A Book of Mormon Flood Narrative (Part II)

Part II of the essay I wrote comparing the Jaredite journey across the ocean to the Americas to other near-eastern flood narratives, especially that of Noah. This part considers more similarities between traditional flood narratives and the Jaredite account, and then compares the Ether account with the Genesis account more fully--especially in light of the documentary hypothesis, which by itself is able to be explored in more detail in future articles.

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There is one area where the Ether account varies somewhat from the others. After the flood in Genesis withdrew, Noah built an altar and offered sacrifice to the Lord.[31] When Deucalion and Pyrrha exited their craft, they also built altars to appease their gods, then continued on and made temples for them as well.[32] One of the first things Atra-Hasis did once back on dry land was build an altar and offer sacrifice; his gods, who had unwittingly deprived themselves of the sweet scents of a burnt offering after drowning all of the humans, are said to have “gathered [like flies] over the offering.”[33] As for the Jaredites, there is no mention of an altar or a sacrifice. Instead, the record merely states that the people of Jared “bowed themselves down upon the face of the land, and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them.”[34] While it is still apparent that the people expressed gratitude to their God for saving them from the flood, this does show a departure from the other texts. However, this seems more like an omission on the part of a later editor than anything, especially since the chapters immediately previous to this are a parenthetical insertion from one of the men who, in the very last years of the historical period portrayed in the Book of Mormon, abridged the many texts that now make up the Book of Mormon. It reads as though this man (whose name was Moroni), after finishing his personal commentary, returned to the record a little haphazardly, perhaps glossing over parts of the account to shorten the overall length of the record. Moroni was writing on plates made of precious gold, which was in scarce supply to him at the moment—at this time, he was actually living as an outlaw, on the run from a civilization that had just destroyed his own. In an earlier part of the Book of Mormon, he wrote, “And behold, I would write it also if I had room upon the plates, but I have not; and ore I have none, for I am alone.”[35] It seems likely, then, that in order to conserve the dwindling space on his plates, he swept over large parts of the stories he abridged, thus leaving us with a very bare record in comparison with the original.

Ether departs again from the Mesopotamian accounts by not ascribing an incredible longevity to its protagonist, but it is not alone in this, as the Biblical Noah account does the same. In the story of Atra-Hasis, the gods devise numerous schemes to eradicate humankind spreading over a number of millennia, but the titular hero is always there to stop them, as though unaffected by the passing of thousands of years.[36] According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim was granted immortality after escaping the flood. This, in fact, is the very reason Gilgamesh sought him out; the warrior had grown to fear death, and so he wished to discover the secret of immortality from Utnapishtim.[37] Noah, on the other hand, receives no such blessing, and neither does the brother of Jared. Noah, it would seem, was destined for something less ambitious than immortality.

Looking at the etymology of a few of the names produces a similar dichotomy. For example, another Mesopotamian flood hero is named Ziusudra (or Xisouthros, depending on the source), whose name can be translated as “Life unto distant days.”[38] As for Noah, Kraeling notes: “The root nū ^aḫ, from which Noah is manifestly derived, means first of all 'to settle down,' and then 'to rest.'”[39] The same root is used in Proverbs 21:16, in reference to settling down, or “remaining,” in the “congregation of the dead.”[40] Thus, while a common theme for the Mesopotamian flood narratives was immortality, the hero of the Genesis flood seems, if anything, resigned to “settle down” or “rest” eternally, along with the rest of humanity. If that be the case, then the brother of Jared would be resting there with him; after mentioning how the Jaredites had spread and multiplied across the land, the book mentions the brother of Jared as growing old and, eventually, as dying.[41] But while the Genesis and Ether accounts may not afford their heroes immortality, they both make specific mention to their protagonists multiplying. Concerning Noah, the Bible says: “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”[42] Concerning the brother of Jared, the book of Ether reports: “And it came to pass that [the Jaredites] began to spread upon the face of the land, and to multiply and to fill the earth....Now the number of the sons and the daughters of the brother of Jared were twenty and two souls....”[43] From looking at these two accounts, it seems that in the Hebrew flood narratives, rather than being awarded longevity through a gift of immortal life, the heroes of said accounts are granted longevity in their posterity. This would make sense given another major player in Hebrew traditions—Abraham, who the Bible records as being told by the Lord, “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore.”[44]

