The Book of Judges begins with the death of Joshua, and is arranged in very distinct and obvious cycles: Israel prospers, forgets God and embraces idolatry, is allowed to be enslaved/captured by its neighbors until it repents, and then God raises up a charismatic military leader or “judge” who delivers Israel from captivity. Wash, rinse, repeat. Continue reading
Author: benspackman
Old Testament Gospel Doctrine Lesson 18- Joshua
We are now out of the Pentateuch, into what’s called the Deuteronomistic History, or DH. This refers to the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Continue reading

Come Follow Me: Numbers 11-14, 21
(Minimal time to update this content, but wanted it back at the top of the posts.)
The Book of Numbers takes its English name from the Greek Septuagint title, a description of the census-taking in its first four chapters. The Hebrew title is a bit more descriptive, bemidbar sinai, “in the wilderness of Sinai.” Note the time in Numbers 1:1. Two years have passed. In 14:29-33, God decrees that that generation— everyone over 20— will die in the wilderness and their children will suffer because of their unfaithfulness. Continue reading

Mormonism as Rough Stone Rolling: Towards an LDS Theology of Encountering “the World”
In 2017, I participated in the Maxwell Institute’s Summer Seminar, with the theme Mormonism Encounters the World and run by Philip Barlow and Teryl Givens. The seminar involves an intense few weeks of researching, workshopping, and writing. The result is a public conference of papers. Unfortunately, the papers that year were never posted onto the MI website, but WVS provided a summary here.
My paper looked briefly at the vertical relationship between Latter-day Saints and God but primarily at the horizontal relationship between Latter-day Saints and “the world.” I proposed two historical and competing models, ways of thinking about our interactions with “the world:”
- The “infection” model, which presupposes that Latter-day Saints received a pure intellectual inheritance of doctrinal understanding through prophets and modern scripture, which must be zealously guarded against outside influence. This model also characterizes almost all truth as “old” and static.
- The “quest” model, which presupposes that more “truth is out there,” and Latter-day Saints must venture out to find it, carefully weighing and “testing all things” to find what is good (per 1Th 5:21)
My paper received some very kind and enthusiastic comments, and I post the unrevised working draft here. I hope, eventually, to revisit and revise for publication, but in the meantime, enjoy.
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.

Virtual Sperry Fireside On Reading the Old Testament in Context (Updated with text)
This paper and presentation introduces a couple kinds of context and how to get at it, in order to understand the Bible better. Update 05-05-2022, I have made my formal paper draft available here.
If you missed attending one of my firesides or the Sperry Symposium, this is for you. I recorded the audio/powerpoint from my final presentation last weekend, which benefitted from having done it three times. The length is about 1:10, and unfortunately I cut the audio before I closed with some testimony about the utility of the Old Testament, my appreciation for it, etc. The first slide is up for almost two minutes, they do change. And below are books/authors I quote or allude to in the slides. The actual paper has many more references, of course, and I’ll be posting it in chunks. And if you want to link, please link to this post, not direct to the youtube video.
Continue reading

May 4th is Not Just Star Wars Day…
Few Latter-day Saints, I think, know that May 4 is a significant day in LDS liturgical history. (This is reposted from last year.) Continue reading

I am very pleased to announce…
I have news! Big news. So read on.

Come Follow Me: Exodus, The Law of Moses, Covenants, and the Temple
Now that we’re getting into the desert Exodus narrative, we’re going to encounter what scholars call “legal sections” of scripture, that is, the details of the Law of Moses. I’m not interested in these so much as I am in the way the Israelites entered into the law, by covenant. So, let’s talk about these a bit more from an ancient Near Eastern perspective Continue reading

Come Follow Me: Notes on Exodus 1-14
As we move into Exodus, time passes suddenly. We move away from the individual novella of Joseph to several hundred years later, just as we often do in the Book of Mormon. Just how long, we don’t actually know. Continue reading

Notes on Genesis 34, 37-39
Today, I’ve got a bit of writing about these chapters in General, an article I wrote in the past on Genesis 38, and some useful tidbits Continue reading
Recent Comments