Yesterday a local Mormon leader asked me a rather common question posed by Mormons seeking to discuss their faith with Jewish friends and colleagues. He has a Jewish coworker who has expressed the desire to read the Book of Mormon in order to better understand his Mormon friends’ belief system. While the leader was looking forward to giving his friend a Book of Mormon and discussing it with him, he was wondering what to say if/when his friend asked him about certain passages in the book that appear to treat Jews harshly. I told him that if his friend was familiar with the Hebrew Bible, he would have nothing to worry about.
According to the Book of Mormon narrative, a group of Israelites led by a prophet named Lehi left Jerusalem around 600 BCE and eventually made their way to the Americas. Lehi’s righteous son, Nephi, is the author of the first two books in the Book of Mormon. A cursory reading would seem to suggest that Nephi harbored some unkind feelings towards the Jews of his time. For example, in the first chapter of the first book, Nephi refers to his father’s Jewish persecutors’ “wickedness” and “abominations,” and in the second book he condemns the Jews’ “works of darkness” (2 Nephi 25:2). However, when those remarks are put into context they should not trouble Jews – or anyone else – at all.
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