In my research at the University of Utah I have mainly focused on Hebrew and Jewish studies, but have had the opportunity of taking a good sampling of courses on Mormon history, text, and practice as well. Both in and out of class I have read many studies that seek to understand Mormon scripture better in its own context, and in so doing have read works that study Mormon scripture devotionally, defend Mormon scripture apologetically, attack Mormon scripture antagonistically, or just simply find Mormon scripture fascinating for understanding western religious traditions.
I would like to comment on a trend that I have seen from the side of defending Mormon scripture and offer what I think might be a more appropriate way of discussing the issues. I do not mean to suggest that my way is the only way or even best way to do it, but I would like to point out something that I view as a major flaw that can easily be remedied. I also do not mean to either defend or attack. I am simply proposing that if anyone is going to compare Mormon scripture with past historical documents and cultures that one should be careful to watch for this, in my opinion, fatal flaw.
I would also point out that I am not the first to bring this up. It has been discussed for decades in wider biblical studies (and is therefore not simply an issue within Mormon studies), at least since Samuel Sandmel’s 1962 article in Journal of Biblical Literature entitled, “Parallelomania,”[1] and has been discussed in a Mormon context a little over a decade ago by Douglas F. Salmon.[2] The reason I would like to discuss this now is that I am still hearing that many members of the church, even in academic institutions, continue to simply draw parallels between the past and something Joseph Smith translated or taught, ask how he could have known, and then simply leave it at that without providing any further insight into the matter.[3]
One example of this type of hermeneutic can be found in a recent blog post at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute (MI) at Brigham Young University (BYU). The post was authored by Matthew Roper in early 2013 and is titled “Premortal existence of a ‘First Man’ suggested in the book of Job.”[4] Roper has worked as a research associate at the MI for over twenty years, first at FARMS before it merged with the MI in 2006.
Roper’s main thesis is (1) the LDS teaching that Adam had a premortal existence and “was present at the planning and creation of the earth” is noteworthy, and (2) this idea is supported by recent research on the book of Job by Dexter Callender, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.[5] In order to make his point, Roper briefly goes through the following four steps: (1) the primal man in Job 15:7 is described as being “brought forth,” rather than “created” or “formed” as in Gen. 1 and 2, which means that the birth of the primal man as described in Job 15 is “an event distinct from that described in Genesis”;[6] (2) in contrast to the account in Gen. where man’s body is created on the sixth day, in Job he is born “before the hills” (15:7); (3) the first man is placed in God’s heavenly council, where he had access to heavenly wisdom; and (4) Job would not be able to answer the questions God asks in Job 38-41, but the primal man would have. Since he was the first man and had been born before the creation of the earth, he took part in shouting with the sons of God for joy.
As Roper states, this idea will resonate with many members of the Church, but as I will highlight in this post these connections are not as firm as they first appear to be. First, I would like to point out that the research Roper is dependent on is all supported by critical scholarly methods. The translations, and the discussions of grammar that he provided, are all accurate and reliable from what I can tell. It is not the research itself that is the problem; rather, it is how the research is stripped by Roper from its own context and placed into LDS theology that there are issues.
The Primal Man in Job
The cumulative framework that is provided by Roper in citing Callender, Koehler and Baumgartner, May, and Wyatt of the description of the birth of the primal man and his witnessing creation must be stressed. The first man is, as Callender points out, was born through the natural process of birth, labor pains and all.[7] This first man has a physical body through the natural birthing process, and receives wisdom as he witnesses the council of God and the creation of the earth, but he is the only human there. As Callender points out
According to Eliphaz, the wisdom of the primal human came as a result of his presence within the council of God, and the fact that he ‘listened’. The knowledge at issue belongs to the gods, and not to common humanity…this higher knowledge is connected with the primordium, and is closely associated with creation. The primal human…was present at the creation and by virtue of that fact possessed wisdom in its most intimate details. The divine speeches in chapters 38-41 make clear that the secrets of the universe lie within the primordium, the epoch of creation. As one who ‘was born there’, he knew the deepest and most esoteric of knowledge.[8]
According to Callender, in Job the primal man was the only human being to have access to this kind of wisdom because he was the only one born before the creation of the world. No other human witnessed these events, and this knowledge is privy only to him and to the gods. It was not possible for Job to have this wisdom because he was not there, and he can only have these events described to him in narrative detail in chapters 38-41 to attain even a glimpse of what happened then.
Unfortunately, Roper does not cite this section of Callender’s monograph. This is not necessarily a fault to Roper, but as will be seen this point is very important once we attempt to compare the image of the primal man in Job with that found in LDS scripture.
