What follows is known as the vision of the tree of life. Lehi receives this revelation in his typical fashion—through a symbolic dream, requiring interpretation. This vision is the most completely reported of any of Lehi’s dreams. It is also the only dream that we have in two versions; the report of Lehi’s vision, and Nephi’s report of his own experience with this vision and its explanation. This dual discussion of the dream is important, for it tells us a little more about the differences between Lehi and Nephi. Lehi receives a dream or vision that is laden with complex symbols, and he understands it immediately. Nephi hears those details and must pray to receive an understanding. Significantly, when Lehi describes his dream, he notes simply that he sees a tree. Only in Nephi’s explication of the dream do we find out that it is the tree of life (1 Ne. 11:25).
Lehi is much more conversant with the inherited set of cultural symbols than Nephi. Lehi sees a tree and not only understands it as the tree of life, but he also understands the entire symbolic complex that is associated with it. Nephi requires a detailed explanation.
Scripture: Lehi prefaces his report by explaining why he feels that the dream has been important. Although this dream has widespread application, for Lehi, it was very personal. It gave him joy over two sons and intense sorrow for two more. I suspect that Lehi told this dream in hopes that Laman and Lemuel would finally understand the destructiveness of their course and turn to Yahweh. If this were Lehi’s motivation, it is obscured in Nephi’s account because the story also becomes intensely personal for Nephi.
History: The tree of life in its explicit function of providing life to those who eat of its fruit appears, ironically, in the first book of the Old Testament and the last book of the New Testament (Gen. 2:9 and Rev. 2:7). Between those two parallel references, the term becomes a metaphor (Prov. 3:18, Prov. 11:30, Isa. 61:3) and the explicit understanding of the tree fades into an underground current that informs the language and symbols of the Bible but is rarely explicitly present. Nevertheless, the symbol complex associated with the tree of life feeds other imagery and is a key to understanding other references, even in the New Testament.
Anthropologists use the term “multi-vocal” to express the idea that a symbol has multiple meanings simultaneously. For instance, if you were to see your country’s flag and were asked what it meant, you could likely create a list of meanings. The actual visual representation and colors may have some meaning. The flag also represents the nation itself and pride in the nation. Therefore, it can represent bravery, valor, and history. That single symbol has all of these meanings simultaneously. The better a person understands those multiple meanings, the richer his or her experience may be when seeing the flag.
The tree of life was an incredibly rich symbol complex. It was multi-vocal in multiple cultures, simultaneously evoking aspects of that varied heritage. When Lehi sees the tree, he sees a set of symbols and associations that is far larger and far more intricate than what Nephi sees, even though Nephi had to have been aware of some of that symbolic complex. Nevertheless, Lehi sees the whole, and Nephi must have the essence explained. What did Lehi see? The only way to answer that question is to spend some time with a very ancient symbol and learn something of its symbolic development up to the time of Lehi.
By the time Lehi left Jerusalem, the symbol of the tree contained multiple layers of conceptual information that had been elaborated over the basic underlying idea behind what is known to be a nearly universal symbol. To understand the later elaborations, we should begin with a survey of the deeper layers of meaning, those that attach the biblical tree of life to its non-biblical cousins. Mircea Eliade, the premiere analyst of comparative religions, begins with a Scandinavian myth and extrapolates some of the important basic information:
The prophetess, the Volva, awoken from a deep sleep by Odhin to reveal the beginning and end of the world to the gods, declares:
I remember giants born at the dawn of time
And those who first gave birth to me.
I know nine worlds, nine spheres covered by the tree of the world,
That tree set up in wisdom which grows down to the bosom of the earth.
I know there is an ash tree they call Yggdrasil
The top of the tree is bathed in watery white vapours,
And drops of dew fall from it into the valley.
It stands up green, forever, above the fountain of Urd.
The cosmos is pictured here as an immense tree. This ideogram of Scandinavian mythology has its counterpart in innumerable other traditions. Before noting each individually, we might try to glance over the whole domain we are to study: sacred trees, symbols, myths and rites of plant life. There is a considerable amount of material; but it takes such a variety of forms as to baffle any attempt at systematic classification. Indeed, we meet sacred trees, and vegetation rites and symbols in the history of every religion, in popular tradition the world over, in primitive metaphysics and mysticism, to say nothing of iconography and popular art. All this material comes from a great variety of ages and cultures.
