Once everything seems to be in place for the fulfillment of the promises given to Nephi in 1 Nephi 2, the narrative turns to a second series of visions. Chapters 8-10 describe the experiences and teachings of Lehi, and chapters 11-15 describe the experiences and teachings of Nephi. Again there is a profound emphasis on the intertwining of father and son through these revelatory experiences.
Familiar though Latter-day Saints generally are with the overall "picture" of what Lehi sees in his dream--it is easy enough, that is, to incorporate all of the elements of the dream into a single drawing or painting--there is reason to question the very desire to make a picture out of Lehi's experience: not only Lehi's experience but his very description of the experience is saturated by a genuine temporality. In other words, Lehi's dream unfolds as a series of sequential events; it does not come to him as a kind of static picture. This is, it seems to me, absolutely vital for making sense of the whole thing.
He begins, of course, by seeing, as if from afar, "a dark and dreary wilderness" (1 Nephi 8:4). As in his earlier vision, he is then confronted by "a man . . . dressed in a white robe" who "came and stood before [him]" (1 Nephi 8:5; cf. 1 Nephi 1:11). Again the visiting figure bids Lehi to do something, but now it is to follow rather than to read. Because of the obvious similarities between Lehi's earlier visionary experience and this dream at first, this distinction marks an important difference: it would almost seem as if, whereas Lehi was in his first dream given to reside high in the mountains and so away from the dark recesses visited by the twelve who "went forth upon the face of the earth" (1 Nephi 1:11), now he is summoned from the heights right down into the dark and dreary world. The shift from the position of spectator ("I saw in my dream, a dark and dreary wilderness") in verse 4 to the position of actual participant ("I beheld myself that I was in a dark and dreary waste") in verse 7 cannot be missed.
Lehi goes on traveling--though it is unclear whether the messenger remains his guide or whether he simply wanders on his own at this point--until he despairs and so begins "to pray unto the Lord that he would have mercy on me, according to the multitude of his tender mercies" (1 Nephi 8:8; cf. 1 Nephi 1:20). The immediate result is that a light comes on: "I beheld a large and spacious field. And it came to pass that I beheld a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one happy" (1 Nephi 8:9-10). The imagery of this whole scene, as Hugh Nibley pointed out long ago, is that of a wanderer in the desert: Lehi seems to have been, in his dream, traveling through a dust storm, and just when he begins to wonder whether he will survive for his hunger and thirst, his prayer results in the storm's abeyance and the appearance of a tree--the sign of an oasis.
Lehi of course rushes forward to try the fruit, which he describes as "most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen . . . . [I]t was desirable above all other fruit" (1 Nephi 8:11-12). Struck by the experience, Lehi famously looks for his family, and it is only then that the scene begins to be complicated. Indeed, one must notice that up until this point, there has been nothing to the dream except the darkness, the sudden light, and the tree: Lehi was so taken up by the possibility of finding salvation from the storm, that he seems not to have noticed anything else around him.
Now, however, he sees "a river of water," which "ran along, and it was near the tree of which I was partaking the fruit" (1 Nephi 8:13). He recognizes only now that he indeed stands at an oasis. The source of the images in Lehi's dream, at this point, should be relatively obvious: the entire dream is a reflection of the experience he is himself already actually going through: he had been wandering through the desert, praying for his people, when he saw the fire/light on the rock, and he had, through that first vision and its aftermath, discovered the tree of life--the truth of the coming of a Messiah (though he will seem, as will be seen below, to have understood little about what that coming meant as yet). More strikingly still, he has recently had to flee through the desert to an oasis very like--if not identical to--the one he is seeing in his dream: the tree and river Lehi comes to in his dream may well be a visionary reflection of the very place at which he has set up camp in real life, at a distance from the dangerous wilderness that is sixth-century B.C. Jerusalem. This will prove helpful further along.
It isn't long before Lehi sees Sariah, Sam, and Nephi, and he summons them to the tree in the wilderness as well, away from the lures of Jerusalem. Though they come "and partake of the fruit also" (1 Nephi 8: 16), Laman and Lemuel, spotted a moment later, "would not come unto [Lehi] and partake of the fruit" (1 Nephi 8:18). The situation, again, is exactly what Lehi's family has been experiencing: though Sariah, Sam, and Nephi all come out into the wilderness to dwell at the oasis Lehi has called the valley of Lemuel, Laman and Lemuel have on several occasions refused to come, and a good Freudian would interpret Lehi's dream as being haunted by the fear (or perhaps the desire) that Laman and Lemuel will eventually desert the family and return to the doomed city. Again: it must not be missed that the dream seems to be a kind of symbolic recasting of the situation Lehi's family is experiencing at the very time.
