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
Sundown over Galilee (my pic)
We often assert that the Book of Mormon is historical in nature, and necessarily so, in my view. But we must equally recognize that it’s historical nature certainly does not mean it was written as modern history, with our expectations about what history-writing means. Continue reading
Today, like the Titanic and the iceberg, we arrive at the dreaded Isaiah chapters. Continue reading
Some rough notes this week. Continue reading
The new manual follows a more logical division than the old, which treated 1 Nephi 8-12 and 15 as one unit, and 1Ne 13-14 as another. Nephi’s vision and then explanation runs from chapters 11-15. However, lacking time for a full rewrite, I’m putting up my two posts separately, which follow the old division. Continue reading
This is a grab-bag of sorts; I’ve been sick for a few days, without full dedicated brainpower to revise/expand. Still, there’s a lot of good stuff here, food for thought.
My 2019 FAIRMormon Conference presentation is up now, here. There’s a lot in the footnotes as well.
The takeaway is this: Many LDS have unsustainably fundamentalist assumptions about the nature of revelation, prophets, and scripture. The conflict these cause sometimes leads to a loss of faith, instead of recognizing and reexamining the assumptions. Continue reading
My image.
Occasionally, one hears Mormons (usually laypeople) critiquing Protestants for slavish and uncritical interpretation of the Bible, for “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” kind of bibliolatry. Certainly, some Protestants merit this critique. The intellectual crisis and problems among Protestants, and their effects on American culture and politics have been written about extensively by Mark Noll (e.g. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind), Randall Balmer, George Marsden, Grant Wacker, Kenton Sparks, and others. These scholars are themselves largely Evangelical, so it’s an internal critique.
No, my problem when this critique is made by Mormons is that oft-times Mormons are making it hypocritically. Continue reading
These chapters constitute the end of Day 1 of Jesus’ visit (ends in 19:3) and the beginning of Day 2 (19:4-26:15)
Outline
17- Jesus, moved by the people, stays longer than planned (or so the text appears to say). He addresses the multitude, heals people, prays.
18- Bread and wine for sacrament, various instructions and teachings, then Jesus ascends into heaven.
19- Everyone goes home, tells their neighbors, gather again, but into 12 groups, each taught by a disciple. People baptized. Each group prays, and Jesus prays, somewhat like John 17, the “great intercessory prayer.”
3Ne 17:3 “Prepare your minds for the morrow.” Get ready to receive. Cf. Alm 16:16, Alm 48:7 (Ready to endure.)
This or the next or the next General Conference something may change. It may be something minor, a policy or practice. Maybe something major, akin to polygamy being given or rescinded, or the revocation of the priesthood ban. Are we ready to receive something that potentially goes against our presuppositions, whatever they are?
We have some tight places to go before the Lord is through with this church and the world in this dispensation…. There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord himself, with patience and faith, the promise is that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.” (D&C 21:6.) Harold B. Lee. Conference Reports, 1 October, 1970, p. 152.
3Ne 17:6- “Bowels filled with compassion” two notes here, one on meaning, one on translation. In the KJV OT, “bowels” translates a few words that refer to your internal (Num 5:22) and reproductive organs (Gen 15:4, Gen 25:23). Israelites localized strong feelings there, both positive and negative (Jer 4:19), “a feeling of love, loving sensation, mercy (originally designated the seat of this feeling, meaning bowels, inner parts of the body, the inner person).”- HALOT When feelings are intended, modern translations often go with “heart” (Lam 1:20), since that often captures the modern pseudo-physiological “location” of strong feelings.I doubt they are speaking Hebrew at this point in time, but to the extent that the Book of Mormon echoes (often literalistic) KJV idiom, to have his “bowels filled with compassion” is an expression of very strong feeling.
Modern translations of the Old Testament read differently. They’re translating the sense across cultures.
