Books of Mormon, Abraham, Moses as Inspired Fiction

[Themis]

I think it does answer the question. We don't get to the point where we say that God lied without making a whole host of assumptions about the role that God plays in communication, the role that we play in the communication and intentions.

I provided 2 scenario's. You are welcome to come up with one that works. I don't think you have one since you don't seem to be on board with inspired fiction of the Book of Mormon. Assumptions is all we have to go on, but we can use logic and reason to see which may be reasonable and which may not. One of the problems I think is unreasonable is assumptions that make communication from God so poor. The Bible has the problem of no original documents and centuries in which we have no idea who did what for much of it. The Book of Mormon is very different. We have the original document and many cliams from the orignal author who claimed communication from God. It's unreasonable to think the God of the universe who supposedly can talk to you in person, send angels, etc cannot communicate a story that has some level of accuracy. I think that would make God dishonest with an inspired fictional Book of Mormon story.

There is an interesting issue that we have to address if we suggest that most believers are willing to accept that some parts of scripture are inspired and some aren't in that there is no broad consensus among them about what is inspired and what isn't.

Not sure why we need to address it. It's well understood by most that different people have different beliefs about what is inspired and what is not. Even within their own group. LDS doctrine puts lots of errors for the Bible, and members will differ on what might be inspired and what may not be in the Book of Mormon. Inspired fiction with the Book of Mormon goes way too far to be reasonable. You lose the Book of Mormon people as a real people you lose God inspired messages as well.

[Symmachus]

But that isn't what I am asserting at all. I am suggesting that in "likening scripture unto ourselves" we eliminate the need for any special knowledge at all - our experience is enough. That includes any postmodern knowledge whatsoever. The funny thing about this is that the Book of Mormon is published in 1830. Derrida is born in 1930. Kristeva is born in 1941. Lacan in 1901. They cannot play a role in the way that the Book of Mormon discusses its own suggestions for its interpretation. On the other side of the coin, to suggest that scripture is primarily historical means that we have created an absolute need for its readers to develop a very specialized sort of knowledge. This is especially visible with the Bible. There is an extensive body of literature trying to help us understand the biblical text in its historical context. We have the question of which is better - to read it in English translation (but then, which translation, right?) or to read it in its original Hebrew and Greek (this is, after all, why I studied Biblical Hebrew decades ago). And the commentaries that tell us how to understand the text engage their own very specialized knowledge base. This is just another face of the argument that the text has an esoteric meaning that may only be uncovered by initiates. The Book of Mormon cuts through all of this in its "likening" of scripture. It places the text into the experiential context of each reader. And so I stand by my assertion that the Book of Mormon argues completely against any sort of gnostic approach that you suggest. And I would argue that the more distant we are from the source of scripture (both in terms of time and culture), the more esoteric the knowledge that is required to understand the text as it was intended to be understood.

This isn't to say that I am not familiar with Kristeva or Derrida. I have many of their texts on my shelves. But, I am not a postmodernist (or perhaps, even a post-postmodernist - on the way to something else) as a matter of convenience either.

I don't really disagree, but we're not talking about the same thing. If I failed to make it clear, I'll try again: the Book of Mormon has a reception history, not a little of which is derived from the text, that is not easily overcome. I don't know your views of the Church, but I don't think its leaders have an interest in supporting an approach to the Book of Mormon that opens up a plurality of readings. Maybe you don't care about any of that; perhaps all that is at issue is what you do with the Book of Mormon in the privacy of your own head. All I'm saying is that, if you extend this outwards into the community of Mormons, there will need be some kind of intellectual framework and vocabulary that makes this transition possible. The example you bring is just one part of the Book of Mormon. How does one liken Nephite coinage and agriculture to one's own life? It's a big book with a lot of material in it that claims to be historical. You already displayed a sophisticated approach to that stuff in the other thread; doesn't it need to be done a more comprehensive scale if this approach is supposed to catch on? Will the vocabulary and conceptual frameworks for doing that get less technical? I doubt it.

[dastardly stem]

This is only scratching the surface right?

Of course.

The proclamation on the family fascinates me because of its textual history (and not just its production history). There is nothing new or unique in it. For example this line: "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose." It comes right out of a James Talmage article published in the Millennial Star dated August 24, 1922 (although he uses the word 'sex' instead of 'gender'):

We affirm as reasonable, scriptural, and true, the eternity of sex among the children of God. The distinction between male and female is no condition peculiar to the relatively brief period of mortal life. It was an essential characteristic of our pre-existent condition, even as it shall continue after death, in both disembodied and resurrected states .... [The] scriptures attest a state of existence preceding mortality, in which the spirit children of God lived, doubtless with distinguishing characteristics, including the distinction of sex, "before they were naturally upon the face of the earth."