The Pre-existence of Adam in LDS Scripture and Thought
As noted by Roper, Adam is not only the “first man” in LDS scripture, but he also had a premortal existence where he was present for the planning of the creation of the earth with other “noble and great ones” (Abraham 3:22-26). In Mormon thought not only was Adam there, but all humankind pre-existed and had a premortal experience before the world was created (D&C 93:23, 29). This is in stark contrast to the book of Job’s description of the primal man as being the only one present. This is a significant difference, and should be noted accordingly if we are to fully understand the connection between Job and LDS scripture. In Job the “sons of God” that shouted for joy are not other human beings, but rather are “celestials” or “gods” themselves.[9] Callender makes this explicit in the above quotation when he states that this knowledge did not belong to common humanity, but rather to the gods.
If we are to take Roper’s placement of the narrative of Job in an LDS context further, there is another problem that is as big as the first. In Job the primal man has a physical body at creation. Mormon belief in Adam’s pre-existence excludes his having a body in the council of heaven and also at the time of creation. It is also believed that when Adam was in mortality, like all men (even Jesus) a veil was placed over his mind that allowed him to forget his past existence so that he would be able to use his agency in making correct choices and following God’s commandments. Not only does this image contradict the narrative of Job by placing the primal man in a spirit body rather than a physical one, it includes several details found nowhere in the book of Job. The primal man in Job is never explicitly said to have lost his wisdom once he is born, specifically because he is born physically before creation, negating the idea that he would at some point forget his experience prior to and during creation.
It is admitted that many of the LDS beliefs pointed out above are noted without citation of scripture, but this follows the mainstream understanding of the common chronology of human existence through our pre-existent state and into mortality, and is taught often at any given church or seminary building as part of the “Plan of Salvation.” In this light, I am only taking Roper’s placing of Job’s narrative in an LDS context to its furthest logical conclusion. If one was to accept the connection that Roper creates between the primal man and our Mormon version of Adam we would have to alter how it is we understand the chronology of the Plan of Salvation. I would venture to guess that most members, and the Church in general, would be unwilling to conform our view to this scripture, and it would be just as harmful to force our theological view on Job. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Roper has done in his blog post, and is a prime example of the trend I noted at the beginning of this essay.
One More Issue With Roper’s Use of Scholarly Literature
Throughout Roper’s essay he seems to assume that the “primal man” in Job is the exact same individual as haadam (“the man”) in the priestly account in Gen. 1, and Adam in the Yahwistic account in Gen. 2-4 (and the noun Adam does not appear until Gen. 4:25; up to that point it is still “the man”). These accounts in Gen. and Job are all recognized today as coming from different authors at various periods of time. In Roper’s second point, summarized above, he only compares Job 15:7 to Gen. 1’s description of Adam as being born “on the sixth day.” He completely excludes a separate comparison with Gen. 2, where the creation of the man is placed very early on in the process of creation, though still different from Job’s description. It is essential to take into account the fact that each of these texts were written by different people. When making these kinds of comparisons we must not only be aware of these issues, but allow our audiences to be aware of them as well as they carry a lot of weight in how we understand the comparison.
Comments Going Further
This essay has not been written to disparage from making comparisons similar to those made by Roper. Rather, I welcome whole-heartedly the study of these kinds of parallels, and I hope that many are not only interested in this subject but that more people in the Church will get interested in it. This essay is to show that we cannot simply make a quick connection between our LDS thought and teachings with that of an ancient text and leave it there, forcing our paradigm onto the text. We must instead find these interesting parallels, note them, and open up discussion about the similarities and differences between our latter-day scriptural texts and ancient scriptural records and have a continuing dialogue about them in our community. This is especially important when we have so much material in the scholarly world easily at our reach through print and online publications. We have to be aware of the problems that come with making quick conclusions about parallels, and instead spend time getting to know the various intricacies of these texts. Not only are these ancient documents, the hundreds of texts inside and outside of the canon of the Hebrew Bible, worth it, but they’re ancient authors and readers deserve it too. Just the same as the documents that we will one day leave behind deserve to be understood in their context and not automatically placed into one that we did not intend them to be, we need to show these ancient texts the reverence and respect they call for and deserve by being aware of the information about the time and place that they were written. Only then can we correct this trend that has provided a false sense of holistic connection, and only then can we open up these texts to our further understanding.
[1] See Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 81, No. 1 (March, 1962), 1-13.
[2] Douglas F. Salmon, “Parallelomania and the Study of Latter-day Scripture: Confimation, Coincidence, or the Collective Unconscious?” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), 129-156.
[3] Not every example fits this categorization. In the broader context, other examples can include simply bringing up a similar word, phrase, or idea between LDS scripture and ancient documents, quoting an authority or two, and making a partial contribution to exploring the connections. This will be examined in further in this post.
