Anthropological: As part of a Mesoamerica cultural milieu, regardless of their choice to leave it behind for the sake of their king, Benjamin’s people would surely have understood the need for the king to connect with the spirits of the other world for important communication. Against this backdrop, it is would not have been surprising to his audience that Benjamin had seen an angel nor that he had received a message from the angel. Nevertheless, there is a major distinction between Benjamin’s experience and that which might have been expected of a Mesoamerican king. It is possible that the unusual doubling of the command “awake” with the repetitious “I awoke” may be an attempt to clearly differentiate Benjamin’s experience from that of the Mesoamerican king-shaman.
To understand the contrast Benjamin might be making, a couple of background notes are important here:
“Shamans are specialists in ecstasy, a state of grace that allows them to move freely beyond the ordinary world- beyond death itself- to deal directly with the gods, demons, ancestors, and other unseen but potent beings. Shamanic ecstasy can last moments, hours, or even days, but the amount of time spent in trance is less important than the knowledge of its existence.” (Freidel, David, Linda Schele, Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos. William Morrow and Company, 1995, p. 33).
“If the Precolumbian Maya practiced bloodletting and sacrifice to sustain the cycle of the soul, they also did it to enter trance and commune with the gods. Recall that the Vision Serpents conjured up by the ancients in trance rituals have names. Some, like the great War Serpent, the Waxakiahun- Ubah-Kan, have special roles in Maya cosmology that we can identify. When the Vision Serpents open their jaws, they convey the gods and the ancestors into the land of the living. One of the most masterful representations of this rite to have survived from Classic times is the beautiful Lintel 25 (Fig. 4:23), commissioned by Shield-Jaguar of Yaxchilan. The scene depicts the principal wife of this king conjuring up the founder of her husband’s lineage during his accession rites. Wearing the costume of a Tlaloc warrior, this ancestor emerges from the jaws of a frightening, double-headed beastie with a hall-flayed body decorated with feather fans. He is Waxaklahun-Ubah-Kan, the Maya War Serpent” (Freidel, David, Linda Schele, Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos. William Morrow and Company, 1995, p. 207-8).
While the method of achieving the trance, and the serpent as the conduit to the spirits may be very foreign to us, it would have been an acceptable mode of spiritual communication for the greater Mesoamerican world. It is similar to Benjamin’s experience only in that Benjamin is the king and he has had contact with the “other” world. Nevertheless, Benjamin’s experience was qualitatively different, and he may have been attempting to define that difference.
Let’s return to the replication of the command to “awake.” Benjamin has the angel saying “awake” twice. Surely a prophet of Benjamin’s caliber would not need to be told twice! Nevertheless, here we have it. As a pure and unadorned repetition of the words of the angel, there is no good explanation for the duplication. Benjamin would not have required the information, and there is very little literary support for this particular repetition. However, in the context of Benjamin’s speech and the Mesoamerican connotations of a vision trance, Benjamin may be specifically highlighting the fact that while the vision may have begun in a dream, the communication occurred while he was awake. It did not occur when he was in a trance – or a trance-like sleep.
Literary: The angel brings a message of “glad tidings of great joy.” This is an echo of Luke 2:10: “And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Even with the change of “good” to “glad,” the correspondence is very high. The Book of Mormon is consistent in using “glad tidings of great joy” (see Alma 13:22 and Helaman 16:14). It appears that there is a fairly typical way in which an angelic messenger might at ease the person to whom he appears. That this greeting might be expressed in terms similar to the KJV (where glad tidings is also a known phrase) is not at all surprising. It is most likely that the closeness of the translation has to do with the similarity of the message, and Joseph’s familiarity with KJV wording.