Introduction

I'd like to begin with D&C 84. That revelation marks one of the relatively few times the Lord Himself bothers to mention the Book of Mormon in His (canonized) communications with the Prophet Joseph. But what a curious place to bring it up! D&C 84 is the first revelation given to the saints on the connection between the priesthood and the temple. In fact, it would become one of only four revelations privileged in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants with the heavily bolded prefatory phrase "ON PRIESTHOOD," the others being what are now sections 3, 86, and 107 (D&C 3, it should be noted, was actually prefaced with "ON PRIESTHOOD AND CALLING," though it is entirely unclear why). There would thus seem to be little reason for the question of the Book of Mormon to intervene in this revelation particularly: What has the Book of Mormon to do with the priesthood and the temple?

In fact, this odd juxtaposition can be pressed a bit further. It is relatively common to point out that there is something strange about the assertion in D&C 20:9 that the Book of Mormon "contains . . . the fulness of the gospel fo Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews also," since it would appear to say nothing at all, really, about the ordinances of the temple. Somewhat less commonly asserted among the traditionally faithful but equally poignant, it seems to me, is the claim that the Book of Mormon represents Joseph Smith's "early" theologizing, something he surpassed or indeed left behind with his "later" radical Nauvoo teachings. At any rate, this much seems clear: There seems to be something of a disjunct between the content and self-presentation of the Book of Mormon on the one hand, and the complex theology of the temple and the priesthood on the other. Why would a revelation like D&C 84 bring these together?

Of course, one should ask how the temple and the priesthood are presented in D&C 84. And, much more importantly, one should ask how what is said about the temple and the priesthood in D&C 84 ought to recast the way that Latter-day Saints read the Book of Mormon itself. In other words, the very fact that the Book of Mormon is intertwined in the revelation with the twin themes of the temple and the priesthood ought to suggest that we tend to approach the Book of Mormon, to be a bit blunt, incorrectly. That is, if the revelation brings these several themes together, is there not reason to ask all over again what the Book of Mormon is, or how it ought to be read?

This question can be asked all the more strongly with an appeal to the text of D&C 84 itself, which chides the saints of 1832 precisely for misreading the Book of Mormon: a "condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all," and it is not to be lifted "until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon" (D&C 84:56-57). Taking this text as seriously as possible, I would like to suggest that we are, perhaps precisely as Latter-day Saints, prone to misreading the Book of Mormon, to misunderstanding its actual intentions and self-presentation. Rather than reading it first and foremost as a collection of doctrinal sermons that articulate a relatively bland, quasi-neo-orthodox Christology, and rather than following up that approximately theological reading with an emphasis on how Nephite history parallels (and so reinforces our interpretations of) American history, I would suggest that we approach this singular book of scripture as a question from the first to the last of the priesthood and the temple.

The Book of Mormon as having everything to do with the priesthood and the temple: How could the book be read in that way without doing violence to the text? I respond: How else can the book be read without doing violence to the text?


If we take Joseph Smith at his word--and I'm not sure how a Latter-day Saint can be faithful without doing so--then we have to recognize that the Book of Mormon begins as a question of the temple and the priesthood. From the earliest revelation canonized in the D&C: "Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall plant in the hearts of the chiildren the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming" (D&C 2:1-3). These are, of course, the last two verses of Malachi 4 as Moroni reportedly quoted them to Joseph Smith during his several visits on September 21-22, 1823. Of everything the Brethren might have bothered to canonize from Joseph's personal history after his death, they chose these words (the section was canonized in 1876), emphasizing the connection Moroni himself drew between his announcement of the existence of the Book of Mormon and what would eventually be revealed as the highest and holiest ordinances of the temple.


But what is the connection? The traditional understanding of D&C 2 takes the inclusion of these words among the revelations as an emphasizing of the importance of the eventual visit of Elijah to the Kirtland temple, or perhaps as a canonizing of the crucial necessity of doing genealogical work. But the question deserves to be asked: Why Moroni? That is, what was it Moroni specifically who offered Joseph an alternative reading of Malachi's words, and why did he do it specifically when he was there to let Joseph know all about the ancient record of the Nephites? In a word, what was Moroni doing talking about Malachi during his visit, when he had other, perhaps more pressing matters with which to concern himself?


