Author: gwesley

Section 7 of the Doctrine and Coventants shares much of its language and content with John 21, a few other New Testament texts like Hebrews 1 and Matthew 16, as well as 3 Nephi 28. This commonality is no secret. Most all the cross-references are listed right there in the footnotes to the standard edition.

What to make of the commonality is of course debatable, but it can be argued that D&C 7 adds new material to John 21 by drawing from Hebrews 1 and Matthew 16. The Book of Mormon then builds on D&C 7 in 3 Nephi 28, drawing further from Paul.

It can also be argued that much as John 21 itself, neither D&C 7 nor 3 Nephi 28 would have been written had the return of Jesus not been delayed. If Jesus had returned in the first or second century, there would have been no need for the development of a doctrine of ‘translated beings’ such as John the beloved disciple and the three Nephites—beings that tarry on or around the earth for hundreds, even thousands of years.

In John 21, an anonymous third-person narrator faces a problem. Some of his fellow early Christians believed that the beloved disciple would not die. According to the third-person narrator, Jesus never said that; he only said that the beloved disciple would tarry until his return.

Fast forward a couple millennia, and Jesus has still not returned. So the question for Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery is “whether John, the beloved disciple, tarried in the flesh or had died.” As a (p)rewriting of the biblical text, D&C 7 tries to get behind the third-person narrative of John 21 to the voice and authority of the beloved disciple himself in order to give a definitive answer. It also adds new material to John 21, John 21 itself being an ancient addition to John 20.

The new material added to John 21 in D&C 7 is drawn in part from Hebrews 1 as an explanation of how the beloved disciple had tarried so long and could still be alive in April, 1829: he had become an angel. John himself recounts Jesus’ statement of his angelification, while the actual experience of becoming an angel was soon to be described in 3 Nephi 28 as the three Nephites desire the same thing that John desired.

The new material added to John 21 in D&C 7 also draws from Matthew 16, where Jesus tells Peter that he will give him the keys, and that “there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”

Despite Peter’s desire to come speedily unto Jesus in his kingdom, in D&C 7 it is not clear that Peter in fact did so. He and James and John take part in what looks like the same ministry, all three having been given the same power and keys. This re-interpretive allusion to the giving of keys in Matthew 16 is striking because here in D&C 7 the keys are not given to Peter alone; they are given to him, James, and John: “and unto you three will I give this power and the keys of this ministry until I come.”

If the power and keys of ministering and tarrying until the return of Jesus are among those given to Peter, James, and John in D&C 7, this would go some way towards resolving the issue of Jesus’ saying in Matthew 16 that “There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” The more and more time passed before Jesus’ return, the longer and longer some of the disciples would have to live in order for this saying to be true in any literal sense. And it could not be just one disciple, e.g. John. It had to be some.

Jesus’ saying in Matthew 16 is similar enough to what he says of the beloved disciple in John 21. In Matthew 16 Jesus says that “some … shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom;” in John 21 Jesus of the beloved disciple that he will “tarry till I come.” But by combining Matthew 16 and John 21 in the way it does in order to work out problems caused by the delay of Jesus’ return, D&C 7 also introduces certain tensions of its own within John 21 and the New Testament as a whole. Peter and James could not be among Matthew’s ‘some that shall not taste of death’ because the future death of Peter is mentioned in John 21, and the death of James is related in Acts 12.

Even a (p)rewriting of the biblical text as creative as D&C 7 could not avoid these tensions due to the constraints of the canon. Only in the extra-biblical text of 3 Nephi 28 were the tensions resolved in the figures of the three Nephites, each like John in their desire, and none of them tasting of death, just as Jesus said about the ‘some’ in Matthew 16.

3 Nephi 28 was written apparently no more than a month or so after D&C 7, and it seems that the inquiry started by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery was still going. In April 1829, they wanted to know “whether John … tarried in the flesh or had died.” Provisionally it was sufficient for them that John had become an angel. But by May, as editor/narrator of the gold plates, Mormon wants to know details about the process of angelification and whether the three Nephites who had become angels like John were immortal or not.

