Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast.

Today I am joined by Dr. Josh Sears, who is an assistant professor of ancient scripture

here at Brigham Young University.

Today we are focusing on the book of Second Nephi and we are really zeroing in on the text

of Second Nephi.

We want to prepare you to open, open this book of scripture and be ready and wearing to

go understanding the context and the themes and the characters

and the forms and the structure.

So Josh, you are going to be our guide, our intrepid guide today through this.

And let's jump right in.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Thanks for having me here.

Tell us what we need to know about any context for opening the book of second Nephi and getting up to

speed with what's happening. I guess the most obvious thing to say would that this is a sequel to

First Nephi. Most people pick that up, but it's important to recognize Nephi set this up into two

books. And we had a great discussion from Kim Matheson last time where she set up First Nephi.

So I'm hoping we can just kind of continue to build on the foundation she laid here with Second

Nephi. Yeah, yeah, that's right. You know, it's interesting that First Nephi ends kind of with

a lovely moment in First Nephi 22, where it seems like there's a kind of rapprochement

between Laman and Lemuel and Nephi. They've come together, right? It's a moment where

Nephi is effectively teaching them how to understand Isaiah and Xenus. And it's kind of a beautiful

place to end the book of First Nephi.

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