Click to Listen: Episode 6: Nephi 20- 2 Nephi 2
I’m not going to lie, this was a tough one. It starts with god (I think) telling everyone in Israel how screwed they are, and then just shifts to Lehi babbling endlessly on his deathbed. I hope I made it enjoyable in some way… but it wasn’t easy.
Drinking Game count (this will make sense after Episode 9, basically, drink after ever “Yea” and “It came to pass”)
“Drink” Count – 30
5 Beers
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My Book of Mormon 
May 5, 2014 at 9:56 pm
I met a guy in the gas station once, touting Mormonism. He asked if I’d read the book, I said yup, its hilarious.
The look on his face was priceless.
May 6, 2014 at 6:28 am
Draken, you are officially the first listener to post to this blog. Congrats! That’s something that no one can ever take away from you. And you’re right, it’s been pretty damn hilarious so far…
May 7, 2014 at 10:59 am
I’ve heard that the book of mormon is soooo repetitive. If you haven’t hit that yet be ready for it.
I just listened to your first episode today. For the moment, then, I don’t get to share your pain. I have added your rss to my regular schedule of podcast downloads and will post again next week once I’ve caught up.
May 7, 2014 at 7:48 pm
Thanks! I’ll have to make sure I have fresh jokes for when this thing starts repeating itself.
May 16, 2014 at 6:07 pm
The whole weirdness with the garden of Eden is Mormonism’s way of writing out original sin. It’s saying that the only reason you were ever born is because of the fruit eating, so Adam’s sin really wasn’t a big deal.
May 16, 2014 at 6:21 pm
That’s interesting, but I will say again, wouldn’t it have been better if mormon god created beings that didn’t need saving? Like, by default we’d be going to heaven instead of hell? Just seems like a dick move to me.
May 16, 2014 at 8:57 pm
Yeah, that’s what you’d expect. Truly god’s ways are mysterious.
There is no formal commentary on that condundrum that I am aware of, but I can give an amateur theologian’s response I heard in a sunday school a long time ago.
Perhaps God was planning on having Adam and Eve eat the fruit eventually. The sin was not so much in the eating, but in eating the fruit at Satan’s command rather than at God’s command. God’s timetable was disturbed, but no huge foul.
I should note that mormonism formally distinguishes sins from transgressions. Sins are acts that are innately bad, transgressions are acts that are wrong out of technicality. Adam’s sin was a transgression against the law of god like driving a car without licence is a transgression against the law of man. The context was wrong, but there was nothing innately wrong. So we know that eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil is a transgression… but I’m not aware of any other anti-god behavior falls into that special category of wrongdoing.
May 20, 2014 at 3:25 am
As a former Mormon I want to comment on the part of this podcast where Lehi was talking to his son Joseph. There is a lot of confusion over whom Lehi is talking about: Is it Joseph’s kids? Is it his decedents? Who is the son of Joseph that will be a great seer? Well in the Mormon church we are taught that this is a prophecy about Joseph Smith himself. That’s right, the founder of the Mormon church is a junior, his father was Joseph Smith Sr. Therefore, Joseph’s son is Joseph Smith and is a great man, prophet, seer, and revelator. Wow! That must prove the book is true. There’s no way Joseph Smith could be so self-indulgent as too include a prophecy about himself in a book that he was writing. Right? Right? Eh, I found that hard to buy as well. We’re also taught that Joseph Smith is a direct descendant of Lehi through his son Joseph. When you reach the end of this book you’ll see why this is hard to believe. I love the show, can’t wait for the next episode
May 30, 2014 at 5:14 pm
The whole Adam and Eve thing has to do with the core principle of free will. The impact of this principle means a 300 page discourse to explain all the nuances which I don’t care to get into.
It does sound like God set up Adam and Eve for failure, but it really wasn’t. Yes, the Garden of Eden sounds really, really boring place. Two people hanging out with animals…forever. They were innocent like good little kids (side note, LDS people don’t believe Adam and Eve could have children in the Garden of Eden because of this innocence). They had no concept of sin because there wasn’t any. They had a choice to eat of the fruit and had a vague idea of what the consequence would be, but not really a full understanding (i.e., you will die eventually…but since nothing ever died it’s hard to grasp the concept). Satan was right in the sense they would know good and evil, but he said they wouldn’t die (which was the lie). God didn’t give a deadline when that would happen, just that death would happen (spoiler alert: Adam and Eve DO die…its just 900 years later. See God was right.).
It sees Eve was the smarter one and saw the wisdom of having this knowledge…or got bored with everything being the same all the time and though it would be good to change things up. Adam and Eve had to make the choice. We also have the choice to choose what to do, good or evil. Either way, eating the fruit remove that innocence, got the whole having children thing going and introduced death to the world.
June 3, 2014 at 5:52 pm
Yikes. This episode was a reminder. I hope you can survive the Isiah chapters in 2Nephi because I’ve been entertained so far.
Fair warning. Most ultraorthodox Mormons have trouble “powering through” those chapters in 2Nephi to continue reading the rest of the book.
June 6, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Regarding “compass”, “cows”, “horses”, etc, remember that what you’re reading is not the original writing but an English translation. Sure Nephi didn’t know the word compass or the invention, but God gave them a device that had a similar purpose and whatever word Nephi used to describe it has been translated into the English word “compass.”
Similarly, Nephi didn’t write the words cow or horse, but whatever words he did write was translated into those words, presumably because they were similar. There are many animals in America that are similar to cows and horses that various people have named with the same name as they named what we call cows and horses.
Also, horses did exist in America prior to Columbus. How likely they were to be extant in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times is a judgment people have to make after looking at the various fossil records that have been dated to around and including that time period.
January 13, 2016 at 5:11 pm
J Shuttleworth, please provide citations regarding your claim that horses existed in America prior to the year 1492. Also, why are you talking about cows and horses when these animals have not been mentioned in this episode or any episodes prior to this one. Finally, didn’t God provide the Book of Mormon’s (gold bible) English translation? Surely God knew the names of the native American animals that were “similar” to the domesticated cow and horse. Odd that you don’t provide examples of these animals that God mistook for a horse and cow.
June 9, 2014 at 2:31 am
Re: the phrase “in fine.” It’s a Latin phrase that means “at the end.” It’s sometimes used in lawyer speak to mean “at the end of the term/period” (e.g., from the point of view of interest payments).
April 28, 2015 at 1:36 am
So not sure if you’re familiar with the concept of “Felix Culpa,” but this chapter is just a twist on that. A major difference would be that medieval Christians didn’t see it as being God’s original plan for man to fail, but that so long as they did, they were pleased that humanity got bailed out by Jesus.
May 6, 2015 at 7:01 pm
Boring as the chapters might have been, this episode made me laugh so hard I almost drove off the road on my commute home. I was dying laughing. This was great stuff. Hoping you make the Isaiah chapters endurable too.