Last updated on: July 30, 2018 at 1:44 am By Ben Spackman
Joseph F. Smith, public domain
The general thrust of my research over the next few years will be science, religion, and history, centered around evolution and scriptural interpretation. I’ll post various things from time to time. The following comes from The Juvenile Instructor, Vol XLVI No. 4 (April 1911): 208-9. BYU had just undergone a controversy of sorts about evolution, the nature of the Bible, and some other intertwined issues. See my post here. Writing in the Church’s magazine, President Joseph F. Smith, in the 10th year of his presidency, penned the following. I have broken up some of the paragraphing for readability, and bolded some interesting bits, commentary at the end.
SALT LAKE CITY
APRIL, 1911
Philosophy and the Church Schools.
Some questions have arisen about the attitude of the Church on certain discussions of philosophy in the Church schools. Philosophical discussions, as we understand them, are open questions about which men of science are very greatly at variance. As a rule we do not think it advisable to dwell on questions that are in controversy, and especially questions of a certain character, in the courses of instruction given by our institutions. In the first place it is the mission of our institutions of learning to qualify our young people for the practical duties of life. It is much to be preferred that they emphasize the industrial and practical side of education. Students are very apt to draw the conclusion that whichever side of a controversial question they adopt is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; and it is very doubtful, therefore, whether the great mass of our students have sufficient discriminating judgment to understand very much about some of the advanced theories of philosophy or science.
Some subjects are in themselves, perhaps, perfectly harmless, and any amount of discussion over them would not be injurious to the faith of our young people. We are told, for example, that the theory of gravitation is at best a hypothesis and that such is the atomic theory. These theories help to explain certain things about nature. Whether they are ultimately true can not make much difference to the religious convictions of our young people. On the other hand there are speculations which touch the origin of life and the relationship of God to his children. In a very limited degree that relationship has been defined by revelation, and until we receive more light upon the subject we deem it best to refrain from the discussion of certain philosophical theories which rather destroy than build up the faith of our young people.
One thing about this so-called philosophy of religion that is very undesirable, lies in the fact that as soon as we convert our religion into a system of philosophy none but philosophers can understand, appreciate, or enjoy it. God, in his revelation to man, has made His word so simple that the humblest of men, without especial training, may enjoy great faith, comprehend the teachings of the Gospel, and enjoy undisturbed their religious convictions. For that reason we are averse to the discussion of certain philosophical theories in our religious instructions. If our Church schools would confine their so-called course of study in biology to that knowledge of the insect world which would help us to eradicate the pests that threaten the destruction of our crops and our fruit, such instruction would answer much better the aims of the Church school, than theories which deal with the origin of life.
These theories may have a fascination for our teachers and they may find interest in the study of them, but they are not properly within the scope of the purpose for which these schools were organized.
Some of our teachers are anxious to explain how much of the theory of evolution, in their judgment, is true, and what is false, but that only leaves their students in an unsettled frame of mind. They are not old enough and learned enough to discriminate, or put proper limitations upon a theory which we believe is more or less a fallacy. In reaching the conclusion that evolution would be best left out of discussions in our Church schools we are deciding a question of propriety and are not undertaking to say how much of evolution is true, or how much is false. We think that while it is a hypothesis, on both sides of which the most eminent scientific men of the world are arrayed, that it is folly to take up its discussion in our institutions of learning; and we can not see wherein such discussions are likely to promote the faith of our young people.
On the other hand we have abundant evidence that many of those who have adopted in its fulness the theory of evolution have discarded the Bible, or at least refused to accept it as the inspired word of God. It is not, then, the question of the liberty of any teacher to entertain whatever views he may have upon this hypothesis of evolution, but rather the right of the Church to say that it does not think it profitable or wise to introduce controversies relative to evolution in its schools. Even if it were harmless from the stand-point of our faith, we think there are things more important to the daily affairs of life and the practical welfare of our young people. The Church itself has no philosophy about the modus operandi employed by the Lord in His creation of the world, and much of the talk therefore about the philosophy of Mormonism is altogether misleading. God has revealed to us a simple and effectual way of serving Him, and we should regret very much to see the simplicity of those revelations involved in all sorts of philosophical speculations. If we encouraged them it would not be long before we should have a theological scholastic aristocracy in the Church, and we should therefore not enjoy the brotherhood that now is, or should be common to rich and poor, learned and unlearned among the Saints.
Joseph F. Smith.
A few observations, then.
Smith does not pass judgment on evolution directly, but observes that it is an open and disputed theory which does not lend itself to practical, daily needs, and therefore doesn’t belong in Church schools.
