PROVO, Utah — Nephi's familiarity with an ancient Israelite goddess helped him to understand his vision of the tree of life, said a BYU professor of Islamic studies and Arabic.Daniel C. Peterson told a Campus Education Week class on Tuesday, Aug. 18, about Asherah, an ancient deity figure whose symbol was a tree.The Book of Mormon tells of a vision received by Lehi and later by his son Nephi. The central image of the vision was a tree of life."The beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow," Nephi wrote in his account (1 Nephi 11:8).Nephi asked the Spirit for the interpretation. "We expect the Spirit to answer Nephi's question. But the response to Nephi's question is really surprising," Peterson said.The Spirit showed Nephi another vision in response. A vision of "a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white. ... A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" (1 Nephi 11:13, 15).Nephi asked about a beautiful white tree and was shown a beautiful white virgin. After Nephi saw Mary with the newborn Lamb of God, the Spirit asked Nephi if he understood.Nephi did. "It is the love of God" (1 Nephi 11:22)."It seems, in fact, that the virgin is the tree in some sense," Peterson said. "Now why would Nephi see a connection between a tree and the virginal mother of a divine child? I believe that Nephi's vision reflects a meaning of the 'sacred tree' that is unique to the ancient Near East."To understand that connection requires taking one step back from the religion of the ancient Israelites to look at the related religion of the ancient Canaanites.The Canannites worshiped a god named "El.""El was probably also the original god of Israel," Peterson said. "In the earliest Israelite conception, father El had a divine son named Yahweh or Jehovah. That ought to sound very Mormon to you, this increasing understanding of Old Testament scholars. But gradually the Israelite conception of Yahweh … absorbed the functions of El. By the 10th century B.C., King Solomon's day, Yahweh and El had come to be identified as the same person."The chief goddess of the Canaanites was Asherah, El's wife."Asherah seems to have been known and venerated among the Hebrews as well," Peterson said. "At least some Israelites worshiped her over a period extending from the conquest of Canaan in the second millennium before Christ to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. — the time of Lehi's departure with his family from the Old World."Peterson said that an image or symbol of Asherah was displayed in Solomon's temple for nearly two-thirds of its existence, including the lifetime of Lehi and, perhaps, his son Nephi. "What this (symbol) was we really don't know exactly, but it was probably a wooden object — like a tree."There is no record of Asherah being opposed by many of the early Old Testament prophets — including Baal-worship critics Amos, Hosea, Elijah and Elisha. Peterson indicated that the symbol's eventual ban may have been because it had been corrupted into idol worship — the tree symbol became a tree that was inappropriately worshiped itself as an idol.What is important for Nephi's vision and his easy quick interpretation is that there was a tradition of associating a tree with the heavenly mother of Yahweh. It was not a stretch for Nephi to understand a virgin mother being associated with, or in some ways equated with, the tree of life."This would not have made any sense at all to Joseph Smith, who knew nothing about any of this," Peterson said. "The answer (the Spirit gave Nephi) wouldn't make any sense to any of us, but it would have made direct sense to an Israelite growing up in Israel in a time when the divine tree represented a divine mother who was standing in the temple in Jerusalem."Peterson warned against taking the connection too far, however. He said that Mary, the mother of Christ, was not literally Asherah. "She was, as Nephi's guide carefully stressed, simply 'the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.' But she was the perfect mortal typification of the mother of the Son of God."A rich symbol of the love of God.
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