Nephi's violence as 'commandment anxiety'

I have recently been (slowly) getting back into my exploration of what a modernized Book of Mormon might look like, which has meant spending some time in the opening chapter of the Book of Mormon and some commentaries on that chapter. One of the most interesting things about I Nephi 1 (by the original and Community of Christ chapter breaks—LDS editions split this into 1 Nephi 1-5) is that the reader is almost immediately forced to deal with a tension between our protagonist and narrator Nephi’s insistence that he is a good guy of whom God approves and Nephi’s willingness to murder a passed-out drunk to steal his clothes and con his way into taking control of some of his property. One of my favorite things to come out of critical readings of the Book of Mormon is trying to understand this episode: not to dismiss it or to justify it, but to wonder how there might be more to the story than our narrator might be letting on.

For example, in his excellent book Understanding the Book of Mormon, Grant Hardy draws attention to narrative elements that might indicate a strained relationship between Nephi and his father. Lehi never reassures Nephi that what he did was the right thing to do—instead, Nephi concludes the chapter with his own self-justification of the importance of the scriptural record that he killed a guy for and just moves right on to the next episode. Hardy is one of many authors who asks us to see Nephi as a flawed, imperfect, untrustworthy narrator and models how we can use the inherent subjectivity of the Book of Mormon to develop readings of problematic passages as the result of human frailties rather than divinely approved actions. In short, we can read Book of Mormon stories not as “what God wants us to do,” but rather as “what some dude thought—perhaps mistakenly—that God wanted him to do.” (I use masculine pronouns intentionally, because the Book of Mormon is even worse than the Bible when it comes to valuing women’s voices—Carol Lynn Pearson has a famous essay that uses this hermeneutic lens of flawed narrators to ask “could feminism have saved the Nephites?”).

Flipping through Jospeh Spencer’s brief theological introduction to 1st Nephi yesterday, I ran across one of his observations along these lines, which I don’t remember having come across before. I thought I had read Spencer’s volume, but I’ve either forgotten what he had to say, or I didn’t actually ever finish the book. Anyway, Spencer points out that one recurring word—and, therefore, theme—of I Nephi 1 is “commandment.” It shows up all over the place in that chapter, as something God cares about, as something Lehi and Nephi care about, and as something that Lehi and Nephi invoke to motivate others, too. Spencer therefore observes that “Nephi is acutely anxious about keeping commandments” and “willing to impose this anxiety on his brothers” (p. 75). On the next page, Spencer also notes that the narrative connects Nephi’s obedience to commandments with God’s promises to elevate Nephi to a position of authority over his brothers—this introduces the possibility of mixed motivations in Nephi’s insistence on obedience.

Then, Spencer makes a really interesting observation. When Nephi describes his decision to kill a man as something inspired by God, he does not use the language of “commandment.” Rather, describes himself as “constrained by the spirit” (I Nephi 1:110; LDS 1 Nephi 4:10). Spencer’s conclusions from this change in vocabulary are not necessarily to condemn Nephi for mistaking a perception of “constraint” as actual “commandment”—he offers a more ambiguous reading that I can respect even if I’m not sure I’m totally comfortable with. I’d prefer a reading that sees Nephi more like how I see Jephthah: As someone whose anxiety about doing right by God leads him to go too far.

Time prevents me from writing more here, and I think this deserves more thinking, but I’m sure I’ll come back to this in the future.

• macro
• Communities
• Joseph Spencer
• Brief Theological Introductions (series)
• rereading the Book of Mormon project
• Book of Mormon
• Grant Hardy
• Understanding the Book of Mormon
• Carol Lynn Pearson
• Nephi