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The Might of Assyria

10 Things for Understanding the Old Testament

May 21, 2017 /
The Might of Assyria

The Might of Assyria

My semester has ended, and now I enter into a busy summer of reading, writing, travel, research, and some public speaking. I do hope to be writing posts a little more often than I have in the last few months; at least, I have some posts on the back burner I’ve worked on sporadically, to finish off and post.

If you’re settling down for a serious study of the Old Testament, what ten topics do you need to know? I was part of a group discussing this recently, and this was my quick list. Long-time readers will probably recognize repeated themes from my blogging. (I’ve added a little bit of explanation and/or links)

  1. Translation mattersEveryone’s first and primary interaction with scripture is in a language not their own. The Bible, of course, is translated from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, but even D&C is not the American English of 2017. This means that for most people, their sole understanding of what scripture says is contingent on what the translation implies. Well, what if it’s not a great translation?
  3. Genre is a thingWe recognize the existence of genre or kinds in movies, books, music, food, pretty much everything… but then throw all that out because of Enlightenment inheritance and default to the assumption that scripture is history, with rare and obvious exceptions.
  4. Genre matters tooBut it’s not all written as history (let alone “history written from a modern conception of history”) and misreading the genre creates problems.
  6. Revelation is responsive to questions and circumstances, but Israelites often had different circumstances and questions than most moderns.For example, the Israelites had serious questions about the problem of one God versus many gods. Who was really in charge? What if you only prayed to the God of Israel, but it turned out there was another god too, and as a result, your crops or wife got sick? What happens when your civilization gets destroyed, and you’re hauled off to another country with a different religion?
  7. There are different kinds of interpretation.It goes WAY beyond “figurative” and “literal,” which is really problematic as a binary.  The most important binary, I think, is something like “contextual interpretation” (i.e. what the author meant to say, in historical, cultural context) and “non-contextual interpretation” (i.e. what the passage might say without context, under the influence of the Spirit, to a later prophet, to me personally etc.) These are both legitimate and can coexist, provided we don’t confuse the latter with the former. Oftentimes, we either hear in Church or propound ourselves a personal non-contextual interpretation as if it were “what Isaiah (or Matthew or Deuteronomy) really meant.”
  8. The Old Testament rarely hits you over the head with the point; There’s no Mormon-like “and thus we see.” You have to pay attention and read between the lines.Once again, translation matters. A lot of hints and connections in the text are obscured through translation. This is why the best, most comprehensive understandings of the Old Testament are provided by people who know it deeply and thoroughly, who can pick out the connections, and read between the lines. Along those lines, I recommend Robert Alter’s translations  and the Jewish Study Bible.
  9. If line-upon-line is a thing, then we shouldn’t expect the Old Testament to reflect doctrinal understanding or policies of today.If God will reveal more in the future than he has now, it stands to reason that he has revealed more now than he did back then. So why do we insist on reading the Old Testament as if they had the post-1930 Word of Wisdom, or knowledge of three degrees of glory, as if they were basically modern Mormons living a long time ago? Sometimes, reading in our modern Mormon understanding gets in the way of what it is really trying to say.
  10. No really, translation matters.It does, I promise. Nothing will increase your understanding of and appreciation for the Bible than learning Greek and Hebrew, or (more realistically) getting a modern translation of the Bible. And the Church is fine with that! Really!
  11. Most of what prophets know and how they think comes from the culture and worldview they grew up with. They are not tabula rasa for God to program.Somewhere, the future President of the Church is in a Deacon’s Quorum. He plays video games. He reads books and watches movies. He has a few hobbies. He’s under the influence of his parents, friends, and teachers. He belongs to a culture, and that inevitably affects him.
  12. Culture mattersIn this last point, I was thinking about cultural context of scripture: customs, idioms, etc. What they knew living at the time, that we don’t, because no one bothered to write it down. Lots of great books on these, like this one (Old Testament oriented) this one (New Testament oriented),  or this series,

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.

