Eschaton

He won't find any mainstream scholars arguing that Jesus thought marriage would continue in the eschaton.

You misunderstand. I'm not arguing that Jesus was an ascetic who required strict celibacy. I'm giving you the framework showing that Jesus did not value family relationships over celibacy, that his view was an immanent apocalypse, and that he understood as marriage as not continuing on beyond this life. All three of those are standards of New Testament scholarship. The "like the angels in heaven" is your clue that Jesus did not think marriage would continue past this life. Other important passages include his praise for those who abandon wives and children to live Jesus' lifestyle.

- “I suggest that Jesus—anticipating the final tribulation, general resurrection, the incoming of the exiles, a last judgment, even his own end-time role—did not expect there to be a next generation. He thought of himself as inaugurating the new age, when people would be like the angels, when marriage and childbirth would be no longer needed. To advocate a celibate lifestyle for everyone is no simple social program; it signals the end of the age. Thus it is the apocalyptic setting that substantially drives his so-called ‘moral’ program.” Kloppenborg, John S., and John W. Marshall. 2005. Apocalypticism, Anti-Semitism and the Historical Jesus: Subtexts in Criticism. Vol. 275. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series. London; New York: T&T Clark International. - The correctness of this interpretation is assured by the fact that it is difficult to conceive of an act of “being counted worthy” as occurring at any time subsequent to physical death. This logion, then, reflects the view that humanity is currently divided into two classes, the “sons of this age.” who marry, and “those who are counted worthy to attain that age and the resurrection from the dead,” i.e., “sons of God” or “sons of the resurrection,” who do not marry. That is, celibacy is regarded as a prerequisite for resurrection. (p. 121) Aune, David E., “Luke 20:34-36: A ‘Gnosticized’ Logion of Jesus?”, Jesus, Gospel Tradition and Paul in the Context of Jewish and Greco-Roman Antiquity: Collected Essays II (WUNT.1 303), 2013. And of course in Jewish apocalyptic literature, only the wicked, fallen angels have relations with women. 1 Enoch 15:6-7 1 And He answered and said to me, and I heard His voice: 'Fear not, Enoch, thou righteous 2 man and scribe of righteousness: approach hither and hear my voice. And go, say to the Watchers of heaven, who have sent thee to intercede for them: "You should intercede" for men, and not men 3 for you: Wherefore have ye left the high, holy, and eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men and taken to yourselves wives, and done like the children 4 of earth, and begotten giants (as your) sons And though ye were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten (children) with the blood of flesh, and, as the children of men, have lusted after flesh and blood as those also do who die 5 and perish**. Therefore have I given them wives also that they might impregnate them, and beget 6 children by them, that thus nothing might be wanting to them on earth. But you were formerly 7 spiritual, living the eternal life, and immortal for all generations of the world. And therefore I have not appointed wives for you; for as for the spiritual ones of the heaven, in heaven is their dwelling.**

Jesus says they're "like the angels in heaven." So yes, sexless. Jesus never makes any such distinction. There is no reason to read contemporary LDS doctrine into an ancient first century text. Your argument is sophistry. Biblical scholars read Jesus' statements on marriage the same way I do. The only reason you're trying to lawyer in an exception is because of your commitment to contemporary LDS dogmas. No, it's not an assumption, this is all coming from historical scholarship of the Bible. Jesus praises the sexless and never praises family relationships. Jesus forbids divorce and remarriage, not divorce per se. Timothy, a second century forgery, is the prime example of Roman family values creeping into Christianity, as I mentioned in my previous post. Some early Christian ascetism was based on philosophy, but in Paul and Jesus' case, it was likely just due to their belief in the impending eschaton. There is no use in getting married and starting families when the end of history is coming any day now. Paul and Jesus didn't forbid marriage, but they treated celibacy as a higher way of living.

24 Jesus said to them, “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. The angels in heaven of course being sexless. It strikes me as a dishonest reading to parse out the words to suggest that Jesus was suggesting that existing marriages would be valid in the afterlife. Jesus wasn't pro-marriage to begin with - he asked his followers to abandon their families and praised those who lived as eunuchs. In fact both Jesus and Paul were in favor of celibacy and didn't celebrate family relationships. That narrative in Christianity only came later, as Roman cultural values started to creep in.

oops, wrong thread

We do have different standards - you're going by the received Christian tradition and I'm going by the historical consensus.

