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Sam made this comment in another thread Quote:I think that’s unfair…I also see a return to the Bible.
Really? I have not seen this. But I have waited very impatiently for it to happen. When will the prophets come out in GC and tell the membership to read the Bible every day, like they have been preaching about the BoM for the last 30 years? Will it ever happen?
In our family, we replaced our BoM reading with the Bible. It’s been a GREAT decision – but I doubt many orthodox members would ever even consider it. Firstly, most members won’t even read the BoM daily like they have been commanded to do – and they certainly wouldn’t read the Bible daily, because I just don’t think our church puts emphasis on it like it deserves. Also – would they consider it a “sin” to read the Bible everyday, rather than the BoM, since that is what our prophets have told us to do? I would argue they would.
Is is just my planet, or does anyone else see the LDS church returning to the Bible?
I think the LDS Church will never stress Bible study over Book of Mormon study – except in Seminary and Sunday School, where official time spent on the Bible is double the time spent on the Book of Mormon, simply because the Book of Mormon is our truly unique record and we split the Bible into two separate study texts. However, I have seen a MUCH more focused effort to use the Bible in General Conference talks over the past few years more often than in the past.
Before I dive in to the critical side of my comment, let me say I think it is rewarding to read ANY type of uplifting and spiritual writings, both as a family and individually. It’s a great activity. Now having started on a positive note …
I don’t see the switch from BoM to Bible happening. We’re really supposed to read them all, but of course we are going to promote our own idiosyncratic Holy Books.
For the majority and the organization to actually come to terms with the issues of the BoM, to the point of making a decision to distance themselves and go back to the Bible, it seems like at that point you are looking at a slippery slope.
I hate to push this sometimes because I know a number of people who seek to resolve their faith crisis fall back to the Bible as more dependable. But IMO, the Bible is even more dubious in a lot of ways than the whole BoM formation story. Once you take the critical eye to the BoM, it opens up the doors to doing the same thing with the Bible. The Bible is even more problematic in a lot of ways with its history and formation. It’s just different problems. I’m not talking mere “as far as it is translated” minor language problems. I mean people like Moses and Abraham probably were not real people. And none of the New Testament was written by anyone that ever even met Jesus or directly heard him preach. So where does it stop? (answer: it stops where you are finally satisfied with enough deconstruction).
Bottom line: read what inspires you. Enjoy it individually, and use great writings as a springboard for great family discussions.
Will the LDS Church abandon the BoM? I doubt it. Actually, I hope they don’t. It would be a shame and a loss. It’s something that makes Mormonism unique.
A woman in a ward recently gave a talk and said that she received her testimony while reading the New Testament. I don’t think anyone batted an eye. It was actually quite refreshing. This woman is as unorthodox a TBM you can get if that makes any sense. She extremely irritating and bossy but I really admire her. She recommended a book about how Weakness is not Sin. Gotta love that! I’ve been meaning to get to Deseret Book and buy it.
I am with Brian. The Bible can be deconstructed just as easily as the BofM. If you like reading them OK, but I would not use them as a source of absolute truth or a means of understanding the nature of God. Both are full of contradictions and somewhat rambling writing at times. But like much literature there is good stuff in there if you want to spend the time to find it. Yeah, but shouldn’t we put a little more emphasis on the Bible since it’s the only accepted record of the teachings of this fellow named Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon not withstanding? After all – our entire church is suppose to be based on his life and teachings – why not study it and learn about it? Yes, we do have a few chapters in 3 Nephi, but the Bible has four entire books devoted just to the life and teachings of Jesus. Oh don’t get me wrong — I find the Bible to be mostly myth and symbolic teachings of what we call the “gospel of Jesus Christ.” Perhaps that is why I like it – because I don’t have to believe it is historical factual history. That’s not the case with the BoM. Sure, there are those few of us who don’t accept it as the history of the American Continent, and perhaps not even history at all —- but 85% of the active members have probably never even considered that it might not be all that the church leadership claims it is. In fact, I dare say that NO ONE in the church today gets up in SS and says that the BoM is not factual history. Hell, it’s bad enough questioning the validity of Jonah or Noah – let alone saying something as blasphemous as that perhaps Nephi and Moroni are mythical characters. You’d be burned at the stake before sundown if you said something like that at church.
