- Stephen Fleming on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “REC, I agree that it’s the principles we live that will really matter. Jonathan, “So I think some work is required to show that foregoing belief in historicity is a tenable position in the long term for faithful members. It’s important work, but it’s not easy work.” I agree and I’m certainly not claiming to be THE guy to do this, but this blog post is such an attempt to contribute to such work. allergy, yes, I think there is meaning to be found in old stories. Anna, yes, all that. My sense is that not only did none of that Moses stuff happened, but I’m thinking that scholars who argued that it was written down (essentially invented) WAY later will be proven to be correct. And I also agree with you that there’s a TON of rather immoral stuff in the OT that I think relinquishing historicity helps us to take a little less seriously. And I think God would approve of that.” May 1, 15:17
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “I don’t think we can prove that Moses did not exist. What we can prove is that one million Hebrews did not wander in the desert for 40 years. That would have left evidence of huge nomadic tribes living in that desert. Even assuming that God miraculously provided water and food, they would have left evidence. In a desert landscape, where one million people walked, would leave traces even several thousand years later. And they would have broken dishes, worn out clothing, buried their dead. Nope, no millions of people wandering the desert for 40 years. Now, a small group is possible. What the latest theory from scholars that I read said, was that the Hebrews took stories from small groups and blew them into huge miracles, in order to give the new Nation of Israel a common identity. To give all the people the same cultural identity, it has to be the ancestors of the whole nation, not a small band of a few hundred. So, they took a real story and exaggerated it into an epic story, by multiplying 100 escaped slaves into millions. They gave one common ancestor to the whole nation as a reason for the divergent tribes to become one nation instead of tribes. Maybe there were 12 tribes, not descended from 12 brothers, but totally unrelated tribes that a king wanted to unite under his rule. So, start telling them a handy myth about their common origin. There are real advantages to knowing that some Biblical stories are nothing but myth. The most obvious to me is that knowing the point of Genesis and God creating the earth and the animals is that God did it. It shouldn’t be taken as literally as to be a detailed description of how God created the earth and animals. It only tells us what, not how. But then people get all bent out of shape over the Big Bang because they assume that the theory says “God didn’t do it.” No, Genesis just says that God created the earth. So, what if I believe that God did it by causing a big bang and then selecting the best resulting planet. And maybe God sort of engineered evolution. After all, Genesis does not say how God created animals. So, maybe it was by selective breeding. Humans can do it, why couldn’t God. So, I am not worried by fossils because I am not staking my belief on thinking Genesis explains God’s method when it doesn’t. It never says “out of nothing”. That was a Catholic idea, not Joseph’s. I think Joseph Smith would be just fine with Big Bang and evolution. Because he took truth where ever he found it. There are other advantages to not taking things literally and accepting there is a real history that may not back up Biblical stories. We can just toss stories that are too illogical, like that all billions of species on earth fit into one big boat, called Noah’s ark. Believing i the mythological history changes things in that we don’t waste time looking for the remains of Noah’s ark on Mt Ararat. But it doesn’t change the message of obeying God we can learn. And it actually protects us from some of the spiritual dangers of taking it literally. If we believe in a God that would kill innocent children because their parents are evil, in both the ark story and the Sodom story then we may dislike the cruel God portrayed and miss the message in the story of Sodom to treat travelers nicely. Many people miss the point of the story anyway because they get lost in the horror of men raping men (never mind that Lot offered his own daughters up to be raped) and think it is about homosexuality, and not even the rape part of it. And knowing that it was a myth, may help us not go about blaming the victims of natural disasters every time there is an earthquake or hurricane and assuming it HAS to be a punishment for homosexual behavior like some modern Christians do. So, I think the advantages of not believing it is all historical outweigh the disadvantages. My testimony won’t get destroyed by science.” May 1, 14:51
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “In studying Job, once I decided that the events described were probably not historical, I found that its power and meaning could be made more relevant to me. Like releasing it from a tether that would otherwise restrict its reach. Similar thing with Adam and Eve, a story which we intentionally pull out of history and mythologize so that we can live in the story ourselves. Myth and fiction are often more true than life. I don’t think this is necessarily the path to apostasy, but it does necessitate a different view of what scripture is and can be. In a good way, in my opinion.” May 1, 12:27
- on Temple Architecture and Local, Native Styles: “Ok, Stephen C., I’m hoping my next comment doesn’t cause a stir. I really have some cognitive dissonance about building a temple in Dubai, and I would balk at integrating traditionally Muslim religious architectural elements (like a minaret etc.) into the design. Yes, I want temples to dot the earth. Yes, I want saints to have access to temples, yes, I want temples to be culturally, ecologically and geologically aligned. But, aside from the appropriation concern I mentioned above and despite my respect and appreciation for the rich Islamic history and the beautiful elements of this enormous faith, my concerns are many. I don’t buy palm oil products from companies known to be the largest environmental abusers – on principle. When I married, I opted to not buy a non-ethically sourced diamond for a ring. ETB told us to “say no” to drugs in the ‘80’s not just because of the personal implications, but also because using drugs required others to participate in the trafficking of drugs which stained your hands with the blood of those who died. Additionally, selling was harmful others. Why do I worry about the ethical implications of my purchasing power if my church pays absolutely no heed to the much larger footprint of its coffers and choices? What does it mean to symbolically, financially, and politically align with the UAE? Doesn’t it mean we accept a certain amount of tolerance for globally condemned women’s, LGBT and other human rights and free speech violations? Just because our conservative LDS culture gives us a certain