This is but the first of many characteristics shared between the Genesis and Ether accounts exclusively. This is understandable, given that they share the same basic religious background. With that in mind, it would make sense for the Ether account to most closely resemble the Biblical, and vise versa. Curiously enough, while the Bible refers to the deity involved as either “God” or “the Lord,”[45] in the Ether account, the deity behind the whole story is constantly referred to as only “the Lord.” In the English Bible, the titles translated as “God” and “the Lord” come from different Hebrew source-words; “God” is a translation of Elohim, while “the Lord” comes from Yahweh, or Jehovah.[46] Though often considered by modern readers to be one and the same, these are believed to actually refer to two separate deities: Yahweh, who was worshiped earlier in history, and Elohim, who was worshiped later. Biblical authors who wrote during these different periods would use the name they considered sacred as the name of God in their text; sometimes, when combining an “older” story with a “newer” one, the story would include both names.[47] This fact is especially evident in the story of Noah, where in some places the deity in question seems to switch from verse to verse.[48] Evidence strongly implies that the Hebrew Bible is mostly an amalgamation of what are known as the earlier “Jahwist” versions and the later “Elohist” versions[49]. The Book of Mormon, being a record entirely separate from the Bible, wasn't subject to the same redactions, although the book clearly tells us that the records in the Book of Mormon were abridged by editors immediately prior to the book's end. This editing is especially evident with the book of Ether, which seems to have gone through several editors before arriving as it is today. The book itself claims to be written by a prophet named Ether at the very close of Jaredite history; however, being a history of the entire civilization, it is no doubt based upon other records that were kept by the Jaredites throughout their existence, and therefore consists mostly of a historical account largely edited by Ether. This is then translated and edited by Moroni, one of the two principle redactors of the Book of Mormon (the first being his father, Mormon, for whom the whole book was named). Thus, to at least some extent, the original story had to have been affected by its editors, much as the Bible was. Judging from the rest of the Book of Mormon, it would seem that the authors (and especially the editors, Mormon and Moroni) could be loosely classed as “Jahwists,”[50] and so it should come as no surprise that the Ether account, as filtered through Moroni, is very Jahwistic. Bear in mind, the history of Mormon and Moroni's civilization begins about thirteen years prior to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. This would mean that the scriptures taken with Moroni's ancestors and used throughout their culture's history were, by that time, already Elohistic;[51] thus the classification of the Book of Mormon theologians, then, may be considered something akin to “Elohist-influenced Jahwists.”

The Jahwist verses in the Genesis account show Jehovah to be a fierce and wrathful god. It is he who is sorry to have ever made man, and he who declares venomously, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air.”[52] While the first Elohist command to gather animals for the ark mentions only gathering them in pairs,[53] the second Jahwist account commands that the “clean” animals used in sacrifices should be gathered in higher numbers[54]—presumably to allow Noah to continue making sacrifices to Yahweh.[55]

The Yahweh of Ether sounds very much like his Genesis counterpart. He is constantly described as being angry or destructive. Early in the record, when describing the time period when Jared and his family lived, the author wrote, “...At the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth....”[56] Later, the brother of Jared enters into a covenant with Yahweh in order to enter the promised land: “And he [Yahweh] had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fullness of his wrath should come upon them.”[57] After living beside the sea for several years, the brother of Jared was chastened by the cloud-veiled Yahweh “for the space of three hours” because the man had “remembered not to call upon the name of the Lord.”[58] Yahweh's next words to the brother of Jared draw the connection between Ether and Genesis even tighter: “I will forgive thee and thy brethren of their sins; but thou shalt not sin any more, for ye shall remember that my Spirit will not always strive with man.”[59] Compare this with his nearly identical words in Genesis: “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh.”[60]

Samuel Shaviv has a different interpretation of the Jahwist and Elohist accounts of the Noachite flood. He argues that the account shouldn't be read as two separate stories mashed together; rather, it should be considered the byproduct of an earlier polytheistic version, in which the high god Elohim and the lesser god Yahweh argue back and forth over whether or not to wipe out humanity.[61] When thus comparing the vicious and warlike Yahweh with the more peaceful and caring Elohim, one is reminded of the divine duels at the heart of the other Flood Narratives.[62] In fact, a key ingredient of each seems to the angry god seeking death being undermined by the loving god saving a chosen person or persons. For the Mesopotamians, the angry god Enlil stirred up the other gods into a frenzy every 1200 years to try and destroy the bothersome humans, at which time the more merciful Enki would go to Atra-Hasis and prepare him for the coming blight.[63] In Deucalion's version, Zeus was the obstinate god who, to borrow a phrase from Ether, “swore in his wrath” to destroy mankind; opposed to this was the titan Prometheus, who warned Deucalion and Pyrrha to stay in their chest and ride out the deluge.[64]

If the typical flood-narrative polytheism is obscure in Genesis, then it seems entirely missing from Ether; that too, like the Bible account, may be the work of later editing which chose to preserve only the parts involving Yahweh. Looking again at the verse where the author writes, “Whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fullness of his wrath should come upon them,”[65] it seems a pretty clear indicator that the Lord mentioned is a lone deity, what with the emphasis on the word "only." However, compare that with what follows:

And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fullness of his wrath shall come upon them....For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off....And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God...that ye may not bring down the fullness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of this land have hitherto done. (Ether 2:9-11)

It is especially evident in the closing sentiment ("...as the inhabitants of this land have hitherto done") that these are the words of a man who has already lived in the Americas and is speaking about the history of the inhabitants in the past tense; in short, these are the words of Moroni coming to us centuries after the story at hand, not the original words of the brother of Jared. The transition between the Lord speaking to the brother of Jared, and Moroni speaking parenthetically, is heavily blurred; it's entirely possible that Moroni redacted the text to eliminate unwanted polytheistic passages and better express his own monotheistic religious views.

This poses an idea contrary to common Mormon belief about the nature of the Godhead. While Mormons do indeed believe in a separately embodied Godhead as opposed to a three-in-one trinity,[66] and while Mormon scriptures do indeed mention multiple gods,[67] there is still a strict belief that the only being worshiped by Mormons as a God is Elohim, or Heavenly Father. Yahweh, according to traditional Mormonism, is the same being as Jesus Christ. Thus, the problem that may arise is: Should this theory be true, would the Godhead be better acknowledged as three polytheistic gods—gods who at times are known to quarrel amongst themselves?

Distasteful as some may find it, the three beings in the Mormon Godhead may be considered gods in their own right. One might look at it and suggest that a view of a separately embodied Godhead is, in its very essence, polytheistic (although such a term is inherently disliked by those who believe in this form of Christianity), and as the beings are separate in form, perhaps they are separate in temperament as well, not unlike Enlil and Enki or Zeus and Prometheus. While the Ether narrative contains no explicit mentions of a polytheistic pantheon of gods, it does prominently bear the scars of redaction from a much later form of Yahweh worship. It's not difficult to imagine Moroni, like his Biblical counterpart redactors, removing "unsavory" bits to highlight instead (or entirely create) pro-Jahwist sentiments in a document written during a much different era of worship.

In summary, the origin story of the Jaredite civilization as contained in the Book of Mormon shows unmistakable similarities with the ancient Flood Narratives. It begins with divine displeasure targeted at humanity. The solution for this problem is decided by deity to be a curse—often a literal flood, but in the case of the Ether account, a dispersion across an ocean—that would eradicate the problem mankind was causing. In an act of mercy, a righteous man is spared from the curse, along with his household. This same man is commanded to gather pairs of all animals in order to save them too. He then is told to board some manner of vessel and brave a treacherous water voyage. When the journey is finished, he offers gratitude to his god or gods as thanks for their mercy, then experiences some form of “longevity,” either in the form of an extension of his mortal life, or of a multitude of offspring. The story itself acts as a bridge between two important segments of a culture's history. In all these points and more, the story of the brother of Jared can be matched with the stories of Atra-Hasis, Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, Deucalion, and Noah as a Flood Narrative.

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[31] Genesis 8:20.

[32] Kraeling, “Xisouthros,” 181.

[33] Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis, 99.

[34] Ether 6:12.

[35] Mormon 8:5.

[36] Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis, 67-85.

[37] Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic, 75-88

[38] E. G. Kraeling, “The Interpretation of the Name Noah in Gen. 5:29,” Journal of Biblical Literature 48, no. 3/4 (1929), 139-140.

[39] Ibid., 141. Kraeling also points out a pun on Noah's name in Genesis 8:4, which says “...The ark rested...upon the mountains of Ararat.”

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ether 6:18-19, 29.

[42] Genesis 9:1.

[43] Ether 6:18, 20.

[44] Genesis 22:17.

[45] See, for example, the differences between Genesis 5:5 and 5:6.

[46] Although “Yahweh” can be spelled a number of different ways (Jahweh, Jehovah), I have used the spelling most common to academics on the subject.

[47] Gordon J. Wenham, “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative,” Vetus Testamentum 28, No. 3 (1978): 336.

[48] Samuel Shaviv, “The Polytheistic Origins of the Biblical Flood Narrative,” Vetus Testamentum 54, No. 4 (2004): 543.

[49] Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg, The Book of J (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 273. In addition to the two scriptural accounts mentioned in the text, there were also “Deuteronomist” and “Priestly” accounts, followed later by general Torah redactors such as Ezra.

[50] See, for example, Moroni 10:34, the very last verse in the Book of Mormon, where Moroni writes, “I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead” (Emphasis mine).

[51] Bloom and Rosenberg, The Book of J, 6.

[52] Genesis 6:6-7.

[53] Genesis 6:19-21.

[54] Genesis 7:2-3.

[55] Shaviv, “The Polytheistic,” 547.

