The Goodness and the Mysteries: May 2014

Thursday, May 29, 2014

All Manner of Sin and Blasphemy

I'm reading the New Testament with the kids, and tonight noticed something striking, which I will offer up without comment.

In Matthew 12, the warning that sins against the Holy Ghost (the "holy spirit" in Greek, and remember that, although "spirit," pneuma, is neuter in Greek, in Hebrew it would be the feminine ruach) will not be forgiven is followed immediately by a reference to the tree with good fruit that elsewhere Matthew identifies as lying behind the strait and narrow gate.

In Mark 3, the parallel passage transitions immediately into the question who is Jesus' mother?

See also 1 Nephi 11.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Gifts of God

Since I'm not teaching Sunday School, I haven't updated this blog recently. I continue to read the MT and the LXX side by side. Today I read Leviticus 21, and was floored.

Where the MT has "bread of God," the LXX consistently has "gifts of God." This connects to Matthew 6 and 7 and shows that the bread of God brought out by the Melchizedek priest in Matt 6 was a gift, that is to say, an endowment.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Bookshelf: the Divine Woman II

Two more books I came across in reorganizing my shelves that touch on Israel's Divine Woman in different ways:

Jacob of Serug, On the Mother of God. This is ancient Christian (Syriac) poetry about Mary, and Jacob weaves deep mythological and liturgical roots into what he writes.
G.W. Ahlstrom, Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine.

By Way of Explanation

This blog started as an email list, to which I sent daily updates of my Book of Mormon reading, as I promised my Elders Quorum I would do. Then it came to this URL as a private blog, and then to a Drupal-powered site. I wanted to invite people to join a private community that talked about the Book of Mormon.

The Drupal site, tragically, has crashed (probably nothing to do with Drupal), so I brought the blog back here. In the meantime, I've also published a couple of books -- Plain and Precious Things: The Temple Religion of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men and The Goodness and the Mysteries: On the Path of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men.

As of year end 2013, I've been called to teach Gospel Doctrine in my ward. So I'm leaving up all the old posts and comments, and I'm now going to use this blog to post class outlines, book recommendations, and so forth. Please feel free to share and comment!

Here I Stand

Here are some things I think about the Book of Mormon, the Bible and the origin of the Nephite community. This is not systematic, but intended to explain what might seem like idiosyncratic perspectives.

A) I believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.

B) I believe the Bible is a collection of books recording the experiences and thoughts of Israel and the early Christians.

C) I think both halves of the Bible have been doctored by people who didn't like the true ancient religion of Israel and the true doctrines of Christ, and wished to conceal them beneath their own teachings.

D) I think Lehi left Jerusalem during one of the great moments of conflict in Israelite religion, when reformers (often called "Deuteronomists" by Bible scholars) were changing the way religion was practiced in Israel and rewriting the holy documents to prove themselves right.

E) We read these reformers as heroes in the Bible, because they won, and got to tell the story the way they wanted it. Lehi belonged to the other party, the "prophets" or "visionary men", who lost. This "loser's view" of the sixth century B.C. makes the Book of Mormon an invaluable resource that secular Bible scholars would kill to have. Ironically.

F) This is gross simplification, but: the visionary men went underground, but didn't cease to exist. 1 Enoch is one of their books, along with much of what we call Second Temple or Intertestamental literature or the Apocalyptic Books or the Pseudepigrapha or the Apocrypha. The Dead Sea Scrolls people inherited many of their ideas. The first Christians were Israelites of the traditional religion, more heirs of the visionary men, who recognized Christ as the Messiah who had been promised by the ancient faith.

G) Lehi and his people carried the practices of the visionary men into the promised land. They loved the temple, and its rites were the sources of their prophesies. Crucially, they had visions, the imagery of which was derived from temple furniture, architecture and ritual (1 Nephi 8 and 1 Nephi 11-14 are showcase examples of this). I think it is demonstrable that the Nephites knew an endowment rite, which is expressed both in 1 Nephi 8 and in the Sermon at the Temple (and elsewhere, as I discuss in Plain and Precious Things). That and the Day of Atonement rite were the "rock" and the "salvation," the two ordinances central to the doctrines and prophecies of the visionary men.

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