Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In the Abinadi story, why would the threat of an east wind strike terror into King Noah's people? Because this isn't just a random detail in the Book of Mormon. Turns out this is actually a real life ancient phenomenon that behaves exactly as Ben and I says it should. So, welcome to Informed Saints. I'm Jasmine. We've got Neil and Stephen, and today we're talking about a paper in this volume, Abinadi, He Came Among Them in Disguise. This was published by the Religious Study center at Brigham Young University. And. And we're discussing a paper by BYU professor Kerry Hull entitled An East Wind Old and New World Perspectives.
So let's talk about the story Abinadi. He comes to King Noah's people, he preaches, he gets arrested. Where does this east wind show up?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: So there. It's actually two places where it refers to Abinadi prophesying of an east wind that Kerry Holt points out and others have talked about it as well.
The first place you encounter it narratively is in Mosiah 7. And this is actually where the group of Nephites have come down, or the people from Zarahemla led by Ammon, not the missionary Ammon, but the other Ammon.
Ammon comes down as, like a party to try and find out what happened to this group that had left.
And he meets Limhi, and Limhi is telling him, yeah, there was this prophet who came among us and he prophesied all these things and our people didn't listen. And he says in Mosiah 7:31, and he saith, if my people shall sow filthiness, they shall reap the east wind which bringeth immediate destruction. Okay, so that's the first passage that mentions it. And then the second occurrence is in the actual narrative about Abinadi himself. He had come once among them in disguise. It says, that's why it's the subtitle to this book.
And the people try to kill him, and so he flees, and then he comes back again and he prophesies. And on this occasion, he like, lists a whole series of warnings of calamities that might befall the people if they do not repent.
And in chapter 12, Mosiah 12:6, he says, and it shall come to pass that I. He's speaking, you know, prophetically for the Lord here. So it's like a thus saith the Lord context, that I will send forth hail among them that it shall smite them, and they shall also be smitten with the east wind. And insects shall pester Their land also, and devour their grain. And so.
So you have these two passages where clearly the east wind is mentioned in. It's like, it's supposed to be threatening, right?
[00:02:32] Speaker C: It's a bad thing.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: It doesn't sound threatening, though. I mean, you know, like, what's the big deal? It's wind.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Ooh. Well, exactly.
[00:02:40] Speaker C: Spooky wind.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: I actually think, in general, this is.
It's maybe hard for people in a modern developed context, a modern developed society to appreciate this, really, because no wind from any direction has ever struck fear in my heart. Okay. About what is gonna happen. And we live with. We live in a place that gets pretty windy. And so I can appreciate that, like, it's an annoyance for sure.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: But we don't live in, like, Tornado Alley.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Those kinds of winds might strike more fear into your heart.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Right. But I've never, you know, the wind coming out from the canyon or whatever has never been like, oh, this is something to be.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: It's bringing woe and destruction upon us and our crops. That sort of thing.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So it can be hard to appreciate, except for maybe people who do live in, like, Tornado Alley.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Or shout out to all our Kansas viewers out there, I hope you guys are okay in Kansas.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Maybe if you live somewhere along the coast where you get tropical storms and hurricanes. Right. Wind can actually be very destructive, of course.
And that actually may be part of the context. We can get to that in a second. But I think the most important context to have here is just, like, understanding how ancient people in both the Old and New World, like. Like Kerry's paper subtitle says, understood wind, and specifically the east wind. So, you know, I'm sure Stephen can tell us. Well, not to put him on the spot, per se, but the east wind in the Old Testament is frequently used in context of, like, punishment and judgment from God.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Famine. Yeah.
First place it shows up in the Hebrew Bible is Genesis 41 with the dream of Pharaoh, where it says in Genesis 41, verse 6, then seven ears thin and blighted by the east wind sprouted after them. So you have the seven ears of healthy wheat and then the seven ears of gross wheat that come and eat them. The famous imagery from Pharaoh's dream. But they're said to be blighted by the east wind.
And so that imagery is sort of picked up later in Genesis 41, we get this description how the seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years, as are the seven empty ears of. Of wheat blighted by the east wind. They are Seven years of famine.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: So the interpretation of Pharaoh's dream that has the seven ugly, gross stalks of wheat that are blighted by the east wind is explicitly linked with famine coming to destroy all the nice wheat. So after Pharaoh's dream, where this east wind first appears later in Exodus 10, when the plagues are coming on Egypt, Moses stretches out his hand over the land of Egypt, and he stretches over his. His staff. And it says in Exodus 10:13 that the Lord brought an east wind upon the land of Egypt, and it brought locusts with it to come and devour it. So you get the east wind appearing there in that negative context. The punchline here being. Without going through every single example, I guess it is pointing out one more, that in Exodus 14, the sea is driven back by a strong east wind, it says. Right. So east wind appears typically in negative contexts in the Hebrew Bible.
