“The Word of God”

Alan C. Miner

In 1 Nephi 11:25 we find "the Word of God" being equated with "The Fountain of Living Waters" and "The Tree of Life" and "The Love of God."

According to Michael Griffith, anti-Mormons assert that the Book of Mormon contains almost no Mormonism" (Decker and Hunt 114). By this the critics mean to claim that none or almost none of the more unique doctrines of Mormonism can be found in the Nephite record (Decker and Hunt 114; J.L. Smith 23-30). . . . [One of these allegations involves the preexistence and the doctrine of "the Word"]

In John 1:1-14 we find set forth the doctrine of the divinization of "the Word" (or Logos). In the Ebla tablets, which date to around 2500 B.C., we also find the concept of the divinized Word. Mitchell Dahood says the following:

From the biblical point of view, perhaps the most dramatic place name [in the Ebla tablets] is MEE 1,6523 = TM.76.G.525 rev. VII e-da-bar-ki, Temple of the World," wherein da-bar is equated with the Hebrew (and rarely Phoenician) dabar, "word." In other terms, the Word, the Logos, was already divinized in third-millennium Canaan . . . . (Mitchell Dahood, "The Temple and Other Sacred Places in the Ebla Tablets," in Truman Madsen, editor, The Temple in Antiquity, 1984:86)

[Michael T. Griffith, Refuting the Critics, p. 101] [See the commentary on Alma 5:34; Helaman 5:47]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

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