We don't have eye witness testimony to that effect. That comes from John, written last in the 90s CE, the least historical of the four gospels. We have no eye witness testimony in regards to any of the teachings of Jesus, but the self-exalting sayings in John are the least likely to be historical. Otherwise one has to explain why that kind of language doesn't appear in our earliest gospels. If the authors of Mark/Matthew/Luke knew that Jesus was saying those kinds of things, why didn't they report it? And why do the sayings in John match the writing style of the author of John's gospel? By historical standards only a small percentage of the reported sayings of Jesus are likely to have been something Jesus actually said in life. Those historically likely sayings include some of the memorable aphorisms and parables, and other sayings that align with historical criteria.

That's a Christian theological view. From a historical perspective Jesus was a law-observant apocalyptic Jewish wisdom teacher who, like many other Jewish thinkers, had his own interpretation of Torah.

Indeed! Jesus himself was not in any sense a Christian, but Christian empathy derives from his Jewish teachings, which did not emerge in a vacuum.

Yup, exactly. Regarding the most conservative religious groups, it's definitely white evangelicals and LDS: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/party-identification-among-religious-groups-and-religiously-unaffiliated-voters/

While it's not comprehensive, it's enough to show a trend away from empathy as a value amongst the two most conservative American religious groups. Empathy gets in the way of the aims of the wicked, so they propaganize their adherents to harden their hearts against human kindness. Propagandists are eager to have their abuses tolerated by the American public, hence the anti-empathy campaign.

I envy you not having heard of it, but it's real: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/22/nx-s1-5321299/how-empathy-came-to-be-seen-as-a-weakness-in-conservative-circles

Yes I believe that's right

I value empathy. The opponents of Christ and traditional Christianity do not. Do you value empathy Kenngo?

There are fundamentalist evangelicals for sure, but not every evangelical is a fundamentalist.

In terms of LDS people, it may be the word itself that people are rejecting to due to their political affiliations, but not (yet) the concept itself in their every day life. Hard to say.

This seems to be an exercise in excuse-making. We all know certain extremists have come out against empathy in recent years, and the slow poison has worked its way into the two most conservative religious populations, white evangelicals and Latter-Day Saints. White evangelicals are probably a lost cause at this point, but I don't think the same is true of LDS people.

Empathy is a traditional Christian value, which the opponents of Christianity have rejected. You don't seem to understand what the word means.

A recent survey on empathy found that white Evangelicals care the least about empathy, followed by Latter-Day Saints. Although LDS people scored low, white evangelicals scored by far the lowest. A symptom of America's recent moral decline. I hope LDS leadership can shore up the Christian value of empathy among church members even as radical extremists try to poison their followers against this traditional Christian value. https://religionnews.com/2026/10/20/an-empathy-gap-divides-americans-ahead-of-the-midterms-say-prri-report/ "Religious groups were also split. At least two-thirds of most major religious groups said empathy “is a foundational moral value for a healthy society,” as did 83% of religiously unaffiliated Americans. White evangelicals were the least likely to name empathy as a foundational social value (42%), and more than half of white evangelicals (54%) said, “empathy can become dangerous when it leads people away from building a society guided by God’s truth.”

It's 100% strawman. You're trying to say that mainstream historical critical scholarships is just "positivism" which is absolutely false. The textual/literary dependence on the BOM on the NT is all throughout the book. None of the post-NT authors in the BOM would have had access to the NT anyway, so this is moot. You've already gone away from history here and into theology. History doesn't have access to the risen Jesus, so appealing to your religious beliefs as a way of fixing historical anachronisms is just a non-starter. Let me make it easy for you. Here is a pretty comprehensive list of early Christian documents from the first several centuries of Christianity. Can you locate the Book of Mormon in this list? https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ If not, why not? Is it a positivist conspiracy? The parts of Barker's scholarship that LDS apologists seem to like don't actually get you to a historical Book of Mormon and they don't address the many problems with the Book. If you think that other historical critical Biblical scholars are taking up the mantle of Barker's temple theology, I would invite you to name them. I'm not referring to theologians but actual Biblical scholars doing historical critical work. Barker's more quixotic ideas support her particular theological views, but they haven't found any purchase in the larger historical landscape. Of course not all of her ideas are crazy. Her reconstructions of Christian-like Judaism based on post-Christian texts hundreds of years after the fact has most definitely not caught on among other scholars. No amount of apologetic wishcasting can change that. Biblical scholarship does change over time as new arguments and evidence are seen as being stronger, but it doesn't change with a single outlier scholar whose career is almost over. No one has taken up the mantle of Barker, and even if they did, it wouldn't get you to a historical BOM

Actually I'm not sure! I have heard that before, not sure how important it really is.

Retain as BYU students

I know so many BYU pre-med students who came to our area for med school, and then move back to Utah once they graduate. I'm sure they'll retain a lot more students with this new program.

My guess is he means follow the data when it comes to data-driven fields like history or science. Faith isn't data driven, and Dan has never advocated against faith.