Abinadi was a little like Paul, in that he was well trained in the scriptures and may have served in a leadership capacity. He himself may have been one of the older priests that Noah had kicked out (Mosiah 11:5), being among those who condemned the things Noah had begun doing. Yet, as we saw above in Mosiah 11:7, the law of idolatry was open to interpretation. As in our world today, there were laws and loopholes in Noah’s world. The question was, how strict were they going to be in keeping the law of Moses? The priests could well have claimed that they were keeping the law of Moses, at least their interpretation of it. There is a lesson for all of us in this kind of misreading and misconduct. It is not hard to see where it leads if you do not follow both the spirit and the letter of the scriptures with diligence.