There may be a history of it, but, it it isn't history (the difference between text and artifact in some ways). This distinction you make doesn't make much sense to me.

Let's go back then. The Proclamation was written and signed off by those who claim to speak for God. The history of how it came out can be verified on those points. On the Sermon on the Mount, we have very weak, as I see it, reason to think there was a Jesus. We have little to no reason to think that anyone who claimed to be Jesus thought himself to be a God or to speak for God, and even less reason to think He spoke the actual words of the Sermon--or anything near what was written in Matthew as the Sermon. If there was good reason to think Jesus existed, claimed to be God or speak of Him and that what was written in Matthew was what he spoke, then at least there is some reason to tie the teachings found there to God. Instead, as I pointed out, we call it scripture simply because it's been called scripture and the teachings in it only matter as far as they mean something to someone. Most, it seems, reject the notion that God and Jesus ignore many believers.

Perhaps more importantly, should we even care? Is ambiguity and uncertainty so difficult to live with?

Only those who think it scripture and who think scripture is important should care. If you are saying, no one should pay attention to the writings of Jesus in the New Testament, or at least not care about anything they don't like, then ok. There's really little point to any of it. Religion stinks and we should finally move on.

The issue is in your question. Why does it have to be wrong or right?

I didn't frame it as wrong or right, though. God could be there inspiring people and be, Himself, an evil character hoping for the worst possible outcome for anyone who believes in him and follows his teachings. I framed it as inspiring or not.

And in asking that question, don't you first have to have an interpretation of the text (a meaning) and isn't the meaning that readers attribute to the text inconsistent over time and from individual to individual? For us to answer the question about what is wrong or right about a text in any absolute sense is to first claim that the text has a meaning in an absolute sense.

I'm not following this because I'm not saying "wrong or right" nor anything about absolute. If God exists and inspires texts to be written for the good of those who read it, one must wonder why the texts could cause harm and destruction if one follows it. One must wonder why God is telling everyone that he chooses to ignore many believers. If Jesus taught the sermon and then at the end, someone added some notion about God ignoring many believers, then was it God or man who miscommunicated?

I didn't pick that sentence from the Proclamation on the Family randomly. Suppose, for example, that I accept the premise of a pre-existence with gendered spirits. We know from factual evidence that a certain percentage of persons are born in a gender indeterminate state. Their gender is then assigned by physicians at birth. But this gender they are given doesn't necessarily match up with the gender of their pre-existent spirit. It seems quite reasonable to assume (from and LDS perspective) that we already have spiritually gendered women who have been ordained to the priesthood, as well as same-gendered couples who have been sealed for eternity in a temple. And we can make this interpretation without having a two thousand year gap along with questions about authenticity or authorship. This is why the issue of inerrancy remains central to this question. Does being scripture create some obligation for us to read a text in a specific way or to frame its meaning in a certain way?

I think in a way we're just talking past each other. That's going to happen and I accept that we simply aren't seeing this the same. I've alluded to the end of the Sermon on the mount a number of times. What framing, what interpretation discredits the reading of God chooses to ignore many believers? You act as if we have hidden meanings in things that are explicit in their meaning. Granted there are reasons to employ reason and intellect to some parts of scripture to determine, perhaps in ancient contexts, what might be meant. And granted such practices may never get us to a direct or good meaning. I mean...ok. But, one must ask, why is God authoring scripture if that's the case? And such an explanation side-steps any scriptures that explicitly and directly say something that either no one believes or perhaps applies twisted logic in hopes to make it sounds "OK".

Maybe there isn't a point. People like to have authoritative sources. From my perspective, scripture is a text - just like any other text. We get meaning out of it because we have a cognitive process we call reading. There isn't any difference in reading scripture than from any other text except possibly in the ways that when we view a text as scripture, we privilege certain ways of reading over others. But those preferences (and how we respond to the category of scripture) aren't universal - they are cultural. And such a view also precludes the idea that you raise that "we dig meaning out of it, in any way we can." This isn't true. We dig meaning out of scripture usually in ways that are associated with how we view scripture. And for many, this includes a presumption that scripture is in some way inerrant (whatever that means). Or in the case of the Book of Mormon, that translation implies something very specific about the text.

I really am not sure what you intend to convey when you ask "Is it historical"? Every text is historical in this sense. They all have a space of origin in some way or another. Even spam e-mail generated by an A.I. is historical (although we may question whether it counts as a text). When I discuss a view of the text as inerrant, I also include the notions that go along with this of interpretation. That is, an inerrant text has some sort of determinate meaning. I don't believe this is the case (for a broad range of reasons that I have written about). Even in the context of a divinely inspired text I would argue that there is no determinate meaning. But some of your comments seem to come from the perspective that texts have determinate meanings. Do you think that there is only one meaning to a text? And if so, who determines that meaning?

