Melchezidek Priesthood, Josiah Cleansing, and the Nature of the "Trinity"

[David T]

nackhadlow,

If you don't need Abraham, Moses, David, or Isaiah, may I infer that you don't need Joseph Smith, either?

That's kind of a strange question. I don't discount as irrelevant or even without a divine hand the books that contain literary accounts of the individuals' lives, or even purport to be by them. The actual human author of the texts does not change what power those texts can have in my life, and what truth they can convey. I am indebted to whoever actually did compose, compile, and edit those texts for the insight I have gained from them. An author is required, or 'needed'. The knowledge of details of the identity of that author, in this case, does not.

On one level, when it comes to the texts presented by Joseph, the same could be said.

However, unlike with those Old Testament individuals named, it's undeniable (in the realm of actual reason) to us today that Joseph Smith not only lived, but that he had direct, personal involvement in the production of texts that are held as inspired, and scriptural in the LDS Church today. When it comes to the texts, we have autographs, and multiple verified contemporary witnesses.

As for his existence, apart from those things, we have his grave, and his physical remains. We have clear genetic descendants.

Whatever one may make of the ultimate origins of the source of the texts that went through Joseph's hand, it is clear that they did, in fact, go through Joseph's hand. When one sees a divine hand in the composition of the text, we are very aware of who that hand would have to have been working through.

And then when one adds in the claims for dissemination of divine authority, by which sacred and essential aspects of the Church are founded, and it is understood that the authority had the historical Joseph Smith Junior as its modern fount, his reality as an individual and as a mediator or disseminator of divine knowledge and authority does become important.

The historical Abraham and or Moses could easily be personified composites of religious and authoritative ideals (and individuals) used for rhetorical purposes, and that wouldn't change the nature of the centuries later texts in which they make appearances as characters for me. It wouldn't change the reality for me of the hand of God in the course of the development and of Israelite religion.

However, it would make a difference if the person known in 19th Century American secular and religious history as Joseph Smith, a few generations removed from us today, were to be shown to have not existed, or be a fictional character, that would not only completely affect how the modern manifestation of what I understand to be an inspired development in revealed religion would need to be understood, but also necessitate a radical reassessment of basic practices and assumptions of modern historical research as well.

If that answers your question.

[Kevin Christensen]

Mormons can accept Margaret Barker's speculative reconstruction of pre-Old Testament Israelite religion and theology only at the cost of utterly undermining the Book of Mormon, which pervasively reflects the same despised "Deuteronomic," "Josianic" perspective and presupposes that Moses, the Ten Commandments, and all of the book of Isaiah originated before 600 BC.

One would have thought that if Barker's reconstruction of The Older Testament utterly undermines the Book of Mormon that she would have noticed when she read it. She judges that the Book of Mormon accurately depicts the situation in Jerusalem in 600 BCE as she reconstructs it, as the her published comments from the 2005 Joseph Smith Conference at the Library of Congress demonstrate.

In LDS circles, there is some debate about whether the Book of Mormon reflects a Deuteronmist perspective. Terrence Szinc's essay in FARMS Review 16/2 might agree with Robert. My essay in the same issue disagrees. And there is TT out there who dismisses it all because his paradigm requires it. But many of us, some of them who are very well informed on scholarly matters, are very impressed.

What is clear is that Lehi and Nephi read about Moses in the Brass plates. What is less obvious is Ben McGuire's hypothesis that the Book of Mormon quotations of Deuteronomy always come from that strata of the text designated as proto-Deuteronomy. It is obvious that when Abinadi quotes the 10 commandments, he quotes the Exodus version, not the Deuteronomy version. There are some notable differences.

Personally, I think that Jacob's debate with Sherem in Jacob 7 is a reflection of the contemporary tensions in 600 BCE, between the Wisdom tradition and the new views of the reformers. I think that the passage in Jacob 4 on "blindness" caused by looking "beyond the mark" is a direct comment on those in Jerusalem who rejected the role of the anointed high priests (whose anointing was quite literally the mark that Ezekiel describes). And the blindness that Jacob describes is the same that Jeremiah and Ezekiel and 1 Enoch describe in the period just before the destruction of the temple. I noticed that Jeremiah contradicts Deuteronomy on the very issues that Margaret sees as key to the reform.

Rob says:

By the way, not that it matters to many Mormons, but the New Testament also presupposes the validity of the Old Testament in essentially the same form and doctrinal perspective that we have today.

See Margaret's "Text and Context" essay on the transmission of Hebrew scripture:

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/TextAndContext.pdf

Compare that essay with the story in 1 Nephi 13.