Announcement: Online Mormon Reading Group of Luke T. Johnson’s Introduction to the New Testament

April 20, 2017 /

Screen Shot 2017-04-20 at 4.09.26 PM It’s paper-writing season for me, not a ton of time to blog anything substantial.  However, if you’re on Facebook, over the next year the Mormons Talk: NT Bible Scholarship group will read/post/discuss its way through Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Writings of the New Testament .  Currently available for $4.99, this volume is part of the Kindle sale I posted about last week which runs through the end of April. It’s the kind of book that might be used in a college Intro to the New Testament course.

Johnson is a Catholic New Testament scholar, former priest, currently at Emory. In terms of scholarship, he is well-regarded and centrist/conservative. He’s also done lecture series for The Great Courses, which are worth listening to.

Given my academic and public commitments this year as I finish my coursework, and my book which I am struggling mightily to finish, I will not be participating on a regular basis. Nevertheless, it’s a good project that I recommend.
As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.

Free Book! and It’s a Good One!

April 1, 2017 /

Screen Shot 2017-04-01 at 1.24.43 PMI’ve often had Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible on this or that list of books I recommend. It’s April’s Free Book of the Month at Logos (link). If you’ve read my previous posts about Logos (link #1, #2), you know that entry-level Logos is free and like a supercharged Kindle, runs on Mac, PC, ios, and Android. It’s what Infobases or Gospelink could have been. Continue reading

Transitional Mormonism, Part 2: An Earlier Transition

March 7, 2017 /

Screen Shot 2017-03-07 at 11.37.26 AMWhat do I mean by “transitional Mormonism”? (Part 1 is here if you missed it.) I take the idea from the title of Thomas Alexander’s award-winning book Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930, now in a 3rd edition. Alexander was a BYU professor, and wrote this as part of a commissioned 16-volume history of the Church that did not come to fruition. This time period was a particularly tumultuous one both for the LDS Church and America, with major intellectual, social, scientific, and technological changes. Among other things, the “modernism crisis” with Darwinism/evolution, “higher criticism,” and the rediscovery of the ancient near east  led to the creation of fundamentalism (an intellectual response to the crisis) as well as Pentecostalism (a spiritual response.)

The LDS Church existed in the same environment, and many major changes to policy, doctrinal understanding, and LDS culture happened during this period Alexander chronicles. These changes discomfitted many LDS, who reacted in a variety of ways including both intellectual and actual schisms. For those not well acquainted with LDS history, I would characterize this period as the bridge between “Joseph Smith’s church” and the “modern church.”

What are these discomfitting changes? To pick a few major ones Alexander covers well and hold my interest

  1. The ending of (mainstream) lived polygamy
  2. The beginning of geneaological research and the associated centrality of the temple. That is, until this time, it seems the importance of learning about your ancestors and doing their temple work and sealing was not understood; consequently, most Mormons (including Apostles) were endowed, married, and then didn’t have any theological motivation to return. Once Wilford Woodruff put an end to the idea of “adoption” and emphasized geneaology, the need to attend to proxy ordinances greatly increased.
  3. The codification/standardizing of the Word of Wisdom and its elevation to a temple recommend question. Among others, see Mike Ash “Up in Smoke” and Edward L. Kimball, “The History of LDS Temple Admission Standards”
  4. Doctrinal regulation/centralization 

I suspect Mormonism has now entered a similar transitionary period as the one Alexander describes from 100 years ago. Certainly, Mormonism is always changing in some way or another so in a later post I’ll explain why I think we’re into another major transitionary period and why. I’ll also describe a parallel transition that I suspect is informing LDS leadership. In the meantime, check out Alexander’s book.

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.

My Contribution to the SMPT Conference at Claremont

February 22, 2017 /

podcastThe Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology will hold a conference at Claremont, March 2-4. The schedule has been posted and includes several luminaries as well as night lights like me. I will present Saturday morning from 10-11, invoking Enuma Eliš, René Magritte, C.S. Lewis, Joseph Smith, B.H. Roberts, B.B. Warfield, Islamic abrogation, and Emily Dickinson (quoted below).

