for real Book of Mormon

Religion 122H- Book of Mormon
Winter 2010
Clyde J. Williams
Joy Prior
Supplementary Reading
I read the first 201 pages of An Approach to the Book of Mormon by Hugh Nibley.
1- Nephi learned to hunt in Jerusalem. There is more to Nephi hunting in the wilderness then him breaking his bow. As I read An Approach to the Book of Mormon by Hugh Nibley I learned how much hunting was involved while Lehi’s family wondered through the desert. The book mentioned that Nephi is the only member of his family and Ishmales family mentioned having a metal bow. Hugh Nibley emphasizes how his brothers had wooden bows, and their wooden bows had lost their spring. His point was to show how the entire family knew how to use a bow. I realized that Nephi is the only one who has a more expensive and longer lasting metal bow. Lamen, Lamuel, Sam, and all of Ishmales children could have forgotten their more expensive metal bows when they fled out into the wilderness, possibly they lost their metal bows on their excursion, or maybe Nephi was the only one who had a metal bow in the family because back in Jerusalem he enjoyed hunting so much that buying a metal bow was worth it for him.
2- Hugh Nibley mentions how unique a hunter was to the Jewish culture, but that Nephi seems know not only how to hunt, but how to hunt well enough to provide for his entire extended family. I knew nothing about the Jewish culture, but according to An Approach to the Book of Mormon hunters were not very common in the city class. I had this immature imege of everyone living in a hunter gather lifestyle, but apparently that is not so. This realization helped to identify with how difficult it must have been to live in the desert, because they had lived in a city and enjoyed that lifestyle years of camping in the desert would be not only be long, but I am sure that there were lots of things that they all had to learn that their life in the city had never required them to know.
3- An Approach to the Book of Mormon by Hugh Nibley emphasized that Lehi was an ambitious and hard working man before he began his journey into the wilderness. When I used to think of Lehi I imagined a wrinkled and hunched over man wrapped in stripped robes wondering through the desert with a knobby staff. Now, I don’t think that this description grasps the true character of Lehi. If I have ever wondered (which I doubt I have) about the life Lehi lived before “I Nephi…” I must not have wondered enough because in my mind he was locked into one age, the old and weathered age. Hugh Nibley points out that Lehi there is more to Lehi than just him being a father, and purposes that he was an educated traveling merchant.
4- Hugh Nibley supports this idea with support that it appears as if Lehi was familiar with the rout that his family was traveling on. Nibley mentions how nether Lamen or Lamuel complain of their father’s lack of direction. They complained rather about why they were leaving, and what they were leaving, but not once did they complain that their father was going to get them lost in the wilderness. If Lamen and Lamuel had faith in their fathers sense of direction that is saying something. Had Lehi traveled across the desert before? Did he have a map? Did they even have maps of the desert in those days? Or were there special markings throughout the desert that helped travels cross? How would Lehi know about the special desert markings? Well I guess I would have to know if there were special marking in the desert before I can ask how Lehi knew about them. So many questions about Lehi, and every time that I formed another question there seemed to be five hundred that branch of from it.