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Biblical Literalism, Literally

The increasingly common use of “literally” to mean something emphatic (but not literal) has provided much fodder for comedic monologues (language warning!), drinking games, BYUtv skits, running jokes, Oatmeals, etc. Last August Dana Coleman (at Salon) brought to our attention Webster’s Dictonary entry on ‘literally’, which now admits that, in addition to the ‘according to the letter’ sense, the word can mean “in effect; virtually”. In other words, it can signify both “according to the letter/actually” and “not according to the letter/figuratively”. If you understand ‘virtually’ and ‘actually’ to be opposites, ‘literally’ can then be a contranym,* or a word that is its own antonym, like ‘cleave’.

Does this have anything to do with what fundamentalists mean when they say the Bible is literally true? It’s a serious question, and one that struck me tonight as my friend at dinner reported that a General Authority told LDS Stake Presidents in a recent Utah Valley training meeting that we are to remember that the Bible is literally true.

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Bill Hamblin on the Documentary Hypothesis

Bill Hamblin has done a great service in providing a detailed outsider’s critique, repeating some of the frequent objections to the Documentary Hypothesis that gives us a chance to discuss and hopefully to reach greater clarity on the issue. Since Hamblin has shut down and deleted comments for anyone whose names don’t seem real enough to him, and (more important) since his 20-part attempted takedown of the Documentary Hypothesis (the theory that the first 5 books of the OT are the result of the combination of 4 independent documents) is too unwieldy to treat all at once on his blog, I thought I could summarize the points here and treat it as a whole while providing an open forum where all of Jupiter’s children who behave themselves are welcome to participate—even, and especially, Bill Hamblin (if that is even his real name).

I will also reiterate here my invitation to host a roundtable looking at specific texts so that we are not just sending volleys of assertions about what the theory is and isn’t or does or doesn’t claim. Of course, anyone remotely interested in this topic should consult first Joel Baden’s excellent and eminently readable The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Yale 2012), which does both of these things, giving an overview of the method and then walking the reader through specific texts to illustrate it. One can see similar ideas treated here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

First off, I think there have been some misunderstandings about what the DH is, which have led to some of Bill’s attacks, and I will try to clear those up. Even with these clarified I imagine Bill and I will still disagree, but it might get us closer to a conversation about key issues instead of red herrings. Below I try to summarize Bill’s posts in a couple of sentences and then react to each claim. There are so far 20 posts, so this will be an inordinately long treatment to digest in one sitting. For those sane ones of you who don’t want to wade through each post and reaction, I will summarize my critique here (for details on any one of these, see the individual treatments below the general summary):

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Some non-arguments against ordaining women to the LDS priesthood

I’m sure all these things have been said before and better, but in order to satisfy my need to respond to some of the assertions presented as self-evident arguments against opening the LDS priesthood to women, I collect my responses here. Here are my top five non-arguments [with a sixth I couldn’t resist]:

1. Men and women are not the same.

2. Women have moral authority.

3. There is no scriptural precedent for ordaining women.

4. There is scriptural precedent for the denial of equal treatment of women.

5. Women have had the priesthood since 1844.

BONUS: Protests and complaints have never resulted in change or revelation.

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The Joseph Story in Genesis and the Documentary Hypothesis

A basic first step in grasping the meaning of a biblical text as it may have been intended to be understood by its original authors is to establish something of its literary history. Most biblical texts developed over a long period of time, beginning with the earliest forms of the texts that served particular ideological purposes in their original historical contexts, then undergoing a succession of various literary and editorial adaptations by scribes and priests for the purpose of creating new textual entities to meet the ideological and religious needs of later periods, and finally a standardization process that led to the construction of a canon of sacred literature in Second Temple Judaism.

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Things You Wouldn’t Think Might Go Together…

 

About last Friday or so I was sitting under my rock reading from Ehrman’s and Holmes’ Text of the New Testament: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, which happens to be about textual criticism. I am not making this up – it was chapter 17, Wasserman’s essay on criteria.  So anyway, word filtered in that the Maxwell Institute had a new book collecting all the NT apocrypha and giving high quality pictures of the same, etc., etc.

 And I thought to myself:  This is good news!  Textual criticism is concerned with the recovery of the oldest possible readings of ancient documents, including those of the Bible.  It’s pretty important in Classics, as well. Before anybody can get their so-called higher criticism on, they have to have a text – the best one possible. And before the textual critics can work, they have to have the best possible copies (pictures or transcriptions) of the texts.  Although I haven’t seen it, I suspect (hope) that’s what this latest book features.

