Enos Encoded: Narrative Structure in the Small Plates
July 2, 2025If the Book of Mormon possesses, in the words of the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell, “divine architecture,” then it follows that one task of theology ought to be to seek God in the structure of the book. In this vein, Adam Miller argues that “theological readings aim to develop a text’s latent images of Christ.” Given that the Book of Mormon is, whatever else it may be, a narrative, then those searching for God in it would do well to pay attention to the ways the text’s narrative structure (i.e., its “divine architecture”) develops “latent images of Christ.” Miller gestures toward a methodology for divining Christ in texts when he writes that the power of theology “derives from its freedom to pose hypothetical questions: if such and such were the case, then what meaningful pattern would the text produce in response?” In what follows I offer such a theological reading of the small plates of Nephi, paying particular attention to the book of Enos.