The scene remains, up to this point in Lehi's experience, still relatively simple: there is only the tree and the river on the one hand, and the desert stretching out towards Jerusalem on the other, and the various members of Lehi's family find their several places somewhere on that simple stage. But so soon as Laman and Lemuel refuse to come to the desert oasis, Lehi's vision suddenly expands: "And I beheld a rod of iron, and it extended along the bank of the river, and led to the tree by which I stood" (1 Nephi 8:19). Note that this rod does not appear to Lehi at all until Laman and Lemuel decide not to come to Lehi's family gathered around the tree: it seems to have been uncovered only when Lehi began to wonder how it was possible to get his two rebellious sons to join him in the valley of Lemuel.
The rod is an interesting image. Hugh Nibley mentions in one of his lectures on the Book of Mormon that some traditions claimed that there had been an iron rod leading up to the Jerusalem temple, such that those who would go to the temple had to cling to the rod of iron all the way up the temple mount. Interesting and promising though this is, it must be recognized that, if there is a reference to this tradition here, Lehi's dream effectively reverses it: the rod leads not to the temple, but indeed away from it into the desert, away from Jerusalem and the temple that Jeremiah was busy telling the people was to be destroyed any day.
It is only after Lehi sees this rod that he notices the "strait and narrow path, which came along by the rod of iron, even to the tree by which I stood" (1 Nephi 8:20). The implication seems to be that the path derives from the rod rather than the rod from the path: it is not that there is a single path that leads to the tree, but that those who would get to the tree must hold to the rod, and their many footsteps eventually wear a path into the ground alongside the rod. (The implications of this subtle point for our "application-oriented" readings of the tree of life dream are important, it seems to me: the emphasis is on the rod, not the path.) And, so soon as Lehi sees the well-worn path, he glimpses the multitudes of people.
It is fascinating that it is only at this point, only when Lehi sees how worn the ground is along the rod, that he begins to notice the enormous multitudes of people. Up until this point, his vision has been entirely focused on his own family, but now his perspective is forcibly shifted: the oasis that Lehi had taken at first as a kind of personalized have now becomes the only place that the people in Jerusalem can look to for safety, and they begin to flee the city in droves. Lehi sees them separated into categories that he witnesses in succession.
The first is described, curiously enough, in the language of Lehi's earlier visions: he sees "numberless concourses of people" (1 Nephi 8:21; cf. 1 Nephi 1:8) who are looking for the well-worn path that leads to the tree and away from the doomed city. But because they look for the path rather than the rod, they are lost in the "mist of darkness" that suddenly engulfs them (1 Nephi 8:23). Again the emphasis is on the rod: it is not the path by the rod that leads to the tree.
So Lehi sees a second group, this one "press[ing] forward through the mist of darkness, clinging to the rod of iron, even until they did come forth and partake of the fruit of the tree" (1 Nephi 8:24). This group--reduced from the "numberless concourses" (who, one can guess, flee from Jerusalem as the Babylonians enter it to destroy the temple) to the smaller-sounding title "others"--do arrive at the oasis and partake of the fruit, but then they suddenly begin to "cast their eyes about as if they were ashamed" (1 Nephi 8:25). This odd scene forces Lehi's eyes open a little wider: "And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth" (1 Nephi 8:26, emphasis added). This curious building deserves careful attention.
Hugh Nibley, of course, compared this building with the enormous towers built in the desert cities of Arabia, with which Lehi might well have been familiar. But given the relatively local meaning of the dream that seems quite obvious to me, there seems to be a much simpler interpretation: the great and spacious building is the temple. Just as Jeremiah was at this very time telling the people of Jerusalem to put no trust in the merely physical building that was the temple, Lehi here offers his prophetic critique of those who too easily misunderstand the meaning of the temple in Israelite religion. Mocking those who come out into the desert to hide at the oasis are the rich who put all of their trust in a long-since apostate religious establishment. Lehi and his family too face their scorn--and Laman and Lemuel's decision to stay in Jerusalem may well tell us their own relationship to the religious traditions against which Jeremiah railed.
At any rate, the situation seems relatively clear: what is the fruit of a tree at a tiny oasis in the desert to the great feasts of the holy days at the temple? The wealthy who point their fingers merely emphasize the undeniable weakness of a single--though deliciously arrayed--tree in the desert. And so it is that many who come to the tree find themselves ashamed, unwilling to bear the weakness of the truth, and they soon "fell away into forbidden paths and were lost" (1 Nephi 8:28).
