Jan
31
Parts 3 and 4 of this series on the Historical Jesus were a summary of John Meier’s ten criteria for establishing a sense of the historicity of an event. In this segment, we turn our attention to an example of Meier’s criteria in action: the case for the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
Jan
30
It appears that although we are meant to pay closer attention to the teachings of the current prophet, this does not extend to his wife. No matter; we plow ahead.
Historical Mormon Smackdown: Auxiliary Edition! [Corrected]
Who has more influence on your church experience: Bonnie D. Parkin or A. Roger Merrill?
Bonnie D. Parkin, General Relief Society President
A. Roger Merrill, General Sunday School President
Vote Below and Discuss:
This poll was corrected after Justin, whose research skills far outweigh my own, pointed out that GA’s are no longer in the Sunday School Presidency and that Elder Bateman (to be particular) was no longer the Sunday School President (which makes the whole darn thing work better to my mind anyway).
The poll is closed until I can figure out what is wrong with it.
Jan
28
My GD class was hinting around last week that there is a firm distinction between the terms “sin” and “transgression” when talking about Gen 3. Of course, Gen 3 makes no claim about the event, either way. And it seems to me that such terminological precision is not a feature of Paul’s original comparison of Christ and Adam in Rom 5:12-21. When Paul does make a distinction it is transgression, not sin, that is the stronger term.
Jan
27
The writings contained in what is known as the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (hereafter OTP) are legion. They date from about the middle of the 7th century BC to the 9th century AD and were written mostly by pre-Christian Jews, Christians, and other minor people groups. Some of the languages represented in the OTP are Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Slavonic, Coptic, Latin, and others.
What is the OTP?
The word “pseudepigrapha,” as one may see, comes from the Greek compound word which means “falsely superscribed,” or in other words, “false author(ship).” The reason for the name is not to cast the shadow of suspicion upon them, but because the books frequently take the names of noteworthy figures in Israel’s history (like Enoch, Abraham, Moses, etc.) whose authorship either can’t be proved for sure, or the text simply cannot have originated with the author intended, whether by linguistic, historical (anachronisms), or other means. The proper adjectival form of the noun “pseudepigrapha” is, per the SBL handbook of style (p. 162), “pseudepigraphic” (not “pseudepigraphal” or others).
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Jan
26
Since the majority of our information about Jesus comes from the Gospels, when we try to work out the details of the historical Jesus, we are obliged to sift and weigh these sources. In Part 3, we opened a discussion of John Meier’s ten criteria for this effort with the three strongest. Today, we continue with the remaining two strong criteria, then summarize the five weak ones.
Jan
26
FPR is pleased to announce that it is no longer an isle of the sea, but a “whatever a founder is”. The only change around here is the acknowledgement of the other founders in a place of honor on the sidebar. Also, I am now contractually obligated to bash on T&S until they ask me to guest-post.
Thanks be to all the fine bloggers, readers, and commenters around here. Hopefully, we’ll keep on providing good stuff.
Jan
25
Here’s the announcement of Bibleworks 7. I’ll probably be ordering the update. I am, however, interested in what others think of the “unlocks.”
Zerwick –> always handy
Blass, Debrunner, and Funk –> likewise, when you’re not in a library
Critical appartus stuff –> probably a good idea, at some point
But how about Comfort & Barrett? Or Balz & Schneider?
Jan
24
When last we checked, more people were disturbed by possible polyandry than polygyny on the part of the Prophet Joseph. This week, we continue my personal campaign to put things in perspective:
Who is more influential in the church today: Emma Hale Smith or Marjorie Pay Hinckley?
Emma Smith: wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith, recipient of D&C 25, subject of two books and several pieces of variable quality artwork at deseretbook.com.
Marjorie Hinckley: wife of the current prophet, recipient of degrees, subject of three books at deseretbook.com (but no variable quality artwork).
Take a side in this fight below and post your thoughts on the process.
Jan
21
This little narrative describes opposition to the use of chloroform to ease the pain of delivery based on the divine decree that childbirth was to be painful. If it’s true, it’s one for the “stranger than fiction” file. I’ll try to run down more on it over the week. In the meantime, I see no author explicitly listed on the site I took it from, but the URL is here:
Jan
20
This is the second part of the first post from Dan Belnap.