[56] Ether 1:33. Emphasis mine.

[57] Ether 2:8.

[58] Ether 2:14.

[59] Ether 2:15.

[60] Genesis 6:3.

[61] Shaviv, “The Polytheistic,” 527-528.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis, 67.

[64] Fantham, Ovid's Metamorphoses, 29.

[65] Ether 2:8.

[66] See Doctrine and Covenants 130:22

[67] See Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20, 37.

A Book of Mormon Flood Narrative (Part I)

About a year and a half ago, I took an Honors English course at BYU called "Writing About Religion" (Honors 300R) taught by Boyd Peterson. It was, in hindsight, one of my favorite classes at BYU (at least so far) and one of the most influential to my personal writing and research style. As a final project for that class, I wrote the following article over a two and a half day period locked away in the campus library until the wee hours of the morning.

Due to its length, it will be presented in two parts.

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When considered as a historical document, the Book of Mormon—a book considered scripture by several churches, most notably the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ—offers many interesting parallels with ancient beliefs and customs. Such parallels not only indicate to at least some degree a possible ancient origin for the text, they also open an avenue for further clarification of those same practices mirrored therein. A remarkable parallel exists in the latter half of the book, in a section known as the Book of Ether, where a group of nomads called the Jaredites migrated away from the vicinity of the tower of Babel and, eventually, traveled by boat to the Americas. This exodus marked the departure of this story from the Biblical account, and in order to represent this important transition period, the author or authors of the account relied on the common Near Eastern archetype of a flood narrative. The evidence of this can be seen when the story elements common to several different narratives are compared with the Ether account; also, because of the similarity of the two, special comparison may be made between the Ether and the Genesis accounts.

In saying this, it should be understood that the story of the Jaredite exodus is not a flood account in and of itself; as it is, it doesn't even have a proper flood! Rather, it relies on the conventions and symbols common to flood accounts to offer an origin story for the Jaredite civilization. Most flood narratives act as bridges between two distinct periods of civilization[1]—most often between the more myth-based earlier years and the more history-based later years.[2] In like manner, the Ether account uses flood imagery to bridge their early history (doubtless considered mythic to later Jaredites, especially after living in the Americas for hundreds of years) with their later history (again, doubtless based on more concrete historical records). The Book of Ether makes it clear that the Jaredites both knew of and were, in general, inclined towards the same manner of worship as their contemporary Hebrews. It can therefore be reasoned that they had a knowledge of the story of Noah's flood, if such a story already existed among the Hebrews at the time;[3] at the very least, they were probably familiar with Mesopotamian flood myths, coming as they did from Babel in the plains of Shinar.[4] In any case, there are certain elements that almost all major flood narratives hold in common, most especially the Mesopotamian myths (be the protagonist Utnapishtim, Xisouthros/Ziusudra, or Atra-Hasis), the Genesis flood story, and the Greek myth of Deucalion, the son of Prometheus; and these same elements are present in the Ether account.

Invariably, the story begins as a dispute between Deity and mankind. For the God of Noah, it was the disobedience of creation that got his ire up, and so he decreed to let lose the waters of heaven and earth and wipe the land clean of its wicked hosts.[5] For Deucalion, Zeus' rage at the cannibal sacrifice of the wicked king Lycaon led to his disappointment with man in general and his destruction of all men on the earth.[6] For Atra-Hasis, the source is less religious in nature: the gods seek to destroy mankind because, as the men have multiplied, they have become noisier and noisier, and the gods can find no rest.[7] Something must be done about these problems, and in each case it is decided to eradicate mankind from the face of the earth.

However, there is always a righteous man whose family is spared. Atrahasis was a prominent king with a keen friendship with the god Enki; after this same god was forced by the other gods to unleash the flood, Enki tells Atra-Hasis to gather his family and build a boat.[8] The Bible states that Noah was a “just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God,” and for his righteousness he was told that he and his kin needed to build an ark to protect themselves from the flood.[9] In the Greek, Deucalion was a pious man, and so, being apprised of Zeus' wrath, hid himself and his wife in a large wooden chest.[10] In every story, the narrative's protagonist saved not only his family and possessions, he rescued two of every kind of animal as well, thus preserving the various species for after the deluge.[11]

Time passed and the rains came down, and the peoples of the earth were destroyed; whether it was Zeus, the Babylonian gods, or the God of the Hebrews who instigated the torrent, inevitably the belligerent humans are drowned. In spite of this destruction, the few chosen survivors resided safely aboard their vessels, and when the waters receded enough, they landed safely atop a mountain. They then offered sacrifice, either to appease the angry deities who caused the flood, or to thank the pleasant deities who spared their lives. The flood abated, and mankind began again to multiply—whether by natural means, as with Noah and his sons, or by supernatural, as with Deucalion.[12]

