Review of Jana Riess, “‘There Came a Man’: Sherem, Scapegoating, and the Inversion of Prophetic Tradition,” in Christ and Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7, eds. Adam S. Miller and Joseph M. Spencer (Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2017), 17 pages (chapter), 174 pages (book).


Abstract: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute recently published a book on the encounter between Jacob and Sherem in Jacob 7. Jana Riess’s contribution to this volume demonstrates the kind of question-asking and hypothesis formation that might occur on a quick first pass through the text, but it does not demonstrate what obviously must come next, the testing of those hypotheses against the text. Her article appears to treat the text as a mere afterthought. The result is a sizeable collection of errors in thinking about Jacob and Sherem.





Writing about prophets is a significant undertaking. Commissioned by the Lord to represent him in the highest mortal office, their status is unique. Because they are chosen by the Lord, and because they represent him, what people come to think about prophets can have deep and enduring consequences. That is why careful attention, both to detail and to context, is important in thinking about them.
A case in point is the confrontation between Jacob and Sherem in Jacob 7, to which the Neal A. Maxwell Institute recently devoted a book.1 Jana Riess’s contribution to the discussion — “‘There Came [Page 124]a Man’: Sherem, Scapegoating, and the Inversion of Prophetic Tradition” (pp. 1–17) — is a good example of the importance of careful attention both to detail and to context because, as manifested by its multiple errors, it exhibits far too little of either. Because the episode between Jacob and Sherem is a prominent feature of the Book of Mormon, it is worthwhile to consider these mistakes and to provide some correction.
Starting Out: Obvious Indications of a Casual Approach to the Text
In examining the story of Jacob and Sherem, Riess pursues two major threads. One is the effort to tie this encounter to a pattern that appears in the Hebrew Bible, and the other is her attempt to locate the episode within René Girard’s conceptual framework of cultural scapegoating (both of which I will explain in due course).
Unfortunately, Riess makes several errors in these attempts. Two are so obvious that they tell us immediately that Riess’s approach to the Jacob-Sherem episode is more casual than careful. The first is Riess’s report that God “struck Sherem dumb” (p. 15) in his encounter with Jacob. As the text never indicates that Sherem was struck dumb, Riess seems to be confusing Sherem with Korihor, who appears some sixty chapters later in the Book of Mormon (Alma 30). Korihor is condemned by the Lord and cursed such that he cannot speak. Sherem, on the other hand, is smitten by the Lord and collapses to the earth (Jacob 7:15) with no mention of being unable to speak.
Riess also reports that God nourished Sherem in his weakened condition following the smiting he received, but the record says nothing like this. It tells us that God smote Sherem and that he required nourishing but says nothing to ind...