Yes. Change your posting name. It’s sort of taken.

Any recommendations?

I appreciate your recognition of the fact that my (our) position on the relationship of the scriptures to history is considerably more nuanced than some have appeared to recognize or grant. I’ve been bemused over the past few weeks to see myself represented, essentially, as some sort of hyper-conservative biblical inerrantist. In actuality, my view of historical writing doesn’t differ much across the board, whether the text in question be Herodotus, Gibbon, al-Tabari, Manetho, Tacitus, Mormon, Luke, the Chronicler, or W. F. Albright. I see human limitations, agendas, contemporary influences, mistakes, literary shaping, truths, and, yes, historical facts in all of them. And so, I’m confident, do such other writers on my “side” as Paul Hoskisson, William Hamblin, and John Gee.

Thanks for this post – I very much enjoyed it. Like you, I feel like the historicity of the BOM is too integral to my faith to give it up easily. If there were no actual plates, everything becomes so symbolic, deceitful, and loose that I just feel like I have nothing to really hold on to.

Fortunately, unlike what a lot of young mormon scholars these days seem to believe, I think the evidence in favor of a BOM that is history-based is still reasonably good. While there are troubling aspects and a lot of questions about how the translation worked, I am not swayed by some of the common complaints. For example, Michael Coe – while clearly an expert on Mesoamerica – does not strike me as someone who has thought hard about the BOM or was willing to entertain the possibility that the BOM has some historicity. Being spoon-fed a few anachronistic objects that are in the BOM and then making the obvious complaint that those objects didn’t exist in Mesoamerica to me isn’t enough to show that he has thought through what is a very complicated probability calculation.

Here is my question for you. What are the 3-4 evidences that you find most compelling in regards to the historicity of the BOM?

My apologies if you have already answered a question of this sort somewhere else (if that is the case and a link is available, I would love to see it). Given our similarities in belief, I would very much enjoy hearing your response. Thanks!

I’m personally on this path that you are describing. I’m studying the scriptures in an attempt to glean value for my personal journey, but I’ve had to accept that I don’t believe much of the bible to be historical, as the evidence is not compelling to me. I also see very little evidence for a historical Nephi as you explain.

With the resurrection, I find peace of conscience in accepting the idea that it may have never happened. At the same time, I like to hope that it did, but I’m comfortable if it didn’t happen and realize that we can never know for sure. Whether Jesus actually had to suffer for our sins or not seems less important to me, than the very real and personal application that forgiveness and redemption plays in my life. I consider those gifts very real and attribute them to being part of a divine plan for our welfare and growth.

I see scripture more as a mechanism for explaining theological positions and less as history. I agree with you that many people push back on these perspectives and find them threatening to the lines they draw in the sand around their perceptions of heresy, but I’m feeling more comfortable with my explorations of these paradigms and they are allowing me to hold onto a faith in a higher power within the Mormon community.

But it does not end the divisive nature of the historicity discussion, the litmus test that some recognize or feel. Suppose I conclude (however carefully or casually) that none of the scriptures are historical. (If you prefer “historicity” in that sentence, tell me how to make it work grammatically.) Suppose I conclude that there was not an actual human being in historical time who is described as Abraham. That there was not an actual human being anywhere in the Americas any time in the vicinity of 600 B.C. who is the “I, Nephi” of 1 Nephi 1:1. To up the stakes here . . . even that there was not a literal rising from the dead in the resurrection. More precisely, suppose I conclude that while there were people around and things actually happened, it is irrelevant to the authors–that they aren’t even thinking about real people on real mountains seeing burning bushes or three crosses, but are telling a story with purpose that has little or nothing to do with historical events. If my conclusion is that the scriptures are 100% ‘holy myth’ (that that is what the authors intend) then have I excluded myself from the communion, from the count of believers? Does it mean I should not be any part of the conversation?

To be clear, I am not there yet personally but I find myself looking at that path. More importantly, for those who are on that road already, I would readily accord them a place at the table and in the discussion. To put it bluntly, there is so much power and significance already in the ‘myth’ of the resurrection that I want to hear it fully and deeply, and I’m not sure how much is left to gain from a historicity of resurrection. (I know that’s provocative and many will disagree. That’s sort of the point.)