However, he states that many who adopt evolution refuse to accept the Bible as the word of God. This can be read several ways, and I don’t think this is accurate today, even if it was then. However, since Smith also asserts that the Church has very little revelation about the nature of creation or the relationship of God to his children, it does not seem that he reads Genesis/Moses/Abraham as strongly controlling scientific/historical accounts. (Which raises the question, where does his son Joseph Fielding Smith get that from?)
Smith is pessimistic about the the ability of students to wrestle with ambiguous questions and theory without doing harm to faith.
Smith is wary of any kind of de facto intellectual class distinctions being established among LDS. This, I think, was inherited from Joseph Smith, and was anti-intellectual in a way. Joseph Smith had bad experiences with trained pastors and preachers, and taught fairly strongly that you did not need training for the ministry.On the other hand, he also engaged in “academic” pursuits like studying Hebrew and German, reading Josephus, etc. (On Josephus, see here, a good LDS lecture here, and the expanded publication of that and similar lectures.) The Church seemed to inherit the suspicion of a trained, quasi-priestly class, as reflected above. This suspicion, I think, is still around today, but has also partially been overcome (see Elder Ballard’s important comments about consulting scholars) and partially been realized in an academic and practical sense by BYU’s RelEd department and CES, respectively.
Last updated on: July 30, 2019 at 4:58 pm By Ben Spackman
George Cattermole, “The Scribe” public domain.
I’ve updated this post with a new section and handout, after the overview. It treats the definition of “faith” in the NT.
Let me open by saying, this is a wide-ranging and complex subject; I may well prove to be wrong on this or that point. You may well quibble with some of what I’ve written, and I may be missing important nuances here or there, and it’s a bit scattered and repetitive. Let’s get those disclaimers out of the way.
I have, however, read a bit, and I think sharing some of that can help our Gospel Doctrine classes, as we see these ideas pop up again and again in Paul, and in LDS discussion. Moreover, there is a variety of LDS views, and while I don’t necessarily endorse any of them, I wish LDS to be aware of these ideas and discussions that are happening. There is much to read and explore on these points, and more informed discussion is better, more edifying discussion. Better doctrinal understanding leads to better discipleship, I firmly believe. (more…)
Last updated on: June 13, 2019 at 4:40 am By Ben Spackman
Ben contemplates his words, at Petra.
It’s been a long several months. I have passed my written and oral exams, and am on to writing my dissertation proposal. I’m currently traveling, and have a lot on my plate to get caught up on, but I hope to return to my weekly Gospel Doctrine writing (and other things) soon.
Well, soonish.
In the meantime, let’s talk about my dissertation and summer speaking.
I’m very excited about my dissertation on creationism and biological evolution in the LDS Church after 1970. Here’s a 30,000 foot very early academic overview of the direction my proposal is going right now.
How has the “quintessential American religion” fared with the quintessential crux of American religion, science and scripture, evolution and creationism? This dissertation examines how the unique structure, theology, and intellectual contexts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints led directly to “open warfare” between its flagship University departments beginning in 1970, with an ostensible dénoument in 1992, and then tracing the broader not-insignificant effects to the present.
I argue that latent hermeneutical and epistemological assumptions lie at the core of the LDS chapter of this conflict, and that understanding post-1970 events is impossible without close attention to earlier intellectual history. A variety of competing and largely unrecognized assumptions were in the air in the late 19th century, came into stark conflict in the early 20th, and then one particular set took root in the 1950s, becoming firmly entrenched by the 1970s. While the LDS Church generally came to reject the scientific positions entailed by these assumptions (particularly through Joseph Fielding Smith), the assumptions themselves which generated those positions remain present but unrecognized, unmarked shallows on which ships run aground.
For the pre-1970 years, then, my intent is not to present a history per se; much has already been written on that period, but virtually nothing since. Consequently, to contextualize what happens after 1970, I revisit prior events only to 1) provide new details, 2) draw out the relevant assumptions, and 3) set the LDS history within a broader American intellectual and scientific context.
I’m integrating several fields and kinds of history here: Biblical criticism and hermeneutics, history of science, intellectual history, American religious history, and LDS history. It builds on my earlier work such as this (if the video link there doesn’t work, try here), this, and this.
Now, not a lot of details there. Those will come in the formal proposal, which runs 20-25 pages. My research, at its broadest, will include a number of interviews with professors, Church administrators, curriculum writers, and also a lot of archival research. It will cover scripture, pre-adamites, BYU and Church curricula, evolution, and dinosaurs, including the establishment of BYU’s two museums.
