According to Moroni, much that happened during worship services relied on the Spirit, suggesting flexible and somewhat spontaneous meetings. For example, although singing and prayer were both part of the services, Moroni does not indicate a fixed time for either. Though singing probably occurred “oft,” it was probably not as predictable in its arrangement as the modern pattern of opening hymn, sacrament hymn, closing hymn (and optional inter-speaker hymn) that are part of the predictable liturgical order of service in modern LDS services.
It would be satisfying to know more about Nephite singing. The ancient world lacked the overabundance of sounds that competed for human attention in the modern world. Communal singing was therefore both aesthetically beautiful and culturally powerful. It changed the nature of the audible world and involved the congregation in that alteration, creating a sacred sound environment. Congregational singing would be a very human way of expressing joy and aethestic feelings in a communal setting.
Vocabulary: The Methodist churches with which Joseph Smith was acquainted had two distinct positions; one of preacher and one of exhorter. It is possible that the vocabulary representing these two distinct facets was influenced by his own religious experience.
Text: This is the end of a chapter in the 1830 edition.
1. Daniel H. Ludlow. A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 330.
2. Otto Betz, “Apostle,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 41.
3. Richard Lloyd Anderson, “Religious Validity: The Sacrament Covenant in Third Nephi,” in By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, 27 March 1990, edited by John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book/Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990), 2:17. A shorter version of this paper appeared as Richard Lloyd Anderson, “The Restoration of the Sacrament,” Ensign, January 1992, 40–46, and February 1992, 11–17. John W. Welch, “Our Nephite Sacramental Prayers,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 286–89, also ties the sacramental prayers to Jesus’s visit to Bountiful.
4. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 424–44.
5. Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship,2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 71–72.
6. Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 332.
7. See “Excursus: The Nephite Understanding of God,” following 1 Nephi 11.
8. Mark D. Thomas notes that the phrase “bless and sanctify” is used in an Episcopal prayer recorded in 1790. “A Rhetorical Approach to the Book of Mormon: Rediscovering Nephite Sacramental Language,” in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon, edited by Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 59–60. While this observation is interesting, such phrases were part of Joseph’s standard religious language—just another example of the influence of Joseph’s culture on his translation vocabulary.
Thomas also attempts to contrast the Book of Mormon sacrament prayer with its New Testament counterpart:
According to Matthew, Jesus took the bread and “blessed it.” The “it” is in italics. Nineteenth-century biblical commentaries knew that the translators of the King James Version added italicized words to indicate that the word was not in the original text. The parallel of “bless” over the bread and “thanks” over the wine in both Matthew and Mark indicate that the “it” was an inappropriate addition. The Revised English Bible provides a more accurate translation: “Jesus took the bread, and having said the blessing.… ” The knowledge of this questionable translation helped fuel early nineteenth-century debate over whether the proper Eucharistic prayer was a consecration or a prayer of thanks. The Book of Mormon repeats “and blessed it” in the 3 Nephi 18 narrative among the Nephites. This fact along with the form of the prayer itself indicates that Joseph Smith believed the original prayer was a consecration of the elements. Ibid., 61 note 4.
This is an interesting analysis, but it is based on a misunderstanding of Greek. The italicized “it” represents a word implied but not explicit in the text. In Greek as well as many other languages, direct objects need not be explicit. They may be implied from the verb. What Thomas misses by not returning to the Greek is that the next verb, “broke” also has an implied direct object. There is no reason to turn that verb into a noun as the New English text did with the “blessing” phrase. Thomas is simply incorrect in claiming this to be an “inappropriate addition.” While there is no reason to believe that Joseph would not have believed the sacrament prayer to be a consecration of the elements, there is also no linguistic reason to see this conception as contradictory to the biblical usage.
9. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 118–19.
10. Ibid., 121. John W. Welch has argued for a relationship between the covenant language in King Benjamin’s speech, the sacrament language of the Savior at Bountiful, and the sacrament prayers in Moroni. The Bountiful and Moroni prayers are certainly related, but the evidence of a relationship with Benjamin’s language is too tenuous. For instance, he notes the presence of a “cup” in both, but in Benjamin, the cup is God’s wrath (Mosiah 5:5), while the sacrament prayers refer to a literal cup holding literal wine. Such a correlation leans far too heavily on a superficial similarity. The argument that one transformed into the other is similarly quite weak. Welch, “Our Nephite Sacramental Prayers,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 287.
11. Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69.
12. Ibid., 65.
13. Heather McKillop, The Ancient Maya: New Perspectives (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), 212.
14. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 68–69.
15. Erwin B. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Graeco-Roman Period, 12 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), 7:94.
16. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (Philadelphia, Pa.: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909), 5:97
17. Ibid., 5:98.
18. Louis Midgley, “The Ways of Remembrance,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, edited by John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1991), 170.
19. Most notably, Alexander Campbell in his Delusions: An Analysis of the Book of Mormon; with an Examination of Its Internal and External Evidences, and a Refutation of Its Pretences to Divine Authority (1832), quoted in Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 125.
20. Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 155. He describes North African practices on pp. 156–57.
21. Ibid., 169.
22. Robert L. Millet, Alive in Christ: The Miracle of Spiritual Rebirth (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 102. Internal references silently removed.
23. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 150.
24. Ibid., 156.
25. Ibid., 149.
26. Neh. 4:5; Ps. 69:28, 109:13–14; Isa. 44:22; Acts 3:19. It appears elsewhere in the Book of Mormon: Mosiah 1:12, 5:11, 26:36; Alma 1:24, 5:57, 6:3.
27. Richard Lyman Bushman with the assistance of Jed Woodworth, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 153.
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