Seeing Third Nephi as the Holy of Holies of the Book of Mormon by John Welch

"the Sermon on "the Mount" recalls the fact that the temple in Israel was equated with "the mountain of the Lord." Matthew begins chapter 5 in his gospel with these words: "And Jesus went up into the mountain (anebē eis to oros)" (my translation). It does not say, "And Jesus went out on a gentle hillside." Significantly, these words in Matthew are precisely the same as the words in the Septuagint text of Exodus 19:3 and 24:12, when Moses and the elders went up into Mount Sinai (anebē eis to oros). In the mountain, the seventy elders "saw God" and received the law. In the sermon, Jesus similarly promised his disciples that if they are pure in heart, "they [too] shall see God," and he likewise gave them a new dispensation of the law. As some recent biblical scholars have said, these points of parallelism "clearly cannot be ignored." 15 Moreover, when Psalm 24 asks, "Who shall ascend into the hill [or mountain] of the Lord" (anabēsetai eis to oros—the same words again), the psalm is asking, who is worthy to enter the temple? The precise verbal similarity between the Greek texts of these passages in Exodus, Matthew 5, and Psalm 24 comes as further confirmation of the temple setting for the Sermon on the Mount."

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