[4] http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/premortal-existence-book-of-job/
[5] Dexter Callender, Jr., Adam in Myth and History: Ancient Israelite Perspectives on the Primal Human (Harvard Semitic Studies, 48; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000). This monograph is a revised version of Callender’s PhD dissertation completed at Harvard University in 1995.
[6] See Roper’s blog post, second paragraph.
[7] Callender, Adam in Myth and History, 141. This is especially stressed in the use of the verb ḥwl (Roper mistakenly has ḥyl, but the two verbs are related), as pointed out by Callender here in his monograph. The verb means “to dance (round),” and in the context of birth denotes the writhing of the mother. As Callender says, “hence [one] can render the meaning ‘to bear or bring forth’.”
[8] Callender, Adam in Myth and History, 175-176.
[9] See the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translation of Exodus 15:11 in Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible (2nd Ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
While I commend your work, your argument contains the same logical fallacy as you claim Roper’s has. I definitely say this not to belittle your work or idea. In fact I am a proponent of taking great care when using scholarly analysis to defend or debunk religious beliefs. I just feel it would be good to point it out. But here is your logical fallacy: you presume that Primal Man was born in heaven as a physical being. I can see you are getting this idea from your research, but I wasn’t sure where you are finding this in the book of Job since Job 15:7 – 11 appears to be Eliphaz questioning Job’s wisdom. When he says “older than the hills” he’s making a logical appeal to Job saying he’s not as wise as the first man, nor his father, nor the old and wise men around him–all people he mentions. I see no context here to say it is a reference to Adam actually being born before the hills, since the entire appeal is based about Job’s age and wisdom, not Adam’s, and he’s asking if Job was born before the hills, or these people. Ironically God comes to Job in chapters 38-41 and uses a similar logical appeal, except God really is that ancient and wise and spends 3 chapters making that appeal to his authority. He then chastises Eliphaz and his friends in Job 42:7 for speaking this way to Job when Job had always made God his authority while Eliphaz had made age and wisdom his (which God’s doings are greater than–the whole point of Job 38-41).
Next, I think it is an unfortunate fallacy that people think the “Sons of God” in the Job refer to some counsel in heaven every time it is used. It isn’t. In Job chapter 1 God is speaking to Satan. Would Satan come up to heaven where he is? No. I think that idea would be against most religious thought historically, not just Mormon’s. The setting has already been established–Job 1:1-6 present Job as a man of sacrifice, one who is perfectly loyal to God. Job 1:6 says “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.” Everyone assumes this is in heaven. However, the word here, is יצב in hithpael. It is used in presenting oneself before YHWH elsewhere–Israelites presenting themselves. In Num 11:16 seventy elders and Moses present themselves in the tabernacle of the congregation. In Deut 31:14 Moses and Joshua present themselves before the Lord in the tabernacle of the congregation. Furthermore, in 1 Sam 10:19 the tribes of Israel are commanded to gather together when they rejected Samuel and then Saul is selected as the new king, and in 1 Sam 12:7 and 16, they present themselves before YHWH. So I propose that beney elohim (Sons of God) are there, where Satan was: “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it” and God was there because he came to visit his place of sacrifice. My point is, For a lot of people, including scholars, this chapter orients them to think certain scenes are being played out in heaven. Contextually, that never is the case. God explains his dealings with Earth in Job 38-41, and things that happened that Job can’t claim to know. I would propose, therefore, that when scholars make assumptions about some council in heaven, it is because of the setting of Job 1 where they assume Sons of God are angels due to the Enoch narrative found in Genesis and 1 Enoch, but that can be a fallacy perpetuated by the Septuagint and 1 Enoch, rather than the way Sons of God or Sons of Abraham, or Sons of Moses,or Sons of Aaron, etc. are shown in the rest of the bible–to be in a covenant relationship with religious significance to whichever father being mentioned. However, I have no problem with the idea that Sons of God in Job 38:7 being in a preexistence, since the context is something that is occurring around the time of creation. I would propose that it is a legitimate idea to think of them as being those joyful about God’s creation–his covenant children (since “sons” can be inclusive of daughters too in the original Hebrew, translated as children). I honestly think it more logical to assume this is referring to pre-earth life if you believe in such a thing, since that is the context: before creation. On the other hand it isn’t very logical at all to assume that Adam was physically born before earth was created based on any account in scriptures. P.S. Sorry for the wall of text, and I submit this argument as a scholarly argument rather than one of ego or anger :D.
David,
Thank you for not only reading but also responding, I appreciate it. I’ll respond to various parts of your comment below.
David: “While I commend your work, your argument contains the same logical fallacy as you claim Roper’s has. I definitely say this not to belittle your work or idea. In fact I am a proponent of taking great care when using scholarly analysis to defend or debunk religious beliefs. I just feel it would be good to point it out. But here is your logical fallacy: you presume that Primal Man was born in heaven as a physical being.”
