Dave's Mormon Inquiry

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.

England Calling

I just finished Proving Contraries: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England (Signature, 2005), edited by Robert A. Rees. And "writings" is the right term, as the book covers every genre: there are poems, essays, stories, articles, and even a short dramatic script. This is appropriate, I suppose, to celebrate the BYU prof and writer who was apparently a moving force in pushing hundreds of LDS writers and students to develop their writing talents in diverse directions. England co-founded Dialogue when he was still a graduate student, at Stanford. Later, he also co-founded the Association for Mormon Letters. If he'd done nothing else, that would have been a substantial legacy. For more biographic details, you can look up the Sunstone issue devoted to England's memory. In the balance of the post, I'll talk about a few of the more interesting entries in the book.

DN on Evolution

Since ID and evolution are Big News this month in Utah, you might enjoy this: The Deseret News weighed in with a nice article summarizing the position of various denominations and religions on the suddenly topical evolution question. It starts by noting the very recent publication (by a couple of LDS scientists) of an expanded version of the notorious 1992 BYU Evolution Packet, which was (according to the article) also distributed to all CES teachers in 1999. I wonder if there was a cover memo that said, "Ignore all statements on evolution by Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie, and restrict your remarks about evolution to the substance of the authoritative statements reproduced in this packet." Just curious. Oh, about those other denominations ...

Happiness?

A couple of weeks ago, Jane Doe shook up an otherwise unremarkable discussion at T&S by announcing that she had been reading LDS blogs for "many hours every week" and, as a result, she was now facing a significant personal crisis: "I suddenly have lost my sense of place in the world, in the universe, my sense of purpose and meaning, my identity, the foundation of my marriage, everything. Without a solid testimony undergirding my church experience, all the joy has gone out of it for me. It used to make me so happy; now it feels so empty. Everything, my whole life, is at a crossroads, and I can’t see where either path takes me. I am sinking into a deep despair." Is this Banner of Heaven stuff, or the real thing? Working under the "If it's at T&S it must be true" assumption, let's think about Jane Doe's dilemma.

OSC on ID

For this week's online essay, go read Creation and Evolution in the Schools, by Orson Scott Card at Meridian Magazine. It's got something for everyone, and OSC himself tries to come down somewhere in the middle. Against "Designists," he notes: "But when you purport to teach science in school, the subject you teach had better be science, and not somebody's religion in disguise." Against "Darwinists," he says: "That's the problem with both sides in this squabble. They are both functioning as religions, and they should stop it at once." I'm not sure the article really makes clear what OSC's own position is on evolution or ID.

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).

F is for the Family

Continuing to wind our way through the True to the Faith doctrinal booklet published by the Church in 2004 (earlier posts here), I settled on the Family article from the long list of F-words covered in the book. There’s nothing in the entry you haven’t heard before, as after a five-line introduction it simply repeats (in full) The Family: A Proclamation to the World, described as an “inspired proclamation” that is now “the Church’s definitive statement on the family.”

Pondering Proving Contraries

While reading through my currently featured book, Proving Contraries (Signature, 2005), I've been stewing over the title. It bothers me. The phrase comes from a Joseph Smith quote ("By proving contraries, truth is made manifest") and it sounds like just the sort of thing that would thrill a writer — a creative phrase that springs some verbal tension on the reader, hence its use as the title for the book. But writers and English profs never have to prove anything. In mathematics, one technique for proving an assertion is to assume the opposite, then show by careful mathematical argument that it implies a contradiction, hence the assumption can be rejected. In other words, by rejecting contraries, truth is made manifest. That's how I see things. So I need to dig a little deeper to be happy with the title.

Blog Updates

The work of a blogmaster is never done. I replaced the sideblog on the right sidebar with a blogroll of "DMI's Greatest Hits," 24 posts drawn from the 511 (now 512) that I have posted since moving DMI over to this Typepad site in March 2004. Stats: 9 of the 24 relate to LDS history; 10 of the 24 are based on or flow from a book I read. On the left sidebar, I created a new list, "Bible Books," and added a few of the Old Testament books I've been working on lately. For a nice listing of useful supplements to reading the Old Testament, go peruse A Call for Old Testament Help at LDSLF. I picked up the name Robert Alter in that thread, which led me to The Literary Guide to the Bible (see sidebar) at my local library. It includes an excellent introductory essay by Alter, as well as a second short essay by him entitled "The Characteristics of Ancient Hebrew Poetry."

Church and State

Edwin Gaustad posted a short essay entitled Roger Williams & Church-State Separation over at the Oxford University Press Blog (which any discriminating blogger will immediately add to their blogroll — where else will you find posts like The Year in Geography?). Roger Williams often gets overlooked in the bubbling pageant of American religious history, especially by Mormon readers who often have a hard time seeing anything of consequence in the historical record before 1830. Gaustad's essay (he also authored a recent biography of Williams) reminds us what a courageous figure was Williams, truly a man before his time. I'm also going to use this to resurrect my dormant online essay of the week feature.

Under the Banner of Liberty

I got an email from a friend a couple of weeks ago with a link to this interesting post at Positive Liberty by an accomplished libertarian blogger, decrying (in no uncertain terms) present-day polygamy of the sort practiced by the FLDS Church but defending consensual adult polygamy, which he rather generously likened to the sort practiced by the 19th-century LDS Church. This rather unusual constellation of positions is due in part to the author's recent reading of Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. I like Krakauer and have posted on him before (Responding to Krakauer; Krakauer Walks the Walk; The Land That Time Forgot; and, from the old blog, a post on Into Thin Air). Here I'll just comment on the post at Positive Liberty.

Defining "Anti-Mormon"

Get Religion has a short post discussing the WSJ op-ed piece I talked about in my prior post. The GR post also gets around to discussing the term "anti-Mormon," a term which likely means something different to a religion reporter not terribly familiar with the Utah beat than it does to practicing and cultural Mormons. Of course, the term means different things to different Mormons as well. I sometimes think the FARMS Review sees an anti-Mormon behind every tree. I think that's the flip side of the coin of exaggerated zeal. I myself think a true anti-Mormon is a fairly rare bird (if not quite an endangered species). Maybe I'm zeal-impaired. I suspect these viewpoints define the two ends of a spectrum of opinion on the prevelance of anti-Mormons or, equivalently, of a spectrum of definitions of the term "anti-Mormon."

Latter-day President?

That's the title of a WSJ op-ed piece by James Taranto taking yet another run at the "Can Mitt get nominated?" question. It's clear he has a shot at being elected, the only real question is whether Evangelical Republicans will swallow their sectarian prejudice and nominate him. That's exactly where Taranto comes down on it, noting in his last sentence: "If Mr. Romney runs for president, it may test the proposition that the religious right is an issues-based movement as opposed to a sectarian one." So it's not just Mitt Romney who faces a defining political moment next year, it's also politically engaged Evangelicals.

Blog New Year

Tough to do a "heavy" post on New Year's Day. Besides, today (January 2) is really just the official holiday. So what was yesterday, a one-day extension of 2005? One day of 2005½? Anyway, the new year has started. I won't trot out my lame New Year's resolutions, but I will chat about some new blog items and plans for the year, starting with a new entry on the top of my Featured Books list: Proving Contraries: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England (Signature, 2005). If this didn't show up under your Christmas tree, you might invest some of that card money from Grandma in this little treasure. It is a collection of essays, poetry, short fiction, and personal reflections on various topics of interest to LDS readers by seasoned authors and scholars commemorating the career and writings of the late Eugene England. I'll put up a couple of posts on the book in coming weeks. [Update: Deseret News just posted a short review of the book that makes some very nice comments.]