Lehi goes on to describe a third and final group to his family, but Nephi here suddenly interrupts to announce that he will only summarize the remainder of the dream or vision: "And now I, Nephi, do not speak all the words of my father" (1 Nephi 8:29). Whatever follows in the last few verses of the chapter must be taken as heavily abridged. Why? And this question is doubly important given the textual complexities of the relationship between the last few verses in this chapter and what Lehi goes on to say in chapter 10--all of this being split in the middle by a full chapter's aside in 1 Nephi 9. What is going on here?
This truncation of the remainder of the experience is fascinating. First, Nephi only begins to abridge what he's writing when he gets to this point, that is, only after he has described in some detail the first two "types" of people and as he comes to the point of describing the second two "types." This seems, of course, backwards: it would seem that Nephi describes in some detail the two "types" of lesser importance but then ends up summarizing the two important extremes, the joyfully righteous and the betrayers. Second, even as what would seem to be the most important part of the dream is thus shortened down and moved through rather quickly, Nephi turns the whole event back to the apparently central question of Lehi's relation to Laman and Lemuel. Everything else Lehi might have said on the occasion is completely elided, except in that it is described narratively in the last few verses of the chapter.
This return to Laman and Lemuel is perhaps particularly fascinating because it tells us something of the way Nephi sees Lehi understanding the whole experience: for Nephi's Lehi, the dream is a question from the first and definitely at the last of where Laman and Lemuel fit into the experience of escaping the wrath coming to Jerusalem. The concern Nephi attributes to Lehi at the end of verse 36 is, so far as this goes, perhaps the most important line in this last part of the text: "yea, he feared lest they [Laman and Lemuel] should be cast off from the presence of the Lord." It must be noticed that this phrase makes this whole experience a question, rather suddenly, of the Lehitic covenant: precisely as had been said to Nephi in 1 Nephi 2, Laman and Lemuel, if they rebel against the commandments (these being in turn nicely mentioned as part of Lehi's admonition in verse 38), are to be cut off from the presence of the Lord.
What this means is that Nephi's truncation of the last part of the dream-telling experience makes a fascinating weave of two apparently disparate ideas in the text to this point: on the one hand, it emphasizes that the entire experience of the dream as Lehi understood was a question of Laman and Lemuel's relationship to Jerusalem and its doom; but on the other hand, Nephi's way of stripping the final part of the dream from the linguistic command of Lehi (that is, because Nephi is not quoting) allows him to intertwine this apparently local concern on the part of Lehi with the much broader or even more global concern of the Lehitic covenant as Nephi understood it. In other words, what Lehi seems best interpreted as having understood as a question entirely of his immediate family and its loyalty to the words being delivered to him, Nephi is able narratively to begin to turn into a question of something like world history.
In a word, Nephi's way of summarizing the end of the dream-telling experience ultimately works out a kind of anticipatory transition to what Nephi will describe in 1 Nephi 11-15, his own experience of Lehi's vision(s) in a much broader interpretive context (Lehi's local concern becomes Nephi's global apocalypse). What of chapters 9-10, then, if Nephi seems already to be moving beyond Lehi's local interpretation of the dream of the tree of life and so towards his own subsequent experience (in chapters 11-15)? Actually, it is vital to sort out the effect of this truncation because Nephi will do something very similar all over again in chapter 10: there is an essentially parallel relationship that obtains between chapters 8 and 10. This calls for a bit of comment.
1 Nephi 8 tells, as it were, the entire story of the dream-telling experience: Lehi gives his preface to the dream at the beginning of the chapter; his words are quoted at length; and Nephi gives a summary of the remainder of the event, even concluding with "and he did cease speaking unto them" (1 Nephi 8:38). But, oddly, 1 Nephi 10, reopens the account: "For behold, it came to pass after my father had made an end of speaking the words of his dream, and also of exhorting them to all diligence, he spake unto them concerning the Jews" (1 Nephi 10:2). And what follows through most of the chapter is another summary treatment of Lehi's teachings on the occasion, which I will discuss below in some detail. And Nephi again closes up his account of Lehi's teachings as if he had told the whole story: "And after this manner of language did my father prophesy and speak unto my brethren" (1 Nephi 10:15).
