Book of Mormon Reading Group: 23 Oct - 29 Oct 2023 (Alma 1 - Alma 12)

[zil2]

Please see the Book of Mormon Reading Group thread for details (and discussion of 1 Nephi 1 - 5).  Our goal is to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year.  I'll make a new post before each Monday so that it's ready to go - weeks go from Monday to Sunday for our purposes.

This week's schedule:

Oct 23	Alma 2	Monday
Oct 24	Alma 4	Tuesday
Oct 25	Alma 5	Wednesday
Oct 26	Alma 7	Thursday
Oct 27	Alma 9	Friday
Oct 28	Alma 10	Saturday
Oct 29	Alma 12	Sunday

 

Last Week: Book of Mormon Reading Group: 16 Oct - 22 Oct 2023 (Mosiah 14 - Mosiah 29)

Thread Index

[zil2]

Alma 1

v4: Mortality has no point, do whatever you want.  Very popular teaching.  The strange thing to me is that people would feel the need to pay someone to tell them this - I guess it helps them to believe their own lies...

v11: You know you're far gone when you boldly claim that murdering an old man over words was justified.

v16: It's tempting to only consider this in relation to religion (this preaching for money), but really, I think it applies to a lot of things - get rich quick schemes, MLMs, various health crazes, etc. - any time someone teaches about the "vain things of the world" - things that aren't needed, that add no value, that offer nothing in exchange but vain, "results may vary" promises.  How the world loves these false promises - anything that promises gain without work.

v17: God is in favor of freedom of conscience.  v17 & 18 essentially outline the rights of life, liberty, and property.

v24-: Don't let your faith and testimony be swayed by non-believers.  Don't let them anger you or provoke you into a "fight".  The minute you allow that, you have already lost.  (See v25+ for the better way.)

v26-27: A different definition of equality.

v28: Peace despite persecution is something we will want to have now and in the future.

v29-31: The Lord prospers the obedient.

v32: 1-800-Psychic will only make you poor.

Alma 2

V1+: I want to say that the story of Amlici's attempts at power can be used in our modern world to analyze those who seek power of any sort, that those who are trying to change the law to take power from others and give it to themselves can thereby be identified as something we don't want (for example), or those who rile up the people to contention, or betray the nation to its enemies, etc.  But frankly, we don't need this lesson.  Our country's leadership and potential leadership are already awash is such characters.  Indeed, it would be hard to identify one who wasn't like this.   Awaken to our awful state indeed.

It may be of use to remember that Mormon's whole life was lived in a state of near-constant warfare.  That may explain the degree of detail and what details he includes throughout the "war chapters".  (NOTE: I also firmly believe that the Lord instructed him as to what to include, and that these chapters are for us in these days - I frequently recognize parallels between the world around me and the things portrayed in these chapters.  Further, I find no shortage of ways to "abstract" what it said into general counsel that is useful in my day-to-day life, without physical warfare being involved.)

Some examples: Keep track of your enemies (e.g. things that would lead you into sin, your own weakness, etc.) and don't let them gather against you while you're not paying attention.  Pray mightily to God for strength, and life worthy of the blessing.  "Contend mightily" against those "enemies".  Seek the blessings of God not for your own benefit, but that you might serve him.

[Jamie123]

Something's just struck me about the Book of Mormon. Almost no female characters. The Bible has Eve, Esther, Deborah, Ruth, Jael, Hannah, Jezabel to name but a few. As far as I recall, the only woman mentioned by name so far is Sariah. Why do you think this is?

(OK Mary is mentioned somewhere, but it is the same Mary as in the Bible.)

(I'm still racking my brains here. Plenty of mentions of "wives" and "daughters", but none that you would really call characters in the story. None that talk to snakes or hammer tent pegs into people's heads. Well, apart from Sariah. Not that she ever hammered a tent peg into anyone's head, but you know what I mean.)