 Personally, I find textual criticism fascinating, but it is tedious, painstaking work and sometimes not everyone appreciates this the way they might.  Rarely do the textual critics make pronouncements about Life, the Universe, and Everything but the exegetes who do are in reality indebted to textual critics.

 However, what I really want to mention is this:  In addition to providing us texts to work on, some aspects of textual criticism are also an excellent window into the world of early Christianity and into THE ASSUMPTIONS AND BIASES that are part of ours!   Yep, I’ve moved on from Status Quaestionis and into Eldon J. Epps’ Junia: The First Woman Apostle.  It’s a fascinating book, and quite accessible, too.   I’m just a few pages in, but I’m enjoying it immensely.

 Anyway, Epps is making the point that, with the 1927 edition of the critical Greek text of Romans 16, the female Junia became the male Junias.  Why?  According to one Hans Lietzmann, writing in 1906, the name must be male “because of the following statements” identifying the person as an apostle.  Yep.  Can’t be a woman because we KNOW that women can’t be apostles!  And, it stayed that way until 1970 or so. 

 Why did it finally change?  Ah, well, textual critics, of course, because the exegetes mentioned so far seem to have been quite satisfied about the whole thing!   And there you have it:  textual criticism as a means to social justice…

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Korihor and the Defense of Secularism

Generally, Korihor is understood as a kind of anachronistic representation of secularism by many modern interpreters.  However, it is not at all clear that Korihor represents secularism.  Indeed, his confession notes that a religious experience is what motivated him.

Secularism may be defined in various ways, and indeed has enjoyed a rigorous critical discussion over the past decade or so.  For the purposes of this post, I want to examine just two important ways for thinking about the secular: secularism as the rejection of religion (whatever that may mean), and secularism as the separation of ecclesiastical power from state power.  In brief, I argue that Korihor is not guilty of the first, and the narrator is guilty of the second. Indeed, the text actually argues in favor of this latter kind of secularism!

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Exploring the Iconic Nature of the Book of Mormon: Part IIb – The Fluid Nature of the Text of the Book of Mormon

I here continue my series of posts dealing with the iconic nature of the Book of Mormon (BoM). For my introduction to this series, see here. For the first half of the current section on textual criticism and the BoM, see here.

In my last post I gave a brief description of the various manuscripts and editions of the BoM. I would now like to examine what I have found to be several very interesting textual variants in the BoM textual witnesses. As I stated in my last post, anyone interested in BoM text criticism should consult the foundational work of Royal Skousen if she or he has not done so already (I rely heavily upon it in this current post). [1]  In the following examples I will use “OM” to refer to the original manuscript, and “PM” to refer to the printer’s manuscript. For the various editions I will use the year of publication, thus, “1830” refers to the edition of the BoM that was published in Palmyra, New York in 1830. The 1981 edition will stand for the most current edition. [2]  Now on to the examples:

1 Nephi 8:31

1981: “And he also saw other multitudes feeling their way towards that great and spacious building”

OM: “and he also saw other multitudes pr∫sing their way towards that great and spacious building”

Though many have imagined Lehi’s dream as depicting groups of people “feeling” their way towards the “great and spacious building” (perhaps in correlation with the “mist of darkness” mentioned in vv 23 and 24?), the text probably should read “people pressing their way…” The OM at this point is in an unknown scribe’s handwriting (Skousen refers to him/her as “Scribe 3” or “Scribe y”) and contains an elongated “s” represented above by a “∫”. According to Skousen, since the scribe’s initial “p” looks like an “f,” Oliver Cowdery in producing the PM misread “pressing” as “feeling.” This conclusion is consistent with the rest of Lehi’s dream which “always us[es] press rather than feel when referring to the movement of people.” [3]  This apparent misreading has been reproduced ever since.

