Item Detail
-
32900
-
0
-
17
-
English
-
"The Lord slayeth the wicked": Coming to Terms with Nephi Killing Laban
-
Journal of Book of Mormon Studies
-
2022
-
28
-
1
-
Provo, Utah
-
University of Illinois Press
-
137-169
-
"Many would agree that the most disturbing narrative in all of the Book of Mormon is that of Nephi being commanded to slay Laban. Few encourage their friends to turn to that passage when introducing the book. It is the rather detailed account of what appears to be an unconscionable act. Its closest parallel elsewhere in scripture is the story of Abraham and Isaac, with the all-important difference that, for Nephi, there was no ram in the thicket. How can we justify a man coming upon another man lying in a street, completely helpless, incapacitated because he is passed out from being drunk, and that first man decapitating the second man, stealing his sword and clothing, and then impersonating him so he could steal a most precious item from his treasury and lead one of his servants away from his household? On the surface, this is what appears to be happening. The fact that Nephi feels led by the Spirit to commit this act may be of little comfort to us as members of society since 'few, if any of us, would want to live in a society where individual citizens are free to kill drunken fellow citizens-however guilty the drunk may be-because the citizen feels he has been constrained by God to do so.'" [From the article]
-
Book of Mormon Compendium
Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon
Feasting on the Word : The Literary Testimony of the Book of Mormon
Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith : Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon
Joseph Smith : Rough Stone Rolling
Joseph Smith : The Making of a Prophet
Killing Laban : The Birth of Sovereignty in the Nephite Constitutional Order
Laban's Ghost : On Writing and Transgression
Legal Perspectives on the Slaying of Laban
Lehi in the Desert; The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites
Nephi and Goliath : A Case Study of Literary Allusion in the Book of Mormon
Rediscovering the Book of Mormon
Second Witness : Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon
The Death of Laban: A Literary Interpretation
The Political Dimension in Nephi's Small Plates
The Sword of Laban : Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind
Why Nephi Killed Laban: Reflections on the Truth of the Book of Mormon