The Literary Book of Mormon

Dr. Gideon BurtonBrigham Young University

Presentation to the Association for Mormon Letters

BYU Student ChapterFebruary 15, 2007

Reasons for Reading the Book of Mormon as Literature

• Provides proof of the historicity of the book

It’s Egyptian!

“The first three verses of 1 Nephi…are a typical colophon, a literary device that is highly characteristic of Egyptian compositions, such as in the Bremer-Rhind Papyrus. Nephi gives first his name, than the merits of his parents with special attention to the learning of his father and an avowal that the record is true, and “I make it with mine own hand.” Egyptian literary writings regularly close with the formula iw-f-pw “thus it is” as does Nephi 11” –Franklin S. Harris

It’s Hebrew!

“The second type [of Hebrew literary forms found in the Book of Mormon] is antithetical parallelism in which the thought of the first line is emphasized, or confirmed by a contrasted thought expressed in the second line:

To be carnally minded is death,And to be spiritually-minded is life eternal”

--Franklin S. Harris

It’s Middle Eastern!

Lehi’s desert poems in 1 Nephi 2:9-10 are a literary form Hugh Nibley as identified as an Arabic quasida. –adapted from Richard Dilworth Rust and Donald Perry, “Book of Mormon as Literature”

Reasons for Reading the Book of Mormon as Literature

• Provides proof of its historicity

• Literature is sophisticated, so if our scripture is impressive, then so are we Mormons

• Better appreciate the book’s creation

• Better understand its doctrines

• Better feel its effects

Literary Activities

• Record Keeping• Drafting• Revising / Correcting• Translating• Redacting• Editing• Publishing• Transmitting

Dramatic

LiteraryOratorical

Overlapping Fields of Discourse

Poetical Linguistic

Narrative Genres

Journal / Diary

Family histories

Political histories

Annals of military campaigns

Epic

Parable / Allegory

Detective story

Literary Elements

• Setting• Plot (including flashbacks / foreshadowing)• Characters / Characterization• Dialogue• Figurative Language• Imagery• Symbolism• Dramatization • Narrator and Narrative commentary• Allusions

Linguistic Elements(Diction—level of words and phrases)

• Word pairs (“great and terrible” “signs and wonders”)

• Merisms (“nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples”)

• Idioms (“make bare his arm”; “ends of the earth”)• Aphorisms (“For it must needs be, that there is

an opposition in all things”)• Antithetical pairings (“Jew and Gentile”; “choose

life or death”; “mortality raised to immortality”; “to act for themselves and not to be acted upon”)

Figurative Language

Schemes• Anadiplosis • Parallelism• Antithesis• Climax• Parenthesis• Tmesis• Apposition• Repetition

Tropes• Metaphors• Similes• Apostrophe • Personification • Hyperbole • Exergasia • Polysyndeton

Poetical Genres

Psalm

Lamentation

Lyric poetry

Literary Lamentations

Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.

–from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”

Literary Lamentations

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

–from The Tempest, by Shakespeare

Literary Lamentations

I conclude this record....by saying thatthe time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days.

–Jacob from the Book of Mormon (Jacob 7:26)

Rhetorical genres

SpeechesSermons Political OratoryMilitary Addresses

DebatesInterviews

Rhetorical Elements

Rhetorical ModesExposition

Narration

Description

Types of Discourse

Direct / Indirect

Reported Narratives

Questions

Onomastics(Naming)

• Multiple Names of Christ: 60 names

• New names: Irreantum, curelom, deseret, urim & thummim, rameumptom, liahona

• Conventions of naming places and people

Literary Themes and Motifs

• Obey and prosper (conceptual motif)• Wars and contentions• Pride• Land of Promise• Fleeing• Naming• Preserving• Remembering• Visitations of angels (plot motif)• Sword / word • Imagistic motifs

The Functions of Form

Being aware of formal features of a sacred text attunes one to the various functions and effects of those forms that condition the understanding and appreciation of the text.

Any difference?The Red Wheelbarrow

so much dependsupon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

--William Carlos Williams

The Red Wheelbarrow

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

--William Carlos Williams

What effects from the forms?

• Chaptering?

• Paragraphing?

• Versification?• Layout?

Function of Layout: Chiasmus

A B

B A

Book of Mormon manuscript

Book of Mormon1830 (1st)

edition

Special Attention through Verses

The Psalm of Nephi (1)

The Psalm of Nephi (1)

The Psalm of Nephi (2)

Book of Mormon1980 Church Edition

1830 Book of Mormon

Book of MormonGolden Plates

Book of MormonManuscript of English Translation

Book of MormonA Reader’s Edition, ed. Grant Hardy

(University of Illinois, 2003)

Illustrated Book of Mormon

Book of MormonDigital Audio Edition

Book of MormonFamily Study Edition

The Book of MormonNon-English Translations

Book of Mormon Scholarly Edition

Golden Plates Graphic Novel edition

The Literary Book of Mormon

Dr. Gideon BurtonBrigham Young University

Presentation to the Association for Mormon Letters

BYU Student ChapterFebruary 15, 2007