The account as recorded in the Book of Ether is no less exciting than any of the previous examples. The ancestors of the Jaredites originally inhabit the area of the tower of Babel (which Emil G. Kraeling asserts would be better rendered “the city of Babel,” or Babylon).[13] One of their number, a man named Jared, was forewarned of the impending curse upon Babel, and so he implored his brother (referred to throughout as “the brother of Jared”): “Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.”[14] This same brother of Jared becomes the story's main protagonist, despite never being specifically named in the text.[15]

Upon pleading with the Lord, the brother of Jared receives the following command: “Go to and gather together thy flocks, both male and female, of every kind; and also of the seed of the earth of every kind; and thy families; and also Jared thy brother and his family; and also thy friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families.”[16] After gathering the people and animals mentioned in the command, Jared and his brother lead their band away from Shinar and into the wilderness, with constant supervision coming from the Lord in the form of a cloud to the brother of Jared. Out there, away from Babel, they crossed the land in a great caravan, often passing through various bodies of water in ships referred to as “barges.” Eventually, the migrants arrive at the edge of the ocean, where they encamp for several years. After four years, the brother of Jared again speaks with the Lord, and is told that he and the rest of the people shall once more construct their barges, only this time they will use them to cross the ocean and arrive in the Americas (referred to as the “Promised Land”).[17]

Following this is a lengthy aside where the brother of Jared, concerned for the welfare of his tribe while on board these barges, asks the Lord for help. Specifically, he asks the Lord to find a way for the barges to be lit within, and to allow in fresh air. The Lord tells the brother of Jared to add portals to the top and bottom of the barges that can be opened to allow in fresh air, then states that he wants his servant to come up with the rest.[18] The brother of Jared returns to the Lord with sixteen stones and the idea that, if the Lord touches the stones with his finger, they will glow and thus provide light in the barges. As the Lord touches them, the brother of Jared sees the Lord's finger, and as a result is shown the Lord in his fullness. This theophany acts as a prelude to an apocalyptic vision not recorded in our current text.[19]

Returning to the main narrative, the people of Jared board their barges and set out into the ocean. Guided by divinely affected weather patterns, they drift through the waters of the ocean for three hundred and forty four days before arriving at last in the “Promised Land.” There they disembark and give praises to the Lord for his merciful guidance in their travels.[20]

The parallels between this story and the other flood narratives are easy to spot, even in this brief summation. The catalyst for the wrath of deity was the wickedness of the people of Babel, who, as they gathered into an urban multitude, forsook the proper worship of their God.[21] As written in the text, “...The Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth....”[22] The Bible's version of this says: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth....”[23] Interestingly, Emil Kraeling stated that the story of the tower of Babel should be taken “as the sequel” of the Genesis flood story,[24] which further solidifies the link between the Noachite and the Jaredite flood accounts.

In order to spare the righteous from this punishment, the Lord chose Jared and his friends and family, exactly like Noah, Atra-Hasis, Utnapishtim, Deucalion, and countless others. Again, not only does he spare the righteous people, but animal life as well—remember the specific mention of “flocks, both male and female, of every kind” in Ether 1:41. This is described in even more detail as follows:

And it came to pass that Jared and his brother, and their families, and also the friends of Jared and his brother and their families, went down into the valley which was northward, (and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter) with their flocks which they had gathered together, male and female, of every kind. And they did also lay snares and catch fowls of the air; and they did also prepare a vessel, in which they did carry with them the fish of the waters. And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind. (Ether 2:1)

The ark motif is similarly apparent. The Jaredite transports are a number of barges, which the text's author describes as being “small” and “light upon the water, even like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water.”[25] He goes on to describe them in further detail:

And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish. (Ether 2:17)

This is reminiscent, of course, of the Genesis description of the Ark:

Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. (Genesis 6:14-16)

More than that, it is also reminiscent of the description Utnapishtim offers Gilgamesh concerning the construction of his own ship in Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic: “On the fifth day [I] laid its framework. One iku was its floor space, one hundred and twenty cubits each was the height of its walls; one hundred and twenty cubits measured each side of its deck. I 'laid the shape' of the outside (and) fashioned it.”[26]

While the Ether account doesn't contain an actual flood (much less one sent from God to destroy the wicked), it makes up for the lack by constantly using flood imagery when referring to the ocean. When describing the holes used to receive fresh air, the Lord said, “And if it so be that the water come in upon thee, behold, ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood.”[27] The Lord later comforted the brother of Jared concerning the future voyage by saying, “Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth.”[28] A few lines later he stated again: “For ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come.”[29] Even when floods are not specifically mentioned, the descriptions of their voyage express a similar sentiment: “And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind.”[30]

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For the exciting conclusion, please tune in to "A Book of Mormon Flood Narrative (Part II)."