It should first be noted that Christ Himself quoted these same verses--along with the remainder of Malachi 3-4--to the gathered Nephites and Lamanites during His visit to the Americas. That is, there is an implicit connection between the text Moroni quoted to the Prophet Joseph in 1823 and the actual text of the Book of Mormon, since Christ so obviously privileges the same biblical passage. In light of that fact, it might well be argued that Moroni was less playing the Old Testament exegete in his discussion with Joseph Smith than he was being the advocate of the record he came to announce and so of the peoples whose ancestors had once heard the same words from the lips of the resurrected Christ. Moroni's having dwelled on Malachi's closing words should, I would argue, be understood less as a kind of fanciful foray into complex or arcane doctrine, and more as an explicit commentary on precisely what Moroni was himself doing in his visit to Joseph.


That said, what does D&C 2 itself say? Its connections to the temple and the priesthood are perhaps relatively clear, but how might it be seen to bear on the Book of Mormon?

One could perhaps suggest that there is a thematic tie between D&C 2 and one of Joseph's most interesting public discourses on the Book of Mormon. In his vital "Before 8 August 1839" discourse, Joseph Smith raised the possibility of reading the parable of the mustard seed as having reference to the Book of Mormon: "The Kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed. the mustard seed is small but brings forth a large tree, and the fowls lodge in the branches The fowls are the Angels, the Book of Mormon perhaps, these Angels come down combined together to gather their children, & gather them. We cannot be made perfect without them, nor they without us." I have taken these words directly from John Taylor's notes on the discourse, since the version in the History of the Church (and hence the version in The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith) drops the phrase "the Book of Mormon perhaps" in its editorial attempt to sort out the language of the passage.

It is worth noting carefully what this brief reading of the parable says. The kingdom is the seed that brings forth a large tree. The fowls that lodge in the branches are the angels who "come down combined together to gather their children . . . . We cannot be made perfect without them, nor they without us." Here Joseph is touching on what might said to be the essence of his Nauvoo teachings: the sealing up of the moderns to the ancients through the visitation of true messengers sent from heaven, etc. But what is so interesting in these notes is that Joseph cites as the prime example of such a visitation the instance of the Book of Mormon.

And it fits: Moroni can be understood as having come, not simply as a relatively passive messenger who then subtracts himself from the remainder of Mormon history; he comes rather as one of so many angels with keys (cf. D&C 27:5) whose work it is to seal the children (namely, the Lamanites) to the fathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). The Book of Mormon is, in a word, a textual connection between the children and the fathers, precisely the sort of thing that has to be brought by true messengers so as to turn the hearts of the children back to the promises made to the fathers.

Indeed, this is what the very title page of the Book of Mormon explains: the primary purpose of the book, according to the ancient title page itself, is "to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever." This could not, in the end, be any clearer: the first purpose of the Book of Mormon is covenantal. It is only after that that the title page mentions the question of Christology, to which we so quickly turn: "And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations" (emphasis added).

This covenantal emphasis of the Book of Mormon, moreover, is not something that Moroni adds when he writes up the title page for the whole compilation. Nephi discusses it as early as First Nephi: in the course of his apocalyptic vision, the angel explains to him that the worth of the Bible carried among the Gentiles is precisely "the covenants" contained therein (1 Nephi 13:23), and that, similarly, its major flaw is precisely that "many covenants of the Lord" have been "taken away" (1 Nephi 13:26). Indeed, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, in Nephi's vision, is not preparatory to the Second Coming as such (Nephi's vision never mentions an actual second visit from Christ at all!), but to "the fulfilling of the covenants" (1 Nephi 14:7).

The Book of Mormon, then, as a covenantal word--indeed, as the "new covenant" mentioned in D&C 84. Or rather, as what must be "planted," according to D&C 2: Alma describes in what is perhaps his most famous sermon that God "imparteth his word by angels unto men, . . . women . . . [and] children" (Alma 32:23). That "word" he goes on to compare to a seed, and what results is a metaphor that draws on precisely the language employed in the Malachi passage as reworded by Moroni (one almost has to ask whether Moroni did not Alma 32 in mind when he retranslated Malachi's words): "Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts," etc. (Alma 32:28, emphasis added).

Is it not more or less clear from all of the above that the Book of Mormon ultimately cannot be separated from the twin questions of the priesthood and the temple, from the twin questions of angels bringing keys and the endowment and sealing ordinances of the temple? Whatever this book is, in the end, it seems best to me to read it in light of what is too easily summarized as later than Joseph's "early" Book of Mormon theology: the Book of Mormon is, through and through, a question of what Joseph only began to make explicit in Nauvoo, and to read it otherwise is to miss its entire message.

The primary question, then, that will guide all of my subsequent reflections on the Book of Mormon is this: What is this book telling us about the covenant? If we do not approach the Book of Mormon through this question, I fear that we are most likely to miss the book entirely.