The extreme distribution of this basic mythological conception of sacred trees tells us that it belongs to a very archaic layer of human experience, and in particular, human experience with religious/mystical thought. The fact that trees grow in so many parts of the world aids in the spread and persistence of these types of mythological meanings. What happened over time was that a core understanding of a sacred tree acquired greater and greater elaboration, with some regional differences. When Eliade gives us a scheme by which he might classify the various manifestations of this symbolism, note how many of the different themes overlap in the area where the Bible took place, i.e., Mesopotamia and Phoenicia, in his lists of specific locations:
I suggest a provisory classification of the vast amount of material that faces us. Leaving aside all the religious values and ceremonies of agriculture… we may distinguish in what we may call, for want of a closer and more convenient formula, “vegetation cults,” the following groupings:
(a) the pattern of stone-tree-altar, which constitutes an effective microcosm in the most ancient stages of religious life (Australia; China; Indochina and India; Phoenicia and the Aegean);
(b) the tree as image of the cosmos (India; Mesopotamia; etc.);
(c) the tree as a cosmic theophany (Mesopotamia; India; the Aegean);
(d) the tree as symbol of life, of inexhaustible fertility, of absolute reality; as related to the Great Goddess or the symbolism of water (Yaksa, for instance); as identified with the fount of immortality (“The Tree of Life”), etc.;
(e) the tree as centre of the world and support of the universe (among the Altaics, Scandinavians, etc.);
(f) mystical bonds between trees and men (trees giving birth to men; the tree as the repository of the souls of man’s ancestors; the marriage of trees; the presence of trees in initiation ceremonies, etc.);
(g) the tree as symbol of the resurrection of vegetation, of spring and of the “rebirth” of the year (the “May” procession, for instance, etc.).
As the mythology evolves in various regions, it does not take a single developmental path, but rather layers multiple adaptations upon the basic beliefs. Two particular elaborations of this sacred tree symbolism are particularly relevant to Lehi’s dream. One is the connection between the tree and the king, and the second is the connection between the tree and a goddess.
An important mythology relating the tree and the king comes from Babylon from at least a thousand years before Christ. The Babylonian myth mirrors themes that are present in Eliade’s cited poem on the world tree, of which the tree of life is a subset.
I remember giants born at the dawn of time
And those who first gave birth to me.
I know nine worlds, nine spheres covered by the tree of the world,
That tree set up in wisdom which grows down to the bosom of the earth.
I know there is an ash tree they call Yggdrasil
The top of the tree is bathed in watery white vapours,
And drops of dew fall from it into the valley.
It stands up green, forever, above the fountain of Urd.
The third line notes that there are “nine spheres covered by the tree of the world.” The tree connects all levels of the universe and conceptually forms a conduit among them. Scandinavian mythology posited nine levels. Mesopotamian mythology had three (as did the Israelites): the underworld (a primordial ocean under the earth), the earth’s surface, and the heavens. The Scandinavian world tree “grows down to the bosom of the earth” in the fourth line.
In the sixth, the top of the tree is “bathed in watery white vapours” (clouds). Thus the Scandinavian tree stretches from under the earth to the sky. Significantly, it “stands up… above the fountain of Urd.” This association between the tree and water is common to many mythologies, including the pan-Mesopotamian tree myth as well.
In his study The King and the Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern Religion, Geo Widengren discusses the motif as revealed in written texts and visual art. I am summarizing the major points of a much more complex argument on his part, but the essential elements of the tree of life in Babylon show remarkable parallels to not only the Scandinavian variant, but also to the Genesis account of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden.
The Babylonian tree of life stands in the garden of paradise. An inscription to that effect, dating from the first Babylonian dynasty (1900–1660 B.C.), says that it was founded in the “year in which the garden of the gods was made.” It is always associated with primordial waters because the original tree is located over “the Deep,” meaning the waters under the earth’s surface.
The tree stands in a garden, obviously related to the Genesis tree of life. In Babylonia, it appears as “a temple grove with the Tree of Life growing in the sanctuary as in a fine garden.” The gardener is identified with the king. He guards the tree of life. A twig from the tree is his scepter. Symbolically, the tree represents the king and vice versa. In Mesopotamia the symbol includes both king and god: “The Tree of Life is nothing but a mythic-ritual symbol of both god and King.”
The tree also has the power to restore life and health, just as those who ate of the Genesis tree of life would live forever. This life-bestowing power may be conferred by touching its twigs (wielded by the king), eating its fruit, and or drinking its juice or associated waters (the Deep). Widengren notes: “According to the texts both the Plant of Life and the water of life are partaken together, in order that man may be revived.” Such then is the motif—a tree with life-giving twigs, fruit, juice, or water which is closely associated with a king and a garden.