In the long run, whether we like it or not, we read the Bible as scripture only because we accept it as scripture - not because it is historical. Others do not read it as scripture even though it is historical. The same is true of the Book of Mormon. And while the meaning we get in reading will almost certainly be different depending on whether we read the text as history or using some other guiding interpretive principle (such as 'likening' it to our experience), the decision to read it as scripture or not is largely unaffected by these different reading strategies. Is there a point to scripture? According to Nephi in the Book of Mormon the purpose served by scripture is as an inadequate substitute for personal revelation.

Your questions really have moved beyond, I think, the space we have for this discussion about scripture and/or inspired fiction. These are philosophical perspectives that don't have any kind of universal answers. Do we have any sort of moral obligation to read a text in a certain way? For that matter, do we have an obligation to be moral? If we see scripture as a moral guide, and we don't believe that morality is important, than is scripture pointless? What do you think the point of scripture is? Or is scripture simply a man-made category that allows us to give authority to some sort of moral code or expectation that we have invented?

What I can say is that the Book of Mormon offers us a reading strategy that works whether or not the Book of Mormon is an actual historic text or some sort of inspired fiction. And this means that the ability of a believer to read it as scripture doesn't have to be determined by their view of what the text is.

YEah, well, I guess we're confusing each other some by trying to explain ourselves. I've given another shot at describing the question of historicity on certain texts. What does it mean if someone writing in Greek decades after a supposed Jesus lived, puts words into the mouth of the Son of God for what seems to amount to effect? Sure the sermon was written at some point in history. Did Jesus actually give it? That would be the question...for the basic reason that that is what it claims. If someone thought Jesus teaching in the first century sounded good and made up the sermon because it sounded like a good thing to use to help represent the teachings that were going around, well, ok. I mean it's just some nice sounding teaching at that point. Was it God? Was it just some man? This question matters because that is what is at bottom of the question on this thread. If everything written in the New Testament was myth, what is the point of religion now? Is there a Jesus? Is there a God? If we say nothing described in the New Testament had to have happened in order for the writings to be meaningful to someone...then great. I agree. Anyone can basically find meaning and purpose in anything written down if one wants to. But then we can cut out God and Jesus and scripture and religion altogether.

[Benjamin McGuire]

One of the problems I think is unreasonable is assumptions that make communication from God so poor.

I don't think it's unreasonable at all. And perhaps this is where our disagreements begin. Even if we assume that God can communicate perfectly with an individual, a text isn't a one-to-one communication with God. So the weakness in the communication comes from the medium of that communication (a text) and those receiving it (us). A written text has an intended audience. The closer the real audience is to that intended audience, the better that communication works. But, you cannot produce a text that will communicate equally well to billions of people over a several thousand year period of time. It just doesn't work. So I think it is unreasonable to assume that somehow communications from God are all that particularly good. And the Bible is a wonderful example of this. Short of learning to read its original language, and spending a great deal of time learning to understand the nuances of a dead language, we just aren't going to be able to be very competent at all in reading it. So there we go. Until we get past this, the rest of it is largely inconsequential by comparison.

[Dr Moore]

Let us suppose that, hypothetically, the church publishes a new proclamation that states the Books of Mormon, Abraham and Moses are all inspired, prophetic, and true--but they're fiction. Included in this proclamation is also a statement that the Old Testament is inspired fiction.

Does that solve all y'all's problems? See you in church on Sunday?

The church flip flopping on their positions? And what about all the really stupid parts of scripture? The church says it's all just God's mean joke?

This. In many minds, a move like this would only weaken confidence in the leaders as reliable mouthpieces for God. I can't think of a reason why such a move would make them appear more credible to anyone. Therefore, the minimalizing and slightly insulting questions following this hypothetical are non sequiturs.

[hauslern]

So you think the exodus and conquest really happened?

[Benjamin McGuire]

I don't really disagree, but we're not talking about the same thing. If I failed to make it clear, I'll try again: the Book of Mormon has a reception history, not a little of which is derived from the text, that is not easily overcome. I don't know your views of the Church, but I don't think its leaders have an interest in supporting an approach to the Book of Mormon that opens up a plurality of readings. Maybe you don't care about any of that; perhaps all that is at issue is what you do with the Book of Mormon in the privacy of your own head. All I'm saying is that, if you extend this outwards into the community of Mormons, there will need be some kind of intellectual framework and vocabulary that makes this transition possible. The example you bring is just one part of the Book of Mormon. How does one liken Nephite coinage and agriculture to one's own life? It's a big book with a lot of material in it that claims to be historical. You already displayed a sophisticated approach to that stuff in the other thread; doesn't it need to be done a more comprehensive scale if this approach is supposed to catch on? Will the vocabulary and conceptual frameworks for doing that get less technical? I doubt it.