Edited October 23, 2023 by Jamie123

[Jamie123]

Women in the Bible (without looking them up):

• Eve
• Sarah
• Rebecca
• Rachel
• Leah
• Bildad
• (The other concubine of Jacob - begins with a Z)
• Dinah
• Tamar
• Miriam
• (Pharaoh's daughter)
• Zipporah
• (The girl who greeted her father playing the tambourine, so he had to kill her)
• Deborah
• Jael (the wife of Heber)
• Ruth
• Naomi
• Hannah
• Bathsheba
• Abishag
• The Queen of Sheba
• Tamar (the other one)
• Jezabel
• Gomar***
• Elizabeth
• Anna
• The Virgin Mary
• Herodias
• (Herodias' daughter)
• Mary of Bethany
• Martha
• Mary of Magdala
• (The woman at the well)
• (The woman who touched Jesus' cloak)
• (The woman who anointed Jesus. Not Mary of Magdala - the other one)
• Priscilla* (the wife of Aquila)
• Lydia (who sold purple cloth)

I'm sure I've missed quite a few out... I've a feeling there was a Chloe too... Paul mentions a lot of women by name, but doesn't say much about them. There were also the women who went to Jesus' tomb on the morning of the resurrection. (Accounts differ about how many and who they were.) The point is there are a lot of them**!

*There's a theory that the Letter to the Hebrews may have been written by Priscilla. (Yes I know traditionally it was Paul, but not everyone agrees with that.) I don't think there's much evidence, but it would be nice if at least one book of the Bible was written by a woman.

**I don't know what's got into me today. I'm turning into a feminist!

Also that's not counting the Apocrypha. There you have Judith, the woman Tobias brings home and marries (forgot her name)....ummmm....I've not read all the Apocrypha so can't list any more there.

***I looked up the spelling. Hosea's wife was Gomer, not Gomar.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Jamie123
Disgraceful spelling

[Vort]

8 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Women in the Bible (without looking them up):

Women in the Book of Mormon (without looking them up). These include only named or uniquely specified women, so not Lehi's or Ishmael's daughters (except for Nephi's wife), the tender-hearted women injured by their husbands' brutish behavior when Jacob was the spiritual leader, etc.:

• Sariah
• Eve
• Nephi's wife
• The prophetess (presumably Isaiah's wife)
• Abish
• Wife of Lamoni
• Wife of the old king (Lamoni's father)
• Woman beaten by Morianton

 

[Jamie123]

1 minute ago, Vort said:

Women in the Book of Mormon (without looking them up). These include only named or uniquely specified women, so not Lehi's or Ishmael's daughters (except for Nephi's wife), the tender-hearted women injured by their husbands' brutish behavior when Jacob was the spiritual leader, etc.:

• Sariah
• Eve
• Nephi's wife
• The prophetess (presumably Isaiah's wife)
• Abish
• Wife of Lamoni
• Wife of the old king (Lamoni's father)
• Woman beaten by Morianton

 

Only 3 of those 8 you can put a name to - that's 37.5%.

My list has 37 women, 29 of whom I can name. That's 78.38%. 😝

[Vort]

31 minutes ago, Vort said:

Women in the Book of Mormon (without looking them up). These include only named or uniquely specified women, so not Lehi's or Ishmael's daughters (except for Nephi's wife), the tender-hearted women injured by their husbands' brutish behavior when Jacob was the spiritual leader, etc.:

• Sariah
• Eve
• Nephi's wife
• The prophetess (presumably Isaiah's wife)
• Abish
• Wife of Lamoni
• Wife of the old king (Lamoni's father)
• Woman beaten by Morianton

 

Sarah should be in that list, as well as the wife of the Lamanite king murdered by Amalickiah, who then became Amalickiah's wife.

[Jamie123]

27 minutes ago, Vort said:

Sarah should be in that list, as well as the wife of the Lamanite king murdered by Amalickiah, who then became Amalickiah's wife.

OK so that pushes your total up to 10 women. The Book of Mormon has approximately 275 thousand words*, so on average that's one woman per 27,500 words.

The King James Bible has 783 thousand words*, and my list has 37 women, so that's one woman per 783,000/37 or approximately 21,200 words. That's nearly a 30% increase in womanly appearingness!

There must be some kind of significance test we could apply to this result. Obtain a p-value for the null hypothesis?

*I'm talking about word instances here - not unique words. The Bible has about 15,500 unique words, while the Book of Mormon has 5,616. I know because a few years ago I wrote a program to count them**.