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[1] Isaac M. Kikawada “Noah and the Ark,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 4, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1127. Kikawada describes how Moses parting the Red Sea is another example of, as he puts it, an “epoch-dividing Flood.”

[2] Emil G. Kraeling, “The Earliest Hebrew Flood Story,” Journal of Biblical Literature 66, No. 3 (1947): 279.

[3] Ibid. See, however, Ether 6:7 for a brief mention of “the ark of Noah;” whether this be from the original author, or added by a later editor (such as those mentioned in the text, namely, Ether or Moroni), is unclear.

[4] Ether 1:33; see also KJV Genesis 11:2.

[5] Genesis 6:5-7.

[6] Elaine Fantham, Ovid's Metamorphoses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 28. According to Ovid, Zeus chose a flood over his customary lightning bolt because he was afraid that, by incinerating the earth, he might accidentally incinerate all of the cosmos.

[7] W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-Hasis, the Babylonian Story of the Flood ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 67. Prior to the flood, the gods also tried plague, drought, and famine, but every 1200 years mankind would again become numerous and noisy enough to bother the gods.

[8] Ibid., 89.

[9] Genesis 6:7-14.

[10] Emil G. Kraeling, “Xisouthros, Deucalion and the Flood Traditions,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 67, No. 3 (1947): 181.

[11] For Deucalion's account, see Ibid. For Atra-Hasis' account, see Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis, 93. For Noah's account, see Genesis 6:19-21 and 7:1-3.

[12] Kraeling, “Xisouthros,” 182. Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, are told to cast stones over their shoulders; the stones cast by Deucalion become men, while the stones cast by Pyrrha become women. See also Fantham, Ovid's Metamorphoses, 30.

[13] Kraeling, “The Earliest Hebrew,” 282. Kraeling claims that the Biblical account refers to the creation of the city of Babylon, done to help unify the people and keep them from scattering across the land; however, they did so without offering sacrifice to God, and for that they were scattered and their language confounded.

[14] Ether 1:34.

[15] Mormon tradition asserts that his name is Mahonri Moriancumer. The name Moriancumer is used as a place name in Ether 2:13.

[16] Ether 1:41.

[17] Ether 2:1-7, 13, 16-17.

[18] Ether 2:19-24.

[19] Ether 3:1-17.

[20] Ether 6:2-12.

[21] Kraeling, “The Earliest Hebrew,” 282.

[22] Ether 1:33.

[23] Genesis 11:7-8.

[24] Kraeling, “The Earliest Hebrew,” 281.

[25] Ether 2:16.

[26] Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949), 82.

[27] Ether 2:20.

[28] Ether 2:24.

[29] Ether 2:25.

[30] Ether 6:6.

That's Right, I'm Posting . . . My Homework

So Casey has asked me to contribute. I have about three different topics I have wanted to tease out in an essay format as I am wont to do; however time has not permitted such an exercise. As a compromise between time and abstention, I have decided to share something I worked on this semester: a review of a book I read for my Latin American history class. I think this should prove interesting.

“Race as Religion”: Martínez’s Genealogical Fictions as an Historicized Abstraction of Race in the Early Modern Era

In Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, María Elena Martínez traces how the Iberian beliefs and practices surrounding limpieza de sangre contributed to the formation of the colonial sistema de castas. Martínez argues that when the religious discourses surrounding the notion of blood purity transferred to the American colonies, they shaped how a racial and caste system was perceived and experienced. At the heart of her project is the contested historical use of the term “race.” Because racial discourses took on a definitive shape connected to biology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, efforts to describe identities prior to that century as racial have been criticized as either anachronistic or teleological. Using the term in alternate ways also threatens to leave the term bereft of meaning. Basically, if “race” is not recognized in its eighteenth and nineteenth-century particularities, the term becomes meaningless. The definitive contribution of Genealogical Fictions is its response to this criticism, demonstrating how “race” can be used if diligently framed within the specific dynamics and circumstances of an historical moment.[1]Ultimately, rather than furthering the Black Legend by contending that Iberian colonialism in the Americas created race and racism, Martínez offers a measured way to conceptualize one specific form of racism forged in the colonies.

When addressing former arguments from historians who “fear equating notions of lineage, blood, and descent with race,”[2] Martínez references a number of essays and articles including one by Verena Stolcke.[3] In “A New World Engendered,” Stolcke also looks at the issue of blood purity and blood proofing, but she indicates the two main objections to discussinglimpieza de sangre in terms of race: (1) anachronistic misusage of the term which actually “sidesteps the fundamental question of how American peoples understood social and identity and exclusion in their own time;” and (2) the risk that interpreting any ideology connected with descent along racialist terms would lead to “the untenable conclusion that all premodern societies were organized along racial lines.”[4] Specifically on the first point, Stolke concludes that the social hierarchy shaped by a cultural-religious form of social placement and discrimination was no better or worse than modern racism, but still it cannot be discussed as racism.