It sometimes is called the wind of the Lord, I believe, or the wind of God.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Hosea 13:15 calls it the wind of the Lord. And it's clearly being used as an instrument of judgment.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: And that's the key thing here. Right? So the east wind as an instrument of judgment in the Old Testament. Carrie gives lots of examples from the Hebrew Bible. Why the east wind? Should we answer for just a minute?
[00:06:11] Speaker A: That's what I was gonna ask. So, like, is this just like a metaphor that, like, east wind equals Lord's judgment, or is there something literal about the east wind?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: There may be something very liter about it.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So from what I understand, and. And you guys can chime in if you want to as well, but in Israel, in the, in the land of Israel, where. Or Judah, where. Where the, where the Israelites lived.
Wind from the east is coming off the desert, right? And so it's bringing in dry, hot air. And especially if it's in the summertime, it's when you're trying to grow crops or whatever, that wind from the east will literally, like, dry out and desiccate your crops. Crops.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: And would natural weather patterns also have something to do with it? Like, if you're getting an east wind, it means you're not getting, like, rain.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Weather systems coming, pushing out weather systems from the west that are coming off the Mediterranean.
Yeah, that all plays a role. Right? Your west wind in Israel is going to be coming off the Mediterranean. It's going to be. It's going to bring in cooler air, it's going to bring in rain, it's going to bring those kinds of things in. Whereas the east wind desiccates, causes Famine, destruction of crops, that kind of thing. And what you actually see here is like, that's based on the land of Israel, but the biblical authors apply it, as we just saw, like with. With Egypt. They apply it to Egypt, where, from what I understand, and Carrie talks about this in his paper, or Dr. Hole talks about this in his paper in Egypt, it actually would have been a south wind that's coming off of coming up from the Sahara that would cause that problem. And that's also. It's also more of a southeasternly wind that would be bringing locusts.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: So they still call it.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: And yet they still call it an east wind, because that's kind of like the. That's what makes it relatable and understandable to your Israelite audience. And the same thing actually happens in the Book of Jonah where he's at Nineveh and he's like, you know when he's like, out pouting that the Lord isn't destroying Nineveh and he has, like, this plant that grows up to give him shade, and then it says the Lord brings, like, a vehement east wind and it destroys it. Except in Nineveh, the east wind brings rains and brings cool air off the mountains there.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: So again, it's like, it's an Israelite centric perspective that's just applied across the board to help the audience understand that this is a wind of judgment.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: It's bad. East wind equals bad. Right. Like, regardless of the actual literal wind. Like the mythic connotation of that east wind descriptor. Bad wind.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: So in Abinadi story, by the time we get to this point in the Book of Mormon's narrative, they've already been in the New world for generations at this point.
Any new world corollaries to this?
[00:08:52] Speaker B: So, yes, there are also. There is also a new world context for understanding wind as bad and even east wind specifically as bad.
It can be regional, just like it is in the ancient Near East. But for wind in general, though, they have, like, a lot of Mayan groups have this idea of bad or evil winds that come as a punishment for him. I'm gonna try to say it out loud, but I'm probably gonna butcher it. But it's. So forgive me all you Mesoamericanists out there, but it's Kaak as IK in Yucatec Mine.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: That sounds about right.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: That sounds about right. Yeah.
Mark Wright and Kerry Hull and Brant Gardner are all gonna come up cringe at that.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: And they're believed, these bad or evil winds are believed to be sent as punishment from the gods. And they can cause illness, they can cause dis. Disease, those kinds of things.
And. And there are some contexts where it's particular. Like the east wind is particularly bad. So again, among the Yucatec Maya, there are three major winds that can attack. And one of them is specifically listed as the east wind, and the other two are not directionally based winds. It's just the east wind, as far as directional winds go, that is listed as being really bad.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: And is it for the same reason that it's just bad for the crops, it's a desiccating wind?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Well, it depends on the Conte. For some Maya in the Yucatan, there are. There are concerns about, like in the hot summer, you know, hot summer winds in the. From. From the east can cause. When they're like, burning their fields to prepare crops and stuff like that. A hot summer wind is more. A hot summer wind coming in from the east can cause fires to get out of control, those fires to get out of control. Now you burn your whole field, and you're not going to be able to plant and you're not going to be able to have a successful crop.