What one finds in 1 Nephi 8-10, then, is something like a set of two accounts of the very same event: first, an account of Lehi's preaching to Laman and Lemuel that gives all the weight to the dream of the tree of life, and second, an account of Lehi's preaching to Laman and Lemuel that gives all the weight to another tree, "an olive-tree, whose branches should be broken off and should be scattered upon all the face of the earth" (1 Nephi 10:12). Two accounts of the event, and two trees. If one didn't know better, one might begin to construct a kind of "documentary hypothesis" here: it is almost as if Nephi brings two completely different sources together here, reporting the same event in two radically different ways, each account drawing on the central image of a tree, but in each instance in a totally different sense (the tree of life; the olive tree).
Actually, such a documentary hypothesis is entirely called for: what interrupts the flow between the two accounts is not only Nephi's wrapping things up at the end of chapter 8 and his reopening of the question at the beginning of chapter 10, but also the very existence of chapter 9, which is about nothing other than the fact that Nephi is drawing from two sources (his father's record on the one hand, and his own large plates on the other, this distinction between the small and the large plates only being introduced in this intervening chapter for the first time). The tension between these two sources is emphatic in the text itself: Nephi begins his truncation at the end of chapter 8 by announcing that he has been drawing that chapter from his father's record ("And now I, Nephi, do not speak all the words of my father," he says in 1 Nephi 8:29); and he opens chapter 10 by announcing that he is now turning to his own record ("wherefore, to proceed with mine account, I must speak somewhat of the things of my father, and also of my brethren," he says in 1 Nephi 10:1).
The entire sequence of 1 Nephi 8-10, then, would seem to be a kind of juxtaposition of two very different takes on the same experience: the one (chapter 8) is primarily that of Lehi, an entirely local interpretation of what had been revealed, truncated so as to maintain that entirely local emphasis; the other (chapter 10) is primarily that of Nephi, a much more global interpretation (that I will still discuss in detail below) paves the way to Nephi's own apocalyptic vision of 1 Nephi 11-15; and these two split by an explanation of where the two sources for these juxtaposed accounts come from (chapter 9).
All of this, at last, might make it possible to approach the actual content of chapter 10.
As I read it, 1 Nephi 10 is essentially the introduction of Book of Mormon Christology. Though the Messiah is mentioned in 1 Nephi 1 just briefly, nothing very much is said there about Him: His "coming" is connected in some way with "the redemption of the world" (1 Nephi 1:19), but nothing too much more seems derivable from what is said in that chapter. Here, however, not only is the Messiah mentioned, but something of a preliminary theology of the Messiah is worked out.
The difficulty, of course, is sorting out where Lehi's Christology leaves off and Nephi's Christology begins: while chapter 8 at least claims to quote Lehi's words quite directly for most of its content, chapter 10 seems to be entirely in the voice of the narrator, and Lehi is never quoted directly. The result: it is never entirely clear whether what one reads should be traced back to Lehi's incipient Christolog, or whether it should be attributed to Nephi's subsequent (indeed: much later) theological systematization. That said, however, I will attempt to do some unraveling in what follows.
Verse 3 of 1 Nephi 10 opens the question by providing the context within which the Messiah will be understood: the destruction, captivity, and return of the Jews. The way it is phrased in the text is important: "after they should be destroyed, even that great city Jerusalem, and many be carried away captive into Babylon, according to the own due time of the Lord, they should return again, yea, even be brought back out of captivity; and after they should be brought back out of captivity they should possess again the land of their inheritance" (1 Nephi 10:3). Several things to note: (1) the way the sentence is structured (with its "after . . .") places the entire focus of the teaching on the return; (2) the return, so soon as it is mentioned, is restructed in the passive voice: "yea, even be brought back," etc.; (3) the return cannot be disentangled from the importance of the Abrahamic tie to "the land of their inheritance." Taken together, these three points suggest that the thrust of this contextualizing introduction to the incipient Nephite Christology is that the something or someone will intervene to bring about the fulfillment of earlier covenants.
The next verse introduces the figure of intervention: "Yea, even six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem, a prophet would the Lord God raise up among the Jews--even a Messiah, or, in other words, a Savior of the world" (1 Nephi 10:4). Though this verse is generally read as a straightforwardly correct prophecy of the coming of the Jesus Christ, the context as analyzed above suggests that there is a bit more to the story than just that. Given that verse 3 opens up the question of a specific intervention that results in a return from captivity and a restoration of the ancient covenant, verse 4 would seem to suggest that it is the arrived and present Messiah who brings about that return and restoration: Lehi would seem to have taught, according to Nephi, that the Messiah would come six hundred years after the prophecy in order to bring the Jews out of captivity in Babylon. To be clear: Lehi does not seem to see the Jews as returning from Babylon during the sixth century, but at what we now call the meridian of time; the Messiah's task seems to have been, at least for Lehi, to come specifically to bring the Jews out of their captivity.