Martínez, while acknowledging the necessity of historical specificity, disagrees. By arguing that singling nineteenth-century constructions of race as biological ignores the flexibility of racial discourse, she builds on Stuart Hall’s call for “a more concrete, historicized level of abstraction” in regard to racisms. Racial discourses have what Hall calls “general features” which are “modified and transformed by historical specificity.”[5] Genealogical Fictionsindicates a well-defined and excellently researched effort to propose that racial discourse operated on a “grid of knowledge” that was not constituted by scientific but rather religious discourses.[6] “Race as religion,” as it was manifested in the Spanish American colonies, had its beginnings in the Iberian peninsula; however, Martínez documents that while the transatlantic process altered the implementation of limpieza de sangre, the use of specific terms like razaand casta perpetuated a religious-racial discourse in the colonies.

One of Martínez’s strengths is the detail she subscribes to the terms she investigates and uses. In her Introduction, after mentioning debates concerning anachronistic usage of the term race, she writes,

The debate is important but frankly less pressing than analyzing the historical significance of those concerns—the social tensions that produced them, the terms people used to express them, and the ways in which they were reproduced or rearticulated over time and across geocultural contexts.[7]

At first, it appears that she avoids the implications of the debate and the use of “race” to describe early modern practices, sidestepping the debate. However, her emphasis on “terms people used” is central to her recognition of “race as religion” and it directly addresses critics opposed to this approach, like Stuart Schwartz whose work informed Stolcke’s essay.

The first endnote in the book not only defines “sistema de castas,” but clarifies why Martínez uses that term rather than an equivalent term Latin American historians have often used to draw attentions to the social dimensions of race: “sociedad de castas.” In an article entitled “Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas,” Stuart Schwartz makes a case that the term race should not be used to describe identities and practices during the early modern era. More importantly, however, he also asserts that due to the convention of social categories, subjects (especially people of color living between categories) intent on manipulating identity constructs could. [8] According to Martínez, “the phrase sistema de castas is preferred [inGenealogical Fictions] because, although the system was fluid, it was constituted by underlying principles that gave colonial Mexican racial ideology a measure of coherency.”[9] Furthermore, in describing how classification occurred in the operation of the sistema de castas, she notes that while it “tended to be anything but systematic, [it] was nonetheless a system, an ideological complex constituted by a set of underlying principles about generation, regeneration, and degradation.”[10] Martínez negates characterizations of the sistema de castas and limpieza de sangre as “fluidic.” Race is an appropriate term because while the early modern era did not employ racial discourses informed by biology, its connection to religion still provided an essentializing element which resisted fluidity. Sistema de castas and the religious concept embedded in it can be discussed in terms of racialization because while particular moments of identification were challenged, the principles organizing the entire system remained strict and quite definite.

Genealogical Fictions treats terms related to Spanish colonial languages of race like “raza” and “casta” with equal particularity because their use reflected and reinforced a specific cultural production of race. Martínez explains that these terms, while similar in use and connotation (especially in their relation to blood), were not identical. Raza, because of its connection to raça (a Castillian term for defected), became associated with individuals descended from Jews and Muslims. That association gave it a negative connotation that casta did not carry. In this way, race operated as a marked identity—a marking that indicated impurity and infidelity. This marking was not biological but religious. Because casta referred primarily to Old Christians, it remained a neutral term, while sometimes indicating good breeding. In the colonies, casta started to apply to people of mixed ancestry; at which point it began to take on negative connotations. Cases of mixed ancestry developed new social categories like castizo and morisco. Morisco, a term which had been related to Islamic converts to Christianity, came to describe the children of Spaniards and mulattos. The impurity of an unfaithful religious identity marked black slaves seen as a race not based on biology but on a grid of knowledge informed by a religious discourse that explained their connection to Ham and Canaan.

The transatlantic process that brought Spaniards, Indians, and blacks together resulted in a number of social categories and a systematic hierarchy. While there were cases of people challenging their classification into particular categories, Martínez evidences that neither the identities nor the system was fluidic. The castas in colonial Spanish America can be discussed as part of a colonial racial discourse because while not every casta was a race, a number of the castas were racialized. In the specific historical moment and space of colonial Spanish America, race operated on knowledge informed by religious discourses that marked particular identities as impure and unfaithful. Some castas like the moriscos mentioned above were more like a raza because they were marked. Genealogical Fictions does not open the floodgates of an untenable conclusion that all premodern societies were organized along racial lines. Nor does it employ the use of race in a way that is either anachronistic or sidestepping how American peoples understood exclusion in their own time. María Elena Martínez’s work demonstrates how the Iberian beliefs and practices surrounding limpieza de sangre shaped the colonial sistema de castas. More importantly, however, she exhibits how racial discourses in periods prior to the nineteenth-century can be examined and discussed.