The lackadawn Maya, in their myths, the four winds will cause, like, the winds from all four directions are gonna cause the destruction of the world. But the east wind, God is like the head of those winds. So here's what's actually kind of interesting. So in the Zetzal Maya who live in Chiapas, Mexico, for them, the east wind is understood as a direct destructive force that was ordered by God. And John Sorensen actually pointed out that there was a prayer among the Zetzel Maya that was literally, let no hail come, let no wind come, let no locusts come.
And if you'll remember, Mosiah 12, 6, all three of those things, hail, east wind, and insects devouring the crops. Right. So those three things are associated. This isn't necessarily. It's just no wind. It's not necessarily an east wind per se.
The Zotzel, who are.
And again, apologies if I'm mispronouncing.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: And Zeltal.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Okay. So, yeah, Zeltal and Zotz seal.
They. They are. They are neighbors of.
They're a neighboring Maya group. Their word, their expression for east wind literally means fiery wind.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: Ooh.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: So again, destructive forces associated with it.
We could go through a bunch of other examples. Like I said, there's clearly, like, regional variations and things like that. What I actually think is kind of interesting is to look specifically.
Well, it is worth noting, in addition to heat and destruction during what we might call hurricane season today. Right. East wind could be associated with hurricanes and tropical storms that are coming and would be hitting what the Nephites would have called the East Sea. Right.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: It's not just like crops. That is like overall destruction.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: That's going to be total destruction. Right. And so it could be associated with that, and that could be the concern.
They even had the east wind. God had the title inundation of the east in. In the Yucatec, among the Yucatec. Mayo.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: I'm getting some vibes of like, Third Nephi chapter nine here.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: With the destruction, because it describes whirlwinds coming up. Right.
And blowing people away and causing all this destruction along with the darkness, along with the, you know, the probably volcanic activity, earthquakes, the, you know, the cloud of darkness or the vapors. So, yeah, the wind coming with it clearly is some kind of a destructive force.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
But I do think it's helpful to look specifically at, you know, we're talking about Mesoamerica in general, and I know there will be people who listen, who don't agree that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica. If you want to try and look into how the east wind could be understood in whatever geography model you want, be our guest. But we're going to look at it in this context. Most Mesoamerican Book of Mormon geographers place the land of Lehi Nephi, or the city of Lehi Nephi, where this is taking place in the highlands of southern Guatemala and specifically in the valley of Guatemala, where Guatemala City is today, to give you a geographic context. And I think it's actually kind of interesting to note that there it would be a northeast wind, but a northeast wind could be hot, dry, and could destroy crops, cause famine, like the east wind in Israel. And again, you know, the biblical context, they'll still call it an east wind, even though it's coming from a different direction. Right. So there could be, you know, some brass plates influence on calling it an east wind specifically.
But there's also. Actually, Kerry goes through the concept of directions in Mesoamerica, and he talks about how the east and west are the prominent directions. Right.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: And more than north and south, more
[00:14:33] Speaker B: than north and south, like it would be for us. So a northeast wind might have been more readily labeled an east wind among Mesoamericanists, but here's where it actually kind of gets interesting. This is something Sorensen pointed out in. In Both his ancient American setting and in Mormon's codex, when that wind coming in from the north or northeast, which was hot and dry, clashed with southern winds that were coming up off of the Pacific Ocean and were more humid, that can actually cause hailstorms in the valley of Guatemala.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Which is what Abinadi describes.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Which is what Abinadi describes. Right. In Mosiah 12, 6. Hail, east wind, insects. Okay. Sorensen also talks about how locusts were typically in the Motagua River Valley, which is north of the valley of Guatemala. And so if you have a wind coming in from the northeast, it could also blow the locust down into the valley of Guatemala. And so again, you have this constellation of phenomena, meteorological phenomena, if you want to call it the east wind, is the agent that can cause the, the locusts and the hail. And you get hailstorms in the middle of, you know, your, your, your, like your crops. Like, like while you're growing your crops. Yeah, that's trouble. You get locusts coming in devouring super babs. Yeah, that's trouble. Right. This is going to cause famine. Right. And so there's a specific setting in context here. Again, if you, you know, if you follow this model, that makes a lot of sense for this particular prophecy.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: You've been talking about the east wind destroying crops, but that's like a very seasonal thing. Does timing play into this at all?
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I think it does. I mean, Abinadi's prophecy itself is explicit, at least with the insects or locusts, that they're going to devour your grain. Right. And he talks about, actually in verse four, he prophesies a famine. Right. And so there's some association with that going on. But other scholars have talked about how, have suggested that Israel, that Isaiah's prophecies were maybe on a festival occasion.
I know that John W. Welch has talked about it being during Pentecost, which would be.