In some sense, this is a very Jewish point of view: the Messianic expectations of the several centuries before Christ were very similar, though Babylon was by then an ancient question. The Jews who anticipated the arrival of a Messiah generally looked for a Messiah who would deliver them from Rome and hence who would redeem the land and the covenant on their behalf. Lehi seems, according to Nephi, to have seen things in a similar way, though he makes no mention whatsoever of Rome, only of Babylon.
Now, if this is indeed what Lehi was teaching, we have to recognize that he didn't have all the details, that his understanding of what was coming was, quite frankly, somewhat flawed. This should not, of course, be understood in any condemnatory sense: it is not that Lehi was saying anything wrong, apostate, or corrupt. Rather, it simply appears that Lehi had only a few details revealed to him in his reading of the heavenly book (in 1 Nephi 1) and that he is here trying to sort out the nature of the Messiah's coming. For his part, he seems unable as yet to separate it from the Babylonian exile and a return to the land in fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant.
Moreover, if this is right, it would seem that Lehi understood the Messiah to be a relatively human figure: the Messiah would, as the Anointed One ("Messiah" is a Hebrew word meaning "the Anointed One"), be a king and/or priest who would come to solve the problems of the Jews. As Lehi is reported here as having taught it, the Messiah would be "raise[d] up among the Jews," a phrase that would seem to imply that He need not be understood to be any kind of a divine figure, but simply a chosen Jew, etc.
But if things seem so traditionally Jewish, the very next verse begins to complicate things: there the text reports Lehi as having run through the prophets who testified of these same things, that is, of "this Messiah, of whom he had spoken, or this Redeemer of the world" (1 Nephi 10:5). It is this last phrase that is so important here: the Messiah is suddenly recast as being not primarily a Jewish figure, but rather the "Redeemer of the world," a global figure of intervention. The difficulty, of course, as mentioned before, is figuring out where Lehi's teachings end and Nephi's begin: could it be that the "or" that introduces the final phrase indicates Nephi's editorial intervention here? That is, might it be that Lehi's Messiah was a relatively earthly figure, a redeemer merely of the Jews, and Nephi, in writing up his summary of the occasion, begins to introduce his own subsequent Christological insights into Lehi's discussion? On the one hand, the relatively limited scope of verses 3-4 would seem to suggest that this is the case. On the other hand, though, the phrase "Redeemer of the world" very much echoes what Nephi attributes to Lehi back in chapter 1: Lehi had seen and read concerning not only the coming of a Messiah, but also concerning the redemption of the world.
But then, can the redemption of the world not be understood in a similarly local sense? That is, there is in the prophets--indeed, in the very chapters of Isaiah that Nephi will suggest Lehi quoted a few verses later--a persistent idea that the redemption of the Jews in their return from Babylon will have a profound effect on all the nations, and the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant through the reinheritance of the land will also imply the blessing of all the families or tribes of the entire world. That is, even the mention of the redemption of the world, whether in 1 Nephi 1 or in 1 Nephi 10, need not be taken as suggesting anything like Nephi's subsequent Christological systematizations: it is enough for the return of the Jews from Babylon to have important global effects.
This would mean that verse 6 could be read within the context of the return from exile as well: "Wherefore, all mankind were in a lost and in a fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer." The Redeemer's redemption of Israel would in turn open the way for the redemption of all mankind through the relationships discussed in Isaiah 40-55 (the Gentiles would be saved through their own fidelity to the Redeemer's intervention, etc.). It might be said, in the end, that all of what Lehi has to say remains profoundly Jewish.
So soon as this Messiah is thus introduced, Nephi reports Lehi as having turned to the question of the Messiah's forerunner. And here the question of Isaiah 40-55 becomes quite important. The forerunner is described in the language of the very first verses of Isaiah 40: "Yea, even he should go forth and cry in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight" (1 Nephi 10:8). But the language is, of course, just as much an echo of the gospels, which draw on the same text: "for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose" (1 Nephi 10:8).
