(Why did I pick up Moby-Dick in the first place? Because someone had told me, without elaborating, that he thought I might be Herman Melville reincarnated. That never really panned out, either.)
Anyway, about the name Ishmael.
When I left the Mormon Church, which was four years before I had read any Melville, my newfound atheism coexisted uneasily with an absurd but unshakable feeling that I was doing what God wanted me to do. (Nowadays, I think that may have been true. God needed to get me out of the institutional church to which I was so tightly bound, and only a total loss of faith would do the trick.) At that time, a passage from the Book of Mormon came to mind, ripped from its context, and I applied it to myself (which is what Nephi said we should be doing with scripture anyway!).
And Aaron said unto the king: Behold, the Spirit of the Lord has called him another way; he has gone to the land of Ishmael, to teach the people of Lamoni.Now the king said unto them: What is this that ye have said concerning the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, this is the thing which doth trouble me (Alma 22:4-5).
"The Spirit of the Lord has called him another way" -- that was the exact feeling. But what was "the Spirit of the Lord"? What could any of that possibly mean to an atheist. Behold, this is the thing which did trouble me.
The Aaron and Ishmael mentioned in the passage I have quoted are not the familiar biblical figures, but the occurrence of the name Ishmael nevertheless made me think of Genesis.
And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren (Gen. 16:11-12).
As a firstborn son who had just officially made himself the black sheep of the family, to live as "a wild man" unmoored from institutions, I identified with this Ishmael, too, and I read all the biblical connotations of Ishmael into the Book of Mormon line about being "called . . . another way . . . to the land of Ishmael."
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Remembering all these things today, I realized that there is another figure who is called a "wild man" in Mormon scripture: the biblical prophet Enoch.
And it came to pass that Enoch went forth in the land, among the people, standing upon the hills and the high places, and cried with a loud voice, testifying against their works; and all men were offended because of him.And they came forth to hear him, upon the high places, saying unto the tent-keepers: Tarry ye here and keep the tents, while we go yonder to behold the seer, for he prophesieth, and there is a strange thing in the land; a wild man hath come among us (Moses 6:37-38).
The name Enoch is of course a link, in very general terms, to John Dee and his "Enochian" system -- but what I saw when I read this was the mention of Enoch "standing upon the hills." Later, at the end of Joseph Smith's Enoch narrative, God receives Enoch "up into his own bosom" (Moses 7:69). The language reminded me of what the angels said to Dee: "The Hill is the World, The waters are the bosome of God, . . . The Whale is the spirit of God." This links Enoch not only to Dee, but specifically to the center of the current sync-storm: Dee's whale on a hill.
Dee did not specify what kind of whale it was, but the sync fairies have associated it specifically with the orca, or killer whale -- and, as I shall explain presently, Enoch = Behemoth = killer whale on a hill.
The Enoch-Behemoth connection comes from the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras.
Then didst thou ordain two living creatures, the one thou calledst Enoch, and the other Leviathan;And didst separate the one from the other: for the seventh part, namely, where the water was gathered together, might not hold them both.Unto Enoch thou gavest one part, which was dried up the third day, that he should dwell in the same part, wherein are a thousand hills:But unto Leviathan thou gavest the seventh part, namely, the moist; and hast kept him to be devoured of whom thou wilt, and when (2 Esdras 6:49-52).
Leviathan, the great sea monster, is always paired with Behemoth, the great monster of the land. Here, for some reason, the name Enoch is used instead, but the context makes it obvious that it means Behemoth, not the prophet. And note that hills are mentioned again -- Enoch's domain is "wherein are a thousand hills."
But surely it is Leviathan that is to be identified with the whale, not Behemoth! Melville continually refers to whales as Leviathans, and it is even the word for "whale" in modern Hebrew. Whatever Behemoth might have been, it obviously wasn't a whale, right?
Well, I grew up reading not only the Apocrypha but also old D&D manuals, so I can tell you that Behemoth is a whale -- and not just any whale, but specifically a killer whale on a hill. This is a scan from the 1980 edition of Deities and Demigods. (Fortunately, you can find anything on the Internet!)
How perfect a match is that? Behemoth -- alias Enoch -- is portrayed as "a killer whale . . . that inhabits the plains and hills," and its inclusion in a book called Deities and Demigods also implies that it is in some sense -- like Dee's whale on a hill and Miller's orca -- a god.
Also, although the Behemoth picture itself was drawn by Paul Jaquays, check out the name of the first illustrator credited on the title page.