In language also found in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus tells the three Nephites that when he returns they “shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortality to immortality.” This would be a stunning reuse of Paul, who believed that “we shall not all sleep,” i.e. not all die, because Jesus would return within Paul’s own lifetime or at least within the lifetime of a few of his peers. In keeping with the delay of Jesus’ return, however, in 3 Nephi 28 now the change is to happen centuries later. Mormon, writing circa 400 CE, claims to have seen the three Nephites, whom he refers to as angels, and who so “remain until the judgment day of Christ” hundreds of years in the future.

The actual experience of their angelification is described in 3 Nephi 28 in Pauline terms as well. In preparation for their change in the twinkling of an eye at Jesus’ return, according to the Nephite record, the three were then “caught up into heaven, and saw and heard unspeakable things … And whether they were in the body or out of the body, they could not tell,” once more akin to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.

But unlike Paul who eventually died after his in-and/or-out-of-body experience, theirs had lasting effects. As Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery inquired about John, Mormon states that he too “inquired of the Lord” regarding the three Nephites and whether they were mortal or immortal. After what he wrote previously, he learns that in fact there was “a change wrought upon their bodies, or else it needs be that they taste of death;” a change but “not equal to that which shall take place at the last day.”

Thus the problems caused by the delay of Jesus’ return are worked out, and the tensions introduced by D&C 7 are resolved in 3 Nephi 28.

Finally, if there is a correspondence between Peter, James, and John in D&C 7 and the three Nephites, then the autobiography also runs in the other direction when Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery are subsequently visited by Jesus’ three Old World disciples sometime in 1829/30, as Mormon had seen the three Nephites.

On the chance that you missed it, at least two university professors invoked Martin Luther King Jr in the last few days in order to criticize the president. Given the national holiday, the King-Obama association that had already been established, and the president’s use of King’s Bible for his second inauguration, this is not altogether surprising.

What is perhaps surprising is that both professors did so from quite different points of view, which of course are hardly the only points of view. I happen to be a member of the same faith tradition as one of the professors, and it is his point of view that I want to focus on, that is, his point of view, not him or what he may represent for certain groups of church members and former members.

I want to focus on it in order to arrive at a theological question that I think is important for all Mormons to consider, whatever our different political leanings may be. I am not seeking to perpetuate intra-Mormon dispute as an end in and of itself, much less do I aim at arguing a point so as to appear to win. I feel strongly enough to have written something, but I have tried not to allow emotion to over-influence my writing. I have also tried to use a number of qualifiers, in the hopes of avoiding the possibility of misrepresentation.

For Cornel West, it was upsetting that the president used Martin Luther King’s Bible, as the president is, in West’s recent words, a “Republican in blackface,” out of step with King’s speeches, which the president has referenced in his own.

For Daniel Peterson, the president’s “vaunted oratorical skills pale into insignificance alongside Dr. King’s.” If ‘pale’ was not intentionally loaded with double meaning here, and it easily may not be, Peterson goes on to state: “I’m pleased (it’s the only substantial thing about his presidency that pleases me) that America has broken the color barrier in electing a black president. (Well, 50% black, anyway.)”

Despite whatever superficial and rhetorical similarities there are between them, however, the criticisms function entirely separately. For West, it is the president’s policies that are too ‘white;’ West calls him “my dear brother,” at the same time suggesting that the president is not one of Martin Luther King’s ‘people:’

I got upset [about the president’s use of King’s Bible] because you don’t play with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and you don’t play with his people. By ‘his people’ I mean people of good conscience, fundamentally committed to peace, and truth, and justice; and especially the Black tradition that produced it.

There is some ambiguity in West’s definition of King’s ‘people,’ i.e., “and especially the Black tradition that produced it,” the antecedent of ‘it’ being unclear, but it is clear enough that he does not limit King’s ‘people’ to race.

Whereas for Peterson, it seems that racially the president is only “50% black,” at least potentially implying that “the color barrier” has only been half broken.

If it were not for other things that Peterson has to say about Civil Rights, this potential implication might not be eye-catching. In his blog post meant to honor King on Monday, in the comments there, and in the follow-up post and comments, he seems to be saying that discrimination should not (have) be(en) regulated against but that hopefully it would (have) be(en) corrected through market forces.