That the following verse goes on to mention "Bethabara, beyond Jordan" (1 Nephi 10:9) is significant: it would seem on the one hand to draw on the language of the New Testament rather directly; but on the other it would seem to provide a significant clarification of the themes discussed above. A significant clarification: the forerunner is cast here as baptizing "beyond Jordan," almost as if he were standing at the gateway into the land to which the exiles are returning, baptizing them as they come. Again it seems relatively difficult to disentangle Lehi's teachings (as Nephi reports them) from what might be called a relatively traditional Jewish understanding of the Messiah. This baptist figure, interestingly, then baptizes the Messiah Himself in verse 10.
But if all of the above can be taken as a relatively Jewish-sounding prophecy, what opens in verse 11 perhaps cannot: here the Messiah is killed by the Jews, and He then rises from the dead, while the gospel is preached to the Gentiles and the Messiah manifests Himself to them by the Holy Ghost. One wonders, though, whether it isn't Nephi's voice rather than Lehi's that predominates here, especially because verse 12 goes on to suggest that Lehi's emphasis was on the Gentiles rather than on the events of the Messiah's death and resurrection. Again, though, it is too difficult to make these kinds of decisions, at least as yet.
Regardless of whose ideas are reflected in verse 11, the story that begins to be told with verse 12 is one that must be taken as parallel to the story of 1 Nephi 8: there is here a story about a tree, specifically an olive tree. Its branches are "scattered upon all the face of the earth" (1 Nephi 10:13) eventually to be "gathered together again" (1 Nephi 10:14), all of this being a question of the story of the Gentiles. The details are hardly worked out in any overarchingly significant way in this chapter (and they receive heavy emphasis, of course, in Jacob 5), but it is worth noting that there are two specific trees to be reckoned with in Lehi's teachings to Laman and Lemuel on this occasion.
When all of this wraps up about verse 16 or so, Nephi is left with the mystery of the two trees, and so that last six verses make a marvelous transition from Lehi's experiences to Nephi's subsequent experiences in 1 Nephi 11-15. Whatever Christology can be read into the story that Lehi had to tell, it will be worked out in much greater detail in Nephi's own visionary experience. The transition (1 Nephi 10:17-22) deserves a good deal of attention, but I will only summarize it here by pointing ot its transitional purpose. Attention, so far as the unraveling of the covenant goes, must be turned from Lehi's two trees in 1 Nephi 8-10 to Nephi's two trees in 1 Nephi 11-15.
3 comments:
I like your thoughts here, Joe--this blog is a great way for you to systematically lay out your thoughts on the Book of Mormon. I'm enjoying it significantly.
I do think, however, that the equation of the great and spacious building with the Jerusalem temple is a bit tenuous. The temple is such a symbolic item that I think it would be more explicitly identified in a visionary experience. And since we don't have Nephi's abridgment as yet, I think it's most likely that Lehi was simply seeing a large building. It does seem to represent Jerusalem in some way, but *as* the temple... I think I'll have to think further on this, but my initial impression is to disagree.
Second, I think that closely looking at the beginnings of "Nephite Christology" is right on. I also imagine that Lehi's understanding of the Messiah was very much shaped by the 'Judaism' of his day. Something in all of this makes me a little wary of your reading, however. I just haven't put my finger on it yet.
Logic would dictate that I actually *think* through my thoughts before posting them, but perhaps this initial reaction can be useful as well.
All in all, great food for thought, Joe! I'm continually faced with the injunction to get to work!
Another thought: I don't think Lehi assumed that he had reached the promised land in 1 Nephi 5:5--he hadn't been very far out of Jerusalem yet (just a few months). Could he really have seen the "promised land" being on the doorstep of the city about to be destroyed? The city from which he had escaped with his life and a genealogical record? I think it's more likely that he was speaking about the covenant that had been established: he had obtained that covenant, and *with* it, the promised land.
I do agree with Joe that the great and spacious building WAS the temple of the Priest/Deuteronomist group. According to Margaret Barker and others, they had removed much of the symbolism out of the temple, including the tree of life and angelic visitations.
Here we have Lehi receiving the true endowment that had been lost to Israel, but restored to the Nephites. Still, the apostate Jews would hang out the windows of the apostate temple and mock at Jeremiah and the other prophets who sought the old ways around the tree of life.
As for the two versions of the vision; I believe it has more basis in the focus both Lehi and Nephi give. Lehi is focused solely on his family, and so receives a Christology based upon the family - a local messiah to save loved ones. Jehovah was still a local God in Lehi's mind, the Diaspora not yet occurring to cause the Messiah to be able to dwell in other lands.
Nephi is forward looking, seeing his role as founder of a new nation, and his Messiah therefore must also show forth such power and prowess; the ability to be God in whatever place and time the Nephite nation finds itself.
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