I’ll be in Utah this summer doing research, but also speaking. You can hear me at the FAIRMormon Conference in early August giving an expanded and adapted version of my paper from last October’s Joseph Smith Papers Conference: What do the LDS creation accounts tell us about the nature of revelation, and how should that understanding shape our expectations of ancient and modern prophets? It builds on my last one, which you can watch here.
I’m also scheduled to speak at BYU’s Education Week in late August. (The schedule will be available July 1.) My Sperry Symposium presentation on reading the Old Testament in Context will be expanded in both time and subject. Over four days, I’ll make four 1-hr presentations on Reading the Bible in Context, with demos of some tools, books, etc. My outline looks like this.
Making Sense of the Bible by Putting the Text in Context
Day 1 “Un-wresting” Scripture: Contexts, Tools, and Kinds of Interpretation
Day 2Textual and Historical Contexts of the Bible
Day 3 “My Soul Delights in Reading the Word of the Lord in the Original”: Linguistic Context and Reading in Translation
Day 4Reading Scripture Literally, What That Means, and Why We Need to Do It More: Genre and Literary Context
I’m excited by all of this, but especially day 4.
As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through the Amazon links I post. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). You can also follow Benjamin the Scribe on Facebook. 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.
Last updated on: March 10, 2019 at 12:04 pm By Ben Spackman
“I confess that I am constantly appalled by the scarcity of my knowledge, and the one resentment I think I carry concerns the many pressing demands which limit the opportunity for reading.” President Gordon B. Hinckley, in The Voice of My Servants (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2010): 61.
I have the opposite problem; right now I am doing nothing but reading. Due to time and stress related to preparing for my qualifying exams and dissertation proposal, I will not be posting anything new or updating my Gospel Doctrine posts until June. If you’re looking for them, you can use the category or date selector at the bottom of the page. I’ve also cut out or blocked myself from virtually all my distractions and other activities. It’s eat, sleep, read, and study, for the next 59 days.
Here’s an idea of what I’m studying for. I have three 4-hr exams in American Religious History, Reformation History, and History of Science. Each has a list of books, articles, and questions I’m expected to be able to answer from memory at length, naming events, dates, people, schools of thought, authors arguing this or that position, etc. Here’s a short selection
Discuss how the geological sciences of the 17th– through the nineteenth centuries interacted with the book of Genesis.
Many mid-twentieth century scientists accepted the views of Karl Popper regarding how to tell science from non-science;but those views were seriously challenged by Thomas Kuhn.Briefly characterize Popper’s demarcation criterion and Kuhn’s revisions.
Discuss the tensions amongst different kinds of authority which contributed to the Reformation and how different reformers (Magisterial, radical) tried to resolve those tensions.
Discusses the major differences between reformations in Germany, Switzerland, and England.
Trace the history and development of fundamentalism in American religion, culture, and politics, from its late nineteenth-century origins until today. Highlight major figures, trends, theological developments, and impacts.
In what ways has religion shaped Americans’ attitudes, experiences, and perceptions of war? How did different religious groups respond to war(s) based on their particular theologies, polities, or experiences? Ground your answer by tying it to particular historical conflicts (Revolutionary War, Civil War, etc.)
I’ll propose my dissertation shortly after the oral defense of my written exams. So, I have a lot to do, but I will be back. In the meantime, you can follow my Facebook page, look up old New Testament posts, help me pay my tuition, buy books through Amazon (which lets me get MY books from Amazon), etc.
Last updated on: November 7, 2018 at 1:18 pm By Ben Spackman
I presented a short paper at the Joseph Smith Papers conference a few weeks ago, a spin-off from my Genesis 1 manuscript.
My basic argument was this. Certain common conceptions of revelation, which I term “absolutist,” cannot account for the major textual, doctrinal, and other differences between Genesis, Moses, Abraham, and the temple; this suggests we need to think and teach about revelation differently and in more depth.
I defined “absolutist” revelation with a few characteristics. In this view, revelation involves
Absolute Consistency (i.e. paying lip service to difference with “harmony” but really minimizing differences and contradictions as “only imagined” “mistranslated” or “misunderstood”)
Absolute Accuracy (i.e. a strong presumption of revelation belonging to a historical/scientific genre and its necessary factual correctness)
Absolutely Unmediated (i.e. human elements that may exist in the revelatory process, like prophets, have no practical effect on the end result)
Binary/polarized rhetoric (i.e. “word of God” vs. “philosophies of men”)
These kinds of assumptions about revelation are popular among some Evangelicals, fundamentalists, and in my experience, many Mormons as well.
I presented two categories of differences between Moses and Abraham that strongly undercut these assumptions about revelation.