A similar conception of the relationship between the tree of life and the king is found in Egypt:
In the ancient temple of Heliopolis, a new pharaoh would bow before the sacred persea tree to receive the life and power of kingship. To each leaf on the tree was attached the name of an ancestor of the pharaoh, as well as the sacred names given to him in coronation rites, binding his life to that of his progenitors back to the gods. The lotus plant was a well-known symbol of the plant (or tree) of life, symbolizing rebirth and regeneration after each annual flood of the Nile. In the tomb of Tuthmosis III in the Valley of the Kings, a well-known illustration of the tree of life shows the king suckling from a breast drawn on one of the branches of the tree, and the arm of a goddess grows out of the tree to embrace the king. Many ancient Egyptian coffin lids depict the goddess Nut growing out of the tree of life. She is pouring drink from a pitcher and offering food from a tray, and this is understood as the goddess offering nourishment and life from the tree of life to a person who is wandering through the dark netherworld journey to eternal life.
Later Jewish myths (collected after the time of Christ) show that these themes persisted in Israelite thought over time: “Adam bade Eve go with Seth to the gates of Paradise and entreat God to have mercy upon him, and send His angel to catch up some of the oil of life flowing from the tree of His mercy and give it to his messengers. The ointment would bring him rest, and banish the pain consuming him.” By at least the second century A.D. when this version was extant, the tree in the garden was associated with the olive, hence the reference to oil. This connection between the healing powers of oil from the (olive) tree of life underlies the New Testament (and therefore modern LDS) use of olive oil for blessings of healing (James 5:14).
While the biblical tree forms Lehi’s immediate frame of reference, we should not suppose that any of these symbolic associations were absent from the Israelite understanding simply because we do not see them clearly in the biblical text. If Lehi were a caravaneer or a merchant with international contacts, his travels would have exposed him to the motif in other Mediterranean cultures. Even if he did not travel, many travelers came to Jerusalem and he would have received cultural exposure from those visitors. Therefore, we may understand that Lehi’s dream/vision included the symbolic association between tree, water, fruit, and king.
In the second set of symbols, the tree is associated with the female principle. The king was associated with and represented by the tree because he possessed it, not that he was personified in the tree. The mythology makes a subtle distinction between the two concepts, for the tree itself was considered to be female. Diane Wirth, a LDS researcher, notes: “In the Old Testament trees are often considered feminine, although the Hebrew word for tree is masculine (see Jer. 17:8 and Joel 2:22). Referring to the World Tree in general, Golan notes that it may be presumed that the World Tree is thought to be an incarnation of the great goddess.” Both long before and during Lehi’s lifetime, the tree of life was identified with the goddess Asherah. Her worship spanned the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites until the Babylonian destruction. Rafael Patai, a foremost expert on ancient Israel’s religion and mythology, introduces the problem of the Hebrew goddess:
Were Asherah, Astarte, and the other goddesses served by the Biblical Hebrews, Hebrew goddesses or merely foreign abominations as labeled by the prophets? Gods are rarely invented or discovered; rather they are taken over by one group from another. Even Yahweh had pre-Hebrew antecedents, and so had the deity called El and identified by the Hebrews with Yahweh.… As long as a god is alive, he can easily cross international frontiers and establish himself in a new country in superficially changed but basically identical image and function. This is what probably happened to Asherah, Astarte, and Anath: they arrived, at different times no doubt, among the Hebrews, and although foreign in origin, they soon adopted the Hebrews as their children, and allotted them all the benefits man finds in the worship of a goddess. There can be no doubt that the goddess to whom the Hebrews clung with such tenacity down to the days of Joshiah, and to whom they returned with such remorse following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, was, whatever the prophets had to say about her, no foreign seductress, but a Hebrew goddess, the best divine mother the people had had to that time.