type of alignment (that is celebrated and studied by many), I question what leaning into these similarities through this new temple arrangement means and what it represents to the members and the world. What ARE we leaning into and in the act, leaning away from? Polygamy? Trad wife roles? Free speech and expression? LGBT? Theocracy? Materialistic and wealth-oriented culture? Religiously-dominated modern life? Ugh. I highly suspect that an Elder Kearson was brought into the Q15 specifically for his experience working as a communications exec in the middleast. I highly suspect there aren’t enough LDS ex-pats or UAE members to justify a temple in Dubai. I highly suspect that the UAE temple will need to be expensive and a gem in the pockets of the UAE’s rather Brigham-esque desire to build a divers religious presence in the shadow of its own. I also highly suspect that the heads in SLC feel that all these reasons to pause will be (in time)!inconsequential because planting a temple will bring spiritual transformation, enlightenment and change. I wonder if we ought to be putting more of our hands and shoulders (and leveraging our purchasing power) into that goal rather than jumping in and hoping God does it all. At any rate, I’m not sure that a minaret or Islamic motifs are the best architectural elements to incorporate t this time. As a female LDS still haunted by (as the illustrious Carol Lynn Pearson says) “the ghost of polygamy”, I don’t want to walk into a sacred building with the symbolism of modern polygamy written all over it.” May 1, 11:57
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “Stephen, I don’t think any belief in historicity is required, either now or at some point in the future, including the afterlife. That being said… While scholars generally don’t make pacts with the devil, one persistent scholarly instinct is to tweak the rubes and stick it to the fundamentalists (see Stephen’s post yesterday for an example). I don’t think your Wikipedia link actually states that scholarly consensus is that Moses didn’t exist. Instead, it says that there’s no historical evidence for his existence, and a range of interpretations of that, including the view that he did exist. Unfathomably more happened in Egypt in ~1500 BC plus or minus a few centuries than made its way into preserved records. So maybe an exodus of millions of Hebrews from Egypt seems unlikely, but there’s plenty of room for a group of hundreds or thousands to do something that would take on the significance of the Exodus when it was recorded centuries later. What we ARE (and will be) asked about, I think, is belief in various texts as scripture – we don’t canonize the actual historical events of Egypt in 1500 BC, but some modern forms of a text with a specifically LDS interpretation within a longer interpretive tradition. The difficulty is that in practical terms, I’m not seeing a lot of examples of accepting ahistorical texts as scripture compared to many examples of ahistoricity being one step on the path to apostasy. The focus of our curriculum is primarily on what the scriptures teach, not when and where particular events happened, which would seem to require minimal commitment to historicity. But the move to regarding a scriptural text as ahistorical nearly always seems to be associated with relativizing scripture vis-a-vis other texts, emphasizing some books of scripture at the expense of those taken as ahistorical, or just rejecting accepted teachings altogether. So I think some work is required to show that foregoing belief in historicity is a tenable position in the long term for faithful members. It’s important work, but it’s not easy work.” May 1, 11:41
- on Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, April 2024: “Does our church teach that paying tithe is a way out of poverty?” May 1, 11:31
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “To answer your main question….one…Jesus is real therefore God is real. Once the seeker/reader finds God/Jesus the rest is fluff or “helps” for readers to be like Them. If you have a strong relationship with God and revelation, there is less reason to go back to the “manual/instructions” that help find God/Jesus. Like the OP mentions, there is not going to be a test in the next life regarding our pass/fail knowledge/belief in the scriptures. Did you love? Did you repent? Did you forgive? Did you give mercy? Did you try all your days? Did you believe in Us? Let them enter. IMO. Once the treasure is found, do we study the map?” May 1, 11:19
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “Thanks, E. Indeed, Anna, historicity questions certainly extend beyond the OT. That said, I’d kind of like to hold off larger debates over distinctly Mormon scripture for a bit as I’d like to put up more context first and those can be really hot topics. Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand to try to control the discussion in that way, but I’ll just say this same thing if it comes up: I want to wait on that. But good point about learning from our important cultural stories even if they are not historical. That IS a point I’d like to discuss here. Deriving meaning from our significant stories is quite vital to our human meaning-making, and meaning-making is quite vital to that very important human sense of purpose. No doubt we will continually reinterpret these important stories. And I differ from you in that I quite like a lot about the Book of Mormon.” May 1, 10:31
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “Even after Moses, no battle of Jericho, no massive killing of the Canaanites, who already inhabited the area. Not until you get to King David is anything historically accurate. And there does appear to have been a king named David. But the people were not monotheistic. They actively worshiped several gods and only later were these other gods declared to be false gods and thrown out of Solomon’s temple. God’s wife was Ashera, she of the groves. The actual history can be backed up by archeology. Now, when it comes to the Book of Mormon, more LDS are going to have problems with how there is no evidence that any of it is historically accurate. And the Book of Abraham, well, there is no evidence of any guy named Abraham in Egyptian history, and the papyrus Joseph Smith claimed to translate is really a common Book of the Dead, not anything written by Abraham, is it is most likely something Joseph made up out of his head. Well, according to scholars. The only scripture we have that we can really place in history is the D & C. So, do we dare widen this discussion to our Mormon scriptures as well as out Bible. Personally, to me it doesn’t matter. If I can learn something about God from reading it, then I consider it scripture. I can accept that most events in the early Bible were legends and myth. And not having ever even liked the BoM, I am content to throw it out of my personal scripture.” May 1, 09:10
- on What Historical Claims Does God Insist We Believe?: “So refreshing, again thank you for this series! I would love to see less of what I see as fundamentalism in our church.” May 1, 06:58