BOM 1 Nephi 13

Last updated on: January 7, 2016 at 9:47 pm by Dan Peterson

BOM 1 Nephi 13 2016-01-07T21:47:17-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The tomb of Christopher Columbus, in the Cathedral of Seville, Spain
(Wikimedia Commons)

There is much, very much, that could be discussed in the comparatively long chapter of 1 Nephi 13. But, mercifully constrained by the life-saving, self-imposed requirement that I be brief, I’ll limit myself to passing mention of two items.

It’s in this chapter that we meet Nephi’s famous “great and abominable church.”

Many Latter-day Saints, at least during my formative years, thought that this phrase clearly referred to the Roman Catholic Church. (Many probably still do.) And I’m certain that such a view was common among the mostly-Protestant converts to Mormonism, including its leaders throughout much of its first century.

I don’t think, however, that such an interpretation fits the history of Christianity. I don’t believe it’s sustainable.

We in the West have long labored under a distorted view of Christendom that reduces it to a simple dichotomy between Catholicism and Protestantism. (In the Latter-day Saint variant, first comes the pristine original church founded by Jesus; then a brief period of leaderless chaos; followed by the rise of the Catholic Church; from which, centuries later, the Protestant churches arise; culminating in the Restoration.)

In a sense, this privileges Roman Catholic self-understanding, in which Peter was the first Pope, whose successors continued to exercise universal sovereignty over all Christians. But it omits Eastern Christianity. And Christianity, after all, began in the East. Christianity wasn’t founded in Rome, Marburg, or Canterbury, but in Palestine, and its earliest centers were in places like Armenia, Alexandria, Antioch, and, eventually, Constantinople. Granted, the Islamic conquests that began in the seventh century (and culminated in the fall of Constantinople in 1453) weakened Eastern Christendom enormously. But nothing in subsequent history can erase the fact that all of the seven “ecumenical councils” of the ancient Christian church were held in Turkey, that they were essentially Greek speaking, that Rome was often little more than a bit player in them, that the intellectual center of Christendom was in the East for many centuries, and that, during the same period, the Latin West was something of a side show.

Here, from a 1988 issue of The Ensign of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is an alternative way of looking at “the great and abominable church”:

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1988/01/warring-against-the-saints-of-god?lang=eng

In 1 Nephi 13:12, the prophet records that “I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.”

Most Latter-day Saints have identified this man as Christopher Columbus.

I’m strongly inclined, in this case, to agree.

But, critics say, it doesn’t take much prophetic ability for a book published in 1830 to “predict” something achieved in 1492. Joseph Smith was simply writing an ex eventu prophecy and placing it in the mouth of a fictional character named Nephi set around 600 BC.

However, as I tried to point out in a book review way back in 1996, the Book of Mormon’s prophecy of Columbus isn’t nearly so easy to dismiss.

When I was growing up, Americans still celebrated Columbus Day, but he was seen as a man motivated by ambition and materialism who simply stumbled upon the New World by happy accident. Nowadays, he tends to be lamented in certain circles, not celebrated, as an embodiment of Western colonialism and imperialism and as a forerunner of genocide. But these images of him are, at best, one-sided and misleading.

Nephi’s description of how “the Spirit of God . . . came down and wrought upon the man” turns out to be uncannily similar to Columbus’s own self-understanding:

“With a hand that could be felt,” he later reflected, “the Lord opened my mind to the fact that it would be possible to sail, and he opened my will to desire to accomplish the project. . . . This was the fire that burned within me. . . . Who can doubt that this fire was not merely mine, but also of the Holy Spirit . . . using me to press forward?”

And there’s much more in his writing along those lines.

Clark B. Hinckley published an interesting book on this topic entitled Christopher Columbus: “A Man among the Gentiles,” which treats this topic in greater depth and detail.

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