The most relevant part of Asherah’s worship to Lehi’s dream was that she was both represented by and the embodiment of the tree of life. In the Canaanite version of her worship, archaeologist William Robertson Smith notes: “In early times tree worship had such a vogue in Canaan that the sacred tree, or the pole, its surrogate, had come to be viewed as a general symbol of deity which might fittingly stand beside the altar of any god.” In Israelite practice, this pole which was the surrogate for the tree, found place in the temple itself and was so completely identified with the goddess Asherah that it was named Asherah. Further complicating the biblical material on Asherah is the apparent conscious attempt to diminish references to Asherah. William G. Dever, professor emeritus of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona, has written an entire book on the Asherah as part of the non-literary folk religion of ancient Israel. After discussing the widespread presence of Asherah figurines, he suggests:
Biblical writers and editors knew very well what the female figurines represented, and therefore they deliberately suppressed any reference to them. They did not wish to acknowledge the popularity and the powerful influence of these images, much less to enhance them by talking about them.… Thus there is an attempt here to deceive readers, ancient and modern. Why? I think it must be because the images represented the goddess Asherah, whom the biblical writers abhorred (and probably also feared).
This purported intentional editing of the text to reduce references to what archaeology shows to have been a prevalent part of the folk religion of Israel leads to some confusion in our understanding the text. Biblical texts designate “Asherah” simultaneously as the goddess and the physical representation of the goddess, the symbolic tree in the temple.
Asherah’s place in the temple was seen as right and proper. Several recently discovered inscriptions specifically speak of “Yahweh and his Asherah,” indicating that she was Yahweh’s consort. Patai concludes: “The combined import of these recent archaeological finds and the suggested emendation of the passage in Hosea—added to the historical record as it can be gleaned from the Biblical references summarized above—is that the worship of Asherah as the consort of Yahweh (‘his Asherah’!) was an integral element of religious life in ancient Israel prior to the reforms introduced by King Joshiah in 621 B.C.E.”
I have discussed the plausible relationship of Lehi to Josiah’s reforms in this book’s introduction. Having lived through the reforms, Lehi would be keenly aware of the conflict between the previous religion and Josiah’s version. Because the received text was written by the victors in that reform, their rhetoric toward Asherah would naturally be censorious. Patai looks behind this rhetoric to depict Israelite religion both before and after the reforms, particularly with respect to Asherah, whose pole in the temple symbolized the tree of life:
No sooner was Hezekiah dead than his son and heir Manasseh (698–642 B.C.E.) reverted to the old religious customs. The chronicler dryly enumerates the sins of which the young king was guilty:
“He rebuilt the high places which his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for the Baal, and made an Asherah, as did Ahab King of Israel, and he bowed down to all the host of heaven, and served them. And he built altars in the House of Yahweh… for all the hosts of heaven, in the two courts of the House of Yahweh. And he made his son to pass through the fire, practiced soothsaying, used enchantments, and appointed them that divine by a ghost or a familiar spirit; he wrought much evil in the sight of Yahweh to anger Him. And he set the statue of the Asherah that he had made in the house [of Yahweh].”
The similarity between this list of ritual sins and the one which is given as the causes [sic] which brought about the destruction of Israel is striking. What interests us in the present context is one detail; in both lists of transgressions Asherah alone of all the idolatrous appurtenances is mentioned twice. The reference to King Ahab indicates that Manasseh was considered to have in some way imitated Ahab’s Asherah. It is also noteworthy that the only image said to have been introduced into the Temple in the course of Manasseh’s restoration of old forms of worship was that of Asherah. If Manasseh did not bother to replace the Brazen Serpent, the other image removed from the Temple by his father, this was probably due to the fact that with the passage of time the worship of a deity symbolized or represented by a serpent figure had become obsolete. Not so Asherah, whose motherly figure must have been dear to many worshipers and whose restoration to her traditional place in the Temple was therefore considered a religious act of great importance. It is tempting to conjecture that the mythical motivation behind Manasseh’s act was the conviction that Yahweh’s consort, the great mother-goddess Asherah, must be restored to her old and lawful place at the side of her husband.
With Joshiah (639–609 B.C.e.), another reformer came to the throne whose Yahwist zeal, stimulated by the discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy in the eighteenth year of his reign, surpassed even that of Hezekiah. The Deuteronomic legislation had no such leniency towards Asherah as Elijah, Jehu, and the Rechabites had displayed. Its point of view was unequivocal; it commanded the complete destruction of the seven nations that had inhabited Canaan, prohibited intermarriage with them, and ordered their altars to be broken down, their pillars to be dashed to pieces, their Asherahs hewed down, and their graven images burnt.
When Lehi sees a tree in his dream/vision, he brings to that single image a rich background of concepts and meaning. Until we get to Nephi’s experience, it will not become clear; but Lehi probably understood the tree in the garden near water as Asherah.
