Nibley and the Nativity - Part #4

Ponder the Light the World video The Christ Child and the Innkeeper.

Maybe watch it again watch for all the inns and innkeepers.

Ok

No innkeeper.

What?!  Why?!  Ok here we go. Prophets and leaders and my mom and dad have taught me no room in the Inn meant the hotel was full. We have waxed poetic about this for over a century.

Well, turns out we were wrong.

See the Inn is better translated as a guest room or loft. Turns out we were the last to find out, it’s been in other bible translations for well... forever.

We just use KJV and they said inn probably because they would go to the pub after a day of translating.

So should we have to make a big deal about this change?

I submit that we don’t. We don’t need a revelation. It’s already revealed we have just been blind.

Nibley and Dead Ends with Lehi in the desert.

Where do you go if you want to find ancient parallels or setting that could be related to the Book of Mormon?

Book of Mormon Central is an excellent collection of the unique aspects of The Book of Mormon. One of the reference materials I came across was Lehi in the Desert by Nibley.

Nibley recorded the following in his book Lehi in the Desert, regarding ancient Hebrew Idiom for Blackness:

“This amazing coincidentia oppositorum is the clash of black and white. With the Arabs, to be white of countenance is to be blessed and to be black of countenance is to be cursed; there are parallel expressions in Hebrew and Egyptian.”

The Problem is that he didn't provide any references for its use, he just said it was so.

So where are we to go to find these clashes of black and white in Arabian texts? I didn't know any other ancient texts.  So I googled blackness in Books.Google.com. I didn't find much of anything for a religious text.

Nibley had made a claim but there was no reference.

Click here for Part #5 Ancient use of Blackness