Clothing and Definitions
But the Garden story is not wholly concerned with nakedness, or rather remaining in a state of nakedness. There are also two scenes concerning the preparation and presentation of clothing. If nakedness represents the loss of one’s identity, which Adam and Eve have, then clothing represents one’s identity, and changes of clothing may represent new identities. It has long been recognized that clothing are powerful symbols as to the status and authority of an individual by defining the individual. The choice of clothing by the individual tells us both how he or she views him or herself, and how they wish to be defined by others. As others have noted, clothing acts as like a language, silently providing clues as to how this individual is to be perceived and therefore interacted with. As one scholar put it, “more than any other material product, clothing plays a symbolic role in mediating the relationship between nature, man, and his sociocultural environment.” Therefore, understanding the symbolic role that clothing plays in the definition of the individual is particularly important when clothing is presented in the text. This can done in two ways: 1) by reviewing the way in which the wearing of clothing represented the identity, including new identities with changes of clothing, and 2) and by studying the act of giving clothing to others thereby providing new identities and definitions.
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Jan
20
Anthropopatheia is the name of the figure used to describe the ascription of human passions, actions, or attributes to God. Interestingly enough, at the time Bullinger was writing his Figures, another term for this was Condescension. Readers of the BoM will be familiar with the idea. Anyway, consider Gen 22:7
Jan
19
The Septuagint generally refers to the books of the Old Testament in their old Greek translation. Some scholars only use the term to refer to the Pentateuch section, although mostly the term is used to represent the Greek translation of the entire Old Testament. The correct pronunciation of the term, and the one used by Septuagint scholars, is SEP-tu-jent, the ultimate and penultimate syllables almost sounding as one. Most other folks, however, continue to pronounce the term sep-TU-a-jint.
The origin of the Septuagint is unclear due to fictitious stories surrounding its inception. The most popular is from the letter of Aristeas which describes King Ptolemy Philadelphus’ desire to build a library containing all the books in the world. He requested a copy of the “laws of the Jews” (the OT), and so word was sent to Jerusalem to send 72 elders (6 from each tribe) to work on the translation from the Hebrew to the Greek. Legend states that the Septuagint was written in Ptolemaic Egypt (probably true) from the ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament (also probably true). There were 70 (sometimes 72) Jewish elders who independently, and without consultation one with another, each produced their own translation of the entire OT (probably not true). Once completed, the texts were compared with each other, and miraculously none of the translations deviated from each other, but were all in complete and total accordance (total bogus). Various other stories regarding the translation exist, and the reader is encouraged to seek secondary literature on the subject for more. This Greek translation of the OT often goes by the abbreviation “LXX,” the Roman numeral for “70.”
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Jan
19
One of the interesting things about reading the last half of the NT is seeing how each author seems to “open up” OT language about God in order to include Christ. Since this is Creation Week at FPR, I thought I’d contribute a little something on the way the NT talks about Christ and creation.
Jan
17
This is the first post of two from Dan Belnap. We greatly appreciate his contribution.
One of the most fascinating scenes in the scriptures is that detailing the actors and exchanges found in the Garden of Eden. From their creation to their expulsion the actions and conversations experienced by Adam and Eve, these events continue to provide those of us living millennia later insights and knowledge concerning who we are and how God sees us. Of particular interest, is the juxtaposition that is presented between nakedness and the state of being clothed. The relationship between these two opposing states and the symbolic nature of both the clothing and the act of clothing, especially exemplifies those questions concerning our nature, both as we appear and as we really are.
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Jan
17
Dan is a colleague and is the sort of person who, when asked if they would like to publish an article on a blog, responds by saying, “Sure, I have five already written.” I love that. Here he is, in his own words:
My name is Dan Belnap. I am currently a graduate student at the University of Chicago working on my degree in Northwest Semitics. I teach at BYU part time in Ancient Scripture. I am married, happily, with two kids.
Please welcome Bro. Belnap to FPR.
Jan
17
Ben Spackman is well-known about the bloggernacle and he has kindly consented to write an article for us. He can also be found at Millenial Star. Thanks again, Ben.
Names have meaning. As a result of their archaic or foreign origin, today’s English names are often simply a nice fashionable collection of sounds devoid of any inherent meaning to an English speaker. Many of our names thus have meaning that we’re unaware of. Thomas, for
example, is anglicised Aramaic (via the Greek of the New Testament) meaning “twin,” and Benjamin from Hebrew “son of the south” or “son of the right hand.” Israelites seem to have understood what names meant, and utilized that meaning for literary and teaching purposes.
Understanding what these names meant to an Israelite can increase our appreciation of the scriptures.
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Jan
16
Although the majority of our information about the historical Jesus comes from the Gospels, these sources cannot be used without care. They do not agree among themselves on matters important to the historian, large or small. How, then, shall we make our decisions?