In Category 1, Abraham makes a change where Moses matches the KJV.
In Category 2, Moses makes a change, but Abraham matches the KJV.
From an absolutist perspective, both of these categories call the inspiration of Moses into question, just from different directions. Category 1 says it’s not inspired enough or it would have read like Abraham; Category 2 says it was mistaken to make a change in the first place. Moreover, the stark differences with the temple, as referenced publicly by Elder McConkie, seem to call both Moses AND Abraham into question. Moreover, there are similar phenomena in LDS history: where the Book of Mormon reads like the KJV, but the JST makes a change. Or the JST records a change in a passage, but then later Joseph declares the KJV “altogether correct in its translation.”
Phrased in an absolutist way, “How can revelation be incorrect? Doesn’t ‘incorrectness’ completely undermine its supposed revelatory nature?”
Thus textual issues generate theological issues, which quickly become pastoral issues. It is apparent we need to wrestle with the nature of revelation a bit more, as all too often, the result for someone asking these questions is a rejection of the inspired nature of these texts instead of a reevaluation of the inherited assumptions that rejection was based on.
I’m not going to reproduce my whole paper arguing against absolutist revelation, but I want to include a section on the nature of the Moses creation chapters.
Some have read passages in Moses (1:40-42, 4:32) to indicate that Genesis was divinely dictated by God and then, apparently, dictated again to Joseph Smith. There are at least three major problems with this reading of dictation.
First, writing in BYU Studies in 1968, [note there are some printing issues with the text of that article] James Harris echoed Joseph Fielding Smith’s absolutist rhetoric that the retention of the word “firmament” in Moses 2 means it “reflects an apostate theology.” The idea that a text literally dictated by God would retain “an apostate theology” as Harris and Smith call it, seems difficult to justify from an absolutist perspective, particularly when it’s a one-word difference.
Second, various characteristics of the JST itself and how Joseph Smith treated it argue against divine dictation. For example, Joseph translated the same passage twice with different results. Sometimes he provided a new translation, but later declared the King James language correct. These militate against divine dictation to a prophet-scribe.
Robert J. Matthews wrote that the JST
was not a simple, mechanical recording of divine dictum, but rather a study-and-thought process accompanied and prompted by revelation from the Lord. That it was a revelatory process (my emphasis) is evident from statements by the Prophet and others who were personally acquainted with the work.”
We have an explicit example of this “study and thought process.” Joseph Smith perceived a contradiction in the way the KJV rendered Hebrews 6:1, and simply didn’t believe it as it read, so he changed it to the way it ought to read. The explicit catalyst for that textual change was Joseph’s understanding of what the English text meant! Joseph’s human cognition thus plays an active role in the text of the JST.
Third, let us assume anyway that Moses was dictated to Joseph Smith. It does not follow from this that such a divine dictation would necessarily be historical in nature. Taking scripture as our guide, revelation comes in parable and poetry, historical fiction and fictionalized history. Revelation is not itself a genre, but manifests itself in multiple forms and genres. In other words, accepting the inspiration of the literary narrative which presents Genesis as speaking to Moses does not dictate about its genre, any more than Jesus saying “a certain man went down to Jericho” indicates the actual existence of a mugged Israelite and a good Samaritan. This is a genre issue, which I’ve spoken about at length elsewhere and address in my book; Genre is rarely addressed at all in LDS treatments of scripture, and this both prevents us from fully appreciating scripture as God intended it, and also creates testimony issues when we assume that everything in scripture is intended as modern history.
Are the Moses creation chapters dictated by God? It seems more likely to be a literary framing, similar in function to Moses and Deuteronomy.
I concluded that the assumptions in absolutist revelation are not justified. The nature of all these changes suggests that “revelation” cannot be simplistically equated with “factual correctness.”These changes undermine a simplistic equation of “scripture” with “divinely revealed facts.” Since, at face value, a change in Moses suggests the KJV text is “wrong,” how does one account for the agreement between the KJV and the post-Moses revelation of Abraham? Rather, we should understand revelation, even canonized modern revelation, as a snapshot in the process of progression, a point along the line of approximation of an ideal.
Revelation is not static, nor even a straight line of upwards progress, but a mediated human-divine process which sometimes becomes “frozen” as scripture. The implication is that scripture is not necessarily composed of divinely revealed eternal facts, but contains human elements and understandings common to the time. LDS scholars, as well as Jewish and Christian, have argued for an understanding of revelation which is progressive and involves human input, a “participationist” model of revelation.
This can account for differences between inspired texts which, according to common assumptions, “should” be identical.
