On the one hand, it seems like Mormons are uniquely primed to accept the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) given that:

1. The Book of Mormon was compiled by a late redactor (Mormon) in a way that is at least superficially similar to what R is proported to have done in the DH.
2. There is a long tradition in Mormonism of suspecting that there were problems in the transmission of the Bible. Not just the problem of translation noted in the eighth article of faith, but the outright tampering alleged in 1 Ne 13.

On the other hand, the JST and the Pearl of Great Price make the DH threatening in ways that are uniquely Mormon, for example:

1. Moses 3:5 seems to support the theory that the two creation accounts of Genesis 1/2 are spiritual/physical respectively. This theory, of course, is contradicted by the DH and raises questions about the nature of the JST.
2. Abraham 4-5 crosses a P-J seem which is an odd thing for it to do if it was written by Abraham.

(more…)

The other night I was reading from the scriptures and I found a passage that didn’t make sense to me. Here are the verses:

18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. (1 Pet 3:18-20)

6 For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. (1 Pet 4:6)

When I read this, I marveled because I know that Jesus spent about three years preaching repentance during his mortal ministry and even though he performed a bunch of amazing miracles he was only able to convince a relatively small number of people to repent and follow him. (more…)

We need to be very careful when we read the scriptures and use them to take a stance on issues in the church. It is not wrong to do this, per se, but cherry picking a single line can end up with incorrect conclusions.

For example, In D&C 76, when talking of those who live in the terrestrial world, we are taught:

72 Behold, these are they who died without law;
73 And also they who are the spirits of men kept in prison, whom the Son visited, and preached the gospel unto them, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh;
74 Who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it.

A plain reading of this notes that those who do not receive the Gospel in this life don’t go to the Celestial Kingdom. This was February 16, 1832. Years later on January 21, 1836, Joseph was given further revelation: (more…)

The Setup

In the temple, we covenant to obey the law of consecration, but I have observed that there is some disagreement about what is entailed in obedience to the law of consecration. In the early days of the church, the saints established the United Order to implement the law of consecration as it had been revealed to that point. Members voluntarily consecrated (deeded over) their property to the Church and in return received a stewardship over property to meet their needs. The United Order lasted a relatively short period of time and the Church hasn’t asked people to deed over all their property for well over one hundred years. (more…)

Tonight for Scriptures we read:

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her,
(more…)

Mormons really have no business sneering at the ideals of socialism.

What is socialism? We get this from the wiki:

Socialism refers to an economic theory of social organization advocating social or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society where one’s labor is the only important, individual factor of production. …

Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism by nature concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.

(more…)

Someone asked me recently why the LDS church still uses the King James Version exclusively. My answer was probably a parrot of something I read in the bloggernacle at some point in the past, but I don’t really remember where I got my current view.

My answer was to this effect:

Q1: Why do we use the KJV in the first place?

A1: Because the KJV was the Bible in widespread use at the time of the restoration. We just picked up the KJV by default because it was the Bible used by Joseph Smith and his contemporaries.

Q2: Why do we still stick to the KJV tenaciously after all these years, even to the point of disallowing other translations from use as the basis for Gospel Doctrine classes etc.?

A2: Because the Book of Mormon uses KJV language and we don’t want to do anything to the Book of Mormon language. It would be weird if we started using a plain English translation of the Bible but had a Book of Mormon that still used the KJV English. Since we are not about to “translate” the Book of Mormon into modern English, we can’t officially do it to the Bible either. I don’t think it has anything to do with the KJV being the best, or even a particularly good translation by modern standards. (more…)

So, just to show I suck at New Years Resolutions, I switched from the Book of Mormon to the OT around the beginning of this month, and am currently in Leviticus.

Anyway, in Leviticus 19, we read the following:

23 ¶ And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.
24 But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal.
25 And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God.

Looking at other translations of the Bible, we see another word alternatively used for uncircumcised is forbidden.

So this got me thinking. A lot of the stories in the book of Genesis call on the law of Moses to illustrate part of the story. An example is Judah sleeping with Tamar, which requires Judah knowing and understanding Mosaic Law for it to make sense.

Is Eve’s story like this? Is the Forbidden Fruit she partook fruit of a tree that was under three years old?

(It’s interesting to note that the above mosaic ruling on uncircumcised fruit is put forth without a punishment attached, and thus could be considered only a transgression, rather than a sin out right.)

Any thoughts or feed back from you scholarly types?

The response to my previous post could be characterized as a collective “that’s it?” but I know that what you really meant was “oh yeah baby, that’s it.” So, while I am on the topic of redactors working macro-level messages into the volumes of scripture the are redacting, I want to call you attention to a very interesting paper in the JBMS and get your take on it. In his paper Prophecy and History: Structuring the Abridgment of the Nephite Records, Steven L. Olsen makes some very intriguing claims about the editorial intent guiding Mormon’s abridgment of the Book of Mormon. (more…)

In a book called The Nine Commandments, David Noel Freedman argues that the Old Testament contains a hidden pattern, carefully crafted and put in place by an anonymous master editor† of the Primary History (Genesis – Kings). The hidden pattern is based on the Ten Commandments. According to Freedman, the history from Genesis to Kings is structured to show that the Ten Commandments were systematically violated by Israel (one commandment per-book) until God had no choice but to unleash the covenant curses on Israel, resulting in their capture and exile along with the destruction of the temple. (more…)

In Mosiah 2, it says, in a rather long sentence:

(more…)

The Book of Jacob is a pretty short book, I thought about combining it with Enos-Words of Mormon, but I thought it had two really interesting points I hadn’t before thought of, so I’d go ahead and share them.
(more…)

I’m making pretty good progress on my Goal this year to read the Book of Mormon from beginning to end. I just finished second Nephi. Previously I had reported on 10 things I never knew before in First Nephi. Here are 10 things about 2nd Nephi. (more…)

I can’t get any of my real posts to the point where I am willing to pull the trigger, so I will settle today with a quick question about an interesting scripture:

21 And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments. (D&C 59:21)

The idea that God’s wrath is kindled against those who don’t confess his hand in all things is often used to argue that God is sticking his fingers is way more things than some of us have supposed. For example, Blake used this scripture in that way here, which got me thinking about it again. Earlier in that thread, I said that I reject the “everything happens for a purpose” way of thinking. I don’t think God is micro-managing everything that happens. I don’t feel compelled to attribute every good thing that happens to some form of divine intervention. (more…)

This year, my new years resolution was to read and seriously study the book of Mormon. Tonight I finished first Nephi, and thought I’d take a moment to share 10 things I learned that I didn’t know before. If it’s old hat to you, your name is probably Kevin Barney.
(more…)