Reposted with no significant updates. I have a big writing deadline I’m trying to hit in a few weeks.
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
Come Follow Me: Joshua (with special guest appearance from Elder Joseph F. Merrill)
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: Deuteronomy
“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Mat 22:36-40 KJV)
I begin with this familiar passage because it bears directly on our study of Deuteronomy. It illustrates two things. Continue reading
Abraham, Sarai, Hagar, and the Contextual Approach to Scripture
I recently saw someone comment, “Well, I’m off to explain to a bunch of twelve-year olds why Abraham proposed sleeping with another woman as a cure for infertility.” Presumably a bit tongue in cheek, but it illustrated the problems of an approach to scripture which doesn’t emphasize seeking understanding through context.
Come Follow Me Notes: Exodus 15-20, 32-34.
Insert here my usual gripe of “we’re trying to cover so much ground in so little time!” So let’s focus about The Ten Commandments. It’s a common-knowledge topic, and everyone’s seen the film, so we all know everything about them, right? Continue reading
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
Come Follow Me: Genesis 24-29
One of the aspects of scripture study as commonly practiced by LDS is the idea of applying the texts to ourselves. Although we use Nephi’s term “likening” (1 Nephi 19:23) to refer to this, we haven’t really understood what Nephi means by it.1And I’m not going to analyze it here. What we do instead, typically, is to approach scripture expecting to find one of two things:
Abraham 1:1, 5-20; Genesis 15-17; 21-22
I haven’t had time to update this post significantly .
This weeks’s chapters are difficult and socially significant like last week’s, which makes them difficult to write on. My approach, therefore, will be to come at it from a few disconnected directions in which I ask questions I don’t really have good answers to. Before moving on, I strongly recommend you read Robert Alter’s literary translation and commentary on chapter 22 as well as my post on why all the chapters leading up to Genesis 22 are important for Genesis 22.
What makes this chapter difficult and uncomfortable? (BTW, if it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, I’d suggest you’re either not paying attention, or haven’t really thought about it.) Continue reading
Implicit Contexts in the Scriptures, but especially Genesis
(Reposted from 2022 without update)
As my wife and I were studying tonight, we hit upon a useful analogy for understanding scripture. It could be adapted for a class, depending on the students and the teacher.
We recently finished a year studying the D&C, and had a lot of tools for understanding it. Some of these were built in to our scriptures, like chapter headings. Then there were free Church-provided electronic and paper resources, like Gospel Topics essays, Revelations in Context, maps, etc.1To say nothing of the cottage industry of books written to support the Gospel Doctrine year of study. But I want you to imagine that you are a new convert in, say, Taiwan or Russia, reading D&C 49 for the first time, with none of that stuff. Continue reading
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