Also compare John Gee's essay Early Christians in Disarray.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=42&chapid=206

but perhaps you can help me out by directing me to his article or articles (out of the large number of articles at the link you gave) in which Kevin refutes the following points I made:

that the Book of Mormon presupposes that the Ten Commandments predated 600 BC

that the Book of Mormon presupposes that Isaiah (including so-called Deutero-Isaiah) was written before 600 BC

It's is not necessary to refute the point about the 10 commandments, nor to refute that the Book of Mormon presupposes Isaiah before 600 BCE. As John Welch observes in an essay in Isaiah and the Prophets, the Book of Mormon only requires that the portions of Isaiah that it quotes (except for the quotes provided by Jesus) be available on the Brass plates. Nephi and Lehi lived in a period when when the Moses traditions were being reemphasized. They can witness that without having personally witnessed the parting of the Red Sea. Or reed sea, if you prefer. I personally think that the Brass Plates were commissioned during the reign of Jehoiakim, who was installed by the Egyptians. I think they were done at the request of the Egyptian King for the same reason that the Septuaguint was later done for a later Egyptian King. As a gift for the Royal Library for purposes of prestige and diplomatic education. This happened after the defeat of Josiah during a period when the reformers were in a state of disarray, following the death of their figurehead. With the defeat of the Egyptians and the installation of Zedekiah, the political picture changes, and the Brass Plates sit in Laban's treasury, the plans for the use interrupted.

And I think that recent Scholarship on the Isaiah issue is very promising, and has become more so since I wrote my chapter in Paradigms Regained. Margaret's case that Isaiah 53, the Fourth Servant Song, was written about Hezekiah's bout with the plague, is, I think, very powerful. You can find it at www.margaretbarker.com

In addition, please refer me to an article in which anyone refutes the following observation:

that the Book of Mormon exhibits the same alleged "conflation" of Yahweh (the Lord) with Elohim (God) as supposedly was a principal theological contribution of the Deuteronomists

Brand Gardner's previously cited FAIR essay is very good on how the Book of Mormon picture fits with newer research by Mark Smith and Margaret Barker. And I discussed it in Paradigms Regained.

"And blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest in the Son of the most high God" (1 Nephi 11:6)

"And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ended these sayings he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and said unto them: Behold, ye have heard the things which I taught before I ascended to my Father; . . . Behold, I am he that gave the law, and I am he who covenanted with my people Israel; therefore, the law in me is fulfilled, for I have come to fulfil the law; therefore it hath an end." 3 Nephi 15:1, 5

In the Book of Mormon, Jesus is Yahweh who gave the Law, and the Son of El Elyon, the Most High God.

Barker's theories are inimical to historic orthodox Christian faith and to evangelical theology. That would be a problem for me if I thought Barker's theories were true.

Other Christians find them quite powerful and faith promoting. The Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, who awarded her a doctorate for Temple Themes in Christian Worship, or Professor John McDade, who wrote:

Meyer and Wright have made a strong case for a body of esoteric teachings given by Jesus

about his death to an inner group of disciples. Barker has amplified this and provided a

possible account of the source and content of that teaching by uncovering the significance of

mystical traditions within Judaism which were afterwards excised by the Rabbinic reordering

of Judaism after the traumas of CE 70 and 135. What flows into the Christian development

of 2nd Temple imagery has as much right to claim continuity with Biblical Judaism as does

Rabbinic Judaism. If Barker is right, then the principal Jewish context in which we must

place Jesus is not that of Galilean healers and teachers, but that of mystical Judaism and

Temple traditions. Her case, of course, depends upon certain hypotheses and certain

connections being made, but in my view it has considerable merit in proposing a context

within which Jesus may have come to a grasp of his ultimate significance.

From Jesus In Recent Research

Catholic Theological Association Conference 1998, published in The Month (December

1998), 495-505. He is discussing the significance of her book The Risen Lord: The Jesus of History as the Christ of Faith.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[WalkerW]

Great response, Kevin. David Bokovoy has a theory regarding Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon as well. I suggest watching the whole thing, but Part 4 is relevant to the conversation at hand.

[WalkerW]

Also, see David Larsen's post on Isaiah and the comments that follow.

[Kevin Christensen]

Also, see David Larsen's post on Isaiah and the comments that follow.

Yes... I wanted to point this one out but couldn't remember how to find it. It is very interesting. Thanks for the link.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[David T]

[ I still like the idea that the Small Plates have as their base text a sacral history of eponymous ancestors (like Genesis) pseudepigraphically written, and retrojected in history to a century or so before the Lehite ancestors would have actually showed up, based on starting their record where the Deuteronomistic History (on their brass plates) ended its record. That's right - the idea would make the Nephites actually have come over post-exilic ... but that's another discussion ]

[WalkerW]

[ I still like the idea that the Small Plates have as their base text a sacral history of eponymous ancestors (like Genesis) pseudepigraphically written, and retrojected in history to a century or so before the Lehite ancestors would have actually showed up, based on starting their record where the Deuteronomistic History (on their brass plates) ended its record. That's right - the idea would make the Nephites actually have come over post-exilic ... but that's another discussion ]

You have a way of making people think, nackhadlow.