Even if, for the sake of ‘logical argument,’ discrimination could be isolated from the violence that historically accompanies it, I’m afraid that this economic view may also be tied to what I consider to be problematic theology–the existence or non-existence of Mormon theologians being what it may.

When I first read his post on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr Day this week, I thought of an earlier post he had written about a year ago, as one of his colleagues was in some trouble for statements regarding why there was a priesthood ban. Peterson himself has not connected the posts as far as I know, but I have brought them together. In this earlier post, entitled “An Unfortunate Attempt to Explain the Pre-1978 Priesthood Ban,” Peterson argued from scripture that “God has always discriminated with regard to priesthood … But we don’t know why.”

God discriminates then, according to Peterson, at least when it comes to priesthood and race as well as gender. Though I want to be careful not to conflate Peterson’s earlier blog post on the priesthood ban with his post on Monday so entirely as to result in distortion, it would seem that he does not read the same scriptures as found in Martin Luther King’s Bible, the one that Cornel West is upset about the president using.

If they are not the same, the reason for the different scriptures of a Martin Luther King or a Cornel West and a Daniel Peterson may not amount to our LDS extra-biblical canon. How was King able to look at the Bible and see equality, likewise West, albeit his own version, while Peterson apparently looks at it and sees a God who discriminates?

I would contend that both equality and discrimination are there in scripture. But the issue of God’s discrimination per se has to do with the passages we ourselves select; it has to do with whether we ourselves choose to read them as entirely divine or also at least partly human texts; and it has to do with when we ourselves may or may not make that choice to read them as at least partly human texts.

In other words, I don’t think the best answer is: we don’t know why God discriminates.

The question is: what will we choose, a God who discriminates or not? And if we choose one who does, how will we know when God’s discrimination in scripture is or isn’t a product of the human beings, like us, who recorded and wrote it?

There was some exciting discussion developing here the other day about such topics as how smart it is and the smarts that are required to participate on the blogs and face books. Or as the great elitist Cicero put it:

Nomina stultorum in parietibus [paginisque librorum faciei et commentis blogum] semper videmus [et in podcastibus audimus].

*Crib sheet with reference to grammar in dusty print edition. nomina — neuter plural accusative of third declension noun: nomen, nominis. stultorum — masculine plural genitive of second declension noun: stultus, stulti. in — preposition + object in ablative. parietibus — masculine plural ablative of third declension noun: paries, parietis. paginis — feminine plural ablative of first declension noun: pagina, paginae. que — enclitic conjunction. librorum — masculine plural genitive of second declension noun: liber, libri. faciei — feminine singular genitive of fifth declension noun: facies, faciei. et – conjunction. commentis — neuter plural ablative of first and second declension adjective as substantive: commentus, -a, -um (n.b. primary meaning). blogum — masculine plural genitive of third declension noun: blog, blogis. semper – adverb. videmus — first person plural present active indicative of second conjugation verb: video, videre, vidi, visum. podcastibus – neuter plural ablative of fourth declension noun: podcastu, podcastus. audimus — first person plural present active indicative of the fourth conjugation verb: audio, audire, audivi, auditum.

*Or for all practical purposes you could just copy and paste into an online translator (sorry, you’ve got to click on image for readable size):

I know. Nothing but apples and oranges, if that.

Jesting aside, I do wonder:  is there a tendency to assume too quickly that those who have disaffiliated are less smart, well read, etc., even among the Mormon intellectual crowd (or insert whatever descriptor you prefer) that is otherwise generally careful not to assume that those who have disaffiliated are more sinful? And if there is such a tendency even, perhaps especially, among the Mormon intellectual crowd, why is the assumption made? Is it simply the inverse of the trope that Mormon intellectuals are bankrupt? Can the assumption be unmade? Should it? Or is it essential, at least rhetorically?

Oh, and if anyone thinks of an actual way to translate ‘blog’ and ‘podcast’ into Latin, I would enjoy seeing the fool’s name in a comment.

Here’s the other post in the series so far and where you’ll also find a link to the series announcement.

“What is your philosophy of Religious Education and what should be the proper balance between the intellectual and the spiritual in BYU Religion classes?”

