Nathan Shumate

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• Plain and Precious Things: The Temple Religion of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men on Feb. 29, 2012
  
  My good friend Dave Butler (who, after seeing my example, was unable to resist the draw of initial initial in his name for this release) has done the LDS world an inestimable favor in publishing Plain & Precious Things; reading it has me honestly excited about rereading the Book of Mormon for the first time in decades. Dave (“Can I call you ‘D’?”) reaches astounding insights by simply taking Nephi at his word: that the small plates of Nephi were written specifically to restore the “plain and precious things” which were being and would be removed from the Hebrew scriptures before they got to us. By comparing the doctrines of God espoused by Lehi, Nephi, and their successors with the contemporary reforms being instituted by royal authority in 2 Kings, Dave shows the existence of at least two schools of religious thought at the time: the reformers/redacters who are presented as the establishment heroes of 2 Kings, and the “visionary men” — the prophets outside of the establishment structure, of which Lehi was an example. With the guiding insight that much of the worship of the “visionary men” centered on the ordinances of the temple, Dave draws compelling subtext from the two visions at the heart of Nephi’s record — Lehi’s dream of the rod and the tree, and Nephi’s visionary experience in seeking the interpretation of that dream — that shows a deeper criticism of the reforms which led to the loss of those plain and precious things and a reverence for the symbols and ordinances of God’s house. Beneath Joseph Smith’s pseudo-KJV diction, there is a world of inspired belief and worship that has almost been lost, overwritten by King Josiah’s faction in their zeal to jettison all doctrine and worship that didn’t fit their “cleaned-up” version of Judaism. I heartily encourage all LDS seekers of truth who thought, as I did, that there was nothing additional for the Book of Mormon to teach them to spend the pittance to get get this ebook and feast upon it.