You’ll actually notice in a quick review of my post that I am not assuming this at all, and Roper actually accepts it too. It is found in English translations of Job, but we were both citing the work of Callender and the Hebrew text of Job in the verb hwl. I added some more notes in footnote 7 to make it a little more clear.You should also note Callender’s statements on page 141 of his monograph:
“In these words [i.e. Job 5:7 – Were you brought forth before the hills?] Eliphaz, we learn that the first human was thought to have been born before the hills. The verbal root here is hwl which means ‘to dance or writhe’. It is used in connection with birth imagery, denoting writhing in travail; and hence can render the meaning ‘to bear or bring forth’. The meaning of the verb is clear in the parallelism here with yld, seen also in Isaiah 51:2, habbitu ‘el ‘abraham ‘abikem we’el-sara teholelkem ‘Look to Abraham your father and to Sara who bore you’ (cf. Ps. 8:24,25). The first human is described as having come into existence through natural means, that is, through birth.”
You said: “I see no context here to say it is a reference to Adam actually being born before the hills, since the entire appeal is based about Job’s age and wisdom, not Adam’s, and he’s asking if Job was born before the hills, or these people.”
For the context see the last quote from Callender. I wanted to note something really quick which I’m not sure was very explicit in my post. To simply call the primal man in Job “Adam” is problematic. As you may know, grammatically you cannot translate adam as the personal name “Adam” until Gen. 4:25. Each occurrence of the noun up to that point has the definite marker ha, indicating to the translator that each occurrence should be translated as “the man” before Gen. 4:25, not “Adam.” More specific to our point, the primal man is never identified as “Adam” in Job, and it is itself a logical fallacy to simply superimpose Gen. onto Job.
You said: “Next, I think it is an unfortunate fallacy that people think the “Sons of God” in the Job refer to some counsel in heaven every time it is used. It isn’t. In Job chapter 1 God is speaking to Satan. Would Satan come up to heaven where he is? No. I think that idea would be against most religious thought historically, not just Mormon’s.”
You might actually be surprised to know that your above statement isn’t accurate for “most religious thought historically.” Similar to reading “Adam” into Job’s version of the “primal man,” reading “Satan” into Job’s hasatan (the adversary) figure is incorrect and detrimental to an attempt to accurately understand this section of Job in its historical context.
As to your point that this idea would go against most religious thought in history is inaccurate when Judaism is considered. For most Judaisms (there are many of them) there is no “Satan” in their theology. I first learned this from David Seely as a visiting student at BYU. I think that the Jewish Study Bible, edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler, provide good notes to Job written by Edward Greenstein. He says of this section,
“[Job] 1.6-12: The heavenly court. Like a monarch in court, the LORD in His abode in the sky receives His agents, the divine beings (lit. “sons of God”), the angels, periodically to receive their reports and give them assignments; cf. the scene in 1 Kings 22:19-22. God singles out the Satan (“Adversary”), whose role, He knows, is to “descend [to earth] and lead [people] astray, and then ascend [to heaven] and arouse [the Deity’s] wrath” (b. B. Bat. 16a). God incites the Satan to question Job’s sincerity and propose a plan to test whether Job’s piety can withstand a series of sufferings. Apparently the Deity wants to gauge the depth of His servant’s devotion, using the Satan as His ready agent. The Satan is given a free hand, so long as Job himself is not physically affected.” (Berlin and Brettler, 1497)
You’ll notice several things: (1) this heavenly court takes place in the Deity’s heavenly abode; (2) Greenstein uses the definite article ha, translated “the”, to describe the Adversary in a very different way than you are assuming in your comment; (3) since this is in the heavenly abode, your argument about the use of the term יצב is null because it is drastically different context than Num. 11 or Deut. 31. This is instead in the context of the holy abode in heaven, not in the context of the cultus on earth. The rest of your argument about the Adversary being on the earth is also null, as you see in Greenstein’s statement above. The Adversary was to go to and fro on the earth only to ascend back up to the heavenly abode to report back to the Deity.
You said: “For a lot of people, including scholars, this chapter orients them to think certain scenes are being played out in heaven. Contextually, that never is the case.”
It is very hard for me to take this comment seriously when the Deity asks the Adversary in Job 1:7, “‘Where have you been?’ The Adversary answered the Lord, “I have been roaming all over the earth,” (JPS Translation) indicating that he is no longer roaming the earth. He has returned to the heavenly abode as Greenstein says above.