**And you thought you were sad!

Edited October 23, 2023 by Jamie123
I keep getting my numbers muddled.

[estradling75]

40 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Only 3 of those 8 you can put a name to - that's 37.5%.

My list has 37 women, 29 of whom I can name. That's 78.38%. 😝

Your analysis is flawed...

A Culture's value of women will determine will determine how often they are mentioned in the historical record... And frankly most cultures have not had that high of a value of women.  That is is just something we have to acknowledge as simply being sucky.

The first flaw I see is comparing a 4000 plus year record to a 1000ish year record...  Just from the number of years covered you would expect that the bible would have 4 times as many (assuming the cultural value is largely the same)   So while 37 verse 8 seems large and important once we divide by 4 for the time span   37/4 = 9.25 vs 8 seems like a reasonable margin of error.

Another flaw is that Nephites cultural began in 600ish BC.  To be fair we would need to start the Biblical record count at 600ish BC or give the Book of Mormon all the counts prior to 600ish BC because that is a  culture that the Nephites and the Jew shared and could draw on but that Mormon would skip in making a record.

So while a raw numbers count can be fun to play with... but to make some kind of valid point you need a lot more rigor in your analyses

 

 

[Jamie123]

2 minutes ago, estradling75 said:

Your analysis is flawed...

A Culture's value of women will determine will determine how often they are mentioned in the historical record... And frankly most cultures have not had that high of a value of women.  That is is just something we have to acknowledge as simply being sucky.

The first flaw I see is comparing a 4000 plus year record to a 1000ish year record...  Just from the number of years covered you would expect that the bible would have 4 times as many (assuming the cultural value is largely the same)   So while 37 verse 8 seems large and important once we divide by 4 for the time span   37/4 = 9.25 vs 8 seems like a reasonable margin of error.

Another flaw is that Nephites cultural began in 600ish BC.  To be fair we would need to start the Biblical record count at 600ish BC or give the Book of Mormon all the counts prior to 600ish BC because that is a  culture that the Nephites and the Jew shared and could draw on but that Mormon would skip in making a record.

So while a raw numbers count can be fun to play with... but to make some kind of valid point you need a lot more rigor in your analyses.

Ahahaaaaahahaaa! Read my next post!

[Vort]

Not sure of your point, Jamie. If it's a competition between the Bible and the Book of Mormon, well...it's no competition. The Book of Mormon is not the Bible, and doesn't mirror it in structure or even, to a large degree, in content. The Bible has much more of a literary feel to it, and works well as a historical record due to its tie-ins with a lot of profane histories. The Book of Mormon offers few pretenses of literary finesse, and while it is a marvelous history, there are very few if any profane tie-ins after First Nephi; we simply don't have that kind of history for the Americas, and we don't even know where Zarahemla or Bountiful were. Like, we don't know within ten thousand miles where they were.

Nephi's recountings are along family, Priesthood, and leadership lines. When talking of family, he does mention women, including naming his mother. But when talking about familial goings-on and intrigue, he tends to follow leadership activities and those who oppose it, thus focusing on himself, his father, and his older rebellious brothers. After Nephi finishes, Jacob and the rest of the bearers of the small plates also talk about leadership decisions and large trends, both of which are mostly influenced by the men. Mormon appears to continue this pattern. It's not that the women were unimportant, any more than the men as a whole were unimportant. They (women and men) don't get mentioned because they aren't the drivers of the activities under discussion. Had Amalickiah been a woman and still done what Amalickiah did, she would certainly have been mentioned. But it's absurd to think that a woman would have done the spectacular evil Amalickiah did—not because women are incapable of that kind of wickedness (they most certainly are capable), but because a woman would never have been a warrior at the level of Amalickiah and commanded the respect of troops in rebellion. But, for example, Isabel (there's another named woman) is singled out because she, notwithstanding being a woman, was an actor in a recorded action that had a profound effect on the narrative of the story: She seduced Alma's son Corianton in some way. Thus, she gets the great honor of being mentioned. Lucky gal.

