Relationship with Heavenly Parents

[CV75]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

https://wordcounter.net/blog/2015/12/08/10975_how-many-words-bible.html
 

Whether they had a problem or not, they clearly chose not to for the most part.  Over 780,000 words in the Bible and a little over 14,000 spoken by women. If you had that kind of relationship with your daughter, you would likely be accused of neglect. 

When it comes to revelation, I think this boils down to a basic principle, however corrupted throughout religious history, that the keys of revelation for the entire congregation are held by men, and so their words (and they are supposed to be the voice of the Lord, not theirs) are recorded and presented as canon.

When it comes to religious history and inspired sayings, of course women of faith acted and spoke by the gift or influence of the Holy Ghost, a position of moral authority, or by priesthood assignment (I see Deborah the Judge and the New Testament deaconesses as examples of the latter). If anything constituting the will of the Lord that should be in the canon is missing, I think it would either have been removed with other plain and precious things (unlikely given the following), or the basic principle described in 1 Nephi 19:6; to paraphrase, “the prophets did not write anything save it be that they thought it be sacred. And now, if they did err, and they did err, it was because of the weakness which was in them, according to the flesh.”

Edited December 19, 2021 by CV75

[MacGyver]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

https://wordcounter.net/blog/2015/12/08/10975_how-many-words-bible.html
 

Over 780,000 words in the Bible and a little over 14,000 spoken by women. 

This is a very misleading statistic.

How many of the words in the Bible are directly about women or applicable to women?

A lot more than 14,000, that's for sure. 

[Chum]

4 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

14 hours ago, Calm said:

Over 780,000 words in the Bible and a little over 14,000 spoken by women. 

This is a very misleading statistic.  How many of the words in the Bible are directly about women or applicable to women?  A lot more than 14,000, that's for sure. 

There's little need for women to speak because they have men to speak about them - is the most Guy comment ever.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Chum

[MacGyver]

10 minutes ago, Chum said:

There's little need for women to speak because they have men to speak about them - is the most Guy comment ever.

Which guy supposedly said that?

[Chum]

Just now, MacGyver said:

Which guy supposedly said that?

Which one indeed.

[MacGyver]

4 minutes ago, Chum said:

Which one indeed.

I certainly didn't say that, if that's what you're insinuating. 

[rodheadlee]

You all are beating McGyver up for no reason. You are imputing motives to him that are not there. He can speak for himself but I think he is like me and tries to get his point across with few words. 

You are also bringing presentism into the discussion. You know full well that women were not given the same opportunities and respect in old testament times through the 19th century as they are now. 

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, rodheadlee said:

You are also bringing presentism into the discussion. You know full well that women were not given the same opportunities and respect in old testament times through the 19th century as they are now. 

That is the point I am actually trying to make.  We don’t hear from or about them in scriptures for those reasons.  Acting like they were fully respected and had all the voice they needed is what I challenge.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Calm

[Nofear]

On 12/18/2021 at 2:55 PM, MacGyver said:

The term "Heavenly Parents" is not found anywhere in the Articles of Faith or in the scriptures for that matter.

There is also no instruction or command to build a relationship with our Heavenly Mother. We are to build a relationship with the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), not our Heavenly Parents. 

But presumably by being faithful to the commandments and loving and serving God and our fellow man, we also please our Heavenly Mother as she is undoubtedly aware of us and cares about us, too. 

While certainly it is true that she is spoken of less often than Heavenly Father, she is certainly spoken of. At the same time, some of your other comments suggest a lack of acquaintance on the topic.
https://www.squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleWelchHeavenlyMother.html
https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/a-mother-there-a-survey-of-historical-teachings-about-mother-in-heaven/

Heavenly Parents is part of the YW theme and The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Others assert that the scriptures do have quite a bit more of her (e.g. a little more academic: https://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleLarsenHeavenlyMother.html). I personally don't find the need to search in that way. As an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, equal companion to my Heavenly Father united in perfect harmony there is no interaction with my Heavenly Father but that she is aware and/or participatory and vice versa. The Revelators of the Church have revealed her and each of us may participate in those same revelations, as is our right, nay, our obligation.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Nofear

[rodheadlee]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

That is the point I am actually trying to make.  We don’t hear from or about them in scriptures for those reasons.  Acting like they were fully respected and had all the voice they needed is what I challenge.