You said: “I would propose, therefore, that when scholars make assumptions about some council in heaven, it is because of the setting of Job 1 where they assume Sons of God are angels due to the Enoch narrative found in Genesis and 1 Enoch, but that can be a fallacy perpetuated by the Septuagint and 1 Enoch, rather than the way Sons of God or Sons of Abraham, or Sons of Moses,or Sons of Aaron, etc. are shown in the rest of the bible–to be in a covenant relationship with religious significance to whichever father being mentioned.”
I don’t think that scholars are dependent on Gen. 6 and 1 En. 6-11 (a central research topic of mine) in their interpretation of the use of beney haelohim as much as you assert here, and it seems to me that you are not familiar with the relevant material on this subject. David Bokovoy takes a lengthy look at the sons of God in his dissertation. You can access the dissertation here if you are affiliated with a university library: http://gradworks.umi.com/35/27/3527893.html. I suggest looking further into this topic. The only use of beney in this sense that I can think of in current usage the way you describe beney elohim above is beney navi, the sons of the prophets. I would suggest taking a look at Koehler and Baumgartner, Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament Study Edition, Vol 1, 137-138.
You said: “However, I have no problem with the idea that Sons of God in Job 38:7 being in a preexistence, since the context is something that is occurring around the time of creation. I would propose that it is a legitimate idea to think of them as being those joyful about God’s creation–his covenant children (since “sons” can be inclusive of daughters too in the original Hebrew, translated as children).”
This is precisely the problem I am aiming to address in this post, and is honestly surprising that you still come to this conclusion without engaging in what is said in the post. These sons of God are cannot simply be equated with all humanity in the pre-existence. I believe, as you do, in the pre-existence, but we cannot force our belief onto this text. We have to understand it in its own right. Not only is the primal man already physically born, as noted in the post and in my comments above, but he is with the divine council of other deities, before the creation.
You said: “I honestly think it more logical to assume this is referring to pre-earth life if you believe in such a thing, since that is the context: before creation.”
This highlights the problem: it is only logical if you are forcing our theology onto Job. If the text is taken on its own terms, it is not logical at all. Which also shows that one can believe, as I do, in the pre-existence, and still not see this as fitting that usual interpretation.
You said: “On the other hand it isn’t very logical at all to assume that Adam was physically born before earth was created based on any account in scriptures.”
Again, primal man, not “Adam.” Similar tradition, but expressed differently. We can’t assume that the author of Job thought the same as we do, or even the same as the author of Gen. 1 or the author of Gen. 2-4. And again, it isn’t an assumption, it’s in Job.
You said: “P.S. Sorry for the wall of text, and I submit this argument as a scholarly argument rather than one of ego or anger :D.”
Definitely! I hope my responses are taken in the same light. I enjoy this discussion and you gave me a number of things to think about. Thanks!
Wonderfully thought out. I now need to admit something. I didn’t specify what the logical fallacy was. I said where it laid, but I didn’t give clear identification of how the fallacy was made.
I did this on purpose. In fact, I knew what I typed up had all the fallacies you pointed out as well :D. But there is one major problem: you are still coming at it with your beliefs. That is the fallacy. It is the fallacy that any reader of any text makes. It is impossible not to. I came at it from a religious point of view laced with scholastic work. You came at it with a scholarly point of view. To truly have no bias you have to come at it with no point of view. But what good would that do? You can’t fix a computer without knowing something about computers, otherwise you wouldn’t even know it needs fixing.
You are still missing what I did though. Strip your mind of all the scholarly context and all the religious context. What do you have left? You have the text. You treat the bible as something to be understood by looking at scholars, analyzing the possible redactors, etc. I think they are helpful. I wouldn’t have studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies if I didn’t believe that. But I do find it problematic when we assume scholars trump the text’s context–what the text itself says. Why are you not open minded about what I said? Because you assume you are right and that the scholars you researched are right. That’s fine. But I assume we all have problems with our arguments. You don’t really know any more than I do or than any of the people that have studied it. After all, ethos, logos, and pathos are all parts of the analytical process. We do try to avoid the pathos as scholars, but in reality feelings or beliefs are inevitably part of the process. There is nothing wrong with trying to get at the meaning of the text. You have to use different tools to do that. The Maxwell Institute does exactly what you and I did. We all have different tools and for that matter different angles. What is important is that you keep learning and studying and always realize, yes there is a bias. Frankly, I think your bias, the Maxwell Institute’s bias, and my bias are all important. Otherwise we wouldn’t have fun discussions like these! I agree with you. My argument has all the problems you said. That doesn’t make my ideas false though (I admit aspects of it likely are, I just mean my argument as a whole has basis). It makes them in disagreement. I think yours has problems too, and so does any argument you ever base on something that isn’t what the author intended. Unfortunately, we don’t have the author here to