Approaching the Tree: Interpreting 1 Nephi 8

Approaching the Tree: Interpreting 1 Nephi 8 is primarily theological. For that reason, it may not be on the radar of the Journal of Mormon History's readership. The goal of this review is to point out a few important ways in which Approaching the Tree is historical, and how it might benefit historians of various bents. The book as a whole is a collection of nine essays and nine original artworks all focusing on 1 Nephi 8, the chapter in the Book of Mormon devoted to Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life. Lehi's dream is one of the most famous and memorable passages from the Book of Mormon and contains the influential imagery of an iron rod, a great and spacious building, and more. While the dream is often read as a loose allegory for mortality in the Latter-day Saint worldview, Approaching the Tree shows the many ways in which the dream's interpretive possibilities are neither definitive nor exhausted.First and foremost, Approaching the Tree contains an important review essay by Jennie Champoux that offers a history of Lehi's dream in visual art. Champoux writes that “Lehi's dream was . . . one of the very first scenes from the Book of Mormon to be visualized in art” via an 1874 painting by David Hyrum Smith, son of Joseph Smith Jr. and a leader in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now renamed Community of Christ) (29). “It was 75 years later,” Champoux continues, “that Lehi's dream was first visually depicted by a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with Minerva Teichert's The House of the World” (ca. 1949–1951) (30). Champoux continues a thorough survey of Lehi's dream artwork across three periods: the Early Development of Lehi's Dream Art (1830–1979), the Popularization of Lehi's Dream Art (1980–1999), which “saw an explosion of new images about Lehi's dream,” and Lehi's Dream As Symbol (2000–2019).Categorizing Lehi's dream artwork according to panoramic, symbolic, universal, and Lehi-based approaches, Champoux deftly illuminates the shifts in how the dream has been depicted throughout Latter-day history. These shifts are important because artworks “heavily influence how we picture the prophet's dream in our mind's eye” and “influence how we understand the dream” (28). For example, the symbolic and universalizing approaches—which usually focus on depicting the Tree of Life itself—rely less on communicating a narrative and more on bringing “abstract themes and moral lessons to mind” (52). Champoux concludes her review essay by attending to (1) recent developments in Lehi's dream art (new media, non-Western techniques), (2) tensions and possibilities for future art on the dream, (3) reflections on the survey's implications for our understanding of Latter-day Saint art in general, and (4) an overview of the nine new pieces of Lehi's dream art contained and published within the Approaching the Tree volume's pages. Champoux's review essay is, quite simply, the most exhaustive, authoritative, and definitive survey of Lehi's dream artwork to date. As such, it is valuable for art historians who focus on Latter-day Saints.The second review essay in the volume, Joseph Spencer's history of scholarship on Lehi's dream, will also be valuable for some historians. Book of Mormon scholarship may seem one step removed from Mormon history proper, but it is history nonetheless and offers important insights regarding the Latter-day Saint past. In a meta-way, Spencer notes a shift away from historical approaches to the Book of Mormon, toward literary approaches, and finally, theological approaches. This is interesting, and it may be important to qualify this triumphalist narrative away from historicist Book of Mormon approaches toward Book of Mormon theology. The deeper insight, though, is Spencer's connection between history and scholarship. Mormon history certainly includes a history of scholarship, or history of interpretation—even, intellectual history. As Spencer deftly demonstrates, the story of 1 Nephi 8 cannot be separated from a history of past approaches to and interpretations of that text, many of which were connected to those historical periods and exigencies in concrete ways.From “The Historical Lehi (ca. 1945–ca. 1985)” to “The Literary Lehi (ca. 1975–ca. 2010)”—with its own periods of retreat and re-emergence—to “The Theological Lehi (ca. 2000–The Present),” Spencer's demarcation of periods is nothing if not history. These periods of Lehi's dream scholarship reflect and interact with larger themes across Mormon history such as apologetics, intellectualism, and interpretive authority/efficacy. As Spencer reminds us, many of the factors shaping Lehi's dream interpretation are “simultaneously historical and theological,” such as “increased interest in placing the Book of Mormon's notion of the tree of life in conversation with a variety of tree-of-life traditions spread throughout the world's various religions and cultures” (23). Historians already familiar with the major players on the Latter-day Saint intellectual/historical landscape during these eras (e.g. Sidney Sperry, Hugh Nibley, FARMS, AML, etc.) may find it interesting and insightful to see these players/periods refracted through a focused lens on Lehi's dream interpretation specifically.Beyond these two review essays, readers will primarily find theological essays and new artwork on Lehi's dream throughout the rest of the volume, with perhaps one notable historical exception. Rosalynde Welch's chapter specifically historicizes Lehi's dream within a nineteenth-century agrarian and linguistic context. Welch notes striking similarities between the “physical environment” of Joseph Smith during the translation of 1 Nephi (which included wheatfields, gardens, orchards, and woodlands) and the “lexical environment” or “language world of the prophet” (which included “wilderness, field, tree, river” and “rod”) (101, 103). “I propose,” argues Welch, “that the agrarian world of the early American farm is a primary lexical context for the English translation of Lehi's dream”—an argument rich with theological fruit (102). Welch insightfully notes that the progression of the dream mirrors the expanding frontier, “As wilderness gave way to field, field yielded to city” (110). The possibility of the iron rod being a surveyor's rod is provocative, as is Welch's assertion that “the field is Lehi's destination; the family farm is the good world that the dream imagines. The field exists in a state of moral and ecological tension between a fearsome wilderness on one side and a polluted market center on the other. Salvation is found in a pastoral family world, not in a prosperous, populous city” (112). For these reasons and others, Welch's 1830’s exegetical reception reading represents the sort of “simultaneously historical and theological” impulse noted in Spencer's review essay and is likely to be of interest for scholars of antebellum America and early Mormon history (23).To be sure, even the ahistorical essays in the volume are thoughtful and worth reading. I have tried to explicate a few more overt historical components of Approaching the Tree to prevent them from being forgotten beneath its primarily theological nature. The volume also raised two other notions in the mind of this reader for historians and theologians alike. First is the realization that, at this point in Latter-day Saint history, almost any artistic trope could now be subject to a two-century survey to discern its influence on Latter-day Saint thought. After reading Champoux's review essay, I found myself considering the common portrayals of Joseph Smith reading the Bible. I have not done a systematic study, but they appear to portray a sort of stereotypical individualistic muse: Joseph Smith alone, in a rocking chair or at a table, studying in solitude, perhaps late at night by fire or candle. Might he not have been studying in a rambunctious house with several family members and siblings? Or with parents, or in a church pew, or out in the field? What a world of new artistic depictions awaits us if we can more closely observe our art history to thereby meaningfully and creatively depart from it.Secondly, if history informs theology and vice versa, what might Terryl Givens's moving concluding chapter to the collection say about the current cultural moment for Latter-day Saints? We are bombarded by confusion. We crave certainty. Yet we are called to discern. Neither our choices nor our canon can save us. We must continually rely on discernment and revelation—both personal and prophetic—to navigate a dynamic, fluctuating universe. Food for thought, if nothing else, and a final testament to the value of the book for historical reflection (even in its most theological chapters).All told, Approaching the Tree shows in interesting ways how theology is historical and history is theological, perhaps blurring the boundary between the two more than it moves away from the one toward the other. The very collection of contemporary art within its pages on its own is “historic.” Historians and theologians would do well to continue having productive conversations with each other.