a new approach to the book of mormon - part #1 - biblical criticism

something that has been on my mind for the last several months is a radically different understanding of the book of mormon that, at least for me, breathes a vibrant life and complexity into the text. their are too many different (and sometimes seemingly unrelated) aspects of this way of reading the book of mormon that one or a few posts would be too long and would most likely bore you. instead i've decided to break it down into as many bite-size pieces as i could.

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a few months ago i was attending a mormon studies conference and posed a question to a group of panelists who were discussing the and comparing the mormon concept of the godhead and the tradition christian trinity. the panel consisted of robert millet and a pair of christian theologians from the salt lake theological seminary. in response to different appeals to scripture to justify certain beliefs about god (and thus implying that these were the 'true' or at least adequately justifiable early christian beliefs), i posed the following question:

most biblical scholars are in agreement that besides a few letters of paul, we really don't know who wrote the new testament. mathew, mark, luke, and john were not written by disciples of christ named mathew, mark, luke, and john. paul's epistles were mostly not written by paul. the other epistles likely were not written by their purported authors either. though those who picked out the canon of the bible appealed to apostolicity for standards of canonization, the truth was that these texts were picked out because they felt the texts best represented their beliefs and practices. granted that this is a bit of a simplistic, but as such, is it really even appropriate to appeal to the bible to claim that christ and his direct disciples taught x, y, and z, when in reality the texts can really only reflect the beliefs of the christians at the time of canonization?

robert millet's response to the question was very telling. basically, he leaned back and deferred the question over to the two evangelical panelists who, though a bit stumped, tried to give the best answer they could come up with at the moment (they were able to give me a little better response at a dinner that night, though i can't quite remember what it was).

the interesting point of this story was that it illustrated the inability for many lds theologians (especially of the ces/byu brand) to adequately respond to and deal with biblical criticism, while their christian associates have largely been able to accomodate and learn from it. i am not claiming that lds theologians have completely ignored bibical criticism, but that they have failed to adequately acknowledge and infer the implications of textual, form, redaction, narrative, and other criticisms that give an often very different perspective of the biblical texts.

there are two main reasons i see for this failure in mormonism. the first is that mormonism tends to hold fairly fundamentalist views concerning scripture. while joseph smith's idea of scripture was very radical and dynamic, mormonism has in some large degrees left that expansive view and pushed to an almost mormon version of kjv-only fanaticism. the second reasons (which is also a reason for the first) is that much of mormon theology, tradition, and scripture is highly dependent of a more fundamentalist kjv understanding of the bible.

here are a few examples of some largely uncontested conclusions of biblical criticism that many mormons would have serious trouble accepting.

-the first five books of the bible (genesis -deuteronomy) were not written by moses, nor were they written by a single author. rather they are a blending of different texts from different authors with different purposes, often contradicting each other. for example (as i mentioned in my last post) the creation account in genesis is actually composed of at least two very different accounts. this creates problems for joseph smith's book of moses which is often claimed to be the original source of genesis written by moses himself.

-the sermon on the mount was never given as a single sermon, but is largely a collection of sayings by jesus (some most likely inauthentic) compiled into a single sermon by later authors. this creates problems for the book of mormon where jesus following his resurrection gives a nearly identical sermon to the inhabitants of america.

-the book of isaiah was most likely written by at least two authors, the latter (often called deutero-isaiah) begins with the 40th chapter and was written after the exile around 545 bc. this creates problems for the book of mormon where nephi quotes deutero-isaiah from the brass plates, even though they were written after he reached the americas.

other problems include the unknown authorship of almost every book and epistle in the bible, the possible inauthenticity of the ending of the gospel of mark, the origin of the hebrew bible from oral traditions (both their own, and adopted from others), and a plethora of other biblical texts that mormon scripture, tradition, and theology are largely dependent on.

typically, the response of lds theologians to these issues have been either silence or denial. like robert millet above, the lds theologian's usual response is to treat it like a malnourished african child - look away and hope it either dies or somehow manages to resolve itself. when pressed they're next response is usually to hold a position of infallibility of modern scriptures and attack the criticism as being a misguided and spiritually malnourished child of faithless intellectuals.

as i hope to show in the next several posts, these two responses can no longer be sustained and that a deeper and more critical reading of mormon texts can open up a way for a more vibrant and authentic understanding of lds scripture