tell us though. Anyway, I’m ranting. Good job. I wanted you to say the very things you said which is why I constructed what I said with these kind of problems. We could go on for hours talking about the problems with the Bible. Just remember, we all bring to it what we’ve learned, from whatever source that may be. That’s why I said on Facebook that I agree with your sentiments but not your basis. Bias is problematic. “Parallelomania” causes problems. It itself is a bias. But if you don’t compare the text to itself what do you have left? You have to compare it to other texts. Genesis is another text. Enoch is another text. The Book of Mormon is another text. Job is the only text that can decide what Job meant. And yet you can’t understand Hebrew or the Bible without a historical context. Likewise you can’t understand Mormon religion without the Book of Mormon, Abraham, the Bible, etc. Many biblical scholars who are Mormon assume the other Mormon scholars are trying to read doctrine into the text. I propose (no fallacy tricks this time :D) that it is a two-edged sword. Mormon scholars are also reading the Bible into the doctrine. I don’t think it is wrong therefore, to understand the Book of Mormon or Mormon Doctrine with the very texts they are based on: The Bible. No matter how you cut it, when a Mormon scholar tries to understand their point of view of Biblical text it is going to be with a Mormon point of view, unless you suppress that and take the scholar’s point of view only. That doesn’t make one way or the other more right. It means that we are choosing our bias. To stop studying the Bible as the basis of our religion because we have to put the world’s scholars first is one of the primary reasons I decided not to pursue graduate work in the field. It is an absurd pursuit that we can easily do at the expense of our beliefs. It is a potentially dangerous one to one’s testimony. But we do need people to do it at times, no matter how problematic that is. I just didn’t want to. Anyway, the reason I did all this was to show that to argue you shouldn’t to this is problematic. Everyone does this. Everyone brings things to the table. Yes, we have to be careful about how we do that, but I see nothing wrong with writing with an eye of faith. It’s impossible to avoid unless you are faithless, and there are benefits to it, as long as you realize you are doing it. The Maxwell Institute and other Mormon entities know they are doing it and why they do it. And honestly, I’m glad they do.
You said: “I now need to admit something. I didn’t specify what the logical fallacy was. I said where it laid, but I didn’t give clear identification of how the fallacy was made.”
Very strange given the fact that you said this: ” But here is your logical fallacy: you presume that Primal Man was born in heaven as a physical being.” You said that I assumed that primal man was born physically before the creation, but that is inaccurate. Look again at my comment above. I have read several books on Job, and have read through several parts of the Hebrew (I’m still only an undergrad with a second year level proficiency; Job’s a pretty tough book to work all the way through with that). Given that, I am not simply dependent on random things scholars say. I had read Callender’s work prior to coming across Roper’s essay, and am convinced by the use of hyl by the author of Job 15 that this is what the author intended in vs. 7. Your argument of a fallacy I am making is nothing other than a statement that I am making a fallacy. Your arguments so far for that fallacy have been unconvincing, especially due to your love for using the word fallacy.
You said: “I did this on purpose. In fact, I knew what I typed up had all the fallacies you pointed out as well :D.”
I highly doubt this, but I’ll take your word for it.
You said: “But there is one major problem: you are still coming at it with your beliefs. That is the fallacy. It is the fallacy that any reader of any text makes. It is impossible not to.”
This is a very interesting statement, especially in light of the next couple of sentences that come after that I’ll discuss below. Yes, any person comes at a text with their past experience (not necessarily belief, we can be aware of what we believe and how similar or how different it is to what we are reading), and this experience will definitely flavor how we read a text. My past experience led me to how I read Job, just the same as it led you to read Job the way you do. This is not a fallacy, especially if “any reader of any texts makes” it. The fallacy is not being aware of how our past experience shapes the way we read it. I still don’t think you are aware of yours.
You said: “I came at it from a religious point of view laced with scholastic work. You came at it with a scholarly point of view.”
I redefined your claim that “beliefs” taken into the text are the fallacy and said that past experiences are. Which is a good thing, because here you say you take in religious beliefs laced with scholarly studies and I only bring in scholarly studies. This isn’t necessarily true at all, as I have already noted that my religious belief is constantly in conversation with these texts as I read them. As you say any reader takes that into reading a text. But, I compare and contrast that religious belief with the text only after I have first given the text the chance to speak on its own, in its context. This is at the heart of academia.
You said: “To truly have no bias you have to come at it with no point of view. But what good would that do? You can’t fix a computer without knowing something about computers, otherwise you wouldn’t even know it needs fixing.”
This analogy makes little sense to me. We aren’t fixing Job. The only thing that we are fixing is our lack in understanding Job. It is not that you take “no point of view” into reading an ancient text. You take the point of view that you are going to learn as much new about the work as you can, and be constantly aware of how your past experience might distort your reading. That is the point of view that I am advocating for.
