobs really, when you come down to it. Read the sermon of [Benjamin], “I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness. ... If ye do this ye shall always rejoice” (Mosiah 4:11-12). You won’t be beset by ambitions and frustrations; you really can’t fail in that case. If you start out at the bottom of the ladder, you are going to stay there. You’re depending entirely on the Lord. You remember his greatness and goodness. You can have anything you want that’s expedient; that’s the best part of it. Then he [Benjamin] says, you are less than the dust; you’re nothing at all, and I’m no better than you are. That seems like running down the human race. But he is talking in comparative terms, and it is true, of course. We can’t do anything; we are absolutely helpless. We come to the end of the line and what do we have? A good example of that is people who are utterly terrified.
17 3 Nephi 6:12-14 They got rich and were “distinguished by ranks, according to their riches. ... Some were lifted up in pride, and others were exceedingly humble. ... And thus there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up.” That inequality is important. Don’t think we don’t need the Book of Mormon. For the first time we have a class society. There are permanently poor that don’t expect to be anything else, and permanently rich that don’t expect to be anything else except richer.
17 So there was great inequality, and that broke up the church in the thirtieth year. Why should that break up the church? Well, again, read [Benjamin’s] address here. Remember, we began in the twenty-sixth [with great prosperity]. I wasn’t being patronizing when I said, “How many years is it from twenty-six to thirty?” because that’s a staggering figure. After four years the whole thing is going to fall apart now. This can happen.
18 3 Nephi 6:14,15; 1 Nephi 22:23 In only four years just a few Lamanites were true to the faith (3 Nephi 6:14). What do you think of that? “They were firm and steadfast and immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord.” There was something the people were not doing, very obviously, and it was the law of consecration. Now he is going to explain it to us, after staggering us in verse 14 by saying, look, only four years and this happened. How can that be? It’s a natural question, so here’s the answer. Verse 15: “Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan had great power unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity [Now we come to the character in the Book of Mormon known as Satan. Is he real? This becomes a very real issue, too], and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power.” Note that pride comes first of the four things. The last chapter of 1 Nephi ends up with these same four things, warning the people against them. It’s 1 Nephi 22:23. “... all churches which are built up to get gain, and all those who are built up to get power over the flesh . . .” Power and gain go together. He is talking about churches or any societies. The greatest abomination is this composite of gain, power, and becoming popular. You must become popular if you are going to stay in power. Well, it’s all the churches who get gain, power, and popularity. Then what’s the final payoff? The lusts of the flesh, the glitz, the high living Those are the four things.
18 3 Nephi 6:15,16 These are the things that have to be dominant in our prime-time TV, to which I return time and again. There’s the gain; you’ve got to get the money. The money is behind all this—the drugs, the sex, the perversion, the pornography, the corruption. And they are after power. They must become popular. It is not only nice to be popular, but your power depends on it. And the lusts of the flesh are the payoff. It says the same thing in 3 Nephi 6:15 that we are looking at now. “Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority [that’s your popularity], and riches, and the vain things of the world [that’s the fun stuff, the high living]. And thus Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity; therefore they had enjoyed peace but a few years.” Notice, the chronicler himself marvels that it should take so few years for all this to happen. What will the world be like four years from now? Could anybody even venture a guess? It would be wild if you dared to do such a thing. I don’t worry at all whether I’m alive or not at that time. I’m going to have plenty of things to do elsewhere.
19 But here [in 3 Nephi 6] there’s this Satan business. For one thing, pride is inseparable from our existence, from our ego. You have to have some pride; you have to have something to hold you up. You have to assert your individuality and be distinct from anybody else. You have to do that or you will whither. But the question is how far should you go? How far should you assert you own ego?
19,20 3 Nephi 6:16-19 . It’s going to do some explaining here. Verse 16: “Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity; therefore they had enjoyed peace but a few years.” In this thirtieth year they were “carried about by the temptations of the devil whithersoever he desired to carry them.” You have to give him that power though; they weren’t like helpless automatons. This condition is achieved also through the art of rhetoric, salesmanship, and the ancients were susceptible to it. Four years later “they were in a state of awful wickedness [that’s what it amounts to]. Now they did not sin ignorantly.” They weren’t helpless pawns of Satan. He has no power, it’s going to tell us, but the power we give him. All this misrepresentation and false advertising is to lead us astray and make us willing to follow. Being the objectors, “they did willfully rebel against God. And now it was in the days of Lachoneus . . .”
20 3 Nephi 6:20 [Today] people are aware that strange things are happening; strange people are suddenly appearing who are not to be dissuaded. They have suddenly decided to do the right thing, regardless of what it may cost. We’ve never seen a phenomenon like this; suddenly people have decided to be good whether it pays off or not. This is the answer. What can you do in a desperate situation like ours? “There began to be men inspired from heaven.” So let’s look out for them. When President Benson tells us to read the Book of Mormon and look out for pride as number one and number two issues, he is being inspired from heaven, I believe.