discern and act upon the power of God in her life and in others, and her actions are ultimately world-changing within the book's context. Revelation Abish's story models a religious culture portrayed throughout the Book of Mormon narrative which seeks guidance from and closeness to God through both inherited scriptures and contemporary revelation. In the story of Ammon's mission to Lamoni's people, he first teaches Lamoni by referring to scripture. After Lamoni's household and Ammon fall into the trance, Abish introduces a "second visionary experience" to complement Ammon's earlier use of scripture, highlighting scripture and revelation as interdependent resources for the Book of Mormon's depiction of a life of faith. Abish's vision becomes the first in a series of visions that Lamanites experience which motivate their embrace of Christianity. Messianic parallels Abish's role in the narrative symbolically alludes to Jesus Christ. Abish's liminality as a "Lamanitish" woman suggests Christ's dual, category-defying nature as both god and man. When Abish lifts the queen from the floor and raises her from slumber, the narrative parallels John 11, casting Abish in the place of Jesus raising Lazarus of Bethany from the dead while the queen takes Lazarus's place. The Lamanite queen in turn raises Lamoni such that she alludes to both Lazarus and Jesus in John 11. And Turley notes how with no social privilege, Abish "descends below everyone else in this story" yet from there "lift[s] people up when they fall to earth", paralleling Jesus descending below all things in order to lift humanity as part of the Christian atonement. Other metaphors The Encyclopedia of Mormonism suggests reading Abish as an archetypal "godly servant". Camille S. Williams offers a reading of the overall narrative in which Ammon is a metaphor for the Book of Mormon, and the Lamanite queen and Abish symbolize responsive readers. In this analogy, some critical reactions to the Book of Mormon reject it as if it is a "monster" that needs to be "slain" in a manner that resembles the hostile Lamanite response to seeing Ammon and the royal household in a trance. According to Williams, a perceptive reader behaves like Abish or the queen, willing to receive the Book of Mormon in the way Abish and the queen receive Ammon. Cultural reception Although Abish is directly named only once in the Book of Mormon and only appears in a handful of verses, literary scholar Kylie Nielson Turley