The Spirit Speaketh the Truth and Lieth Not”: The Complex Theological Intersection of Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics

LDS scripture includes several statements on the nature of revelation and truth such as Jacob 4:13, “the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not” (c.f. Num 23:19) and D&C 93:24 “truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” These passages seem prima facie to posit an absolutist conception of revelation as necessarily “factually accurate,” and entailing a concordist and inerrantist hermeneutic. However, these passages are clearly in tension with demonstrably incorrect/non-scientific scripture (e.g. the cosmology of Genesis), inconsistent/contradictory scripture (Samuel/Kings vs. Chronicles), as well as scriptural teachings of progressive/relative revelation (2Ne 28:30). How, then, does “the Spirit speak truth” and in what sense?

I propose two interrelated principles or circumstances under which inspired scripture can be said to be truthful.

First, what the Spirit speaks is not complete and absolute but partial and approximate truth. God must communicate to human understanding, which means adapting both the degree and expression of knowledge (D&C 1:24). Christians and Jews have long used this idea, termed accommodation, as a statement about the nature of revelation and as interpretive method. To choose two expressions, the Talmud says that “The Torah speaks in human language,” echoed by Thomas Aquinas as “Scripture speaks according to the notions of the people.” While numerous General Authorities such as Joseph Smith have expressed this principle, Mormon scripture says that revelation is as true as God wishes to it be; “These are the words which I spake… and they are true even as I will” (Moses 4:32).

Second, I posit a hermeneutical necessity of awareness of scripture’s representational nature, that it constitutes a representation of reality, a metaphorical model of sorts. “In order to understand what a model intends to communicate, we must distinguish the aspects that are relevant to the reality… from those that are irrelevant.”[1] When reading something like the early chapters of Genesis, modern readers need to identify those aspects intended to correspond to reality (and how they correspond), the central truth claims, from those parts which constitute intrinsic but immaterial characteristics of the model. The great conceptual distance between modern readers and the language, culture, and worldview of scripture obscures or distorts the truth claims of a given text for modern readers. The central truth claims of a passage are frequently not what they seem.

My argument, then, is that revelation/scripture is indeed truthful, given these two provisions. First, that we correctly identify its central truth claims through careful contextual interpretation and second, that we understand those claims to be partial, approximate, and progressive. I close with an appeal to Emily Dickinson.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant…
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

[1] Charles Hummel, The Galileo Connection- Resolving Conflicts Between Science & the Bible (IVP, 1986), 168.

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.

Greek/Hebrew Followup: Another Demo and more Free Stuff Through March 1

February 17, 2017 /

Screen Shot 2017-02-17 at 2.20.18 PMIt’s Logos’ 25th Anniversary, and they’re offering a $25 coupon through March 1. That means it’s a great time to invest in some of the supplementary Old Testament resources I suggested (below), or N.T. Wright books, or Peter Enns, or John Walton, or Jodi Magness’ book on Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, or a line-by-line commentary on how the New Testament uses the Old Testament, or why modern translations differ in the New Testament, or Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s JPS Commentary on Ruth, or or or… There’s so much.

Here’s the Old Testament stuff I recommended.

Now, I know Logos looks intimidating, but you can treat it like a Kindle until you start figuring stuff out. Below, I walk you through another tool to help with words and translations.

 

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.

Doctor Who Intro Screenshot

The Complexities of History in The Ensign

February 16, 2017 /

 

I want to highlight an important Ensign article in the February 2017 issue, “Understanding Church History by Study and Faith.” Written by the Church History Library Director Keith Erikson, it makes some important points that are not always obvious or instinctive to non-historians. Erikson echoes several points made in another important Ensign article about history 40 years ago, by Elder G. Homer Durham. I draw on both below.

Continue reading

How to Use Greek and Hebrew: New and Improved

February 11, 2017 /

genesis-hebrew2I’ll get back to my Transitional Mormonism and Tradition, but I was really excited about this development. 

