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My LDS Perspectives Podcast on Genre

Ben contemplates his words, at Petra.

Ben contemplates his words, at Petra.

I was interviewed last year for the LDS Perspectives podcast, which I recommend. Therein, I allude to a lot of different books and papers, linked below. I also cited John Widtsoe on genre, from his 1930 book In Search of Truth available online here Widtsoe said,

“As in all good books every literary device is used in the Bible that will drive the lesson home. It contains history, poetry and allegory. These are not always distinguishable, now that the centuries have passed away since the original writing.”

Continue reading

Truth, Scripture, and Interpretation of Genesis: A Conference Preview

In a little less than a month, I’ll be speaking at the FAIRMormon Conference in Provo. Titled Truth, Scripture, and Interpretation: Some Precursors to Reading Genesis, my paper will be about the importance of recognizing the presuppositions we make when interpretating scripture. We can use various metaphors for this. Each of us (including inspired prophets and apostles) has a Black Box made up of worldview and presuppositions about revelation, prophets, and scripture. The contents of the box differ for every person, time, and culture. 6a00d83451be8f69e201bb07e83109970d-800wiThe scriptural text gets fed into our black box, and out comes “what scripture says.” But since the content of those black boxes differs, so too does the end product of “what (we think) scripture says.” Continue reading

Listening to History, Science, and Evolution

I’ve not had a lot of time to write here recently. I have done a lot of driving and listened to some good lecture series about the history and philosophy of science, religion, and evolution, so this post is mostly about cataloguing and sharing.

I’ve been impressed again at just how unaware we are of our own modern worldview and assumptions, and the story of how we come to conceptualize the world as we do, post-Enlightenment, post-Scientific Revolution. Much of what we take for granted is neither universal nor obvious, and some things we think we know are wrong. Continue reading

10 Things for Understanding the Old Testament

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?
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?
  5. 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.”
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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!
  9. 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.
  10. 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

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!

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

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.