Which was kind of like the summer harvest in Israel.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: It's like the first fruits.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: The first fruits, Right. Harvest your early harvest for the spring. Yeah, of course, that's, again, that's going to be dependent on your actual region and the ebbs and flows of the seasons there. We don't know how that was adapted and syncretized necessarily for a new world context, but that presumably would have been associated with some kind of harvest. And so it'd be very ominous. Right. The timing would be very ominous that, like, oh, there's going to be an east wind that might cause these problems and destroy the harvest here.
Jerry Grover actually has in a book that you wouldn't think is going to have much about Abinadi because it's titled Evidence for the Nahor Religion in Mesoamerica. But the first two chapters are all about the story in Abinadi because he's. I believe he's arguing, if I'm recalling correctly. And Jerry, you can correct me if I'm wrong, that he. That this is kind of the inception of Nahorite religion here, going on with the people of Noah and stuff like that.
But again, you should go read his book to get that full context. But he does have this section on Abinadi where he talks about the New Year rites among the Maya and how there might be a context there for what's going on.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: And New Year would have been. Is that also in the spring or is it a different time of year?
[00:18:12] Speaker B: I don't know, off the top of my head, when they would have been celebrating New Year specifically. But I also think, like, just keeping in mind that, like, the.
Like, these are some. These are some, like, festive rites that would have been done. And I mean, yeah, I would be around probably some kind of seasonal transition, you would guess, right. But. But just I think, keeping in mind that, like, if you have this Israelite background and then you have this New World stuff, there's going to be some syncretism and you might blend what's going on in different festivities a little bit. But he talks about these New Year rites that could be associated with different days or different year bearers. So not to get too into the weeds about that, but basically there were four specific days of the year that could end up being the New Year day. And depending on, you know, whichever day that was that ended up being the New Year day would be the year bearer. And that would have implications for how the year was going to be. And you would actually, during the festivities, you would have prophecies of what that year is going to bring.
And some of this would include warnings about what might happen if the ceremonies aren't all performed properly and if they aren't done right.
And he talks about the ish year spelled I X. And so I think that's.
Ish is how you would say that the prophecies associated with the ish year included want of water, heat and destroying crops, causing famine, wars and discords, and change of rulers or priests. And that. We haven't talked much about that. But there is a little later in Mosiah 12, he prophesies that Noah the king, right, is gonna die. He's gonna be killed and he's gonna, he's gonna be like, be like a garment in the furnace and all of that, right? And so this, it suggests that there's some sort of conflict. And then it also includes locusts coming and causing famine.
And then he also mentions that these New Year rites would include rituals that were performed to protect the community from the bad or evil winds that we talked about earlier. And so you can imagine here you have, and it's worth noting that each year bearer was associated with a specific direction, right? So you have these rights that are supposed to protect you from the bad and evil winds, and they're also supposed to protect you from these prophesied calamities. And so if, if you have a context like that where a Ben Arai is coming and he's prophesying these exact calamities, he's saying there's going to be famine. He's saying there's going to be, he's, he's warning that an evil wind is going to come from the east. So maybe this was a year bearer year where it was the east, right? Or something like that in for the Nephites, he's saying that there's going to be a change of rulers and, and the ruler is going to die a violent death, right? And, and he's saying that there's going to be locusts coming. This, these are all the calamities they're saying they're going to be concerned about and they're trying to prevent with their New Year's rights. So I don't know, I thought that was kind of interesting.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: These are a lot of fascinating details from kind of all over the world. How does this all come together in the Abinadi story?
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Well, I think what this does is it helps us appreciate why a prophecy of east wind specifically could be ominous for people living in an ancient, an ancient Mesoamerican setting, specifically, as we noted, in the highland Guatemala region and specifically with their Israelite background and the, the way the east wind probably, you know, they would have picked up on that in their brass plate texts that they have.
And specifically again with some of the other pestilences or calamities that he warns about in context with this, how it can be part, how it can contribute to causing famine and hail and locusts. And you know, they don't have supply chains and they don't have, you know, they don't have all warehouses and all the modern advantages that we have. If, if the crops you're growing in your, in your city or your immediate vicinity are devastated.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: It's a bad situation.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: It's a bad situation. It's a really bad situation. Right. And it can be devastating for you. And so I think it really helps put in context why, you know, as Limhi paraphrased it, right, why he said that they shall reap the east wind which bringeth immediate destruction. It can just be a very destructive force.
And you can see it in all kinds of ways when you. When you have this ancient perspective.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: If you do want to learn more about this concept, look up the book Abinadi. He came among them in disguise. You can find this on the Religious Study center website of Brigham Young University. You can study deeply, believe boldly. We'll see you next time.