I think that I have been pretty clear that my views are not mainstream. But they are not entirely alien. People bring different views to the table in terms of how they experience the religion. This is especially true given the high percentage of converts that the Church has. And any Church which adopts ongoing revelation with more than lip service can change a great deal (can does not mean that it will). My views are certainly not widely adopted. Before I published it in Interpreter, I was working to get my postmodernist piece published with the MI. At some point I switched simply because it was taking too long. After a couple of different editors and a series of reviews, I was told that it was without a doubt the most read submission in the history of the MI, and the problem was that it was either loved or hated by its readers. I had this to some extent with Interpreter too. My perception of the difference between the two groups? Those that read it who came out of the religion department at BYU disliked it. Those who read it who came from a field of literature of some sort or other thought it was fantastic. The mileage people get out of it reflects more where they start than anything else. But having introduced these ideas, perhaps it will help at some point in the future. I don't think it will take a special intellectual framework or vocabulary to make such a change happen. This is only helpful in justifying such an approach. If some of our theologians (and I say that with a mild degree of sarcasm since there isn't a real space yet within the LDS community for a strong theological presence apart from the authoritative leadership - who are not really theologians but administrators) were to actually engage in this kind of interpretation, the examples would do a lot. As opposed to the sort of interpretations that I am critical of in this context.

I think it's relatively easy to relate things like Nephite coinage to our experience. In fact, your choice of labeling it as 'coinage' is an indication that you are already doing this - since the word "coin" is notably absent from the Book of Mormon. You wouldn't be the only to do this, of course. The term 'coins' appears in a chapter summary added in 1920 and then removed in later editions. I think that we can reframe the political debates, and so on. Whether we will or not, I think its unlikely to see significant change in my lifetime. But, Mormonism is a young religion. I think that if it survives to be as old as say Catholicism is now, there will at some point be a much larger spectrum of belief in the text of the Book of Mormon.

But, one must ask, why is God authoring scripture if that's the case? And such an explanation side-steps any scriptures that explicitly and directly say something that either no one believes or perhaps applies twisted logic in hopes to make it sounds "OK".

I don't think that God authors scripture. At best, God may inspire individuals who then have to translate that inspiration into material for a broader audience. And things are always lost in such a translation. In my personal view of things (not terribly orthodox), personal inspiration/revelation trumps everything else. At any rate, this again moves away from this discussion.

[Themis]

I don't think it's unreasonable at all. And perhaps this is where our disagreements begin. Even if we assume that God can communicate perfectly with an individual, a text isn't a one-to-one communication with God.

LOL You are doing the same tactic apologists like to do with the use of the word perfect. Something no one suggested or even suggested communication should be close to perfection. It's unreasonable to think this God would not communicate at least as well as other humans could do to try and communicate important messages. Instead you want to suggest such poor communication you would lose any good reason to believe it has any accuracy and none of it could reasonably trusted as coming from God.

So the weakness in the communication comes from the medium of that communication (a text) and those receiving it (us).

With the Book of Mormon the Communication is from God/supernatural process to Joseph Smith, or that is clearly what Joseph was claiming. Add to that Joseph's claims of angels like Moroni who speaks to him in his own language saying some of the same historical claims we find in the Book of Mormon text. It's not hard to get some accuracy of someone telling you in your own language the basic historical claims of the Book of Mormon. It's very unreasonable to consider the Book of Mormon to be inspired fiction unless God is being a dishonest. If Joseph is the one lying it's also unreasonable to think the Book of Mormon has any God inspiration to Joseph in the Book of Mormon. It certainly wouldn't be any more inspired then all the great fiction that has been written by mankind, so no prophet-hood or priesthood powers. No authority to speak for God. Church leaders have always known it was all or nothing with Joseph's Smith's claims.

I would add that maybe some difference here could be in how inspiration from God is being defined. Is it the general sort that most people get and many attribute to all the good works of mankind, or is it a rare kind only a handful of people get?

[Kishkumen]

I want to read your Interpreter piece, Benjamin McGuire. I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts on this thread. Thank you for sharing all of this with us.

[Philo Sofee]

I too am enjoying your insights Ben, and the generating of some great discussions which generate great questions from the other side of Mormonism. There are, to be sure, more nuances and issues than a casual reading shows...