As always, you can help me pay my tuition here, or you can support my work through making your regular Amazon purchases through the Amazon links I post. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). You can also follow Benjamin the Scribe on Facebook.
Last updated on: November 1, 2018 at 11:53 am By Ben Spackman
Public domain, http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=8577&picture=old-books
One of my qualifying exams is in Reformation history. As the story goes, Oct 31 is the day Martin Luther nailed his 99 95 theses to the door of the church, so Oct 31 is sometimes known as Reformation Day. What many people don’t know is that a) this story doesn’t mean what people think it does and b) it might not even have happened.
University professors, as Luther was, operated differently from today. A primary form of teaching and scholarship was the Disputation, which required publicly laying out a series of theses pointing towards a yes/no conclusion. The way you announced these Disputations was to put up a paper copy on the church door; In other words, the nailing to the door is the equivalent of sending out an email announcement of a lecture, not a deliberate frontal assault on Catholicism as it is sometimes portrayed.
And so, I’m posting some books from my Reformation exam reading list (still a bit in flux) that I think are accessible. Some of these are not strictly on my list; due to circumstance, I had limited coursework in this area, so some of my readings are a little more general and introductory. Also, most of the list below is still to-read for me.
A history of the early 16th century reformations, including social and intellectual history, through a Weberian lens.
People of the Reformation and Their Ideas
F.Bruce Gordon, Calvin(Yale University Press, 2011)
A well-reviewed biography of Jean Calvin with a focus on “following the events of his life and charting his thoughts through his letters and writings.”
Stjerna provides both a social context for women before, during, and after the Reformation, as well as biographical sketches and case studies of particular women.
Primary Sources
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (This is quite long, and exists in multiple editions and translations.)
I’m using the version edited by John T. McNeill (Westminster John Knox Press, 1960)
A written debate with Luther carried on in print, 1524-25.
I have not settled on a particular translation yet, and will probably consult several.
Martin Luther, “On the Bondage of the Will,” “To Christian Nobility,” “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” “Freedom of a Christian.”
I’m using the English versions found in The Annoted Luther series, (Fortress Press, 2015) which comes with helpful contextual annotations.
Reformation, Science, and Biblical Interpretation
Peter Harrison, “Protestantism and the Making of Modern Science” in Protestantism after 500 Years, Mark A. Knoll and Thomas Albert Howard, eds. (Oxford Press, 2016), 98-120.
Harrison argues against a simplistic “single narrative” of “science and religion,” and summarizes some current views of how Protestant ideas contributed to the rise of modern science.
Harrison argues that the Reformers’ view of human depravity and the “Fall of Man” led to a strong distrust of the human mind, which contributed to the rise of external, experimental, empirical “science.”
Argues for an intellectual continuity between the Renaissance, humanism, scholasticism, and the early Reformation. Includes a section on scriptural interpretation and hermeneutics.
Split between the Renaissance and Reformation, Thompson discusses the religious, civil, and intellectual developments of the two periods, complete with 212 images and illustrations.
Gregory argues that the ideas promulgated by the Reformers contributed materially to some aspects of modern society, including religious plurality and consumerism.
McGrath offers a history of Protestantism with a focus on the role and impact of the Reformers’ views of scripture and interpretation, particularly sola scriptura.
I’ve also been listening to two Great Courses series, also available over Audible.
And if you know nothing, the film Luther has high production values and features Joseph Fiennes as Luther. It’s a little bit one-sided, as it’s sponsored by a Lutheran group, but definitely worth watching.
As always, you can help me pay my tuition here. You can also get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). You can also follow Benjamin the Scribe on Facebook.
My concern can be summed up with this: we treat ancient scripture very differently than we treat Church history, but ancient scripture needs it just as much, if not more.
In the same year that Seminary students are learning about Joseph Smith’s seerstone, that ground-breaking history Saints is published, that we have the Gospel Topics essays, that faithful professional historians like Kate Holbrook and Matt Grow are featured in face-to-face videos for youth, the Joseph Smith Papers, and so on… the way we teach ancient scripture to youth remains so simplistic as to be misleading and even factually incorrect at times.
Elder Ballard’s words about necessary expertise (he specifies Biblical studies and ancient history) have not yet affected the way our manuals are written for teaching and understanding ancient scripture. When they do cite scholarship, it tends to be old and/ or unreliable. To paraphrase Elder Ballard elsewhere, our traditional approach and “curriculum, though well-meaning, does not prepare students for today—a day when students have instant access to virtually everything about the Bible from every possible point of view.” This well-meaning overly simplified approach paves the way for the next generation’s faith crisis (please read that if you haven’t.)