I’ve seen several bad uses  flagrant abuses of original languages recently by people who don’t actually know the languages. They’re typically relying on Strong’s Concordance, which can be used legitimately (see my article here, the section called “original language resources”) but 99% of the time, Strong’s is abused by people who just don’t know better. They use it as a lexicon, as a guide to meaning, but this is highly problematic. If you read something citing Strong’s to establish what a word means, you can be fairly certain the authors have not actually studied Greek or Hebrew, and I strongly recommend not giving that source any scholarly weight or authority in Gospel Doctrine or Seminary.

I am terribly pleased to inform you that there is a new technology-assisted way to move directly from the KJV to legitimate scholarly Greek and Hebrew tools. And it’s free! I’ll provide a description, then walk through the steps to get it, demo some things on video, and then make some suggestions.

Logos just released the free version of its new engine, Logos 7 for Mac, PC, iOs, and Android. Logos is like a supercharged Kindle on steroids, which I use as my research library. I buy all my academic and popular books in it when possible. Back in 2000, I started using it because there was a screaming deal on the Anchor Bible Dictionary (which has been cited in General Conference!) With the upgrades and free resources now provided in version 7, the Basic engine will let you jump directly from the KJV to a decent basic Hebrew/Greek lexicon, included.  Moreover, it comes with both a decent Bible Dictionary and Study Bible, free (both produced by Logos.)

You will need to create an account, but the basic engine is indeed free. You will probably get marketing emails trying to get you to buy a package of books and higher-level functionality. You don’t need to do this, but if you’ve got the cash, go for it. BTW, once you create an account AND fill out a marketing thing, Logos gives you $20 credit every year on your birthday.

How to Get the Free Stuff

  1. Go here to get the free engine. It should ask you to create an account.
  2. It will download an installer file, which will then download the rest of the program and (I believe) the free resources. After downloading and installing, it will draw some processing power to index the new books.
  3. If you don’t see them in your library after everything downloads and indexes, here are the links to some free stuff you should have.
    • Lexham Bible Dictionary
      • Lexham is one publishing name Logos uses (Faithlife being another.)
    • Abridged BDB
      • This is the Hebrew lexicon, a simplified version of the $20 100-yr old lexicon most first-year Hebrew students buy, named after its authors
    • Faithlife Study Bible
      • Essays, introductions, visuals, diagrams, and verse-by-verse notes.
  4. Logos also does a free-book-of-the-month, with one free and one related for $1.99. This month, two books by N.T. Wright.
  5. Other free books are here. Pick up the Greek New Testament, SBL edition, Lexham English Bible, Abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs, and perhaps the Classics, Arabic, or Civil War And 19th Century America collections.
  6. Other books and series go on sale regularly, with both monthly sales and specials, and you can get steep discounts on Pre-publication or Community Pricing.

Supercharge your Old Testament study for $70

Things to learn to take maximum advantage of the free stuff

    • Learn the Hebrew alphabet and vowels here. Hebrew alphabet intimidates more than it is actually difficult. Practice the consonants with Psalm 119 in our KJV. It’s a Hebrew alphabet acrostic, so the letters are printed there.
    • Both BDB and CHALOT will use some unfamiliar but important terminology for verbs. You should learn what qal, niph., hiph, etc. mean or you won’t understand the range of meanings in the definitions for verbs. This is a decent introduction to this vocabulary.

Things I’ll point out in the screencast demo 

  • Note the scripture pop-ups.
  • Lock panes to scroll together.
  • Corresponding Words visual filter. (Only in the KJV or other purchased interlinears. I don’t do much with this in the demo, so click the link and watch their video.)
  • Link Bible to a lexicon! This and the KJV interlinear are the key to cutting out Strong’s.

(I recommend watching 1080p so you can read the text.)

Logos has an active forum free of theological discussion (where I am the resident Mormon),  a good wiki, and lots of how-to videos linked within the wiki.

So, go forth and download, but remember to keep some intellectual humility! You still don’t know the languages, you’re just using much better tools.

As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through this Amazon link. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader. I tend not to accept friend requests from people I’m not acquainted with.