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Reading Genesis to Teach Genesis: a Short Guide for Latter-day Saints

December 20, 2021 /

On January 1, we hit Genesis like a brick wall, and stay in it through the week of March 20.1Then we’re in Exodus until May 8! What makes Genesis so hard? Well,  Genesis chapter 1 dumps us immediately into a maelstrom of issues and questions, and Church materials aren’t the most complete or up-to-date at helping us navigate those, or even be aware of the options and the history behind them.

What’s the relationship between Genesis, Moses, Abraham and the Temple? Why are there significant differences between them?  Does the translation matter? What’s the relationship between Genesis and science? What about dinosaurs and evolution? How old is the earth? What about the Flood? Is Genesis meant to be read as simple history? Is it literal or figurative? or is there some other way to approach Genesis, other than that binary? 

This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

In 1928, the LDS Commissioner of Education and future Apostle Joseph F. Merrill, PhD, sent out a memo to “All Seminary Teachers and teachers of theology in LDS Colleges.” Merrill was concerned teachers had been spending too much time on “mysteries.”

Joshua commanded [the sun to stand still] and it did so, or they thought it did. What is the explanation? Who knows? Why attempt one? Why not emphasize the purpose the Lord had in lengthening the day? Is the story of the great fish swallowing Jonah literally true? I do not know. But in the story of ‘Jonah and the whale’ there are some of the finest moral lessons in all literature….

Face all issues squarely. Encourage your students to think, to ask questions, to seek explanations, etc. but be very frank to admit that you ‘do not know’ in your answers, when this is the fact. Your beliefs or views may not be generally accepted as the truth. If you present them at all make clear that they are only your opinions. Avoid being dogmatic…. You will make many mistakes if you attempt to explain what neither God nor science has yet revealed.2I note that science AND Biblical scholarship now has 100 years of progress  Your attempts may do more harm than good. Play safe. Ask the students to read, search, and formulate their own explanations of mysteries, etc.3I found this in my dissertation research, the John M. Whitaker Collection at the U, Box 15, fd 42

This post is not a comprehensive listing of definitive answers or resources to address all the questions and “mysteries” in Genesis, but is intended for parents and teachers to at least get a basic handle on the material, its interpretation, and background. It’s mostly introductory, accessible material.

Per Merrill above, the most important thing is to ask,  what is the purpose of this story? What is it trying to teach? what question is being answered in this story? Why is it being told this way? And remember, ancient Israelite purposes and needs were not necessarily ours. We tend not to struggle with polytheism, for example.

For Genesis as a whole, my simplest recommendation: pick up a study bible to accompany your KJV, read my series here (strong recommendation), look at the Church materials linked below, and maybe Longman or Enns in the Cheap and Accessible category below; both of those walk you all the way through Genesis, not just the early chapters.

I’m also assuming good familiarity with the Book of Moses (i.e. the JST to Genesis, with all that entails) and the Book of Abraham (a very complicated book.) If not, see here.

Free stuff:

 

Stuff I can’t recommend at all, because I think it does more harm than good

  • The 1980 Old Testament Institute manual
  • Cleon Skousen’s Thousand Years series (here and here)
  • LDS authors who don’t have any training in Old Testament/Bible, and insist on gross oversimplifying to the point of distortion and/or making simplistic claims tantamount to “Israelites were basically 2021 Latter-day Saints, but in tents and stuff. Plus the Law of Moses.”
    • I’m not going to name names here. The point is, the Old Testament (and Genesis, especially) is a complex book and it often takes a specialist to understand and translate that complexity for a non-specialist audience. We may not be able to teach or even understand that complexity fully in Seminary, Gospel Doctrine, or a family chat, but if we aren’t at least acknowledging it and preparing people for it, we set them up to fail. Many Latter-day Saint Old Testament works are not good, simply because they fail to acknowledge or worse, actively deny that complexity.

