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<p style="text-align: justify;">Omni greatly revered his ancestors and their personal accounts on the small plates of Nephi. A close examination of Omni&rsquo;s brief autobiography (Omni 1:1&ndash;3) evidences borrowing from all four of his predecessors&rsquo; writings. Moreover, his self-description, &ldquo;I of myself am a wicked man,&rdquo; constitutes far more than a confession of religious dereliction. That self-assessment alludes to Nephi&rsquo;s autobiographical wordplay on his name in terms &ldquo;good&rdquo; and &ldquo;having been born of goodly parents&rdquo; and his grandfather Enos&rsquo;s similarly self-referential wordplay in describing his own father Jacob as a &ldquo;just man.&rdquo; Omni&rsquo;s name most likely represents a hypocoristic form of a longer theophoric name, *ʾomnı̂yyāhû (from the root *ʾmn), meaning &ldquo;Yahweh is [the object of] my faith&rdquo; or &ldquo;Yahweh is my guardian [or, nursing father],&rdquo; but could also be heard or understood as a gentilic, &ldquo;faithful one&rdquo; or &ldquo;trustworthy one.&rdquo; These observations have implications for Omni&rsquo;s stated defense of his people the Nephites (traditionally, the &ldquo;good&rdquo; or &ldquo;fair ones&rdquo;) against the Lamanites, those who had dwindled in &ldquo;unbelief&rdquo; (cf. Hebrew lōʾ-ʾēmun). In the end, Omni&rsquo;s description of himself as &ldquo;a wicked man&rdquo; should be viewed in the context of his reverence for &ldquo;goodly&rdquo; and &ldquo;just&rdquo; ancestors and brought into balance with those sacred trusts in which he did prove faithful: preserving his people, his genealogy, and the small plates themselves.</p>


“I of Myself Am a Wicked Man”: Some Notes on Allusion and Textual Dependency in Omni 1:1-2

Title

“I of Myself Am a Wicked Man”: Some Notes on Allusion and Textual Dependency in Omni 1:1-2

Publication Type

Journal Collection

Year of Publication

2020

Authors

Bowen, Matthew L. (Primary)

Pagination

71-88

Volume

40

URL

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/i-of-myself-am-a-wicked-man-some-notes-on-allusion-and-textual-dependency-in-omni-11-2/

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Abstract