Text: A remarkable document with structural and thematic parallels to Lehi’s dream is the “Narrative of Zosimus,” which John W. Welch describes as originally written in Hebrew and apparently “at least as old as the time of Christ, and perhaps much older.” Points of correspondence are the righteous man entering a desolate area (Lehi in the wilderness, Zosimus in the desert), a spiritual guide (more prominent in “Zosimus”), and images of a tree and a river. Margaret Barker sees even more parallels between the narrative of Zosimus, also known as the “History of the Rechabites”:
The extraordinary similarity between the History of the Rechabites (the Narrative of Zosimus) and the story of Lehi leaving Jerusalem has already been studied by Mormon scholars. This ancient text, which survives in Greek, Syriac, and Ethiopic, tells the story of some people who left Jerusalem about 600 B.C.E. and went to live in a blessed land. They did not drink wine. They were called the sons of Rechab, which could mean that he was their ancestor, or it could be the Hebrew way of saying that they were temple servants, priests who served the divine throne. In their blessed land, angels had announced to them the incarnation of the Word of God from the Holy Virgin who is the Mother of God. Nobody can explain this text. The Jerusalem Talmud, compiled in Palestine perhaps early in the fifth century C.E., remembers a similar tradition: that a large number of priests fought with the Babylonians against Jerusalem after Josiah’s purges and later went to live in Arabia, the country into which Lehi and his family departed.
Although there are many important similarities, there is a major structural difference between the two accounts that Welch does not point out. Both Lehi’s and Zosimus’s trees have fruit, but the fruit is central in Lehi’s vision while only peripheral in Zosimus’s. Lehi’s tree communicates the divine through the fruit. In the Zosimus narrative, the tree is a conduit by which he rises to a different level. As noted above, the tree as conduit is a legitimate and ancient element of the myth. The “Narrative of Zosimus” and Lehi’s vision are simply variants of the underlying symbolism.
Another parallel to Lehi’s dream is Joseph Smith Sr.’s similar dream/vision. Lucy Mack Smith records that he had seven symbolic dreams (she records one of her own as well). She recounts her husband’s dream, which shares several elements with Lehi’s dream, as follows:
“I thought,” said he, “I was travelling in an open, desolate field, which appeared to be very barren. As I was thus travelling, the thought suddenly came into my mind that I had better stop and reflect upon what I was doing, before I went any further. So I asked myself, ‘What motive can I have in travelling here, and what place can this be?’ My guide, who was by my side, as before, said, ‘This is the desolate world; but travel on.’ The road was so broad and barren that I wondered why I should travel in it; for, said I to myself, ‘Broad is the road, and wide is the gate that leads to death, and many there be that walk therein; but narrow is the way, and straight is the gate that leads to everlasting life, and few there be that go in thereat.’ Travelling a short distance further, I came to a narrow path. This path I entered, and, when I had travelled a little way in it, I beheld a beautiful stream of water, which ran from the east to the west. Of this stream I could see neither the source nor yet the termination; but as far as my eyes could extend I could see a rope, running along the bank of it, about as high as a man could reach, and beyond me was a low, but very pleasant valley, in which stood a tree such as I, [sic] had never seen before. It was exceedingly handsome, insomuch that I looked upon it with wonder and admiration. Its beautiful branches spread themselves somewhat like an umbrella, and it bore a kind of fruit, in shape much like a chestnut bur, and as white as snow, or, if possible, whiter. I gazed upon the same with considerable interest, and as I was doing so, the burs or shells commenced opening and shedding their particles, or the fruit which they contained, which was of dazzling whiteness. I drew near, and began to eat of it, and I found it delicious beyond description. As I was eating, I said in my heart, ‘I cannot eat this alone, I must bring my wife and children, that they may partake with me.’ Accordingly, I went and brought my family, which consisted of a wife and seven children, and we all commenced eating, and praising God for this blessing. We were exceedingly happy, insomuch that our joy could not easily be expressed. While thus engaged, I beheld a spacious building standing opposite the valley which we were in, and it appeared to reach to the very heavens. It was full of doors and windows, and they were all filled with people, who were very finely dressed. When these people observed us in the low valley, under the tree, they pointed the finger of scorn at us, and treated us with all manner of disrespect and contempt. But their contumely we utterly disregarded. I presently turned to my guide, and inquired of him the meaning of the fruit that was so delicious. He told me it was the pure love of God, shed abroad in the hearts of all those who love him, and keep his commandments. He then commanded me to go and bring the rest of my children. I told him that we were all there. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘look yonder, you have two more, and you must bring them also.’ Upon raising my eyes, I saw two small children, standing some distance off. I immediately went to them, and brought them to the tree; upon which they commenced eating with the rest, and we all rejoiced together. The more we eat, the more we seemed to desire, until we even got down upon our knees, and scooped it up, eating it by double handfulls. After feasting in this manner a short time, I asked my guide what was the meaning of the spacious building which I saw. He replied, ‘It is Babylon, it is Babylon, and it must fall. The people in the doors and windows are the inhabitants thereof, who scorn and despise the Saints of God, because of their humility.’ I soon awoke, clapping my hands together for joy.”