1 Nephi 11:18

1981: “Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God”

1837: “behold the virgin which thou seest is the mother of the Son of God”

1830: “behold the virgin which thou seest is the mother of God”

PM: “behold the virgin which thou seest is the mother of <the son of> God”

OM: “behold the virgin which thous seest is the mother of God”

Most textual variants in the BoM are fairly benign when it comes to questions of doctrine. This was the case with 1 Nephi 8:31. While “pressing” is certainly different from “feeling,” it is our imaginative portraiture that is probably more affected than our theological views. However, there are occasions where a change might affect interpretations of doctrine. 1 Nephi 11:18 is representative of such a variant. In preparation for the 1837 Kirtland edition, Joseph Smith went through portions of the PM and made adjustments, one of which was to insert “the Son of” in front of a number of references to God in order to clarify who was being referenced. This is the case in 1 Nephi 11:18 (see also 1 Nephi 11: 21, 32, 40). As one can see above, OM, PM, and 1830 all read “mother of God” prior to Joseph adjusting the text in 1837 to read “mother of the son of God” (represented by <the son of> in the PM above). I will not attempt here to weigh in on whether these changes represent clarifications, doctrinal reinterpretations, or something else, but merely offer the variant as an interesting example of the textual fluidity of the BoM text. [4]

“Amlicites” in Alma 2:11-12; 21–27, 43

1981: (2:11-12) “Now the people of Amlici were distinguished by the name of Amlici, being called Amlicites and … the Nephites were aware of the intent of the Amlicites”

PM: (2:11-12) “now the people of Amlici were distinguished by the name of Amlici being called Amlikites and … the Nephites were aware of the intent of the Amlikites”   NB: though the first 2 occurrences are spelled “Amlikites in the PM, the remainder (25 occurrences) are spelled “Amlicites”

1981: “Amalekites” 19 times in Alma chs 21–27, 43

PM: “Amalekites” 19 times in Alma chs 21–27, 43

OM: “Amelicites” in Alma 24:1, 24:28, and 27:2

One possible way to view this variant might help to explain an entire group of people known in the 1981 text as the “Amalekites.” As the text now stands, two particular groups of dissenters (against the Nephites) are mentioned: (1) the “Amlicites” in Alma 2–3, and (2) the “Amalekites” in Alma 21–27, 43. However, the earliest manuscript evidence (extant portions of OM) spells the name of the second group as “Amelicites.” This becomes important if we realize that while we are accustomed to pronouncing “Amlicites” with a “soft c” sound (as instructed by the “Pronunciation Guide” at the back of the 1981), the use of a “k” in the PM suggests that Joseph pronounced the name with a “hard c” sound. Assuming the scribal inclination to write down a “k” for a “hard c” sound, it is worth noting that the only difference between the  the “Amelicites” (OM) in the later chapters of Alma and the “Amlicites” (1981) of Alma 2–3 is a single “e.” Viewing the added “e” as a scribal error makes sense in the larger context of the BoM narrative . Alma 24:1 states that “many of the Amalekites and the Amulonites were after the order of the Nehors” while Alma 2:1 informs us that Amlici was “after the order of the man that slew Gideon,” i.e. Nehor (see Alma 1:15). Furthermore, Alma 43 lists this group among the Zoramites and Amulonites, descendants of King Noah who rebelled against the Nephites. Skousen’s suggestions to “Accept the spelling Amlicites instead of Amlikites found in the printer’s manuscript for Alma 2:11-12 [and to] change all 19 occurences of Amalekite(s) in Alma 17–27 and Alma 43 to Amlicite(s)” seem warranted. [5]

Alma 50:40

1981: “Now behold, his name was Pahoran. And Pahoran did fill the seat of his father”

PM: “now behold his name was Pahoran and Pahoran did fill the seat of his father”

OM: “now behold his name was Parhoron and Parhoron did fill the seat of his father”

In one last example, here’s another case of what is probably a scribal error due to the oral/aural nature of the BoM transcription process coupled with the unfamiliarity and irregularity of proper nouns. If Joseph pronounced “Parhoron” with stress on the second syllable (similar to present day pronunciation) the “r” before the “h” would have been difficult to distinguish for a scribe. This seems to be the case as Oliver Cowdery, according to OM evidence, started off hearing the “r” clearly. However, by the fifth occurrence (Alma 51:5) it appears that Oliver was not hearing the “r” as evidenced by his writing of “Pahoron.” It appears that all occurrences of “Pahoran” should in actuality be “Parhoron” [6].

There are countless other examples that could be cited and discussed (“white and delightsome” to “pure and delightsome” in 2 Nephi 30:6, PM and 1830 reading “Benjamin” instead of “Mosiah” in Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1, and several lines of Alma 32:30-31 being accidentally omitted by the 1830 typesetter and not being restored until the 1981); nonetheless, even a few examples should suffice in demonstrating just how fluid the text of the BoM is (a feature prominent in any text). Refraining Beal’s words from my previous posts, “there never has been a time when we could really talk about the Bible in the singular.” [7]  It appears that the same could be said of the Book of Mormon.

