I suspect that sometime in the next few decades, historians will look back on the 1990’s as the worst period for Mormon studies. In fact, they may even say that it was so bad that it destroyed an entire generation of young Mormon scholars. This decade may have even set Mormon studies back a few decades from its entry into mainstream academic circles, erasing the progress made in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. I think that there were several factors, but our biggest enemy was definitely ourselves.
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Nephi as the first autobiographer?
One of the most interesting things about the small plates of Nephi is the first person narrative which recounts his own life. The text begins famously “I Nephi,” and gives a personal account of Nephi’s family history, personal reflections, and all this is done in the first person. This is extremely rare in ancient and classical literature. What are we to make of this?
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The Record of John
Doctrine and Covenants 93:6-18 promises that if we are faithful, we shall receive the “fulness of the record of John.” The context of this promise is somewhat strange. Jesus Christ is the first person narrator, who begins to quote John’s testimony of Jesus. So, we have Jesus speaking in the first person quoting John speaking in the first person bearing testimony of Jesus in the third person. Okay, so that is kind of weird. But that is not all that is weird about this passage. It is not at all clear exactly who John is. These verses in the D&C bear close resemblance to the Gospel of John chapter 1. In this chapter, the unnamed narrator presumed to be John the apostle offers a prolouge about the identity of Jesus and speaks about John the baptist’s testimony. In D&C 93, are these two “John’s” are conflated so that the same John gives testimony to both the first part of the prologue, as well as the testimony of John the Baptist? Herein lies a mystery.
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Krister Stendahl has died
The news has already started to make the rounds. Esteemed New Testament professor and former Dean of Harvard Divinity School has passed away this morning after a long bout with cancer. This post cannot possibly substitute for an official obituary, so I shall not attempt the task. I would just like a note a few highlights on his relationship with Mormons.
Stendahl had been a pioneer on interfaith dialogue and had been a long-time defender of the Mormons. Having established relationships with LDS students at Harvard, he became engaged in LDS scholarship. He wrote an article on “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi in the Book of Mormon,” in Meanings , ed. K. Stendahl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984): 99-113 (also in Madsen, Reflections on Mormonism). He is also the author of the article on “Baptisms for the Dead” in the Encyclopedia on Mormonism. Stendahl appears in the LDS film about temples called Between Heaven and Earth. He also became publically involved in defending the LDS temple construction in his native Sweden.
We have lost a great friend today.
[This was posted earlier today before the information was officially made public. Email sometimes moves faster than official news. I apologize for any inconvenience.]
Feral Children and Divinity
I recently reintroduced myself to the study of feral children, children who have been abandoned for whatever reason at a very young age without any human contact, sometimes being raised by animals, for a number of years. I stumbled across the study of these children in some footnotes and was fascinated as I read around online about them. These children are critically important because their existence and behaviors challenge some of the most fundamental concepts of what it means to be human, showing that the line between human and animal is dangerously thin. Here, I am interested in how the case of feral children impacts LDS notions of divinization.
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Bloggernacle Bullies
I don’t venture into other blogs as much as I used to, mostly because of time. Lately, however, either I have been procrastinating a bit more than usual, or there is a uptick in the kinds of posts that I am interested in, so I have been following a few more blogs. One of the things that I have noticed is that there seem to be new bullies that weren’t there before. Of course, there have always been bloggernacle bullies, but some come and go. What I am interested in is some sense of how these bullies are treated by the bloggernacle.
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What if…?
What if someone ordained their wife to the priesthood? Let’s say that this husband wanted to have his wife assist in priesthood blessings in the home, or be able to perform blessings in his absence. She would not be ordained to any particular office, but given the priesthood power for specific ordinances. Let us also say that this woman received it, but never in fact used it. Let us also say that this husband is a bishop, and interviewed the candidate and determined her worthiness. If he did so without claiming that such a practice is or should be church doctrine, how would we understand this practice? A few things to consider:
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Jesus and the Sabbath
Jesus is depicted in the Gospels as healing on the Sabbath. This healing frequently caused disputes between Jesus and his contemporaries. Why? There are a few options to explain these episodes.
1. The popular view is that the Jews were evil and they didn’t believe in healing people and used the Sabbath as an excuse to condemn Jesus. The problem with this view is that Jesus’s opponents had no problem with the healing, only healing on the Sabbath. Jesus was free to heal six days of the week.
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Mormon Literalism and the Body
Recently, Terryl Givens has celebrated one of the Mormon “heresies” (his term) of “literalism.” He argues that Mormonism has eschewed the modern movement towards metaphorical understandings of religion, insisting upon its “literal” relationship to certain “facts,” such as the First Vision, the materiality of the Book of Mormon, and even literalized heaven by making it material. This literalism, however, is distinct from fundamentalist Christianity which insists on a different kind of biblical literalism and historical accuracy, in which areas Mormons have been more flexible. What I think is important to note here is that literalism is always selective, always partial. Some things are always chosen to be taken literally, and others ignored. The question is never whether or not literalism is the operative paradigm, but what things are taken as literal and why.
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The Problem with Laughter
Last night I attended a baptism that was accompanied by much laughter and merry-making, which was at times shushed by many of those in attendance. The LDS practice of “reverence” as a means of producing the conditions for spiritual experience sets boundaries around certain kinds of laughter. In other contexts, “loud” laughter is prohibited. When we fast, we are supposed to abstain from laughter as well as food (D&C 59:15). These particular ways of regulating laughter are not unique to Mormonism.
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