The Book of Mormon has opened my understanding of God’s doing on a scholarly level. In past experience, I have only study the text to gain spiritual revelation. During this semester, my hope was to grasp the Book of Mormon on an academic level of interest. I wanted to simply know the teachings the book contained. Therefore, I accepted the invitation of a past professor to pick a place in the Book of Mormon where a Book of Mormon prophet examines another prophet’s words. He explained that doing so will let the Book of Mormon educate you on how to study the Book of Mormon. Perhaps a fascinating example of this was Alma bridging himself into the early narrative of Lehi which influences Alma’s conversion. The exegesis approach of critically interpreting or involving oneself into a text with hopes of gaining more from the reading …show more content…
During Christ’s visitation he instructed the Nephites by saying “There be no disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine, as there have hitherto been.” (3 Nephi 11:28) For most of my Book of Mormon experience, I've thought that the confusion of doctrine among the Nephites was due to a verbal apostasy. After countless hours of pondering, I simply related the disputation of doctrine among the Nephites to the different interpretation by Nephi and Abinadi of Isaiah's words. This shed new light and was helpful because it allowed me to ponder and pick up my scripture with a fresh desire to make connections of my own. Christ’s instructions to the Nephites is just one of many examples of the Book of Mormon teaching the reader how to better understand its text. Now when I study any form of scriptural text I’ll pay better attention by finding the connections that the writer is making from past stories or experiences. Even though they are other ways to grasp the Book of Mormon, I have enjoyed analyzing scripture to gain useful