Nibley on "Rediscovery of the Apocrypha and the Book of Mormon"

The world today has forgotten that the most shocking and offensive thing about the Book of Mormon was what? For years and years, nobody could find any objectionable teachings in it. So what were they so upset about? It was this: It presented a completely unfamiliar set of scripture and revelation - a completely new idea of scripture. ... This is the thing people resented. But this is exactly what we run into in the newly discovered apocryphal texts. ...

The world says that the documents of the Bible, properly selected and evaluated, are the word of God. But they select the documents! So we go around in a circle, declaring these to be the word of God, insomuch as they're properly selected and evaluated. But who selects and evaluates? Oh, we do! We make our own word of God. That is what it amounts to. ... The Book of Mormon breaks right into that - coming in from the outside, having nothing to do with any of the formal concepts of scripture. It's a completely jarring note, and it's a remarkable document. ...

[Following are more-than-bullet-points of the main common themes in the apocrypha also found in the Book of Mormon. This picture, which I got here, is of metal plates written on in ancient Etruscan, about 600BC - Lehi's day. Another support of Joseph's story that was not known until after the Book of Mormon was published.]

The idea that a king, a near contemporary of Lehi, [~600 B.C.] should cause transcriptions and translations to be made of a royal speech and sent to various parts of his dominion, so a copy of it should turn up in the ruins of a Jewish community far up the Nile in Elephantine ... would not have occurred to anyone before 1906, unless one happened to have read about such things in the book of Mormon. [Mosiah 1-5] ...
Baruch comments on the custom of hiding the book, a theme often mentioned in the apocrypha: the holy book has to be hidden. All the treasures of Israel, he says, must be hid up unto the Lord, "so that strangers may not get possession of them." ... When we flee before out enemies, we hide our treasure up unto the Lord; it's a commandment.

Let me say a word about reformed Egyptian here. ... Spiegelberg defines demotic as .... a short form of hieroglyphic. As a shorthand of a shorthand, demotic was the best shorthand ever invented. It was ideal for saving space... . It's strange that people made so much fun about Joseph Smith and his "reformed Egyptian"; what other name could he possibly give it? It was Champollion who first gave it the name of demotic [in] 1828..., about the same time the Book of Mormon appeared. ...

[1st Nephi 12:17] "He leadeth them away into broad roads that they perish and are lost." In our civilization, the broadest roads are the safest; in the desert, they are the most confusing and dangerous. ... This had actually become a literary convention in Lehi's day .... Ben Sire accords the desert traveler "the image of the man most dependent upon God." So he refers to ... life as a journey through the desert, where man is most dependent upon God....

When I recently collected, sorted, and classified many doctrtinal elements in the early apocrypha, the most conspicuous was the plan laid from the foundation of the world. The idea has been supporessed by the editors and translators of the Bible, but it breaks out repeatedly in the apocrypha, and it is nowhere more succinctly and emphatically stated [47 times] than in the Book of Mormon. ... "Let us prepare our soul," says Baruch, "that we may possess and not be taken possession of" [compare 2 Nephi 2:14, 26]. Speaking of mankind in general, the Wisdom of Solomon remarks, "by judging them by little and little," the plan extends mankind's means; it extends the day of probation. ... [we find this] on the first page of the first Dead Sea Scroll discovered [and on] the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, [which] says that "the rightesous person who fails to follow the command is one that has failed his testing in the furnace."

[He sets out many quotes about the doctrine of the Two Ways as it's called in Eastern philosophy, or the Law of Opposition in LDS parlance.]

[He remarks on Lehi's vision being a vision of the council in Heaven, and notes that the meeting breaks up as people go to carry out their responsibilities.] The so-called creation Apocryphon [describes a] concept of heaven [that] is alien to convential Judaism and Christianity, in which ... Heaven is ... static permanence, a meeting in the presence of God where the opening hymn is sung forever and ever. Christians can't think of anything else to do, just go on singing that hymn. That is why the Christian heaven is such a bore. ...

[Hel 8:25] We find in the many treasure passages that the treasure is the wisdom and knowledge we left behind us when we came down to the earth. In the premortal existnece, we left our treasure in God's treasury, in His keeping. There it is, and by our good works here we can add to it; more will be waiting for us when we go back. ... The Wisdom of Ben Sira [refers to] the treasury, where the righteous have a store of good works preserved. These are good works preserved, already done. ... Everything we add to our credit is being preserved in God's treasury. ...

[He compares apocalyptic imagery - Alma's experience of suffering and main mirrors many other passages of the figurative torture of the damned. He also discusses the images of the "right and left hand of God," the "white garment" as a symbol of godliness used in Jewish art.]

[Two different images are given for the filthy and pure waters in Lehi's dream.] The wild desert torrrent, which is the power of God sweeping the wicked to destruction [and] the way of the princes of this world. They go forth suddenly, with a great rush and a duss, sweeping all things away, only to dry up just as suddenly, while the spring of life flows pure and even forever. ... Notice how the metaphors mix all the time, though the basic ideas remain.

[He discusses looking beyond the mark; compares apocryphal and BoM anti-Christs; being wanderers in the wilderness; the tree of life; writings likely from the oft-quoted prophet Zenos; the ancient care of olive trees described in Jacob 5; likening the scriptures; "the hosts of Israel are always described as being the poor, the down-trodden, those cast out from the world, as against the world, which are the mighty and the powerful.]

[One more wonderful quote from Jesus in an apocryphal work:] "You do not know who I am, you ... love the tree but hate its fruit."

[In discussing ritual war, he mentions the discovery of a fellow named Piankhi.] Piankhi was a general before the time of Lehi, was very famous, became king of Egypt, and the name became quite popular afterwards. ... [It] has a very "Book of Mormon" sound. but of course the name occurs in the Book of Mormon (Helaman 1:3). It was this name, I strongly suspect, that first put Professor Albright on the track of the Book of Mormon. He recognized that it couldn't possibly have been faked or forged. ...

[Regarding kings] The king formally refuses the office and accepts it on other grounds ... You accept the office, but you do it to the Father, not for me; [he summarizes King Benjamin's sermon, Mosiah 2-5; the people fall to earth.] Notice that Benjamin accepts the prostration, only on the condition that it is for the heavnly king. "I know you've fallen down. That's the thing you should always do on this occasion, but remember, you're falling down for God, your heavenly king, and not for me."