This is a very important question that I wish could be discussed more, and more openly, throughout the church at all levels. Because it does not just concern students in religious education classes at church schools. It concerns everyone. To me it seems that Church History and Doctrine is to be commended for asking the question.

In brief, I think the same give-and-take between the intellectual and the spiritual needs to happen in the fields of religious, biblical, and related studies as happens in fields like biology. With the exception of some members who are free to do differently, Mormonism as an institution and at BYU has made accommodations for evolution. To read Mormonism’s history with evolution as a lack of valiance in standing for the spiritual truth revealed to God’s prophets in scripture ancient and modern would be dangerous and counterproductive to the growth of the church and its schools. And yet this is the way Mormonism’s history with biblical criticism for example is still being written. No, biblical criticism is not a science on par with evolutionary biology. But it hardly amounts to mere interpretation.

Put more simply, balance does not mean: accommodate the intellectual only where it does not conflict with the spiritual. Balance means balance. And this goes for all areas of human knowledge.

Tacit in the dichotomy between the intellectual and the spiritual is the assumption that the intellectual is human and the spiritual is not. But the spiritual is human too. It could not be otherwise. There is no such thing as divine revelation that comes to us straight from God without being mediated through human thought, language, culture, society, etc.

When members of the church operate as if there is such a thing, then Mormonism ends up with ‘folk doctrine’ that it cannot get behind it, because it cannot treat its spiritual leaders as human, even though everybody knows they are. Unmediated divine revelation is comforting in a sense, and I admit that from that perspective the alternatives can seem threatening. But it does not make for long-term stability of the group or the individual.

Finally, for those worried about forced or total secularization. That is not what I am saying. To admit that divine revelation does not exist unmediated does not mean that it does not exist. It just means that it is mediated through human thought, language, culture, society, etc. The spiritual cannot be separated from its humanness. The sooner in life a religious person comes to terms with this, the better, in my opinion.

And in conclusion, it would not do to replace one orthodoxy with another. What is needed is space in which church members, whether in religious education or elsewhere, are allowed to attempt balancing the intellectual and the spiritual as best they can in their present circumstances. If for some that is with the scales tipped most of the way down on either side, so be it. The important thing is allowing various and different kinds of attempts at balance.

Guess I should have been reading Religion News Service instead of First Things yesterday.

Something (doubly) ironic about this if I could just put my finger on it.

So it looks like the fragment is not going to be published, at least not now and not in Harvard Theological Review. Why not?

If it is because of the ethical question, better late than never I suppose. But hasn’t whatever damage already been done there?

If it is because of the question of forgery, still why not publish? Questions of forgery were hanging and have continued to hang in the air around any number of material objects said to be from antiquity that happened to resurface one way or another in the last one hundred years, such as the Letter of Clement to Theodore with its quotation of a Secret Gospel of Mark or the Gabriel Revelation with its highly unusual medium of ink on stone. They were published. Why not this text?

If it has been forged, wouldn’t publishing it help lead to that determination? The credibility of HTR would not be at stake so long as the text has not been proven to be a forgery, and I don’t see that it has. What I see are some scholars saying it might be a forgery (including those associated with the original announcement of the text but who decided to treat it as most probably ancient), other scholars saying it was probably forged but they’re not sure, and only a few that are certain it’s a forgery, at least sometimes. I also see media outlets and other online venues acting as though the case is closed, and as though HTR’s rumored refusal to publish basically equals proof of forgery. Unless something like an ink test has already been done and the case is indeed now closed (actually, as Mormon history teaches us, it is not impossible to reproduce ink from a given time and place), I don’t know that the rumored refusal to publish means much about the antiquity of the text.

But as forgery is the new sensation, what would the logistics have been, if the text was forged?

Someone/s would have had to secure a genuinely ancient scrap of papyrus with at least one blank side. This would not have been terribly difficult for someone in or watching the antiquities market. (The text on the other side of the fragment is faint and has not been studied at all, as far I can tell. It looks like it might take something like infrared imaging to be able to read it. Its faintness compared to the ink on the side with the text about Jesus’ wife is not necessarily proof that the latter was forged, although it is definitely worth noting.)