It’s quite possible for there to be a real Adam and Eve while the OT might well be a very misleading presentation of their actual life.

I have a few questions though. First, to what degree must your proposal account for biblical historical facts attested to by modern scripture? For example, in D&C 137:5, Joseph Smith describes Adam as a literal person. In D&C 107:41-52, Smith provides an ordination chronology from Adam to Noah, including the exact ages when each biblical figure was ordained. In D&C 138:39, Joseph F. Smith describes Eve as a literal person. Don’t these verses significantly limit the ability for LDS-faithful scholars to approach the Bible from the viewpoint of its authors?

Well, they certainly make it harder for a Mormon to dismiss Adam and Eve as unhistorical, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. Citing N. T. Wright (notably: not a Mormon):

I do not know when Genesis reached its final form. Some still want to associate with Moses. Others insist it was at least edited during the Exile. But whatever view you take about that, certainly the Jews of the Second Temple Period would have no difficulty in decoding the story of Adam as an earlier version of their own story. Placed in the garden. Given a commission to look after it. The Garden being the place where God wanted to be at rest to exercise his sovereign rule. The people warned about keeping the commandment. Warned in particular that breaking it would mean death. Breaking it and being exiled. It all sounds very, very familiar. And it leads me to my proposal: that just as God chose Israel from the rest of humankind for a special strange demanding vocation, so perhaps what Genesis is telling us is that God chose one pair from the rest of early hominids for a special, strange, demanding vocation. This pair, call them Adam and Eve if you like, were to be the representatives of the whole human race. The ones in whom God’s purpose to make the whole world the place of delight and joy and order eventually colonizing the whole creation was to be taken forward. God the Creator put into their hands the fragile task of being his image-bearers. If they fail they will bring the whole purpose for the wider creation, including all the non-chosen hominids, down with them.

I cited Wright earlier for dismissing a literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2, but here is maintaining that Adam and Eve are historical beings, just that the stories about them are a mixture of invention and history. That’s compatible with the D&C verses you quoted.

Is this the right answer? I have no idea. But the point is to show a model of how we work out the complicated issues of unraveling scripture to try and see what the authors wanted to tell us.

Second, to what degree should your proposal account for current doctrines that depend on biblical historical facts? For example, if the flood was not global (something I also doubt), how does that affect our doctrines that the earth was baptized and that proper baptism requires full immersion? It seems that one of those doctrines would have to be dropped.

Well, I think it has an impact, but I don’t think it’s that stark. It may mean, for example, that you decide immersion is an institutional rather than a metaphysical requirement. In other words: we practice baptism by immersion not because it is the one true way, but because having a single, identical practice helps keep us unified and avoid confusion. If that’s true, then the partial flood can still count as a baptism and we can still believe that we ought to do it by immersion. Or maybe there isn’t even a problem: if everything Noah thought of as “the world” was flooded, then the symbol does what it was supposed to do. It’s not a literal baptism of the Earth, it’s an object lesson for Noah.

I’m not gonna do the third one just ’cause (1) got to get back to work and (2) the real point I want to make is don’t be hasty. A contradiction today might be an insight tomorrow, and if you think everything makes sense (and you haven’t been translated yet), then you know you got something wrong. The important thing is the process of figuring it out, the process of studying scripture, the process of becoming more like Jesus. The important thing is not having the right answers at any particular time.

Thanks so much for weighing in! I really appreciate that you took the time to read and reply to my post.

My concern is that semantic differences over terminology are obscuring more substantive matters. Let me concede, in order to skip us past the linguistic quagmire, that historicity entails “accurate scientific analysis.” In that case, it follows quite easily that “From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible lacks historicity.” To the extent that you identify historicity with a modern genre, the Bible is no more capable of historicity than it is of being a 3-camera sit-com: the genre is a modern innovation.

The risk of talking past one another emerges once you realize that very few people care about such a technical definition. I don’t think there’s anyone at all who thinks that the 600,000 number in Genesis is scientifically accurate (i.e. not 599,999 and not 600,001). Terms like “man” aren’t even unambiguously quantifiable in our time. Is the age cutoff 18 or 21? What if someone was turning 21 on the day of the Exodus? You see my point: the precise headcount just doesn’t matter very much to anyone.

