While the concept of the induced trance and the serpent’s role as a spiritual conduit may be very foreign to us, Mesoamerican people would have found them familiar modes of spiritual communication. However, Benjamin makes it clear that, although he is the king and therefore has the expected contact with the “other” world, it is qualitatively different from the Mesoamerican norm.
Benjamin reports that the angel twice told him to “awake.” Why would a prophet of Benjamin’s caliber need to be told twice? And why did he feel it necessary to report this detail? Perhaps, given the Mesoamerican expectations of a vision trance, Benjamin was emphasizing that the vision may have begun in a dream but the communication occurred while he was awake, not in a trance or in a trance-like sleep.
Reference: The angel brings a message of “glad tidings of great joy,” a phrase that echoes 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.” The Book of Mormon change of “good” to “glad” retains the corresponding emotional content. The Book of Mormon is consistent in using “glad tidings of great joy” (Alma 13:22, Hel. 16:14), but “glad tidings” is also a King James (KJV) phrase (Luke 1:19, 8:1; Acts 13:32; Rom. 10:15). In addition to suggesting that an angelic messenger has a typical way of putting at ease the person to whom he appears, it seems reasonable that the close resemblance in wording stems from the similarity of the message and Joseph’s familiarity with KJV wording.