___________________________

1. Skousen’s The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (CTBOM) project has been a life-long project that is nearing completion. To date, 4 of the proposed 6 volumes have been published: The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text, CTBOM 1 (Provo: FARMS, 2001); The Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts, 2 vols; CTBOM 2 (Provo: FARMS, 2001); Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6 vols; CTBOM 4 (Provo: FARMS, 2004-2009); The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Two volumes are still to come: The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon and A Complete Electronic Collation of the Book of Mormon. See Royal Skousen, “History of the Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 11 (2002): 5-21.

2. There are a number of adjustments to the text (some to the canonical text and some to secondary text) that have been made to the edition of the BoM published by Doubleday in 2006 and to the online edition of the BoM. I will make note of such changes when/if needed. A listing of the most recent changes to the standard works can be found at lds.org.

3. Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 1:187.

4. Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 1:230-33. Skousen argues that these changes “should be considered as clarifications, not as doctrinal reinterpretations” (230). Among his arguments is that Jesus is clearly identified as the “Son of God” in earlier parts of 1 Nephi, as well as later parts of the BoM.

5. Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 3:1605-1609. See also Royal Skousen, “The Systematic Text of the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 11 (2002): 45-66.

6. Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 4:2635-2637.

7. Timothy Beal, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 22.

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Maimonides and a new Torah Scroll Controversy

My ears perked up when I heard the news that Mauro Perani, professor of Hebrew at the University of Bologna, has found what he believes is the world’s oldest complete Torah scroll. Perani was updating the University library’s Hebrew manuscript catalogue in February, when he realized the scroll had been wrongly dated by the last cataloguer in 1889.

The 1889 cataloguer, a Jew named Leonello Modona, had described the letters in the scroll as “an Italian script, rather clumsy-looking, in which certain letters, as well as the usual crowns and strokes show uncommon and strange appendices.” Perani, however, recognized an elegant script whose square letters were of the oriental Babylonian tradition.

Photo: Alma Mater Studiorum Universita’ Di Bologna

The scroll doesn’t follow the rabbinical rules established by Maimonides in the late 12th century that standardized how the Pentateuch should be copied. It contains many features and markings that would be forbidden under those rules. Its script and other graphic notations are far older than the 17th century date that it had been assigned.

Two separate carbon-dating tests — performed by the University of Salento in Italy and the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign — confirmed that the scroll dates from 1155-1225 CE.
Giovanni Garbini, a leading expert on ancient Semitic languages, said the discovery doesn’t change much about what the world knows about Hebrew manuscripts.

“It’s an example of an ancient scroll, but from the point of view of knowledge, it doesn’t change anything,” he said in a telephone interview.

But Stephen Pfann, acting president of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and an expert in ancient Jewish manuscripts, said if accurately dated, the scroll is a rare and important find. “We don’t have anything much from that period,” Pfann said.

I’ll admit that I’m not qualified or knowledgeable in this field, but I’d love to hear some of our Biblical scholars expound on Pfann and Garbini’s disagreement. I was surprised to read Garbini’s opinion that this discovery doesn’t change much. When an older scroll or manuscript is found, there are often changes to our understanding of scriptural passages. For example, just yesterday, June 2, 2013, Ha’aretz reported that a new interpretation of Genesis 9:22-24 has come to light due to a high resolution photograph of a fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though the Dead Sea Scrolls date from an earlier period of time than the Bologna Scroll, there is not a complete Torah among them. For many passages, the newly discovered scroll is going to contain the oldest version of them which is now known.
Here are some of the questions that come to my mind:

Photo: Alma Mater Studiorum Universita’ Di Bologna

What is the extent of the existing collection of Torah scrolls from before the time of Maimonides?

What specific things were forbidden by Maimonides that were included in the Bologna scroll?

What were the reasons for the Maimonides strictures?

Have the graphic features, markings and script required by Maimonides made any difference in context or meaning?

Thoughts? Enlighten us!

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An (Updated) Bible Dictionary?

Let me just say upfront that I don’t have a problem in theory with the idea of a Bible dictionary accompanying the LDS version of the scriptures as a study help for members. Reading the Bible in English (or any other modern language for that matter) for devotional purposes these days presents enormous interpretive challenges, as it represents a translation (in the LDS case, a largely 400 year old translation) of a heterogeneous anthology of ancient Israelite, Jewish, and Christian literature that developed in contexts far removed from our own–historically, culturally, and linguistically. A handy reference tool that briefly introduces general LDS readers to material whose purpose is to somewhat lessen that historical, cultural, and linguistic divide on the basis of the best of recent biblical scholarship and all from the particular theological perspective and needs of the LDS faith would seem to be an obvious desideratum.