I think the bible has some great treasures in it – but, no, I don’t see it as historically accurate in the least. I don’t even know if Jesus was a real person. I think the story and the concept are valuable though – and the teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount, can be of tremendous benefit to myself and society in general
I think there should be a concerted effort by the church to promote reading all the scriptures, not just the Book of Mormon. I will say that my stake had a reading program over a few years. We were supposed to read weekly from the Old Testament one year, New Testament another year, D&C, and BoM too. I know our stake was unique, because I’ve never seen a similar reading program elsewhere. I do think our church members know more about the Bible than many others, but there could be a greater emphasis on reading all the scriptures.
cwald wrote:I think the bible has some great treasures in it – but, no, I don’t see it as historically accurate in the least. I don’t even know if Jesus was a real person. I think the story and the concept are valuable though – and the teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount, can be of tremendous benefit to myself and society in general
I think you are correct, they can be of benefit if you look at them the way you do. The problem is most people that read scripture do not. They take it as actual fact and in many cases inerrant. This to me is myopic and sometimes dangerous. What if I insisted Lord of the Rings was actual history and we should read it every day? People start building their lives around it. They would start quoting Frodo and Sam when they are trying to make a point. People would accept magic and other nonsense as factual because it said it in the book. If the bible is mythical then how is using the bible any different? It would still just be the writing of men. The teachings of Jesus aside is not the bible full of outlandish stories also, especially the OT. Why do we give it such a place of honor when we for the most part have no idea who the authors are?
For me I have no idea anymore. The bible could just as easily be the word of God and we need to follow it to the letter, but I distrust this idea of accuracy and mythology tying to be mixed together in scripture. If it is Gods word I would hope it would be a little more straight forward and easy to understand, and we would not have to look at is as mythology to have it jive with our beliefs and the historical facts.
Cadence wrote:I think you are correct, they can be of benefit if you look at them the way you do. The problem is most people that read scripture do not. They take it as actual fact and in many cases inerrant. This to me is myopic and sometimes dangerous.
What if I insisted Lord of the Rings was actual history and we should read it every day? People start building their lives around it.They would start quoting Frodo and Sam when they are trying to make a point. People would accept magic and other nonsense as factual because it said it in the book. If the bible is mythical then how is using the bible any different? It would still just be the writing of men. The teachings of Jesus aside is not the bible full of outlandish stories also, especially the OT. Why do we give it such a place of honor when we for the most part have no idea who the authors are? For me I have no idea anymore. The bible could just as easily be the word of God and we need to follow it to the letter, but I distrust this idea of accuracy and mythology tying to be mixed together in scripture. If it is Gods word I would hope it would be a little more straight forward and easy to understand, and we would not have to look at is as mythology to have it jive with our beliefs and the historical facts.
All true and good points. However – we are not the Church of The Lord Of Rings of Latter-day Saints. If we were – I think there is a ton of good stuff in Tolkien, and I think a person could find some truth and a decent pathway to follow just by reading his works. We claim to be the Church of Jesus Christ —whether right or wrong, why would not glean the benefit of the truths from the four gospels, which contain the teachings and/or mythology of that person, like we claim to do with the BoM? I guess, I don’t see it being much different than the BoM, yet we have been commanded to read that book of mythology DAILY.
Yes, the Bible can be dangerous — the christian religion can be/has been extremely volatile in the past and somewhat even today — especially if folks take it to be literal and inerrant.
Brian Johnston wrote:IMO,
the Bible is even more dubious in a lot of ways than the whole BoM formation story.Once you take the critical eye to the BoM, it opens up the doors to doing the same thing with the Bible. The Bible is even more problematic in a lot of ways with its history and formation.It’s just different problems…So where does it stop? (answer: it stops where you are finally satisfied with enough deconstruction).. Cadence wrote:I am with Brian.