For their time period they were perhaps represented adequately. Not according to their needs but according to the Lord's needs. I haven't a clue what has been recorded and left out. That is the realm of scholars not Carpenters.

[Chum]

1 hour ago, rodheadlee said:

You all are beating McGyver up for no reason. You are imputing motives to him that are not there. He can speak for himself but I think he is like me and tries to get his point across with few words. 

You are also bringing presentism into the discussion. You know full well that women were not given the same opportunities and respect in old testament times through the 19th century as they are now. 

recap

woman: The Bible doesn't include a lot of stuff women have to say.

guy: Misleading! Bible Guys say stuff about women all the time.

[MacGyver]

3 hours ago, Chum said:

recap

woman: The Bible doesn't include a lot of stuff women have to say.

guy: Misleading! Bible Guys say stuff about women all the time.

This is an inaccurate recap.

The initial claim by a certain woman was not that "the Bible doesn't include a lot of stuff women have to say."

The charge was that the authors of the Bible were just a bunch of men giving their opinions about God who didn't care about women. Then some false and misleading stats were provided in order to support the first charge.

Way more than 93 women are talked about in the Bible. Women are present and part of the story all throughout the Bible. Thousands, if not millions, of women are talked about. 

As for spoken words by women compared to the overall number of words in the Bible. That number is very misleading. The Bible isn't mostly dialog and quotes of various men. Much of it is God speaking to men and women. A lot of it is stories about men and women. The prophets who compiled the Bible were all men, so even the 14,000 words spoken by women are recorded by men. So this 14,000 out 750,000 number is very misleading. 

And for the record, I did not at any point suggest that women didn't need to talk because men could just talk about them. 

You're framing it that way in order to pick a fight. Why is that? 

 

[MacGyver]

5 hours ago, Nofear said:

While certainly it is true that she is spoken of less often than Heavenly Father, she is certainly spoken of. At the same time, some of your other comments suggest a lack of acquaintance on the topic.
https://www.squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleWelchHeavenlyMother.html
https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/a-mother-there-a-survey-of-historical-teachings-about-mother-in-heaven/

Heavenly Parents is part of the YW theme and The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Others assert that the scriptures do have quite a bit more of her (e.g. a little more academic: https://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleLarsenHeavenlyMother.html). I personally don't find the need to search in that way. As an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, equal companion to my Heavenly Father united in perfect harmony there is no interaction with my Heavenly Father but that she is aware and/or participatory and vice versa. The Revelators of the Church have revealed her and each of us may participate in those same revelations, as is our right, nay, our obligation.

I know quite a bit about the early Utah teachings about Heavenly Mother already, but thanks for the additional resources. They look interesting.

[MacGyver]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

That is the point I am actually trying to make.  We don’t hear from or about them in scriptures for those reasons.  Acting like they were fully respected and had all the voice they needed is what I challenge.

I believe that the women in the scriptures were fully respected, but I recognize that many 21st century women disagree with this.

What does any of this have to do with Heavenly Mother, though?

Edited December 20, 2021 by MacGyver

[Chum]

25 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

Way more than 93 women are talked about in the Bible. Women are present and part of the story all throughout the Bible. Thousands, if not millions, of women are talked about. 

Yep. Guys talking about women still isn't the same thing as listening to what women have to say. Not even if guys talk about them 1 bazillion times.

[MacGyver]

4 minutes ago, Chum said:

Yep. Guys talking about women still isn't the same thing as listening to what women have to say. Not even if guys talk about them 1 bazillion times.

The Bible was recorded by men.  Every word in the Bible was written down by a man. That's simply the way it is. That doesn't make the Bible sexist. 