There are some small number of people who would assume that modern conventions apply, and that 600,000 would therefore have to fall in the range of 550,000 to 649,000. These might be the same folks that think the Creation entails 6 24-hour periods. I won’t argue that they don’t exist, I’ll just stipulate that nothing Dan Peterson, Ralph Hancock or–most importantly–Paul Hoskisson wrote entails such radical and anachronistic literalness.

I will also grant wholeheartedly your point that “To identify form and authorial intent we must rely upon the historical critical method.” I said as much in my own post: “I do not doubt the utility and benefit of linguistic, cultural, and historical expertise to the study of scripture. I not only welcome them in theory, but in practice I devour such perspectives eagerly.”

So far so good: 1) some people do ignorantly impose anachronistic readings on the scriptures and 2) the antidote to that relies on the historical critical method.

The problem I see is in your assumption that Hoskisson falls into that category. Nothing in his article suggests that he does, aside from his use of the word “historicity” in a way that you reject. That’s a problem, but the first paragraph betrays his real meaning of the term:

A small group of critics maintain, contrary to Latter-day Saint belief, that it is not necessary to believe in the historicity of central events in the scriptures… For example… Thomas L. Thompson, explains that…“that the Bible does not speak about an historical Abraham.”

Note that, where you preface your analysis with a bright-line distinction between the terms “historicity” and “historical,” Hoskisson treats them interchangeably. Hoskission is not concerned with “accurate scientific analysis.” The writers and thinkers Hoskisson criticizes are not concerned with “accurate scientific analysis.” I am not concerned with “accurate scientific analysis.” I don’t think any significant number of people are concerned with “accurate scientific analysis.” Even if we grant that your definition of “historicity” is the correct one, we still have the case where everyone is using the word “enormity” to mean “enormousness” and you are relying on it’s true definition (a very great evil) to castigate someone for writing about the enormity of a fundraising drive (or whatever). Terminologically: you win. But substantively, the discussion collapses into confusion.

I’m afraid your critique of Hoskisson and your subsequent posts may have confused a lot of people who (like Hoskisson) erroneously treat historicity and historical as interchangeable and therefore interpret your statement that historicity doesn’t matter to mean that the historical events of the Bible don’t matter, and your statement that the Bible lacks historicity to mean that the events depicted in the Bible are fictional. (There are examples in this comment thread.)

I think you and I might be in agreement, once terminology is aside, that the important thing to do is to read the scriptures as the authors intended to read them (and that to accomplish that, human research can be of great help.) Do you think that that is the case?

EDIT: To clarify, there are lots of other things I disagreed with in Hoskisson’s article. But the central issue of historicity / historical doesn’t seem to be a major difference between your post and his, from what I can tell.

I also appreciate this thoughtful post, including your back-and-forth with FarSide. I too am far from an expert as to historical issues. I find your proposal – to look at the text as the biblical authors would have seen it – to make sense. I am going to give this a try.

I have a few questions though. First, to what degree must your proposal account for biblical historical facts attested to by modern scripture? For example, in D&C 137:5, Joseph Smith describes Adam as a literal person. In D&C 107:41-52, Smith provides an ordination chronology from Adam to Noah, including the exact ages when each biblical figure was ordained. In D&C 138:39, Joseph F. Smith describes Eve as a literal person. Don’t these verses significantly limit the ability for LDS-faithful scholars to approach the Bible from the viewpoint of its authors? In other words, even if biblical scholarship suggests that the author(s) of the Pentateuch did not literally believe in the lifespans they attribute to Methusaleh, et al., are we (LDS) nevertheless tied to those unbelievable numbers because they are confirmed by Moses Chapter 8?

Second, to what degree should your proposal account for current doctrines that depend on biblical historical facts? For example, if the flood was not global (something I also doubt), how does that affect our doctrines that the earth was baptized and that proper baptism requires full immersion? It seems that one of those doctrines would have to be dropped. And, relatedly, doesn’t this approach mean that very many of our prophets, seers and revelators have been wrong in their approach to our scriptures? Those with keys have certainly taught as doctrine the historical existence of Job, Jonah, and Abraham’s sacrifice. If we go with your approach don’t we risk compromising our claim to inspired leaders?