“There is, it is important to note, no movement among conservative Christians to argue against the modern viewpoint that our thinking and emotions are not centered in either the heart or the bowels but the brain. Indeed, I think it is worth pointing out that many Christians find themselves able to believe that they are “Biblical literalists”, and that the Bible is in all things scientifically accurate, precisely because they read the Bible in translations that have translated ancient Israel’s literal understanding into modern metaphors, replacing bowels with compassion and heart with mind where necessary.And thus we have the Catch-22 that the better the job that translators do, the more likely it is that Christians reading the Bible may be unaware that they are thinking in ways that may be similar to ancient Israelites in crucial ways, but are also vastly different from them in terms of understanding of anatomy and other matters of science.”- From this review of John Walton’s book on Genesis 1, which I review here.
3Ne 17:7 According to the New Testament, what kind of miracle did Jesus perform in Israel that he does not do here? Like with the missing altar, read the text for what it doesn’t say that we might expect it to. The New Testament has Jesus casting out demons/devils/evil spirits (e.g. Matt 9:32-35). Jesus himself doesn’t do that in the record here, although others do (3Ne 7:19, 22). “Demons” make brief appearances in Mosiah 3:6 and Helaman 13:37, both apparently figurative passages. None of these seem to imply what the New Testament does, i.e. some kind of spiritual or demonic possession. What does this mean for the beliefs of the Book of Mormon people about the supernatural? Or is the lack of “demons” a function of Mormon’s editing or Joseph’s translating?
“Halt” apparently means unable to walk whereas “lame” means an appendage that is obviously less or non-functional due to withering or injury or birth defect, e.g. clubfoot.
“leprous” = skin disease, not leprosy or Hansen’s Disease. In OT never actually refers to leprosy. “NT lepra, if it refers at all to leprosy, does so only as one among many skin conditions.”-Anchor Bible Dictionary (must be out of print, the price has doubled!)
3Ne 17:14 If Jesus groans “within himself,” how do the people or Mormon, four-hundred years later know about it? Cf. John 11:38 “Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.” There the Greek means “to be greatly disturbed, deeply moved.”
3Ne 18:7-11 Sacrament symbolism begins. Bread = body= physical resurrection/rebirth. Wine=blood=atonement/spiritual rebirth/salvation.
3Ne 18:27-35 Administrative instructions given to disciples about who can and can’t attend and partake of the sacrament.
What was the status of the disciples?
They’re given power to give the Holy Ghost by laying on of hand in 3Ne 18:37.
They don’t have the Holy Ghost “given to them” until 3Ne 19:9. Is this the gift of the spirit or just a manifestation thereof?
They are then baptized in 3Ne 19:12 (or rebaptized?)
Then the Hoy Ghost falls upon them. 3Ne 19:13
3Ne 19:23 Cf. John 17:21. Oneness of God.
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I only saw bits and pieces of the Women’s Session of General Conference tonight, but got a teaser of the theme last night from Elder Oaks’ visit to Claremont.
The LDS Church has generally been very favorable to refugees and immigrants. There is good historical reason for this. As dramatized by video in the session today, LDS have institutional memory and family stories about the multiple times we too had to flee because of violence and death, leaving behind everything of value. We too were dependent on others who found us strange and foreign, but who nevertheless opened their hearts and homes.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1
Deuteronomy is the heart of the law of Moses, both in the sense that that is where much of the text is located, but also because of its sympathetic compassion: You shall love the refugee, for you were refugees in the land of Egypt. (Deu 10:19).
Israel had taken refuge in Egypt because of famine, and were then exploited and oppressed.
As for the refugee, you shall not wrong or oppress them, for you were refugees in the land of Egypt (Exo 22:21)
As for the refugee, you shall not take advantage of them; you know how it feels to be a refugee, because you were refugees in the land of Egypt. (Exo 23:9)
Like a full citizen is how you shall treat the refugee living with you, and you shall love them like yourself, for you were refugees in the land of Egypt. (Lev 19:34)
I can’t embed the other video, here.
But today, we will echo the law of Moses, by remembering our own history as immigrants and refugees driven out, and acting with according compassion; We have been invited to emulate Christ by “doing unto the least of these.”
Make Easter memorable for someone who needs it.
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