Of this dream, Blake Ostler notes:
The two accounts are indeed close in phraseology and motifs which may suggest dependence. The direction of dependence, however, cannot be ascertained because Lucy Mack Smith’s book was produced in 1853, after the Book of Mormon. It seems likely to me that Lucy was influenced by the Book of Mormon in relating the dream, rather than vice versa as critics suggest, because several other dreams that she recounts in her 1853 manuscript also reflect Book of Mormon phraseology. Further, Lehi’s dream is archetypal; remarkably similar accounts appear throughout the ancient world. Lehi’s dream also contains poetic allusions and metaphors that correspond better to a desert environment whereas Joseph Sr.’s dream has the meadow and thick forest of upstate New York.
Lucy Mack Smith dictated this account in 1844–45. The vision notes that there are two children yet to come to Joseph Smith Sr.’s family, placing this vision somewhere between 1813 and 1816. This gives us a period of nearly thirty years after the event that Lucy recalled it and dictated it. In the interim the Book of Mormon had been published, and Lucy’s writings clearly indicate that she understood the Book of Mormon to be of great importance. Given both the length of time that elapsed and the influence of the Book of Mormon, it is quite plausible that the Book of Mormon account influenced Lucy’s recollection, much as Joseph’s understanding of the King James Version influenced the language and imagery into which he translated the Book of Mormon. However, while Lucy’s later retelling of this dream may have been influenced by the phrases and perhaps some of the imagery of Lehi’s dream, Joseph Sr.’s dream was sufficiently close to that of the Book of Mormon that the connection could be made. Richard L. Bushman notes: “There is no way of testing the accuracy of her memory. One of Lucy’s accounts echoes passages in the Book of Mormon, suggesting a tendency to make her husband the predecessor of her son.”
It is also certain that Joseph Jr. would have recognized affinities between Lehi’s dream and his father’s. His dictation of Lehi’s dream may have unconsciously stressed the points of resemblance with his father’s dream. The issue of dependence is therefore quite complex. However, Lehi’s dream in the Book of Mormon not only fits into the cultural expectations of Lehi’s period but also with known tree of life literature. Margaret Barker discusses the Book of Mormon dream compared to its putative historical context:
The Tree of Life made one happy according to the Book of Proverbs (Prov. 3:18), but for other detailed descriptions of the tree we have to rely on the noncanonical texts. Enoch described it as perfumed, with fruits like grapes (1 Enoch 32:5), and a text discovered in Egypt in 1945 described the tree as beautiful, fiery, and with fruits like white grapes. I don’t know of any other source which describes the fruit as white grapes, so you can imagine my surprise when I read the account of Lehi’s vision of the tree whose white fruit made one happy, and the interpretation of the vision, that the Virgin in Nazareth was the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh (1 Ne. 11:14–23). This is the Heavenly Mother, represented by the Tree of Life, and then Mary and her Son on the earth. This revelation to Joseph Smith was the exact ancient Wisdom symbolism, intact, and almost certainly as it was known in 600 B.C.E.
Regardless of the similarities between Lehi’s dream and that of Joseph Smith Sr., Lehi’s dream also embodies an authentic strand of tree of life imagery that was current from before Lehi’s time to a few hundred years afterward.
Archaeology: The archaeological site of Izapa is located in the southernmost region of the state of Soconusco, Mexico. An important site for understanding Mesoamerican cultural development, it sits between the cultural horizon of the Olmec (the earliest of the Mesoamerican high cultures) and the Maya who come later. It is usually referenced as Izapan culture, acknowledging that it is distinct from both the Olmec and Maya. It has become important in Book of Mormon scholarship for two reasons. First, it dates from 600 B.C., clearly an important Book of Mormon date. Second, one of the monumental stelae at Izapa has carvings that have been interpreted as Lehi’s tree of life vision. A stela is a large stone planted in the ground so that it rises vertically. Stelae served as political and religious billboards in Mesoamerican cultures—public displays of significant scenes.