---

[1] María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 11.

[2] Ibid., 11.

[3] Stuart B. Schwartz, “Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas,” Colonial Latin American Review 4, no. 1 (1995), 185–201; Stuart B. Schwartz and Frank Salomon, “New Peoples and new Kinds of People: Adaptation, Readjustment, and Ethnogenesis in South American Indigenous Societies (colonial era),” The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas III (2): South America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 443–501.

[4] Verena Stolcke, “A New World Engendered: The Making of the Iberian Transatlantic Empires,” A Companion to Gender History, ed. Teresa A Meade and Merry E. Weisner-Hanks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 378.

[5] Stuart Hall, “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1996), 411–440.

[6] Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 13.

[7] Ibid., 12.

[8] Start B. Schwartz, “Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas,” Colonial Latin American Review 4, no. 1 (1995), 188.

[9] Ibid., 287.

[10] Ibid., 166.

All You Need is LOVE

I was working on a Thanksgiving post (which I obviously did not post, or finish for that matter), and I wanted to finish it up until this morning when I read this.

Let's just sum up my thankful list and say I am thankful today for three things.
1. Over-the-counter medications. 2. My amazing husband, Casey. 3. People like the blogger with the guts to post this article.

Never had I read anything more powerful in the cause for true Christian charity until this article. It’s called “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay.” At the end of the post, he includes a link to a newer post containing responses to his call for love in the world (which I am purposefully not posting so you click it yourself after reading the article). The first two he posted made me so angry I wanted to yell through my tiny iPhone screen at the people who had the guts to write such hateful things and claimed to be Christians - exactly what this post was trying to combat.

Then I read the positive responses. I cried. Casey, dead asleep next to me didn’t notice any of this, but these powerful responses and stories of hope moved me to the point that I couldn’t help but leap out of bed (almost literally) and share what I read with anyone and everyone I know. I posted the link to Twitter and facebook. I commented on the post. And I sat down to write how I feel.

Since returning from my mission I have not felt so compelled to share a message with the world. The amazing gospel message should have a way to include this more vehemently within the teachings. Christ truly said love everyone. I’ve known this since I was a little girl. I remember being maybe 4 or 5 years old, sitting in the Primary room, singing my little lungs out because I knew that the pure love of Christ taught among children through lyrical melodies is the love that all mankind is meant to feel. I remember sitting there hoping and wishing that everyone could feel as great as I felt sitting in Primary.

My testimony of Christ has always been there, sometimes as a blazing fire and other times more like a flickering match, almost out of fuel to keep it burning, but when I remember that 4 or 5 year old me sitting in Primary, there is no doubt in my mind that God loves me. Jesus love me. And a part of that knowledge means sharing that love with everyone.

I remember my first semester away at BYU-Idaho. One of my dearest friends had stopped talking to me on a regular basis. Every time we chatted it was brief, she obviously had a million things to do, but in the back of my mind I knew something was wrong. Finally, I confronted her (online via AIM if I recall). I asked why she wasn’t talking to me as much as before, and if something was wrong. She admitted that she thought I wouldn’t love her anymore and confessed that she had done something against my religion. Not her own beliefs, just mine. She told me that she knew I couldn’t love her anymore after what she had done, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t care what she had done! She was my friend and I loved her regardless of her actions. I told her that I am not one to judge and the action had nothing to do with our friendship. There was no betrayal. No hurtful action made. I told her I truly didn’t care and I loved her just as much as ever.

Maybe she doesn’t remember this, but I think on it often. This same principle applies to everyone. I have been commanded by God to love those that hate me and to pray for my enemies, and I am hell bent on doing so. I do not pretend to be perfect in this, I know I have fallen short of loving everyone, even in my own family, but if I have loved anyone less, I beg their forgiveness.

Buddha taught that, “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”

I’m making a goal here and now - and issuing a challenge at the same time - to love those that hate me, no matter who they are. From elementary school bullies to rude coworkers, from exes with grudges to spiteful siblings, I love each and every one of you. Yeah, even that kid from the bus in kindergarten who poked me in the back of the neck with a pencil. Even the old friend who declared me an enemy and blocked me on facebook. Even the one person at work who as soon as he opens his mouth I try to tune out and walk away.

I’m going to love you all if it kills me.