Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Here, Have a Niblet

Mormon Matters is hosting the 2009 Niblets event. Vote here. DMI was nominated in three categories (thank you, whoever you are): Best Solo Blog, Best Blog Layout/Graphics, and Best Overall Blogger. It's nice that the folks at Mormon Matters inserted links to all the candidate blogs, posts, and comments — I know that must have taken a nice chunk of someone's Sunday afternoon. So what's good or bad about the Niblets?

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?

You Make the Call: Dave, Jay, or Conan

So let's try a lighter post: the late night television wars. This is one war America can actually win. Once upon a time things were simple and straightforward: Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show. Maybe you watched it, maybe you didn't. Now there are late night choices, and Leno is back on the menu. I guess if all three went head to head, I'd pick Leno. Both Dave and Conan started out with late late shows (the 12:30 slot) and never really left their late late antics behind when they moved up to 11:30. I'm not sure if Conan's refusal to take the 12:05 slot, turning Tonight into Tomorrow, was noble or just good negotiating (nice severance package, Conan), but I think he was right that Tonight at 12:05 just wouldn't be the same.

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.

2009 Blog Year in Review ... and What's Ahead For 2010

I posted at Beliefnet and T&S for most of the year, so the 16 posts in my Greatest Hits 09 list (about seven clicks down the right sidebar) are from all over: ten from T&S, four from Beliefnet, and two originally posted here at DMI. [Note: I have archived most of my posts from other sites here at DMI, so all the sidebar links are to the DMI version of the post.]

Underwhelming Thoughts on Correlation

I confess that I am not a regular reader of the Church News, but I did happen to run across this recent piece, "Using proper sources." I will note a couple of quibbles I have with the piece (which, as an unsigned post in the "Viewpoints" section, I take to be essentially a staff editorial), but in the end I think I agree on the need to avoid the use of "uncorrelated" supplementary sources or materials in class.

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.

Good Thoughts on Teaching Sunday School

My second-favorite group blog recently posted a series on what's wrong with Sunday School, showing once again that we bloggers are, if nothing else, talented complainers. So let's talk teaching and collect a few simple suggestions for improvement.

You Make the Call: What Is an Unorthodox Mormon?

Breaking news at NCT, which claims that "[LDS] leadership is worried about a growing rift in the church where members are identifying themselves as either orthodox or unorthodox members." That's nice to know, except what exactly is an unorthodox Mormon and why are they a problem?

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.