(See Part 1 here. )
We cannot separate our understanding of scripture, history, or doctrine from human scholarship. The image here is the gateway into the BYU Jerusalem center, where I really had my eyes opened to this idea; I first read a Study Bible through from beginning to end while learning about history and religion, touring archaeological sites. Scripture was much more than words on paper.
Again, we cannot separate our understanding of scripture, history, or doctrine from human scholarship. This is demonstrated in Church history as well as anything else; note the recent changes, including “factual corrections,” to our chapter headings in D&C based on better data and understandings from the Joseph Smith Papers.
To stave off the critics, this does NOT mean Church classes ought to be focused on trivial or tertiary matters, Greek grammar, or Assyrian pottery typology; discipleship certainly does not require a MA in Semitics or even basic literacy, for that matter. While doctrine and history matter, discipleship “that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
But those who are—as I suspect my audience to be— literate and college-educated ought to be studying scripture along with “the best books,” to use the phrase from D&C. In my mind, those “best books” help us see scripture’s implicit contexts, their meanings which were evident to their original audiences of two-hundred or two-thousand years ago, but are opaque to us. They get us beyond the words alone, because the words alone, however good a translation, are insufficient to communicate scripture’s meaning.
Let me relate three personal stories of how and why scholarship matters.
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