Most people know that in our current arrangement, young men tend to receive the priesthood at age 12, when they are ordained to the office of Deacon in the Aaronic priesthood. This has been the case only since the 1880’s or so, according to this fascinating Journal of Mormon History article. (That page it opens to isn’t blank. You just have to scroll to see the text.) Continue reading “Priesthood, Temple, and Semantics”
Do we really believe the Book of Mormon?
Sitting in Sunday School this week and rereading 1 Ne 1-7, I couldn’t help but wonder if we as Mormons really believed the central theological message of the Book of Mormon that the righteous will prosper in the land, or whether we were forced to read the Book of Mormon’s prophetic stance allegorically in order for it to make sense. We all know that the righteous don’t always prosper. Then, I remembered that I had guest posted on this topic here at FPR more than a year and a half ago. This is what I wrote:
Continue reading “Do we really believe the Book of Mormon?”
More on the New Perspective on Paul
There has been some interest in this topic on the LDS blogs recently. I think that as we enter into the debate, it is important that we not get sucked into a faith vs. works understanding of the NPP. I offer the following short piece which was written for another context which is why it lacks specific LDS reflections, but which in my view comments on a more up to date status questiones of the NPP.
Continue reading “More on the New Perspective on Paul”
The Father of Jesus
It is clear that for many early Christian authors, the Virgin Birth was unknown. Paul seems to know nothing about it, and neither does Mark. John has a pretty clear view that God is the Father of Jesus, but never gets into the biological relationship. Lot’s of people are called “Son of God” without it meaning that God is the biological father. In fact, the story of the Virgin Birth is only known to Matthew and Luke for certain (though both tell the story with some significant differences) since none of the other authors of the New Testament mention it explicitly. Even Luke seems to slip up on occasion. In Luke 2:43, for instance, the more reliable manuscripts read: “and his parents did not know.” Later editors caught the problem and changed it to say: “and Joseph and his mother did not know.” All this leads one to wonder whether the Virgin Birth matters all that much. If it didn’t matter to most early Christians, who didn’t seem to know about, should it matter so much to us?
Continue reading “The Father of Jesus”
The Christmas Post: Happy Winter Solstice
The holiday for late Roman deity Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, was celebrated on December 25. I say late Roman deity because it was under the influence of eastern religions in the late second and third centuries CE that Sol Invictus (aka, Elah Gabal, its Syrian name) came to prominence. To be more specific, the Hellenized Persian deity Mithras was also born this day (and sometimes conflated with Sol Invictus in this later period). Along with a series of Egyptian cults, Mithras and Sol Invictus were two of the great religious competitors to Christianity as monotheistic cults also coming from the east, spreading rapidly throughout the empire. Additionally, the Italian holiday Saturnalia, a holiday of merry-making, was celebrated at this time. It is no accident that the Christmas was celebrated on this day during the Christian imperial period beginning in the fourth century.
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Some Notes on Reading Hebrew (and Greek)
I taught Old Testament in Institute last semester, but we only did Genesis. I’ll try to post some thoughts on that at a later time. We’re continuing with the OT, and adding something new and spicy; students who come 30 minutes early will also be learning some Biblical Hebrew. Continue reading “Some Notes on Reading Hebrew (and Greek)”
The New Spanish LDS Bible
Some of you may have heard that the LDS Church has undertaken a massive project of providing a Spanish edition of the Bible that is similar in scope to the English LDS Bible, including cross-references to Restoration scriptures, a Bible Dictionary, and explanatory footnotes. They have received copyright permission for one of the influential Spanish translations of the Bible and are using this as the basis for the new edition. I do not have all the details to the endeavor (I would love more information if any of our readers have some), but from one source who is close to the project, the Church has employed Hebrew and Greek scholars to “retranslate” the Spanish edition when relevant to a particularly LDS view, or for the sake of clarity (I do not have any information on the quality of these people’s Greek, Hebrew, or Spanish, let alone their skills with textual criticism, so don’t ask me!). Such changes do not appear in the footnotes from what I understand, but in the text itself. From this source, I was told that such modifications have been made on practically every page!
Continue reading “The New Spanish LDS Bible”
Notes from hither and yon
AHLDuke summarizes the SBL conference on his blog. I hear it was a good time.
Across town from SBL, JP Moreland at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting accuses Evangelicals of bibliolatry, in his address entitled “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.” As this summary post puts it, “to accuse evangelicals of over-commitment to the Bible at ETS would be like accusing environmentalists of talking too much about climate change at a Sierra Club meeting. But Moreland, who has gained some prominence as a philosopher and apologist, wasn’t pulling any punches.” No kidding.
Another blogger answers the question, is Christian academic an oxymoron? Though his (and most of the comments’ as well) perspective is conservative Evangelical and thus has some different concerns and assumptions, the conversation in the comments sounds familiar, as it dances around some issues that LDS scholars face as well.
My Margaret Barker Experience
I first heard about Margaret Barker seven years ago and have watched from the sidelines as LDS scholars have fallen all over themselves after her ideas. However, I have never read her work. My avoidance of her work changed when a friend of mine sent me one of her lectures for comment (this is a great way to maintain a long-distance friendship, btw). It was worse than I imagined. I listened to the 35 minute lecture probably 10 times and just got more frustrated every time. I am slightly embarrassed by this episode of LDS intellectual history. It represents a step backwards in dealing with the contemporary critical evaluation of biblical texts and ANE religion.
Continue reading “My Margaret Barker Experience”
Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, and Various Near Eastern Texts
Two quick notes:
Non-LDS scholar Peter Flint gave a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls the other day at BYU. You can watch it or listen to the audio at Aquinas’ blog. (Hat tip to, uh, Aquinas.)
And Logos is doing it to me again. They’ve got two new databases, wheat amongst the chaff on the prepublication list, which means a reduced price is available before Logos finishes building the databases. (This link explains how the prepublication process works.)
The first database is a morphologically-tagged text of the Biblical Dead Sea Scroll texts. The sectarian texts have been around for a while in multiple electronic formats, but not the Biblical texts, which are useful for textual criticism, among other things.
The second database consists of the 16 volume Writings of the Ancient World series by the Society of Biblical Literature, whose conference rapidly approaches. (BYU has given money to some promising undergrads to attend this year.) This is a very good series of books, with different genres (legal texts, epistolary texts, ritual texts, etc.) and different groups (Ugaritic, Hittite, Mesopotamian, etc.) represented. I’ve used a few for classwork and research.
While they’re in prepublication status, the DSS go for $79, and the SBL volumes for $306. Clearly, I need more funding 🙂