You said: “You are still missing what I did though. Strip your mind of all the scholarly context and all the religious context. What do you have left? You have the text…I wouldn’t have studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies if I didn’t believe that. But I do find it problematic when we assume scholars trump the text’s context–what the text itself says.”
Again, there is no assumption here that scholars simply have it right. In reading various different arguments from scholars over the last 100 years or so I have weighed various possibilities of how to read the text. To think that the approach that “scholars” take is some monolithic approach or theology is ridiculous. Scholarship is looking at various methods, approaches, and readings, and weighing all of these against one another when you are specifically looking at the data. The Hebrew text has been the central part of this comparison. It gets really tiring when people claim to mix faith with scholarship then deride others for simply assuming scholars have everything right. It’s not only insulting to the intelligence of the individual, but it lacks charity.
You said: “Why are you not open minded about what I said? Because you assume you are right and that the scholars you researched are right. That’s fine. But I assume we all have problems with our arguments.”
I am very open minded about what you said because what you said is exactly how I was taught to read Job before actually reading the Hebrew text. I have given you the reasons in the other comment about why I do not find them convincing, and how I find your arguments to have the same foundational flaws as that of Roper’s in his essay. This is not a simple “open minded/closed minded” discussion. We are engaging in the details of the Hebrew text, which you have claimed are what we should be doing but you have entirely ignored my responses on why I agree with Callender.
You said: “You don’t really know any more than I do or than any of the people that have studied it.”
Why these kinds of comments if we are being cordial? I have claimed nowhere that I know anymore than anyone else. You have shown an acquaintance with Hebrew so I have engaged you as if you know as much as I do, even to the point of including things like, “as you probably already know,” etc.
You said: “After all, ethos, logos, and pathos are all parts of the analytical process.”
Yes, welcome to WRTG 2010, Intermediate Writing. I felt I was trying to make a connection with you as being on the same level as me in my first comment.
You said: “We do try to avoid the pathos as scholars, but in reality feelings or beliefs are inevitably part of the process. There is nothing wrong with trying to get at the meaning of the text. You have to use different tools to do that. The Maxwell Institute does exactly what you and I did. We all have different tools and for that matter different angles.”
I actually think that most at the Maxwell Institute are doing great in regards to the flaws that I see in Roper’s comparison, and the comparison that you have made. The reason I wrote this was post was to ask the wider membership, especially those of us who are studying the text in the academy, to be more careful of the kinds of pitfalls that come when we uncritically make these kinds of comparisons with the way we usually approach Job in Sunday School.
You said: “What is important is that you keep learning and studying and always realize, yes there is a bias.”
Yes, as I’ve already detailed in this response and the one before. I’m just not as convinced that you are taking the same approach as I listed above when you make your claims.
You said: “Frankly, I think your bias, the Maxwell Institute’s bias, and my bias are all important. Otherwise we wouldn’t have fun discussions like these! I agree with you. My argument has all the problems you said. That doesn’t make my ideas false though (I admit aspects of it likely are, I just mean my argument as a whole has basis).”
Definitely, I agree that each and every one of our biases are important, and I would be quick to point out that Roper’s “bias” is not representative of everyone at the MI. Each person there will have their own approach and past experiences to bring to the text.
I would also point out that I am not discussing whether or not my points are “true” and yours “false.” The discussion has more to do with how can we accurately portray what was meant by the author of Job 15, and what is more likely to be accurate than others. I would continue to argue, as I did in my first response, that there are several places in your argument about how to understand the text of Job that are very unlikely, especially in your argument that the council did not take place in heaven, and even more specifically that hasatan is the exact same figure as Satan in later Christian texts.
You said: “I think yours has problems too, and so does any argument you ever base on something that isn’t what the author intended.”
This is what we should be discussing.
You said: “Unfortunately, we don’t have the author here to tell us though.”
No, we don’t. But, this isn’t surprising at all to those of us who study dead people’s texts. We are already past this fact well before we begin reading.
You said: “I wanted you to say the very things you said which is why I constructed what I said with these kind of problems.”
I still highly doubt this due to the fact that you mischaracterize my approach as simply following whatever any scholar, or “scholars” as an entity say. And I would never presume to be leading an “author” because, just as you say, you might not know what exactly an author intended. Since I am here I would point out again that you haven’t accurately represented my approach.
You said: “We could go on for hours talking about the problems with the Bible. Just remember, we all bring to it what we’ve learned, from whatever source that may be.”
Yes, we definitely could. I’d assume that you would continue to claim that I only approach it through whatever random scholar’s past statements were and completely write off whatever I have realized or studied on my own.
You said: “But if you don’t compare the text to itself what do you have left? You have to compare it to other texts. Genesis is another text. Enoch is another text. The Book of Mormon is another text. Job is the only text that can decide what Job meant. And yet you can’t understand Hebrew or the Bible without a historical context.”