I can be quite pedantic at times, I admit, but I want to emphasize that my concern here is pastoral, not academic. President Faust quoted President Hugh B. Brown that
God desires that we learn and continue to learn, but this involves some unlearning. As Uncle Zeke said: ‘It ain’t my ignorance that done me up but what I know’d that wasn’t so.’
For whatever reason, a number of LDS internalize what manuals say as divinely revealed truth, the Way Things Really Are. If not correct, such statements wouldn’t be in manuals approved by the First Presidency, goes the reasoning. (I have seen some volunteer seminary teachers essentially hold manuals to be inerrant.) So what happens when those things LDS have to unlearn are things that were explicitly presented to them in correlated and approved manuals? Are we contributing to future faith crises?
The more simplistic the claim and the tighter it is linked with the truth of scripture, the easier we make it to reject scripture and faith when that claim turns out to be more complex, or even wrong.
Please do not misunderstand me; Seminary should not be a graduate seminar in complex scriptural issues, but it also shouldn’t simplify to the point of misleading or incorrectness. It needs to be accessible to the high-school student as well as the new-convert Mandarin-speaking teacher. But there are ways to acknowledge and prepare people for complexity without presenting it. (I offer one example below.) At minimum, we need to avoid creating the expectation that there IS no complexity, that this simplicity is all there is to know.
What’s potentially damaging or challenging to faith depends entirely, I think, on one’s expectations…. Any kind of experience can be shattering to faith if the expectation is such that one is not prepared for the experience…. the problem is the incongruity between the expectation and the reality.
What expectations does the manual create? Do people expect further information, expansion, or nuance later? “Milk before meat” is a true principle (one I think we commonly misapply), but we do have to let people know the meat exists and actually provide it somewhere or point people to it! Manuals must create proper expectations, or they put faith at serious risk. Church History is now being presented in its fullness and complexity… but not ancient scripture.
Two Examples from the Manual
I could certainly pull out more examples, but these were in the introduction and Genesis is near to my heart.
Who wrote Genesis and the Book of Moses?
The manual states bluntly that Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy. This is certainly traditional, but it’s also much more complicated than that. As stated, the manual doesn’t even reflect the nuance of the LDS Bible Dictionary, which portrays Genesis as a Mosaic document based on pre-existing documents and with post-Mosaic editing.
The Seminary manual says “Who wrote the first book in the Bible? Turn to Genesis 1 to find out.”
Genesis 1 doesn’t say anything about authorship, unless you’re looking at the heading, which is not actually part of scripture. What does Genesis- Deuteronomy actually say about who wrote it? Here’s a link to a Jewish perspective looking at that question in depth.
Well, what about the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses? Don’t they settle the question of the authorship of Genesis-Deuteronomy? Again, these are complicated, but the manual makes no room for acknowledging “complicated” and that, again, is the real problem.
The Book of Mormon reflects Nephi’s tradition of Mosaic authorship, but there’s no evidence of God revealing this fact to Nephi as much as Nephi assuming it. Scripture tends to reflect the cultural assumptions of the time, but even revelation cannot be assumed to be ultimately correct in a historical/scientific/factual/doctrinal sense. That’s both a genre issue (which our manuals tend to ignore) and a theological one. These are topics I’ve written about extensively in places like the FAIRMormon Conference, the Maxwell Institute (paper not publicly available yet), BYU’s Sperry Symposium, and UVU’s Mormon Studies Conference. As for Moses, in October I’m speaking at the Joseph Smith Papers conference at the Church History Library on the relationship between Genesis, Moses, and Abraham, and what it tells us about the nature of revelation.
Since I try not to criticize unless I can contribute, if I wrote the manual, it would read something like this.
While tradition attributes the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy to Moses, the Biblical text itself does not actually say that Moses wrote it, and different kinds of clues in the text suggest that different authors and editors at different times contributed to these books as we know them today. For example, unlike Nephi’s repetitive first-person “I Nephi,” the Bible consistently refers to Moses in the third-person, “He, Moses,” even describing his death in Deuteronomy 34! The Church is not committed either to strictly Mosaic authorship nor to other views. As the First Presidency said in 1910, it is not ultimately authorship that matters, but whether the doctrine is correct.
2. Revelation as Dictation
Moses 1:40 reads “And now, Moses, my son, I will speak unto thee concerning this earth upon which thou standest; and thou shalt write the things which I shall speak.”
The manual takes this passage as proof of Mosaic authorship of both Moses and Genesis and then uses it as a paradigm for revelation and scripture.