The Bible is full of stories about women and includes their words. So I don't know where you're getting this idea that the men weren't listening to women. They literally recorded their words. Clearly they listened to them. 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, MacGyver said:

by a certain woman

So, do you pick up the habit of not calling women by their name from anywhere in particular?

[MacGyver]

18 minutes ago, Calm said:

So, do you pick up the habit of not calling women by their name from anywhere in particular?

Must have picked it up from Chum who referred to you as "woman" and me as "guy."

Tacenda accused the prophets who recorded the Bible of being sexists who didn't care about women, Calm tried to back this claim up with false and misleading statistics, and Bluebell tried to back Calm up. Is that better?

Edited December 20, 2021 by MacGyver

[Calm]

3 hours ago, MacGyver said:

Tacenda accused the prophets who recorded the Bible of being sexists who didn't care about women, Calm tried to back this claim up with false and misleading statistics, and Bluebell tried to back Calm up. Is that better?

Nope. Not my intent. I don’t read minds, so Bluebell and Tacenda will have to speak for themselves. 

Edited December 20, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

My view of discussing the Bible and other ancient scriptures here on this board is often similar to how I view Star Trek.  Not because Star Trek is fiction, but because it is not the story of the 22nd century.  What we are actually see is a story by 20th century people who are projecting their own ideas and reactions on the 22nd century…and probably getting it spectacularly wrong.  We have a lot more to work with in the Bible given the time period has actually occurred already, but we are still projecting. We see things as we are, not as they are.  A cliche, but an accurate one. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/09/as-we-are/

Ancient biblical times understood what men and women are and their relationships in different ways than we do. They used different languages that we can only guess at what the nuances mean. Sometimes we don’t even know the language. I don’t think it is useful to assume that if they didn’t treat women like I or others would want them to be treated today, that means women weren’t respected or cared for. But also wrong is to believe that women were seen as equals or treated the same as men were in terms of rights and freedoms or the ability to make choices for themselves. The legal contracts defined in the Bible are simply different for men and women in many cases. For example, what men can do to get a divorce is different than what women could do.
 

Another wrong would be to assume that if the women of that time had the opportunity to make choices that we can make today, they would choose as most of us do or that their reasons for their choices would resemble our own beyond the basic needs of wanting safety and happiness.  Maybe they do, more likely they don’t.  Having significant leisure time, access to education, medical services, and technology and other cultural differences changes how we fill our needs and therefore will change our perception of our needs as well eventually.

 

I don’t believe that Heavenly Mother’s voice appears to be absent from scripture because those who wrote scripture didn’t care about her, assuming they believed she existed (I say that because some would debate that they did, but I am not making any such claims), but it is also pretty obvious that there is not a lot of women speaking in scripture like there are men, not by a long shot even if one stipulates that women’s voices are being accurately recorded by male scribes. 
 

One of the common religious hobbies I have seen is the desire to identify all the characters being described in scripture.  There is, of course, debate on the exact characters…some are said by some to be different people, others say the person has more than one name, such as Jethro/Reuel/Hobab; same thing goes for same name, different home or family connection identified. 
 

I have seen books whose intent is to list all the characters for the Bible, Book of Mormon***, and the D&C. The authors typically give whatever identifying ‘marks’ are included, usually starting with the name if given. Thus, it is pretty easy to count female characters being described, whether or not they are named, and get an approximate number, check to see if they are given any speech, whether paraphrased or said to be quoted and compare it to men by the same method. 
 

All this defines imo is the percentage of women’s voices in scripture. It does not define whether or not the women of the time would see themselves and their ideas, beliefs, desires accurately or adequately represented or not when interpreted and/or presented by the male authors. 
 

One can draw conclusions about if the percentage of women’s voices has to do with actual respect or caring of women as individuals in their culture/communities and/or if there is a need for more female voices from those times in order to understand those women better and how they saw their roles (and could point to the effort by the Church to make accessible more women’s voices from our early church history as demonstrating leadership believe it is important to give women in history a chance to speak for themselves where possible), but that was not my purpose for posting the numbers reported from a study of the Bible.