Then the forger/s would have had to compose some lines of Coptic using bits and pieces from the published edition of the Gospel of Thomas, bits and pieces that are one, two, three, and at most four words in length (take a look at the side by side comparison here, noting that the Thomas material comes from various passages). This would have been somewhat difficult, requiring what amounts to maybe a semester of introductory Coptic study, perhaps less, depending on the diligence of the forger/s. They would have had to know enough Coptic to be able to rearrange these bits and pieces into new lines of text that are passable though admittedly not textbook grammar and of course incomplete. This would have involved such things as changing pronouns from masculine to feminine in order for the text to refer to Jesus’ wife, and adding a few other words here and there in more or less grammatical form so as to fit the changed bits and pieces from the Gospel of Thomas together. (I want to reiterate what I said before about determining literary dependence and how we get from that to forgery. There’s also this.)

In the composition of the text they also would have had to introduce some spelling variations and grammatical infelicities. It is curious to see how (mostly NT) scholars (and biblical textual critics) are assessing these, especially given the fluid state of spelling and grammar in other such heterodox Christian texts surviving in Coptic translation from Greek. On the one hand, if the forger/s simply employed a method of cut and paste (with some rearrangement) from the Gospel of Thomas, as some scholars seem to be suggesting, why would the forger/s not have spelled things exactly the way they appear in Thomas and without introducing grammatical infelicities? Especially if they knew enough to be changing pronouns from masculine to feminine and to be adding a few other words here and there in more or less grammatical form. Were they so careful that they actually introduced these variations and infelicities for the sake of verisimilitude and to cover up their tracks, not wanting the text to look too much like Thomas? (Spelling and grammar in everyday Roman Egypt, a multilingual environment, hardly matches what is in the standard academic reference books on Attic Greek and Sahidic Coptic that scholars use to learn the languages.)

Once the forger/s had a text composed, then they likely would have had to practice writing it out before committing it to the fragment. In their study of Coptic they may have done some practice handwriting already. On other scraps of papyrus they also likely would have had to experiment with various inks and methods of application, such as a small paint brush (brushes were used anciently, though a ‘pen’ would be expected in Roman Egypt). At any rate, they must not have practiced that much because the handwriting of the text is poor and does not look like other handwriting samples such as from the Coptic manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas itself in Nag Hammadi codex II. (In general, poor handwriting is not common in literary or even ‘para-literary’ manuscripts like the Nag Hammadi codices, but in documentary texts, especially personally written ones, the handwriting can be pretty bad; if this para-literary fragment is ancient, it would be unusual as has often been said.)

As far as the question of forgery is concerned, the interesting thing about the handwriting being rather unpracticed is that it is like the introduction of spelling variations and grammatical infelicities: if the forger/s knew enough about Coptic to be changing pronouns from masculine to feminine and to be adding a few other words here and there in more or less grammatical form so as to fit together an assortment of changed bits and pieces from the Gospel of Thomas, why not do a better job imitating the handwriting of that manuscript which is readily available in facsimile edition not to mention online? If it is a forgery, the forger/s must have gotten pretty lazy at the end, after having gone to the trouble of obtaining a genuinely ancient papyrus and learning enough Coptic to compose the text.

But then they may have gotten a second wind, forging a handwritten note (not signed or dated) and a type written letter (signed and dated 1982) in German, ostensibly from scholars who examined this now (in)famous fragment and also another papyrus of the Gospel of John some years ago (read about them here). Or perhaps the type written letter is genuine along with the papyrus of the Gospel of John that it refers to; whereas the handwritten note referring to the fragment was forged in order to tie the fragment into a genuine history and collection (admittedly it is curious that the letter does not mention the fragment and that the note is not dated or signed).

Oh, one other thing that the forger/s would have had to do is distress the fragment after writing the text onto it. This may have included trimming it down, fraying the edges, and abrading the surface (see). And just like the writing process, they likely would have had to practice this first on a few other scraps of papyrus. Getting it right the first time would be tricky.

That’s the way I understand it to have happened, if the text was forged. I’m still not convinced that it was. But who knows? Maybe we’ll know for certain one day if the forger/s are found out and admit to it. Until then … I’m popping some popcorn for this weekend.