I find that problematic from several different angles. I can’t address them all here nor lay out my own view of the relationship between Moses 1 and 2-4, which parallel Genesis 1-3. (Again, I’m addressing this partially at the JSP Conference in October and also in my book.) First, the manual assumes the absolute historical/documentary nature of the Book of Moses. That’s not in keeping with what we know of the JST, nor is it actually argued, just assumed. That’s a genre issue.
Second, it implies that the entirety of the Old Testament (and revelation in general) is God dictating to prophets! Prophets as mere scribes, mechanically and passively taking down the words that God dictates! I know some LDS hold to this idea, but it runs against everything we know about scripture ancient and modern. Let’s stick with modern for a moment.
Very orthodox Mormon scholars in orthodox venues looking closely at D&C have argued strongly for a very different view of revelation. For example, The Ensign has carried the statement about D&C from Robert Woodford that
Elder Orson Pratt confirmed President Woodruff’s statement and added: “Joseph … received the ideas from God, but clothed those ideas with such words as came to his mind”
That’s not divine dictation.
Steven Harper, former BYU professor who then became a historian for the Church, an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers, and new Editor in Chief of BYU Studies, writes of the “process of revelation” in a BYU publication, concluding
Joseph knew better than anyone else that the words he dictated were both human and divine, the voice of God clothed in the words of his own limited, early American English vocabulary. He regarded himself as a revelator whose understanding accumulated over time. Joseph recognized as a result of the revelatory process that the texts of his revelations were not set in stone. Rather, he felt responsible to revise and redact them to reflect his latest understanding.
If Joseph merely received God’s word and wrote it down (Harper details how William McClellin thought this), then he should have known not to change it. But that wasn’t Joseph’s understanding of revelation!
Similarly, according to the pioneering JST scholar Robert Matthews, quoted in The Ensign, (and remember the manual presents the Book of Moses as the JST)
[the JST] was not a simple, mechanical recording of divine dictum, but rather a study-and-thought process accompanied and prompted by revelation from the Lord. That it was a revelatory process is evident from statements by the Prophet and others who were personally acquainted with the work.
Sometimes, like with D&C, Joseph made revisions or translated the same passage differently. Sometimes he preached according to the KJV, not the JST. And usually, the Book of Mormon matches the KJV, not the JST. These are difficult things to account for, if you assume that revelation is dictated by God.
The preeminent scholar of the text of the D&C, Robert Woodford, wrote several articles in The Ensign which militate against divine dictation, like this one and that already quoted above.
Joseph Smith did not receive all these revelations as word-for-word dictations from the Lord (although he may have received some this way). Rather, he received inspiration and wrote the revelations using his own words, often couched in Victorian English.
Revelation can work more than one way, of course, but presenting a “dictation” model as THE WAY we got the Old Testament overreaches, dangerously in my view, by presenting it as THE PRIMARY WAY prophets get revelation. This is too simple and too rigid, and also can’t account for modern or ancient scripture. Why are we teaching Seminary this way? Why not teach explicitly that revelation is a process, that scripture is (usually) God’s word in human words? (A simpler and fantastic version of that book is this one.)
This idea of revelation as process, as divine/human collaboration, makes much more sense of the difficulties of the Old Testament that are much much harder to square with faith if the whole thing was just dictated by God.
What expectations does the manual create for students and teachers by presenting divine dictation as the primary mode of Old Testament revelation and, by extension, modern revelation? Are those expectations accurate and well-founded? Are they healthy for the long-term sustainable spiritual health of our youth and soon-to-be-missionaries?
What You and I Can Do
As much as I think we misread the story of Uzzah, I am not comfortable with what’s typically called “steadying the ark” or “counseling the brethren,” but then, I don’t think that’s what I’m doing here. These manuals are not revealed by God nor written by Apostles under divine inspiration. These manuals invite feedback and even correction for mistakes. Moreover, President Nelson recently taught that “good inspiration is based upon good information” and I hope I am providing some of that.
I know that there is currently a group writing a manual to replace the Old Testament Institute manual; the very problematic 1980 manual remains current. (That manual forces a dichotomy between accepting evolution OR the Gospel on p.34, and contains a 2000-word (!) extract from a Seventh-day Adventist pamphlet against evolution, written at a creationist research institution, p.34-36.)
However, if my sources are reliable, the new writing committee, while no doubt good people and teachers, has no expertise in Bible, ancient Near East, Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic, etc. The Bible is an ancient book written for ancient people, and when we try to read it as modern Mormonism, we misunderstand it, to our detriment. Are we looking at a repeat of the Seminary manual’s simplistic tradition, but now aimed at college students around the world?
The manual introduction says
Comments and corrections are appreciated. Please send them, including errors, to…. [email protected] [Also copy them to [email protected]] Please list your complete name, address, ward, and stake. Be sure to give the title of the manual when you offer your comments.