The Bible can be deconstructed just as easily as the BofM.If you like reading them OK, but I would not use them as a source of absolute truth or a means of understanding the nature of God. Both are full of contradictions and somewhat rambling writing at times. But like much literature there is good stuff in there if you want to spend the time to find it. I don’t believe for a second that all supposed “scriptures” are equally valid or not as if they all deserve the same amount of respect; to me this idea is clearly an oversimplification. The reason the New Testament is not nearly as problematic to defend as the BoM from a believer’s perspective is that it just doesn’t make the same kinds of dubious claims about what exactly its origin and contents are supposed to be. For example, if almost everything actually happened approximately the way we are told in the New Testament there is no convincing reason that we should realistically expect to see much of anything different than we actually do from a historical perspective.
Maybe King Herod did not really have all the baby boys killed but as far as I’m concerned any minor embellishment or contradiction like that should already be expected simply based on the fact that these accounts were all written by fallible men often based on oral traditions recorded much later than the events they describe. Based on the text itself at no point do I get the impression that the majority of it was ever originally intended to be understood as the literal word of God received by direct revelation.
By comparison, the Book of Mormon talks about large and advanced Hebrew civilizations in the New World, epic battles, what specific domestic animals and plants they had, etc. It seems like there really should be more evidence of this if it actually happened that way. Also, because of the way the BoM was supposedly delivered and translated it doesn’t make sense why God and the Angel Moroni would go to all this trouble to bring about the publication of a significant amount of misleading and inaccurate information. With the Bible there is more flexibility to interpret many of these ideas as simply the opinions of Paul, Luke, John, James, etc. or some anonymous scribe. I don’t think the Church could ever go wrong by focusing more on the New Testament than they do.
On the other hand, studying the Old Testament too much is what finally destroyed my faith in the Church after reading anti-Mormon propaganda, my own doubts about the Church’s story, and “sinning” so much that I supposedly lost the spirit could not. It’s not so much that I just didn’t believe that many of these stories were literally true that bothered me as much as the fact that Church leaders like Bruce R. McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith, John Taylor, Brigham Young, JS, etc. all tried to interpret them literally so much at the same time that they were supposed to be nearly infallible prophets, seers, and revelators. So maybe the Church should downplay the Old Testament but maybe they don’t care that much about weeding out anyone that asks too many questions.
Well, interestingly one of the complaints on a certain blog was that the church hardly used the BoM (which I disagreed with) and then went on to prove that most of the references in conference talks were to the Bible, rather than the other three sets of scriptures. In the past year, I have read half of the Old Testament, the BoM right through once, and numerous books and chapters of the same repeatedly, the entire D&C, the BoA, the rest of the PoGP etc. Generally I read a Bible chapter, plus a BoM chapter. With the BoM usually a chapter reference pops into my head and I read it. With the Bible, I’m more methodical, and I hope to have completed it by the end of the year. (I started years ago, and have read it piecemeal, but I ought to have read all of it by then. I’ve read all of the NT, Apocrypha, and read half of the OT over the past year. I read Genesis, the Books of Kings and Samuel years ago) There are some hidden treasures in there, such as Ecclesiastes, but I’m leaving the Begats and dietary law to the end.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Based on the text itself at no point do I get the impression that the majority of it was ever originally intended to be understood as the literal word of God received by direct revelation.
I bet the vast majority of all of Christianity would disagree with that statement. I think most people view the Bible the same way most in the Church view the Book of Mormon.Heber13 wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:Based on the text itself at no point do I get the impression that the majority of it was ever originally intended to be understood as the literal word of God received by direct revelation.
I bet the vast majority of all of Christianity would disagree with that statement.I think most people view the Bible the same way most in the Church view the Book of Mormon. I really doubt that the majority of Christians worldwide would say that the Bible is literally the word of God from beginning to end, maybe in America that might be true but even then it would proabably be something more like 52% rather than a “vast majority.” The notion of Biblical “inerrancy” is actually a relatively recent American Protestant invention mostly popularized by some fundamentalist Baptists and Evangelical Christians. The official position of the Catholic Church is that the Bible is not inerrant and that’s one reason that Apostolic succession and tradition are supposedly so important in their opinion.