Backlash against news of the Coptic papyrus fragment now known as the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife did not take long. There is the ethical question: does publishing (on) a text that appears to have been removed from Egypt illegally and separated from its archaeological context, including the rest of the manuscript, due to ignorance and/or greed, not promote more of the same? I think this is the truly compelling question, and it is one that I have to ask myself.

Realistically though, the question that will be discussed is the one of forgery. Here’s why I’m not convinced, at least not yet, that the text on the fragment was forged.

One. Yes, there are parallels with the Gospel of Thomas. Determining direct literary dependence has not been as straight forward as it might seem in the history of scholarship, even in the case of texts that survive in full. Before getting to forgery, it would need to be established that A) there is direct dependence rather than simply common (oral) background. Then it would need to be established that B) the text of the fragment depends on Thomas and not vice versa. Then it would need to be established that C) the text depends on the Coptic version of Thomas rather than the Greek. And finally it would need to be established that D) the text not only depends on the Coptic version of Thomas but the self-same manuscript in Nag Hammadi codex II. The coincidence of the line break is the strongest piece of evidence, but stranger things have happened. It’s no smoking gun. On the whole, I could easily imagine a scenario in which the ancient author knew Thomas and worked it into the text. Even assuming A-C does not prove forgery. Any one of the texts of the New Testament depends on another from the Septuagint.

Two. Yes, there is a parallel with the Coptic version of Matthew. But it is not at all clear that this parallel has an intersection. I would bet that countless such parallels two-and-a-half-words in length could be found between ancient texts in the same language that are known to be unrelated. Again, even if it is assumed that the text depends on the Coptic version of Matthew, and I am not inclined to make that assumption, this does not prove forgery.

Three. Is the Coptic sub-par? Well the same thing and worse has been said about the Coptic translation of Plato’s Republic 588a-598b in Nag Hammadi codex VI, which some experts says is so bad that the ancient translator might not have really known Coptic.

Four. Is it difficult to figure out how to restore what is missing from the text? There are such loose fragments in the facsimile edition of the Nag Hammadi codices and the Tchacos codex.

Five. The handwriting is not easy to date. Ok …

Six. The handwriting doesn’t look like other hands that come to mind. This is fascinating and when/if the text is published, it would be nice to see some Coptic and/or Greek comparanda in support of antiquity. If none are found, that could suggest forgery. Greek hands would have to be included in the search for comparanda, and I think it would take a seasoned papyrologist rather well read in both languages to be able to state matter of factly that the handwriting on the text is not literary, semi-literary, or documentary.

Bottom line. At this point, it’s not necessarily a forgery, and the plausibility of it being ancient is still very much real.

Should it prove to be forged, however, these few incomplete lines would be nothing next to the letter of Clement to Theodore. That forgery, accepting it was one, took rather extensive skill in Greek composition and handwriting. And if Morton Smith did forge the letter with its quotation from a Secret Gospel of Mark, he would not have been motivated by something so petty as cash from the sale of the manuscript. His motives would have been far more complex, honorable, and disturbing.

Update, since I guess some links are in order: backlash, e.g. here and here; also at Patheos and saying some of what I say but days before me is this; Secret Mark wiki.

I have no idea how many Mormons there are in biblical and related studies. It’s a very small percentage, I’m sure. But they and Mormonism were nicely included in the two volume reference work, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. A Mormon scholar wrote the entry on the Testament of Adam, and Mormons in general are listed on the back cover (easily accessible here) along with Christians, Jews, and Muslims, as ‘people of the book.’

This was due entirely to the magnanimity of the editor, James Charlesworth, I suspect, who once spoke at BYU on the topic of Messianism in the Pseudepigrapha and the Book of Mormon (not to mention his once having been teacher to the founder of FARMS and to one of the chairs of BYU’s department of Ancient Scripture). His talk is about as genteel a treatment as could be hoped for from a bible scholar.

