King Benjamin's Address

In 1985, William Kurz wrote an article in the Journal of Biblical Literature that compares famous farewell speeches throughout history. He focused on Greco-Roman and biblical speeches and, in total, compared twenty-two such speeches. Kurz has developed a list of twenty elements that are common to the farewell addresses he used in his study. None of the speeches contain all twenty of these elements but all contain at least a few. For example, Moses’ farewell address contains 16 of these elements, while Socrates’ has eleven.

The Book of Mormon contains some stirring farewell speeches, one of which is King Benjamin’s farewell address to his people at the temple. When compared to the twenty elements from Kurz’s study, King Benjamin’s speech tops the chart with sixteen that are explicitly stated, while three others could be implied. This means that this speech follows the pattern of Greco-Roman and biblical farewell speeches as well as the ancient speeches do! Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I won’t list all twenty of the elements because that would take too long, but some of my favorites are “He states his innocence and the fact that he fulfilled his duty”, “He refers to his impending death”, and “He cites his own mission as an example.”