And the Word Was God

[S. Kent Brown in Andrew C. Skinner and Gaye Strathearn, eds., Third Nephi: An Incomparable Scripture. Salt Lake City: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2012, 381].

I want to say something about text. . . . Jesus himself is the text because he bears in his body the proof of the atonement. And his body, of course, is the first thing he allows people access to—to touch the scars in his hands and his feet and his side. But when one thinks about ancient texts, one thinks about texts that are inscribed on stone, clay tablets, metal, wood, eventually papyri, which is a softer, more perishable material. Each one of those kinds of surfaces can be destroyed, but the resurrected, glorified body of Jesus cannot. And it bears, as it were, witness of itself, and it carries, in its own way, the text of his suffering and death and resurrection. In a concrete way, the immediate and eternal text is the Risen Jesus, bearing in his body marks that will never go away.