One of the challenges in the study of Old Testament pseudepigrapha is the issue of the (possible) later Christianization of texts that were (hypothetically) written by Jews. So of the “apparently later Christian” material in the Book of Mormon, such as Mosiah 3:8-10, Charlesworth says in his talk that it does not necessarily rule out Jewish composition before the Common Era:

In these three verses, we find what most critical scholars would call clearly Christian phrases; that is, the description is so precise that it is evident it was added after the event. The technical term for this phenomenon is vaticinium ex eventu. The specific details are the clarification that the Messiah will be called ‘Jesus Christ,’ that his mother will be called Mary, that salvation is through faith—indeed faith on his name—that many will say he has a devil, that he will be scourged and crucified, and finally that he will rise on the third day from the dead. Do not these three verses contain a Christian recital of Christ’s life?

How are we to evaluate this new observation? Does it not vitiate the claim that this section of the Book of Mormon, Mosiah, was written before 91 B.C.? Not necessarily so, since Mormons acknowledge that the Book of Mormon could have been edited and expanded on at least two occasions that postdate the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It is claimed that the prophet Mormon abridged some parts of the Book of Mormon in the fourth century A.D. And likewise it is evident that Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century had the opportunity to redact the traditions that he claimed to have received.

Today biblical scholars are making significant and exciting discoveries into the various strata of ancient documents through the use of what is called Redaction Criticism, a method employed to discern the editorial tendencies of an author-compiler. Perhaps it would be wise for specialists to look carefully at this phenomenon in the Book of Mormon. The recognition that the Book of Mormon has been edited on more than one occasion would certainly explain why certain of the messianic passages appear to be Christian compositions.

After a fashion, here Charlesworth is defending Mormon belief in the antiquity of its founding scripture, though not a Mormon himself. And he is suggesting the use of tools of higher criticism to do it, namely redaction criticism.

Charlesworth spoke at BYU in the 1970s, a few years before volume one of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha was published. Since then, besides the waning of redaction criticism, there has recently been an effort to supplement his editorial work with another volume, simply called More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. I don’t know, but it is not impossible that a Mormon scholar or two is writing entries for the volume. Mormons in general might also be listed on the back cover when it is published.

All this makes the absence of any Mormon *texts* from the compiled volumes of Old Testament pseudepigrapha rather striking. Is it that friendliness and open mindedness only go so far? they cannot risk contempt from the academy, as the basic rules of scholarship prohibit something like the Book of Mormon from counting as biblical, i.e. ancient? or is it just that no Mormon text meets the criteria for inclusion in these compiled volumes of Old Testament pseudepigrapha (in brief, refer to the link to MOTP above for criteria)?

The Jacob (pseud)epigraphon in the book of Alma presents an interesting manageable case. Quoted by chief captain Moroni within the record of Helaman on the (large) plates of Nephi as edited by Mormon, the text proper is brief (Alma 46:24b-25 in bold):

24.Yea, let us preserve our liberty as a remnant of Joseph; yea, let us remember the words of Jacob, before his death, for behold, he saw that a part of the remnant of the coat of Joseph was preserved and had not decayed. And he said—

Even as this remnant of garment of my son hath been preserved, so shall a remnant of the seed of my son be preserved by the hand of God, and be taken unto himself, while the remainder of the seed of Joseph shall perish, even as the remnant of his garment. 25.Now behold, this giveth my soul sorrow; nevertheless, my soul hath joy in my son, because of that part of his seed which shall be taken unto God.

26.Now behold, this was the language of Jacob.

Could a text such as this be included? should it? why or why not? if it were included, what might the text edition look like? In a follow up, I’ll throw out some ideas, and, lest anyone cry foul, I’ll even look at how the Jacob (pseud)epigraphon is used in the book of Alma.

Need some inspiration for school, whether you yourself are just starting out, returning for yet another year, or you are going to be teaching the next group of collegiate hopefuls?

Look no further than Sidney Rigdon’s address to the Nauvoo Library and Literary Institute, 1844 (you can read the complete record of the NLLI here in Jones’ edition):

Elder S Rigdon then took the floor and remarked that as it was getting late he did not feel as though he could deliver a Lecture and do justice to the subject without encroaching upon a late hour of the night he would however make some remarks upon the subject for the benefit of the Members.