It seems as though you're suggesting that women get the short shrift in the Book of Mormon, that there is something ignoble or reprehensible or unseemly or at least objectionable in some way about there being so few women named in the Book of Mormon. That theme certainly resounds with those who dislike the Book of Mormon or Latter-day Saints, including many who remain technically within the Church. (For the record, I do not believe and never have believed you to be one of those, and I do not mean to suggest otherwise.) My response is that the Book of Mormon is what it is, and our whining that it doesn't have enough women in it belies what the book itself claims to be. The Book of Mormon is neither a feminist tract nor an example of politically acceptable 21st-century writing. It is, if you believe its own self-testimony, the record of God's dealings with a branch of the house of Israel, preserved specifically for us in our day to warn us of evils before us and to offer examples of what we should and should not do in our dealings with God. When we focus on trivial nonsense like how many women get mentioned in the text, we miss the vital and important points that we should be concentrating on.

[Jamie123]

13 minutes ago, Vort said:

Not sure of your point, Jamie.

I don't really have a point. The realization that there are so few named women in the BoM just set me thinking. It honestly never struck me till this afternoon.

(I think you know I'm being tongue-in-cheek!)

I did a bit of searching online. One view is that Mormon, being a military commander, was primarily interested in describing wars, and women (especially in those days!) tended to keep away from fighting.

At least, the only exception I can think of in the Bible is Deborah*.

*OK and maybe Jael and her tent-pegging of Sisera.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Jamie123

[estradling75]

30 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Ahahaaaaahahaaa! Read my next post!

A per word count has more rigor.. I will grant that 

Also note that the greater the rigor the more the gap closes... which is my point

[Jamie123]

28 minutes ago, Vort said:

When we focus on trivial nonsense like how many women get mentioned in the text, we miss the vital and important points that we should be concentrating on.

Let it never be said that I've shied away from trivial nonsense! But you're right. I'll try to get back on track with this exercise...

[Vort]

4 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Let it never be said that I've shied away from trivial nonsense! But you're right. I'll try to get back on track with this exercise...

Forgive me if I came across as scolding or lecturing. Wasn't my intent.

[Jamie123]

1 minute ago, Vort said:

Forgive me if I came across as scolding or lecturing. Wasn't my intent.

No problem!  We're both scientists so we're allowed to bicker! 😁

[Vort]

4 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

No problem!  We're both scientists so we're allowed to bicker! 😁

I'm flattered, but there is exactly one scientist between the two of us.

[Jamie123]

2 minutes ago, Vort said:

I'm flattered, but there is exactly one scientist between the two of us.

So we're half a scientist each Now I'm flattered

[Vort]

2 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

So we're half a scientist each Now I'm flattered

No, I mean there's some idiot in a lab coat standing between us.

[Carborendum]

3 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

Women in the Bible (without looking them up):

You missed Huldah, you sexist.  

[Jamie123]

What strikes me about Alma 1 (and the end of Mosiah) is the kind of religious freedom we have today, at least in the West. The people who were practicing priestcraft were at least pretending to believe what they were teaching, and thus under the law they could not be punished.

Alma 2 made me think of Trump protesting against the election result - and the storming of the Capitol! Much more extreme of course, but you can't tell me there isn't some parallel there!

(I've a feeling I'm about to be scorched for comparing Trump with Amlici!)

Edited October 23, 2023 by Jamie123

[SilentOne]

4 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

(The other concubine of Jacob - begins with a Z)

Zilpah?

And I believe you missed Joanna.

[Jamie123]

1 minute ago, SilentOne said:

Zilpah?

And I believe you missed Joanna.

I believe you're right. And wasn't there a Suzannah too?

[SilentOne]

1 minute ago, Jamie123 said:

And wasn't there a Suzannah too?

I think so

[zil2]

1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

What strikes me about Alma 1 (and the end of Mosiah) is the kind of religious freedom we have today, at least in the West. The people who were practicing priestcraft were at least pretending to believe what they were teaching, and thus under the law they could not be punished.

Alma 2 made me think of Trump protesting against the election result - and the storming of the Capitol! Much more extreme of course, but you can't tell me there isn't some parallel there!

(I've a feeling I'm about to be scorched for comparing Trump with Amlici!)

You're not the only one having such thoughts. IMO, a person would have to be purposefully blind not to see some similarities in these events between various parties in our day.