I was merely challenging the claim that prophets recorded the experiences and thoughts of many different women. If by many, one means women’s voices appear in a significant (in terms of amount, not importance) percentage of the texts or even remotely similar to the numbers of men recorded (speaking of individuals speaking or described and not men or women addressed as a generic topic), I think that can be and has been demonstrated to be false.  “Many” is usually defined by context.  If talking about a total of ten, 7 and above could be defined as ‘many’.  In the context of thousands, around 100 or 200 or less is not “many”.

***for example:  https://deseretbook.com/p/book-mormon-whos-who-ed-j-pinegar-3220?variant_id=109000-ebook

For others, just type “who’s who” into Deseretbook. It is a popular choice for a title for this kind of book.  I used to work in a church bookstore and sold earlier versions of the ones currently listed on DB, plus I inherited an ‘everyone and their dog in the Book of Mormon’ book from my grandmother. Not sure if it is still on my shelf or not. Been purging the house lately. 
 

Another venerable hobby is giving names to the nameless:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_for_the_biblical_nameless

Edited December 20, 2021 by Calm

[MacGyver]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

 

If your intent wasn't to back Tacenda up, why did you post those statistics and say that if a father had that type of relationship with his daughter, he would be accused of neglect?

Edited December 20, 2021 by MacGyver

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

If your intent wasn't to back Tacenda up, why…say that if a father had that type of relationship with his daughter, he would be accused of neglect?

Because I think more than one interpretation is reasonable given we can’t ask the men who wrote why they made the choices they did.  And if someone doesn’t have their own relationship with God or doesn’t see prophets as facilitating their relationship, I can understand why they might interpret scripture in a more negative way than I do.  To be completely dismissive of that position is not helpful in allowing them to see a more positive view as more reasonable.

Quote

why did you post those statistics

Just because she made an overstatement doesn’t make your overstatement any more acceptable to me.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Calm

[MacGyver]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

Ancient biblical times understood what men and women are and their relationships in different ways than we do. They used different languages that we can only guess at what the nuances mean. Sometimes we don’t even know the language. I don’t think it is useful to assume that if they didn’t treat women like I or others would want them to be treated today, that means women weren’t respected or cared for.

A completely agree with you here. The people of the past lived very differently than we do today. It's a mistake to judge people of the past by the norms of our modern western society. 

7 hours ago, Calm said:

I was merely challenging the claim that prophets recorded the experiences and thoughts of many different women.

Thanks for clearing that up. It really looked like you were backing Tacenda up, especially when you made the comment about a father being accused of neglect if he spoke that much more than his daughter.

I guess it comes down to how we want to define many. In this context I was using many to mean a lot. And a believe that we have a lot of women's experiences recorded in the Bible, even though we have significantly more experiences of men. The Bible is full of stories and women play a role in many of them. 

 

 

[MacGyver]

14 minutes ago, Calm said:

Because I think more than one interpretation is reasonable given we can’t ask the men who wrote why they made the choices they did.  And if someone doesn’t have their own relationship with God or doesn’t see prophets as facilitating their relationship, I can understand why they might interpret scripture in a more negative way than I do.  To be completely dismissive of that position is not helpful in allowing them to see a more positive view as more reasonable.

Just because she made an overstatement doesn’t make your overstatement any more acceptable to me.

Can you see how your comments appeared to back up her charge against the prophets who recorded the Bible? 

[bluebell]

11 hours ago, MacGyver said:

Must have picked it up from Chum who referred to you as "woman" and me as "guy."

Tacenda accused the prophets who recorded the Bible of being sexists who didn't care about women, Calm tried to back this claim up with false and misleading statistics, and Bluebell tried to back Calm up. Is that better?

I take issue with the word tried.  We succeeded.  

The point was not to argue that the bible is sexist and can't be trust as God's word.  The point was to argue against the idea that the bible is exactly how God would have done it if He had done it himself.  To argue against the idea that someone can say "if it's not in the bible then obviously God didn't want it in there".

Edited December 20, 2021 by bluebell