If any of this concerns you as it does me, the proper way to express those concerns is through the two email addresses above. Please do so in a constructive way, either in detail or generally, without rancor, but expressing the experiences and needs of your family in Seminary, Institute, and Gospel Doctrine. I hope you would express a concern and hope that we bring Ancient Scripture up to the level of Church History, that we provide LDS around the world with the equivalent of Revelations in Contextfor the Bible. We need some collaboration or even oversight between the manual writers and reliable LDS scholars of Bible, history, ancient near east, etc. In short, we need Ancient Scripture to catch up to Church History, and this for the faith of our youth and adults.
The Bible, after all, is our primary point of contact with Jews, Christians and Muslims, and the foundational scripture of our beliefs. All our modern revelations presume a knowledge and base of the Bible. To quote Elder Ballard again, from a talk called “The Miracle of the Holy Bible,”
The more we read and study the Bible and its teachings, the more clearly we see the doctrinal underpinnings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We tend to love the scriptures that we spend time with. We may need to balance our study in order to love and understand all scripture. You young people especially, do not discount or devalue the Holy Bible. It is the sacred, holy record of the Lord’s life. The Bible contains hundreds of pages more than all of our other scripture combined. It is the bedrock of all Christianity.
So write in, if you feel so moved. But also, study on your own, and contribute to making your ward’s various classes better. Act within your sphere of influence. Balance your study to include the Bible in context. Good teachers and knowledgeable parents and friends can mitigate less-than-ideal manuals in adapting to local needs, and we are each commanded to study and learn out of the best books, as well as teach each other. In doing so, we fulfill our individual call to discipleship.
A claim is often made like “Christians have always interpreted Genesis literally until science came along!” There’s a lot wrong with that claim, which I’ve written about…somewhere. I can’t find my own darn post. Greenwood’s volume will not be the first to tackle the various interpretations of Genesis throughout the ages, but I hope will do it well and in an accessible and popular way. It’s no good for academics to know this stuff if it doesn’t filter down to popular discussion and debate.
Third, an edited anthology called The Warfare Between Science and Religion: The Idea that Wouldn’t Die. I can’t find much pre-publication PR on this yet; it’s not even available to preorder on Amazon, but several of the contributors footnote it in their articles elsewhere.
In the late 1800s, two authors (Draper and White) popularized the idea that Religion and Science had always been and inevitably always would be at war with each other. Although highly problematic and consistently rejected by historians, this “warfare model” came to dominate popular understanding today.
For an overview, I highly recommend this 5-minute video by historians-of-science Lawrence Principe (whose books and lecture series on the history of science and science&religion I have greatly enjoyed) and Ted Davis.
Edited by eminent historian of science Ronald Numbers and others, this volume looks to be the broadest and deepest exploration of the “warfare model,” featuring essays by prominent historians in the field like Peter Harrison and John Hedley Brooke. I’m quite excited for it.
All the big US universities you’ve heard of, like Princeton, were founded as places of religious education as well as training for clergy. They maintained their religious status until very recently (see Marsden, Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief). Process and Providence represents a dry but important examination of how religious thought wrestled with scientific thought at a prominent religious school.
Princeton was the epicenter of a number of simultaneous religious and intellectual developments; The theologians at Princeton generated the modern Evangelical understandings of inerrancy/infallibility (thus contributing to modern fundamentalism), while simultaneously making room for human evolution. Names like B.B. Warfield, Charles Hodge, Alexander Hodge, and J. Gresham Machen appear repeatedly in this broader history (Wikipedia, because I don’t have a better link.) Peter Enns touches on them and Princeton in this online series.
I suspect some of the ideas generated by these scholars affected Joseph Fielding Smith and his views on interpretation, scripture, and science. For example, representing a very concordist perspective, Charles Hodge wrote that the Bible constituted “a god-given storehouse of facts.” Joseph Fielding Smith similarly held that, in contrast to man-made hypotheses like evolution, “the testimony of the prophets [in scripture] are actual facts.” How directly or indirectly Smith’s views were influenced by the Princetonians, I can’t say at this point.
None of these books is on my reading lists for my upcoming exams, but I’m going to try to fit them all in.
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Benjamin the Scribe
“I confess that I am constantly appalled by the scarcity of my knowledge, and the one resentment I think I carry concerns the many pressing demands which limit the opportunity for reading.” President Gordon B. Hinckley, in 
I presented a short paper at the Joseph Smith Papers conference a few weeks ago, a spin-off from my Genesis 1 manuscript.
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