He then in his usual pleasing style commenced with the early history of his own life showing that his own first studies were commenced in a circulating Library, he then set forth in glowing colors the beauties of and benefits derived from a Library – he showed that his own rise to notoriety were all derived from the previlege of a Library and then set forth the manner in which the members of this Library and especially the Youth of this City may receive the most possible benefits from this Library which is equal to the previlege of a College and often superior (for in the language of Burns men sometimes go to College they go in dunces and they come out asses. they go in dunces and they come out Blockheads after other very appropriate the Institute adjourned until a fortnight from to night J M Cole Secretary.

For good measure, here’s the Robert Burns passage (from Epistle to J. Lapraik, April 1, 1785) that Elder Rigdon was paraphrasing:

A set o’ dull, conceited Hashes,
Confuse their brains in Colledge-classes!
They gang in Stirks, and come out Asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An’ syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint of Greek!

Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire,
That’s a’ the learning I desire;
Then tho’ I drudge thro’ dub an’ mire
At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, tho’ hamely in attire,
May touch the heart.

Clearly the take away is that if you don’t go to college and learn some Greek, at least the basic pre-med vocab or such critical terms in literary theory as ‘hegemony,’ you just might end up getting excommunicated.

In episode 24 of the Mysterious Cities of Gold, an ancient Mesoamerican manuscript is discovered inside a stone box underground. As explained during the mini-documentary that follows each episode, the real story adapted for the cartoon is that the find spot was an Indian burial at Palenque (and no manuscript was found; but you can virtually enter the tomb here).

Now the discovery of the gold plates has always been my favorite Book of Mormon story. That the angel Moroni was also understood as a guardian of treasure, be it Indian, Spanish, or pirate, (and whose body was buried with what he was to guard,) makes the story even better.

So I was a little crestfallen when John Sorenson says is his recent FAIR presentation: “How that record reached New York state and Smith’s hands, and how he translated it, are questions nobody is able to answer objectively at this time, but they pale in comparison to the one of how the original work came to be.”

All the same, I am excited to see the publication of Sorenson’s larger project, a life’s pursuit really. According to his presentation, the forthcoming tome offers hundreds of “’correspondences’ between the archaeological record for Mesoamerica and the text of the Book of Mormon.”

Mormon’s Codex, as the title suggests, appears to be about more than establishing historicity so as to support faith among Latter-day Saints. As Sorenson concludes his presentation: “Supposing it [the Book of Mormon] is authentic, it constitutes the oldest and most extensive Mesoamerican codex known. Scholars engaged in the study of that civilization have the possibility, and even the responsibility, of studying this unique document as such a codex.”

This is a bold and intriguing proposition. Mormons are to take the text as seriously historical but so are anthropologists and archaeologists in their understanding of Mesoamerican civilization/s. Alongside of other codices, such as the Maya codices, scholars are to use the Book of Mormon in their professional work. I can only wonder how that might go, being neither an anthropologist nor archaeologist.

My guess is that such scholars would be keen to know something about the discovery that led to the Book of Mormon. Since the artifacts of that discovery were repatriated, this guessing game has to be played without much physical evidence.

But based on reports of the discovery and descriptions of the artifacts, I would suppose something like the following as a hypothetical scenario that an anthropologist or archaeologist might entertain. A European breastplate and perhaps a sword as well were found along with what eyewitnesses described as a manuscript of gold-ish metallic leaves.

Other European breastplates and swords have been found in North America, though perhaps not as far north as upstate New York. For instance, in Georgia in 1982, three treasure hunters found a sword at an Indian burial site. Apparently the sword was carried to the Americas from Europe, perhaps by a member of Hernando de Soto’s exploration of North America after his involvement with Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. Then a Native American of what would become Georgia acquired the sword and was buried with it.

The gold plates themselves, of course, remain a mystery. Not only would they be “the oldest and most extensive Mesoamerican codex,” as Sorenson states, they would be the one bona fide metal codex found anywhere in the western hemisphere, I think.

At any rate, what is perhaps most fascinating about this hypothetical scenario is that within Nephite narrative, the breastplate and sword, these emblems of European invasion, become sacred relics of divine history, as if the Gentiles who came to the Americas were inspired. In a later post I’ll consider how the Book of Mormon itself is situated in relation to their crossing of the many waters.