Jan
14
As a political philosopher, I often feel lost in the deeper and more detailed discussions about scripture, doctrine, and the ancient world. However, the pre-existence, particularly the concept of a council in heaven is of direct interest to me and my own political theory. Let me explain:
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Jan
13
The expression “for Christ’s sake” occurs four times in the Authorized Version of the New Testament. Three instances occur in the authentic Pauline letters (Rom 15:30-31, 1 Cor 4:10, and 2 Cor 12:10), while one is in Eph 4:32. Very similar expressions such as “for Jesus’ sake,” or “for his name’s sake,” or “for the gospel’s sake” may also be found. For the moment, let’s look at the expression in Romans:
Jan
11
So, my wife and I are having a discussion about stuff I’ve read on the blogs and I mention the predestination / foreordination issue. I had posited earlier that in my view of how things are, as long as you personally don’t know what your final destination is, you still have free agency to make choices.
However, what happens when you are told? Consider Peter, told by Jesus “this night, before the #### crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” (Matt 26:34) And then, of course, he does. Here’s the question though – what else could Peter have done? Suppose he had answered the questioners, “Yes, I knew him.” and then was beaten or killed. Pretty bad for Peter, but it would essentially have made liar out of Jesus (or at least, a false prophet.) Well, that couldn’t happen, right? In this case, it seems like Peter was stripped of his agency. Realistically, he still made the choices that caused him to fulfill Christ’s words, but what else could he have done? Was it even possible for him to make different choices?
Beats me. Along similar lines (my wife’s contribution to this enigma), what about people in the pre-existence? Some of them apparently come to Earth in angelic (?) form and later, when they do come to be mortals, they have some sort of leadership position. I’m shaky on this ground because I can’t keep track of who the various named angels are, or were or will be, as mortals. It’s like you have special circumstances in the pre-existence, and then you have special circumstances on Earth. What about everybody else? What was Adolph Hitler like as a pre-mortal? Were there hints of what he would become? If so, why do we come to Earth, after all? So that we can actually make the choices that decide our eternal fate and satisfy Justice? (sorry Mogget)
Jan
10
One way to approach the hard historical and theological questions about the reality and significance of Jesus is through a construct called the “historical Jesus.” Since there are few other sources, most of our information comes from the Gospels. How do the they stack up?
Jan
6
Ol’ Sam was a little amazed to note that the lesson for this week included no biblical passages on the preexistence of Jesus. Sounds like a natural opportunity to complement the existing lesson, so here we go…
Jan
6
From Yahoo News — Original title “Did Jesus Exist? Italian Court to Decide”
Forget the U.S. debate over intelligent design versus evolution.
An Italian court is tackling Jesus — and whether the Roman Catholic Church may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago.
Jan
3
One way to better appreciate the impact of biblical prose is through attention to the so-called classical figures. The “standard” reference work for biblical figures is E.W. Bullinger’s Figures of Speech Used in the Bible. Bullinger’s work, originally published in 1898 and since reprinted, contains sections on 217 different figures, some with more than 30 variations.
Jan
2
At Faith-Promoting Rumor, we are inagurating a new series entitled “Secular Sam’s Guide to the Old Testament.” In this series, our goal is to make the insights of secular scholarship regarding the Old Testament available to the you, our loyal readers. There is some discussion within church society regarding the relative worth of secular training; we are not seeking to replace revealed truth, but rather we are trying to provide a summary of current scholarly thought regarding the Bible and its history (both the history of the text and the history depicted within). As we are reading the Old Testament in Sunday School this year, we decided to relate these posts to the weekly readings from the Old Testament and the Pearl of Great Price that the church will be encountering this year. We’re calling it “Secular Sam’s Guide” because it sounded better than anything else we could come up with. We hope that you will find this helpful.
As modern scholarship has yet to seriously address Moses 1 from a literary-historical standpoint, I have decided to focus my discussion on some of the figures involved, rather than on the text itself.
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Jan
1
I was going to hammer out a brief exegesis of the creation of humanity (Gen. 1:26-28), but I thought that would be less productive because it would have represented my viewpoints on it, which most likely don’t jive with correlation and would also appear terribly non-Mormon.
Instead, I’m offering here a list of good go-to sources for an in-depth look at the book of Genesis. These are sources that I’ve enjoyed using in my study of the book. I took an advanced Hebrew reading of Genesis this last semester and found a number of great monographs and commentaries which will help us with this wonderful book. Feel free to add others you’ve encountered as well! Note: none of these are Mormon.
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Jan
1
Since the Enlightenment, folks have been asking hard historical and theological questions about the reality and significance of Jesus. One of the means by which those questions are dealt with to the standards of a post-Enlightenment world is a construct called “the historical Jesus.” The activity behind this is usually called “the quest for the historical Jesus,” or simply “the quest.”