Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Getting Past the KJV

The Summer 2012 issue of Dialogue contains an article by Grant Hardy titled "The King James Bible and the Future of Missionary Work." The main point Hardy stresses in the article is that the King James Version (KJV) has become so outdated that it now creates problems for LDS missionaries using the KJV in their teaching. Recounting a missionary encounter of his own with a young woman who was reading selected scriptures in her New International Version (NIV) Bible along with the visiting LDS missionaries, Hardy comments, "The meanings did not match up. ... The elders were flustered .... In this case, our exclusive reliance on the King James Version ... had become a barrier to sharing the message of the gospel" (p. 1). Given how few denominations still rely on the KJV and the popularity of newer and better translations like the NIV and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), I am certain similar episodes occur hundreds of times each month.

Who Wrote the Gospels?

It always helps to know who wrote what you are reading, and Bible books are no exception. The four gospels, in particular, present interesting questions of how the narratives were composed and who did the composing.

Putting Bible Problems on the Shelf

Here's a quote from The Rise and Fall of the Bible (2011), by Timothy Beal, a religion prof at Case Western Reserve (I didn't know they had religion profs there). It considers the question of how to deal with scriptural contradictions or problems, and it seems interesting because it is a conservative Christian context rather than an LDS context.

How to Read the Bible

Last month I did a series of posts on religion and science; the theme for November is interpreting the scriptures. (Since November basically ends when Thanksgiving hits, I'm borrowing a week from October.) First up: a few thoughts on Steven McKenzie's book How to Read the Bible: History, Literature, and Prophecy -- Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference, and What it Means for Faith Today (OUP, 2005).

Jonah, Overboard

If you haven't heard the story in Sunday School yet, you will shortly (Jonah 1). Surprisingly, the combination of God and bad weather is still a potent force in the modern era -- my stake was praying for rain earlier this year. But here is a more colorful Jonah-like account with sailors, storms, and witches from the 17th century.

Genesis and Genre

When we read Genesis, what exactly are we reading? The distinctions and categories we modern readers bring to books and narratives (fiction or nonfiction; science or folk tale; history or literature; poetry or prose; author's original text or quoted source) may not serve us well when we read the Old Testament, a collection of ancient literature. Its writers used different conventions. What were they? What exactly are we reading when we read Genesis?

The Deuteronomist

Last week I posted on Josiah's religious reforms, which were apparently motivated by the discovery of an early version of what we now have as the book of Deuteronomy. I also suggested that the second half of 2 Kings (recounting Josiah's reign as king) was a good place to start reading the Old Testament. To complement 2 Kings (the last book in the Deuteronomistic History or "DH"), I'll next read Deuteronomy (the first book in DH) and Jeremiah (which shows marked stylistic similarities to DH). And just what is this Deuteronomistic History?

The Exile and the Beginning of the Old Testament

One would think that the best way to understand the Old Testament is to start at the beginning (Genesis) and read through to the end (Malachi). But the first book is not necessarily the beginning. A different approach is to start where the text itself suggests it began: with the discovery of the Book of the Law in 2 Kings 22. That was in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign as king of Judah, just a few short years before the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its leaders and thousands of its leading citizens to Babylon. The Exile in Babylon becomes a lens through which we can read the Old Testament.

Scriptural Transmission: Adding or Taking Away?

Recently I've seen several Bloggernacle posts kicking off discussion of the Old Testament. Here's mine, relying in part on comments in Christoph Levin's The Old Testament: A Brief Introduction (Princeton Univ. Press, 2005; translation of Das Alte Testament, 2001). Levin likens the process by which the separate books of the Old Testament took their present form to a small snowball (the core original text) that gathers additional layers of snow (additional commentary) as it rolls down a hill (is transmitted over time). He sees the process by which scriptural texts are transmitted as adding material to the texts.

The Ethical Jesus

Last month I posted The Apocalyptic Jesus, summarizing Bart Ehrman's view of Jesus as a "first-century Jewish apocalypticist." This post summarizes an alternative scholarly view of Jesus drawn from James M. Robinson's The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News (HarperCollins, 2005). Robinson is a first-rate scholar who was instrumental in translating and publishing the Nag Hammadi texts. He rejects the view that Jesus preached primarily an apocalyptic message. Instead, according to Robinson, Jesus preached the present reign of a caring God on the earth, inviting his hearers to trust in God for the necessities of daily living and to show love and compassion for others.

Armstrong on the Emergence of Torah and Scripture

I recently read through Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography (2007). The first two chapters, titled "Torah" and "Scripture," review current scholarship on how the Jewish Bible (aka "the Old Testament") came to be, which makes a good review for the upcoming year of studying the Old Testament in LDS Sunday School. Scholarship does not, of course, define the LDS view of the Bible, but it can help us recognize various questionable Protestant beliefs about the Bible that often get amalgamated with LDS views.

Scriptural Skills: What Are They and Can They Be Taught?