Finally, what happens when your approach is applied to the works of modern prophets – specifically, the Book of Abraham? If we should read Job as the biblical authors intended, then we should also read the BOA as Joseph Smith intended it – as a literal translation of the papyri. Does your approach mean that I can’t believe in the catalyst theory? And if so, how do I square the conflict that (i) Joseph and his contemporaries believed they were translating the actual papyri, with (ii) the BOA is not a correct translation of the papyri (at least the fragments that remain)?

In recent weeks, I’ve posted a series of essays that support this statement. And really, in terms of this issue, those posts have only scratched the bare surface (I haven’t even gotten to the Gospels yet).

Without question, the most important historical event from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible is the Exodus out of Egypt. I refer to this as a “historical” event because I very much believe that it was. But the way the most significant historical event in the entire Hebrew Bible is described lacks historicity.

The Bible reports that six hundred thousand men left Egypt during the Exodus (Ex 12:37-38 and Nu 1:46). If we add to that number women and children, plus “others” (Ex 12:38), that number would probably exceed two million. Is it reasonable to assume that two million people could leave Egypt (when the population at the time would have been around three million), then wander around the desert for forty years without leaving any archeological trace? Forget the challenge of feeding such a population in the desert, imagine the problem with latrines!

And what do we do with the fact that the way the Bible describes the event mirrors cosmic battle motifs between gods? In its description of the cosmic Exodus battle, Psalm 77:16 describes the Red Sea “writing” and “convulsing” at the sight of God. This imagery parallels motifs we encounter in the Babylonian myth Enuma Elish where Marduk battles the Sea Monster Tiamat and splits open her carcass. Thus, Psalm 136:13 goes even further with this mythological imagery by depicting Yahweh cutting the Red Sea into pieces.

But even if we ignore the way the Exodus appears described in the Psalms and simply focus our attention on the historical narrative in Exodus itself, we immediately run into problems. The ten plagues are in fact the result of combining various sources, none of which had all ten. And when we return to the way the event appears recounted in Psalms 78 and 105, we find that these texts list the number and sequence of the plagues differently than what actually appears in Exodus.

So if we can’t find “historicity” in THE most significant historical event from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible, what does that say about the rest of biblical historical narrative?

Theologically, I must reject the assumption that because historicity matters to us today, it must therefore matter to God (and by extension scriptural authors). In addition to the fact that this approach would make both God and scripture in our image, after the manner of our own likeness (a theological position I find inherently problematic), I see no evidence in the Bible that historicity was a factor in the production of scriptural texts. None.

I appreciate Nathaniel’s thesis “that we should consider historical those events which the authors seemed to view as importantly historical.” Nathaniel then specifies that he doesn’t see the Bible’s stories of creation, conquest, and Jonah as conveying true history. While this position sounds logical, the problem we need to address is this:

What are the criteria for determining when an author considered an account “historically accurate”?

When it comes to the Bible, we’re dealing with literary genres or forms that are completely foreign to our day and culture. How do we know that Jonah was intended as satire rather than “history”? How do we know that the author of Genesis 1 did not believe that his creation account was historically accurate? Today, we can turn on our TV sets and within minutes know that we’re watching a comedy sitcom, or a teenage slasher flick because we’re familiar with the form. No doubt ancient Israelites could do the same with the stories of Jonah, Job, men meeting women at wells, and, yes, even the Exodus. But we’re not them.

To identify form and authorial intent we must rely upon the historical critical method, and when we do, the overwhelming consensus states that biblical authors were not producing history as we understand the term.

As Latter-day Saints, we have to some extent inherited the general Protestant assumption that the Bible is historically reliable. The evidence, however, simply cannot sustain this assumption. This is why Christian biblical scholar Dr. Peter Enns has written, “Protestants must be willing to learn to be comfortable with how the Bible actually behaves rather than presuming how it should behave and then massaging the data to align with that theory.” As I have shared on my blog, I believe that both LDS theology and Mormon scripture itself encourages readers to adopt this approach.

Thanks again, Nathaniel, for facilitating this discussion. I anxiously await your next post.

No problem! Thanks for your comments as well.

I usually post every other Monday, so my next post for T&S should be Feb 16.