Cheap and accessible stuff

More technical, detailed, or expensive material

  • Harlow, “After Adam: Reading Genesis in an Age of Evolutionary Science” Looks at both the science and current state of Biblical studies
  • I own 52 commentaries on Genesis, and frequently look at Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis.
    • Sarna was both a Rabbi and a trained ancient Near Eastern scholar. You can get his older views in Understanding Genesis
  • Mark Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Fortress Press, 2009)
    • Smith is a brilliant and charismatic Catholic scholar at Princeton. This volume is longer, more densely academic than the others, and excellent. As you might guess from the title, Smith focuses on the nature of Genesis 1 as written by Israelite priests in Babylon. A whole chapter is devoted, for example, to the question of “What is myth, and does Genesis 1 qualify?”
  • Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence
    • Levenson, a Jewish scholar at Harvard, takes a different approach. He looks at different creation accounts in the Bible for what they tell us about the world and the nature of good, evil, and God. A fantastic book, but I recommend some of these others first if you’re not used to quasi-scholarly discourse or haven’t read anything about Genesis 1 before.

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here via GoFundMe. *I am an Amazon Affiliate, and may receive a small percentage of purchases made through Amazon links on this page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box below) and can also follow Benjamin the Scribe on Facebook.

Categories: books, Genesis, Gospel Doctrine Resources

13 Comments

  1. Laurin Rackham

    December 24, 2021 at 6:58 am

    Thank you.

  2. Nathan Goodrich

    December 27, 2021 at 11:50 am

    This question may be a bit out of place, but in your December 9th post, you mentioned the existence of a “Church-approved Bible app for missionaries” that gave access to other Bible translations. Do you know if that is more widely available?

    I didn’t find it on a quick search & the Bible app I tried using last time around was not great.

    • benspackman (Post author)

      December 27, 2021 at 3:11 pm

      It’s called Parallel Plus. Available on the Apple Store and I assume for android too.

      • Estevan L.

        December 29, 2021 at 10:04 am

        Confirmed it is available on Android as well.

      • Joshua

        December 31, 2021 at 4:44 pm

        Hey Ben, how can I get more info about the church’s officially approving this app? Is there an announcement or document somewhere?

        • benspackman (Post author)

          December 31, 2021 at 5:16 pm

          I’m not aware of anything in print. What I know comes from talking to missionaries and friends who work for the Church.

  3. Laura

    December 27, 2021 at 1:32 pm

    Thanks for the expansive list! Several of the books you’ve listed are available on Hoopla through my public library.

  4. Eric Peterson

    December 28, 2021 at 7:15 am

    Thanks for publishing all these great resources! I just read this quote from “Thoughts to Keep in Mind” in the CFM manual for 2022: “Don’t expect the Old Testament to present a thorough and precise history of humankind. That’s not what the original authors and compilers were trying to create. Their larger concern was to teach something about God…” and it goes on to explain a bit further. They don’t mention the word “genre” specifically but it was great to see a helpful explanation like that in there.

  5. Estevan L.

    January 2, 2022 at 12:29 am

    Hi Ben,

    I got the “NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible” and really like it so far.

    I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the “IVP Bible Background Comentary”. John Walton is also an author and it seems like the NRSV CBSB borrows some content from it. The reason I’m asking is because the IVP BBC has been translated to Portuguese (my native language), and would be nice to have good material to study from in Portuguese as well.

    On a separate note, I’m almost finished with The Lost World of Genesis One. Really good.

    Thanks,

    • benspackman (Post author)

      January 2, 2022 at 8:10 am

      The notes in the NRSV BBC come from a 9-volume Zondervan Series, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. I don’t know what relation there is, if any, between the ZBBC and the IVP BBC, but Walton was involved with both. If nothing else, the IVP is probably fine and in the same vein.

  6. Matt W.

    January 3, 2022 at 12:31 pm

    Thanks for the John Walton recommendation! It was free on audible yesterday, so picked up the Genesis 1 book and listed to it for 4 hours. Very interesting stuff. One Call out, I’d love to read your interpretter article, but the link you provided only goes to the comments. I’m sure I can google it and find it, but wanted you to know.