So I'm skimming through one of those unexpected books that you stumble across and somehow end up reading: Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means For the Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 2009) by Daniel T. Willingham. In the second chapter he discusses teaching facts versus teaching skills. They are complementary, of course, and both must be taught. How does this relate to what we do in gospel settings? What are scriptural skills and how can they be taught in Sunday School or other church classes?

The Apocalyptic Jesus

I recently worked my way through Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (OUP, 1999), one of Bart Ehrman's earlier books. It is a very readable presentation of Ehrman's position on the historical Jesus issue, accepting and updating Albert Schweitzer's early 20th-century view that the primary proclamation of the historical Jesus was apocalyptic.

Different Views of Inerrancy

It is sometimes difficult for Protestants and Evangelicals to understand that the LDS Church is not simply another Protestant denomination with a well-defined catechism or creed. It is expected to be well defined since, in the Protestant world, those with different doctrinal views quite easily split off to form their own denomination, movement, or megachurch affirming a slightly different set of well-defined doctrines. The idea that Mormonism is more like a religious tradition embracing a range of doctrines rather than a denomination with a narrow doctrinal range is not easily grasped. Views on inerrancy are a good example of this.

Bart Ehrman on Contradictions in the Bible

I've enjoyed every book I've read by Bart Ehrman, including his latest, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them). I only had time to read the first couple of chapters carefully (the publisher didn't send a review copy), so I'll only make a few remarks.

Hebrews and authorship

Mormon Insights posted "Was Paul the Author of Book of Hebrews?," taking issue with scholarly higher criticism. Scholars of the Bible generally conclude that, as one scholar is quoted in the post as saying, the epistle of Paul to the Hebrews "was not an epistle; it was not written by Paul; Paul was not an Apostle; and it was not addressed to the Hebrews.” The post argues at some length for the traditional view.

I take a different tangent — assuming the scholars are right and some other bright, articulate believer other than Paul wrote Hebrews, it shows that the canonical status and utility of a book is not dependent on the traditional account of authorship and origin. No one, after all, rips Hebrews out of their New Testment or reads it out of the canon, even if they accept the scholarly view. This suggests orthodox worries over attacks on traditional authorship attributions are exaggerated.

Reading the New Testament, Part 1

While reading Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman's popular critique of biblical inerrancy (I posted on it here), I was shamed into finally getting to Christopher Tuckett's Reading the New Testament: Methods of Interpretation (Fortress, 1987), which has been sitting on my bookshelf, unread, for several years now. Tuckett reviews textual criticism, source criticism, form criticism, and other academic approaches to unscrambling the text and meaning of the Bible as it has come down to us. In this post I'll summarize his treatment of textual criticism, cultural context, and genre; in a planned second post, I'll cover other approaches.

More on Secret Mark

Lex Communis has posted Forgery, Fraud and the Gospels, commenting on a recently published book critical of Morton Smith's account of the discovery of what is now known as "the Secret Gospel of Mark." There have always been some suspicions about the circumstances of the discovery of the related documents; the new book makes a frontal assault on Smith's claims. Apart from the details of the discovery and the questions of authenticity, most Christians find the basic thrust of the material in the reconstructed "Secret Gospel of Mark" and Smith's scholarly analysis of it rather troubling. Of course, most Christians find any new material related to the Bible rather troubling.

Documentary Hypothesis, Part 2

As promised (see Part 1) here's a second post on the Documentary Hypothesis ("DH"). DH is the point of departure for modern biblical studies but is verbotten in LDS circles. LDS scholars don't even discuss it: neither Sperry (in The Spirit of the Old Testament, 1970) nor Victor Ludlow (Unlocking the Old Testament, 1981) even mentions it, which frankly doesn't do much for their credibility (I will note that Sperry at least discussed the Second Isaiah issue). Just another sign of the extent to which the LDS view of the Bible is such a mess, IMHO.

The Documentary Hypothesis

[Part 2] This is the first of what should be several posts on the Old Testament ("OT"). It's an unfortunate Mormon myth that the OT is dull and boring. You've all heard the quip attributed to J. Golden Kimball: "I read the Old Testament once, and I promised the Lord that if he'd forgive me, I'd never read it again." Ha ha. Personally, after trudging through the Book of Mormon yet again during the last few months of 2005, the OT is a breath of fresh air. The first step toward really understanding what is going on in the Pentateuch or the first five books of the OT is getting acquainted with the Documentary Hypothesis, and the best book to do that with is Richard Elliott Friedman's very readable introduction to the topic, Who Wrote the Bible? I'm generally following Friedman's discussion in the following summary (with page cites from my 1987 paperback edition by Harper & Row).

Secret Gospel of Mark

About a week ago, M* ran a post on the Secret Gospel of Mark. I swung by my local library and checked out a copy of Crossan's Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (1985), which has a short but informative chapter on Secret Mark. Alas, I'm too late for the discussion at M*, but since my earlier post on the Gospel of Thomas was so well received, I'll go ahead and post my comments here. I'll summarize (1) what Secret Mark is; (2) why most Christians don't like it; and (3) why some Mormons do like it.