M. Wells Jakeman, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University, introduced Izapa Stela 5 to an LDS audience in the 1950s with an interpretation stressing the correspondences between the tree and related objects on the sculpture and Lehi’s dream. His analysis has been so influential that Izapa Stela 5 came to be known among some Latter-day Saints as the “Lehi stone,” prompting other authors to promote it as a representation of Lehi’s dream.
Two problems must be overcome in “reading” any of the Izapa stelae. First, the monuments are all weathered; much detail is consequently lost. Second, Mesoamerican art is stylistically and culturally complex—easy to misread.
Izapa Stela 5.
The New World Archaeological Foundation at Brigham Young University undertook a project to “finesse more details from the old stones by using new lighting techniques” according to NWAF director and archaeologist John E. Clark. The improved drawing provides details that enhance the “Mesoamericanness” of the representation but decrease the chances that this stela has anything to do with the Book of Mormon.
The second problem is much more difficult to resolve as it requires experience in Mesoamerican cultures. Because their artistic style is very complex, it is easy to misunderstand what one is “seeing.” In fairness to Jakeman, understanding Mesoamerican iconography has progressed significantly since the 1950s. Furthermore, many of the features that he “saw” can be attributed to the less accurate photograph with which he worked.
The central image of Stela 5 is a tree that forms the central axis, with roughly symmetric scenes on either side. The upper branches extend into a sky-band (a graphic symbol representing the sky) and the roots of the tree dip into waters below the earth. The tree as a conduit through the underworld, surface of the earth, and heavens appears in the ancient Near East, India, Scandinavia, and the Americas. This very universality tells us that the tree of life on the stela does not automatically make it the tree of life depicted in Lehi’s dream.
Izapa Stela 25
Stela 5 is one of at least sixty-nine stelae at Izapa. The context of these numerous images strongly suggests that Mesoamerican sensibilities, rather than those of the ancient Near East, are at work. Stela 25, for example, also shows a tree of life (or world tree). Its base is the head and forelegs of the crocodilian earth monster. The body of the “crocodile” rises vertically, forming the trunk of the tree, while branches take the place of the hindquarters and tail. Earlier Stela 5 drawings showed the weathered base as roots. In the newer drawing (all of the stelae were rephotographed and redrawn in 1997–99), based on new lighting techniques, the base of the tree is an earth monster. Such a representation is typical of Mesoamerican art in general and other Izapan stelae in particular, but nothing in Lehi’s dream suggests that the tree is associated with the earth monster.
Jakeman and others who see Lehi’s dream in Stela 5 concentrate on scenes in the lower left and lower right panels. Jakeman identified the two figures on the lower left as Sariah and Lehi. In the lower right, he identified Nephi as the figure with the stylus and the fan-fold codex. Obviously, if Sariah, Lehi, and Nephi really are pictured on the scene, this would be tremendously important for Book of Mormon studies. The reason for correlating Nephi with the figure who is writing a record is obvious. Why might we see one of the figures on the lower left as Lehi? Jakeman gave two reasons. First, he is depicted with a beard and may therefore be considered an old man. Secondly, Jakeman saw his name carved in the stela:
For the meaning of the name Lehi is the jaws—especially the upper jaw—in side view, i.e. “cheek.” And we have already noted that Feature 9, the cipactli [Nahuatl word for crocodile] glyph held above the old bearded man, mainly depicts a pair of huge jaws (those of the crocodile)—especially the upper jaw—in side view, i.e. a great cheek! That is, this glyph is essentially a portrayal of what the name Lehi means. It therefore constitutes—whether intended or not—a symbolic recording of that name.…
That Feature 9 is an intentional glyph-recording of the name Lehi appears, however, to be the only possible conclusion. For the coincidence of symbol and meaning occurring here seems much too peculiar to be accidental.
The temptation to see the Mesoamerican crocodile-like earth monster in connection with the meaning of “jawbone” is strong enough that John L. Sorenson repeated it in 1985:
This “earth monster” is repeatedly shown at the base of relief carvings at Izapa (on the Chiapas/Guatemala border), in early Maya sculpture, and even in Olmec art, hence the idea is very old and fundamental. Mayan art represented an aspect of this being by a mere jawbone symbol (incidentally, the name Lehi means “cheekbone” or perhaps “jawbone.” To be able to say that one was descended from “Jawbone,” Lehi, would have been impressive among Mesoamericans).