The problem I have is that the BD appended to the LDS KJV since 1981 never filled that role very well, and the recently updated version looks to continue more of the same for the foreseeable future. From what can be gathered, those responsible for the new online BD have chosen to make only the most minimal of changes to the old BD’s content. The changes found in the expanded list of adjustments produced by the Church are limited to formatting, presentational, and typographical issues and the correction of a few historical and factual errors. While a close reading of the new BD suggests that some changes were made outside of these categories, including a handful of editorial additions and deletions that may represent subtle doctrinal or presentational shifts, on the whole the adjustments reflect no serious engagement with recent biblical scholarship whatsoever. The updated version of the BD is for all practical purposes the old BD. Apparently, the editors of the new version felt that their mandate was to finesse what was already a worthy and acceptable LDS reference work on biblical topics.

As a student of the Bible, I find this lack of engagement to be distressing and unfortunate. The biblical scholarship reflected in the Cambridge Bible Dictionary upon which the LDS BD was based was already old at the time it was appropriated during the 1970s, and needless to say, scholarship has changed significantly over the last forty years. As a result, much of the interpretive content contained in the BD, particularly that relating to Israelite religion and Old Testament historiography, history, and literary development (to mention only areas that I’m interested in), is almost totally useless and only serves to reinforce earlier (Bruce R. McConkie era) fundamentalist understandings and attitudes.

This is truly unfortunate because the first edition evinced a somewhat open and expansive attitude to academic scholarship of the Bible. The introduction claimed that it had been drawn from “the best available scholarship” and openly acknowledged that it was “subject to reevaluation based on new research and discoveries”, suggesting that the BD would be continuously revised as academic study of the Bible progressed.

But after three decades no revision has been forthcoming. The content of the BD has come to be seen as almost part of the stream of tradition, something that needs to be only tweaked here or there. Its dependence on the scholarship of the Cambridge Bible Dictionary has been gradually effaced and forgotten, while in the introduction to the new BD the suggestion found in the old BD that the reader should consult a more exhaustive dictionary if elaborate discussion is desired has been deleted.

Some might argue that the lack of substantive changes to the BD is nothing to make a fuss over, since the Church denies official endorsement of the material found in it. But I would argue in response that contrary to the BD’s claim to be non-official, this little reference work has exerted a powerful normative force on the average Anglo-American LDS reader of the Bible since its inclusion in the standard LDS version of the scriptures. It implicitly bears the approval of the church and speaks with an authoritative voice on a range of historical and doctrinal issues. For the vast majority of English speaking members over the last thirty years, the BD has been a basic scriptural resource used to gain an understanding of the Bible’s cultural world, history, and literary nature. Thus the decision to not revise has very real and practical consequences on the intellectual and ideological makeup of the Church.

In conclusion, it would seem that Philip Barlow’s critical appraisal of the 1981 BD as exhibiting strong fundamentalist, literalist, and harmonizing tendencies remains accurate for the 2013 BD as well. As he stated in 1991,  “the new ‘Bible Dictionary’ is not really a Bible Dictionary but a dictionary of LDS theology, conservatively construed, using biblical terms.” [1]

[1] Philip Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-Day Saints in American Religion (Oxford, 1991), 210

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The 2013 Adjustments to the Book of Mormon: Accuracy Delayed

This post is written by guest contributor, Grant Hardy.

It is a weighty responsibility to decide how God’s word should be presented to the world, and the Church takes this charge very, very seriously. The recent adjustments to the official standard works include many welcome corrections to the headings of the Doctrine and Covenants, but otherwise the revisions are quite minimal. As Elder Neil L. Andersen explained, “members should not feel that they need to purchase a new set of scriptures . . .  Changes to the scriptural text include spelling, minor typographical, and punctuation corrections” (my emphasis). This perhaps makes sense in the case of the King James Version, which continues to be what it has been for the last 400 years, and for the Doctrine and Covenants, where the textual scholarship of the Joseph Smith Papers is ongoing. Yet it represents a lost opportunity for the Book of Mormon in light of Royal Skousen’s completed analysis of textual variants (in six books) and the publication of his reconstruction of the earliest text.

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