Review of Adam S. Miller, “Reading Signs or Repeating Symptoms,” in Christ and Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7, eds. Adam S. Miller and Joseph M. Spencer (Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2017), 10 pages (chapter), 174 pages (book).


Abstract. The Neal A. Maxwell Institute recently published a volume on the encounter between Jacob and Sherem in Jacob 7. Adam Miller’s contribution to this book is a reiteration of views he published earlier in his own volume. One of Miller’s claims is that Jacob made a false prediction about the reaction Sherem would have to a sign if one were given him — an assertion that is already beginning to shape the conventional wisdom about this episode. This shaping is unfortunate, however, since the evidence indicates that this view of Jacob’s prediction is a mistake. Once we see this, it is easier to avoid other mistakes that seem evident in Miller’s approach.





In a previous article, I examined some features of Jana Riess’s contribution to a volume published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute on the encounter between Jacob and Sherem in Jacob 7.1 The errors in Riess’s essay provided opportunity to clarify that confrontation. The need for clarification also arises in considering Adam [Page 162]Miller’s treatment of this episode, which appears in the same volume.2 I will discuss two issues from Miller’s contribution — his view of Jacob’s prediction about Sherem’s reaction to a sign and the wider implications that might seem to follow from his view of Jacob’s prediction.
Jacob’s Prediction
One of the topics Miller addresses in the Jacob-Sherem episode regards the sign given to Sherem. Miller believes Jacob made a false prediction: Jacob says that Sherem will deny a sign if it is given to him, but when Sherem actually does receive a sign, he acknowledges it and confesses his deceit and other sins because of it (vs. 14–19). The conclusion Miller draws is that Jacob’s prediction was therefore false.
Miller first made this claim in his own volume,3 and I responded to it, in somewhat condensed form, as part of a much longer review of a chapter in Miller’s book.4 I stand by what I said in that review about the inadequacies in Miller’s full treatment of Jacob 7 and wish to further emphasize this specific matter, as Miller’s view seems to be gaining traction in some quarters. Joseph Spencer of the Maxwell Institute, for instance, has adopted Miller’s claim about Jacob’s “misprediction,”