On my mission in Brazil we would show practicing Catholics scriptures about the importance of being “born again” and they couldn’t care less and I got the impression that many of them just didn’t attach that much importance to reading and understanding the Bible in great detail and I suspect that many Episcopalians and other “mainstream” Christians are the same way especially outside of the US. My guess is that some hard-core fundamentalist Christians draw a disproportionate amount of attention compared to their actual numbers worldwide simply because so many of them in the US are activists that complain so much about things like abortion, homosexuality, the teaching of evolution in public schools, etc.
Quote:By comparison, the Book of Mormon talks about large and advanced Hebrew civilizations in the New World
Just for perspective:
The actual accounts in the Book of Mormon, excepting the Book of Ether (importantly), don’t really describe large civilizations. At the very most, the central Nephite civilizations don’t appear to have numbered more than a very few million – even after years of consolidation and “gathering” for the final war. Even the largest battles throughout the bulk of the book have casualty totals that number only in the low thousands, usually. Also, there really isn’t all that much “advancement” mentioned in the book itself – except for the use of the word “steel”, which easily could mean nothing more than “incredibly hard iron” or (based on more recent research) might actually be an accurate word usage.
Sometimes we accept too easily the mistaken assumptions of the past over the actual words of the book itself.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:I really doubt that the majority of Christians worldwide would say that the Bible is literally the word of God from beginning to end, maybe in America that might be true but even then it would proabably be something more like 52% rather than a “vast majority.”
Perhaps we are somewhat saying the same thing, but my point was that in the Church we see the Book of Mormon as the word of God, and if there are errors in it which require them to republish with corrections, those corrections are to correct mistakes made by man and are minor grammatical changes, not substantial to the meaning behind the words.
I think most Christians believe the same about the Bible, even if they agree it has errors in it, it is very much the word of God and are somewhat offended when Mormons say we believe in it “as far as it is translated correctly”.
Here is one article that words things pretty well:
Quote:The Bible – and especially that part of the Bible known as “the New Testament” – is the guide and most trusted source of divine revelation for Christians. We use many terms to describe the Holy Scriptures (Sacred Writings) and their role in the Church. Following 2 Timothy 3:16, we say that the Bible is “inspired” by God. The term in 2 Timothy is “God-breathed.” In other words, we believe that the testimony of Scripture is an expression of God Himself. At the same time, we generally understand that these inspired writings were not simply “dictated” through the authors; their own vocabularies, writing styles, and personal expressions become the conduit of divine revelation.
We also hold that the Scriptures are “authoritative” and “infallible.” In 2 Peter 1:20-21, we read that “no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (NIV). Though the Scriptures were written by men like David, Isaiah, John, and Paul – and though their unique way of writing and communicating shaped their inspired revelations – their words were not theirs alone. We believe that God communicates to the church today through their writings. And these sacred texts are authoritative in a way that Mark Twain’s are not. The Scriptures are “infallible,” that is, incapable of failing, certain; without error in their teachings about faith and morals. The Scriptures are trustworthy and reliable.
[snip]
[Referencing critics of the Bible, he goes on to say… If]Every historical detail, no matter how insignificant, becomes as important as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. If in actual fact Caesar Augustus did not really order a census while Quirinius was governor of Syria – if it turns out there really was only one Gadarene demonaic rather than two – then the entire Bible becomes worthless and every tenet of Christian faith falls flat. If one single discrepancy emerges, it’s all over. This makes Christian faith an easy target for skeptics, and drives believers to unimaginable lengths to “defend” the Bible.
Inerrancy is unnecessary and problematic, and deserves to be challenged for the sake of faithful Christians everywhere. As will be seen, inerrancy is not at all essential to maintaining the inspiration, authority, and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures, and can even become a hindrance.
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/inerrant.htmlhttp://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/inerrant.html” class=”bbcode_url”> I haven’t read the whole article yet, but will when I have more time…but in many cases what we question about the Book of Mormon is not unlike what Christians have discussed about the Bible, and I think the vast majority hold it up as the Word of God (however they define that).
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