Historian of Religion, Science, and Biblical Interpretation
My picture, from the Kidron Valley.
This lesson has us jump to Alma’s retelling of his experience being unconscious for three days, in Alma 36. The story of Alma the Younger is actually told in three places, not just two: Mosiah 27:8-37 (roughly contemporary), Alma 36 (Alma jr. recounting to his son Helaman), and Alma 38:6-8 (Alma Jr. recounting to his son Shiblon.) Continue reading
Red brick store in Nauvoo, where the first endowments were done on May 4, 1842.
Edit: I’ve added this syllabus to the main menu at left, and simplified the url for easy access, to http://BenSpackman.com/syllabus
May 4th holds significance in LDS history: it’s the day Joseph Smith introduced temple ordinances in the upper room of the red brick store in 1842. The temple ties together a number of questions, like: Continue reading
Melvin Cook, famous chemist and ardent LDS young-earth creationist, thought scripture should be interpreted literally.
My analysis is intended to be strictly literalistic; in my view, intellectual honesty requires literalism in the interpretation of the scriptures.
President Joseph Fielding Smith also made repeated statements about the necessity of reading scripture literally.
I agree with them. But I’ll go one better and do something they never did: I’m going to define the term “literal.” Continue reading
Something insidious infects our children from the moment they’re born. It’s unstoppable. It surrounds us, burrows in deep, far below our conscious minds, and like a computer virus, writes subtle programming that dictates our worldview, our attitudes, and assumptions, shaping our very reflexes… Ahem. Shifting away from threatening apocalyptic movie-trailer voice, I’m speaking, of course, about culture and tradition, terms I’ll use interchangeably here. Continue reading
I’ve taught a class just on the book of Genesis a few times, in a few places. We spend a lot of time on the first 10 chapters or so. The second time (from whence these notes), few students had a science background, and only 1-2 had previous experience with me. Most of the points below I have developed further in the course. Continue reading
Even though it comes first in the Bible, Genesis 1 represents the youngest of three Israelite creation traditions. As happens in culture and even inspired religion, the past was adapted, shaped, and (re)appropriated to meet the needs of the present. Continue reading
Mark Ward is a conservative Christian with a PhD in New Testament from Bob Jones University. Currently employed at Logos Bible Software, Mark authored a very readable short book on the KJV through Logos’ paper imprint, Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible Continue reading
Communication involves not just words, but the context, culture, and worldview in which they are embedded. Simple translation of words alone, reading words alone, however “clear,” will fail to communicate the entire message, because this kind of information is tacit and unstated. Sometimes we can tell we’re missing an intangible something, but most often we can’t even tell that, illustrated extensively in Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes.
Here are some modern examples. Continue reading
(Originally published in 2010 elsewhere) Most people know the genre of “parable” because they’re in the Gospels, but “myth” is poorly understood and the term carries a lot of negative baggage. Like “literal” you have to be very careful throwing around the term without defining it. One simple definition of myth is that myth is worldview in narrative form. That is, it’s a way of explaining one’s conception of how the world works in everyday language or story form. Continue reading
Elder Bednar in General Conference talked about the spread of temples throughout the world, as well as doubling the number of available languages of the presentation of temple ordinances. This got me thinking again about something I think about from time to time: the state of our collective temple knowledge and how it affects our temple experience.
Since I have a lot of links below, let me summarize with these three bullet points. Continue reading
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