“So Great Was Their Astonishment”

Brant Gardner

Text: The similarity between this account and that of Saul is that those present fall to the earth and all hear the voice (Acts 9:4, 7). The difference is that, in the Book of Mormon account, all fall and all see the messenger (v. 18). Since Alma2 and the sons of Mosiah have all heard the voice and since I am proceeding on the assumption that they are all adherents of the Mesoamerican religion, they would all have experienced the accompanying divine markers of thunder and earth-tremblings. As a result, all would have fallen before the divine majesty of the appearance. In the Old World example, the companions heard a voice, but the record does not allow us to infer either that they understood it or assumed it to be divine.

Culture: Possibly humility before God in Mesoamerican culture manifested itself as prostration, or possibly they could not keep their feet because of the earth’s trembling, but it seems more probable that they fell in response to the event’s spiritual power, not its physical power. After King Benjamin’s powerful address, the people also prostrated themselves: “And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them” (Mosiah 4:1). “The fear of the Lord” was the operative factor in Benjamin’s case; the “astonishment” of Alma2 and the sons of Mosiah caused them to fall to the earth in the second case. But in both, the spiritual power of the moment and their united action logically reflects a common cultural response to that kind of divine presence.

Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 3

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