For sure. You will notice that I never said that we can not compare these texts to one another. I said that you can not assume in that comparison that Job had exactly the same thing in mind with “haadam” and “Adam” as Job did with the “primal man.” We have to compare these texts, but we have to compare them accurately and be aware of all of the problems that are inherent in comparing them. I still think you’re misunderstanding my post due to these kinds of statements.
You said: “Likewise you can’t understand Mormon religion without the Book of Mormon, Abraham, the Bible, etc. Many biblical scholars who are Mormon assume the other Mormon scholars are trying to read doctrine into the text. I propose (no fallacy tricks this time :D) that it is a two-edged sword. Mormon scholars are also reading the Bible into the doctrine.”
You would have to provide more specific examples of this if we wanted to discuss this more, but yes, the Bible is very important for understanding Mormon thought. To be more specific, the King James Bible is the central text for understanding Mormon thought. I am aware of this through various projects I am working on, including a detailed study of every phrase in the Book of Mormon and its relationship to KJV antecedents (http://gregkofford.com/products/kjv-bofm).
You said: “I don’t think it is wrong therefore, to understand the Book of Mormon or Mormon Doctrine with the very texts they are based on: The Bible.”
Definitely! We have to understand them in this light, as you’ll see in my work on the Book of Mormon. But, how do we make the comparison is the important question. The Book of Mormon should be read in light of the Bible because the Bible precedes the BM historically. But, I find it highly problematic to superimpose ideas in the BM onto the Bible, in a similar way that I view it highly problematic to read the rewritten law material found in Deut. onto that found in Exodus-Numbers because Deut. is rewriting that found in those three books.
You said: “No matter how you cut it, when a Mormon scholar tries to understand their point of view of Biblical text it is going to be with a Mormon point of view, unless you suppress that and take the scholar’s point of view only.”
See again my remarks about being aware of our own personal views and they are similar to and different from the text we are reading.
You said: “That doesn’t make one way or the other more right. It means that we are choosing our bias.”
I think this is an overly simplistic view of how to understand bias in the context of reading and understanding an ancient text.
You said: “To stop studying the Bible as the basis of our religion because we have to put the world’s scholars first is one of the primary reasons I decided not to pursue graduate work in the field.”
Who is claiming that we should stop studying the Bible as the basis of our religion? I only know of scholars who study it as such (Phil Barlow), and others who claim that we need to understand the Bible better in its antebellum context for how it was appropriated and understood in the wake of the second great awakening. I am not aware of any scholar in Mormon studies that would say we need to stop studying the Bible as the basis of the religion; rather, the scholars I am aware of argue that we need to understand it better.
You said: ” It is an absurd pursuit that we can easily do at the expense of our beliefs. It is a potentially dangerous one to one’s testimony. But we do need people to do it at times, no matter how problematic that is.”
I also view this as a very simplistic understanding of not only what could and should be done, but what is done in the field of Mormon academics.
You said: “Yes, we have to be careful about how we do that, but I see nothing wrong with writing with an eye of faith. It’s impossible to avoid unless you are faithless, and there are benefits to it, as long as you realize you are doing it. The Maxwell Institute and other Mormon entities know they are doing it and why they do it. And honestly, I’m glad they do.”
I honestly and truly believe that our faith requires us to approach the study of ancient texts in the way that I have advocated above. Those that I know who work at the MI are also in agreement, as not only my conversations with them indicate but also the latest issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. I am not painting the MI in a negative light simply because I responded to a post from one of their research associates. I was responding directly to that individual and pointing out how I see it as a good example of a flawed approach. Many of us as members of the church only want to see how things are similar and don’t want to discuss the differences and how that might impact the comparison.
I hope my lengthy responses help you to understand my approach a little better, and I hope the pointed comments indicate that I wish that you understand my perspective rather than belittling you or your approach. Even if we disagree I still find your approach very valuable. I would simply argue that there are other, and honestly better, ways of understanding many of these texts.
Hans, this is the kind of care that I think treating the Book of Mormon as a real, historical document will empower. My hope is that we will realize we can’t be sloppy in our claims, and that the Book of Mormon is subject to and benefits from many of the same sorts of human and historical problems as other scripture. Of course, accepting this means giving up our sometimes hidden inerrantist views of Mormon scripture, but I think it has potential to open up our views of God.
Maybe I read too fast, but I liked the question your early paragraphs either said or implied to me: are the parallels fruitful? Is their only point to “prove” Joseph Smith or do they lead to more productive understandings of scripture? While I loved the “proof” kinds of parallels when I was first reading Nibley’s works, it’s the fruitful parallels he drew about how to better live our lives that have stuck with me.