In spite of the correct linguistic meaning of Lehi as “jawbone” (see commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 1:4), the correlation of the image and the meaning of “jawbone” on Izapa Stela 5 is strained. Clark notes: “Thus Jakeman supposes that the ‘Lehi’ figure, the old man, can be identified by a monster skull floating behind his head, and he assumed that this feature represented a crocodile-like mythic creature known to the Aztecs (2,000 years later) by the name of Cipactli. From that tenuous linkage, the analyst leaped to the notion that the skull signified ‘jawbone,’ despite the fact that the skull is noticeably jawless.”
Jakeman certainly knew that the skull was jawless, which is why he took such pains to redefine “jawbone” to mean the upper jaw. Nevertheless, the term better fits the lower jaw, which Clark rightly points out is missing in the monster skull. When Samson slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, he was certainly using the lower jaw as his weapon. The text reports that he named the location “lehi” in commemoration of that feat with the jawbone:
And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-lehi. (Judg. 15:16–17)
Not only is it questionable to identify “Lehi” as a name with the monster skull because of the artistic representation, it is also questionable because it assumes that a convention of Aztec manuscripts (placing a symbol for a person’s name above his head) can be applied 2,000 years earlier to a completely different culture. Such a practice, while typical in Aztec codices, lacks even one example from Maya monumental art. In Maya sculpture dating from the first century A.D. and after, the name is placed on the person. In Jakeman’s defense, naming conventions on Maya monumental art had not been determined at the time he wrote.
As a final reason why the male figure cannot be Lehi, the newer drawings have revealed that the figure is skeletonized. Clark describes him: “He is sitting on a skull throne. His bones show prominently, signifying an old, emaciated body. He may represent death, or a priest or aged king in a mask representing death.” If this skeletonization represents death, it may do so as a transition to birth. Jill Leslie Furst, an art historian who analyzed the Codex Vindobonensis, found: “Repeatedly in the preceding pages, skulls, skeletal jaws and skeletonization in general have emerged not, as might have been expected, as symbols of death but rather of generation and fertility. In every case, the painter of Vienna has attributed the skeletal face to just those deities that are unequivocally germinators and givers of life.” The association between skeletonization and regeneration is made more explicit on Izapa Stela 50. The central figure on that stela is dramatically skeletonized, and is connected by an umbilical cord to a second human figure.
Izapa Stela 50.
The symbolic association of skeletonization and regeneration lends support to the most likely interpretation of Izapa’s tree of life. According to Garth Norman, the central scene at the tree deals with symbolic birth:
During the early stages of Stela 5 analysis Bruce Warren suggested to me that the upper severing line creating a jog in the tree trunk (also seen on the Stela 27 tree) could be an early manifestation of the familiar Tamoanchan “broken tree trunk” symbol.…
Some tribes, such as the Mixtecas, express their origin in a Tamoanchan pictograph or hieroglyph depicting a man emerging from a split tree trunk in symbolic birth. The tree of the Mixtec codices is a Tree of Life or World Tree extending above and below this earth, but principally a “tree of the heavens” in Omeyocan guarded by the creator couple, where it gives birth to humanity.
It can be stated simply that in ancient Mexico the broken tree represents a birth, death, or migratory transition for man.
The tree as symbolic conduit along which the newly born and the newly dead travel is the most plausible reading of Izapa Stela 5, bolstered by two fish hanging rather incongruously from the heavens. Diane E. Wirth, an LDS student of Mesoamerica, argues that the fish are associated with birth. Thus, the stela’s story is about life and birth. Lehi’s dream may deal with eternal life, but this stone is more concerned with the birth into this world than the transition into the next.
An analysis of each feature of Izapa Stela 5 lies beyond the scope of this commentary. The important point is that none of Izapa’s monumental art has any obvious relationship to the Book of Mormon. Even though Izapa began around the time the Book of Mormon, that timing is a simple coincidence, not causality. In fact, Clark notes that the site, a coastal location, is in the wrong place, since the Nephites fled inland from the Lamanites. Perhaps the site might be considered Lamanite, but why would Laman or Lemuel commemorate a dream that prophesied negatively about them?
Izapa Stela 5 is marvelous art, important for understanding the development of Mesoamerican ideology. It is not relevant to the Book of Mormon.