My thoughts exactly. As far as your connections between Alma 13, 2 Ne 2, and Mosiah 15, interesting. When I read these texts I am always reminding myself that I am getting only a fraction of the story and religion that is related from them. “The sacred things of God are not for writing,” wrote Clement of Alexandria, citing a tradition that had gone back centuries. The cult was never written down, and we only get glimpses of it through written texts.

Alas, Ben does not need to get into any of that in his book. If his audience is the wider Mormon arena, then introducing “genres” in texts is probably a good way to go, knowing full well that there will be a large portion of Mormon’s who will reject the ambiguity such a proposal brings to the text. Ben can take some comfort in the fact that these Mormons will probably not be reading his book.

My own experience is there are more and more Mormons who are sensing the deep complexities of the scriptural texts. I don’t know if it is a large percentage; it probably is still pretty small. Still, last year when I was asked if the Flood story in Genesis was a myth in SS, my response was an unequivocal “yes,” followed up with “just know, my definition of myth is different than yours, and that at the end of the long and difficult road of the subject, you will find yourself more astonished at the restored gospel.” I was surprised by how many people came up to me during the following week asking for more information. So, people are turning these things around in their heads, even if they do not publicly voice them.

Again, while the Book of Mormon is clearly highly influenced by KJV paraphrases to translate underlying BoM text, it is also interesting how it pushes for this earlier cultic view. (Think Alma 13 among others) I think Lehi’s testament to Jacob in 2 Nephi 2 can also be read in that context. (Especially verse 4 where Lehi alludes to a theophany by Jacob) I’m actually surprised no ones written on similar themes between Alma 13, 2 Ne 2, and Mosiah 15. Abinadi’s exegesis of how the Father is father and son tied to Isaiah 52 seems to me a kind of cultic use. Of course it’s Barker and others who argue these were originally a mythic layer then edited in the second temple period. Mosiah 15’s “sons of men” recalls Psalms 8 and the ties to Genesis 2.

The problem is that while the written scriptures are dated in various ways to the second temple period or later, they rarely are taken to have all originated there. That is often they are seen as creations inspired by or edited from other writings. Some might have been slightly earlier others much earlier.

While Mormon use of Barker and the question of the Josiah reforms are interesting. The whole place of cult and the problem of the Book of Mormon quoting passages usually dated as post-exilic is quite interesting. And of course Abinadi’s use of detereo-Isaiah is only one example but interesting due to a plausible merkabah parallel as well as that strange Alma 13 with echoes of Ps 110.

I’m not sure how to tie all this to myth. If anything I think the dating issues are for more difficult to deal with. But I suspect if there is a resolution it will be due to cultic use of texts in a more oral/performative way.

Below is an introductory blurb for my discussion of myth in the Old Testament. I would love some feedback. Comments and criticisms are welcome. If not, than ignore this post. (Have I hijacked this thread by now? Sorry Ben. Not my intent.)

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In many circles it is presumed that Israel had no mythology. Myth is believed to be associated with polytheistic systems, according to some academics, or to the pagans, according to some believers. Yet these assessments essentially miss the mark. Myth is associated with oral cultus. Any oral society built around the sacred-ordered space of a templum will have rites and narratives that describe or associate those rites. Israel had a temple tradition for over one thousand years. Myth was part of that tradition.

Innumerable complications impede any attempt to fully understand the Israelite temple cult. One major problem was its constant cross-germination with surrounding cult systems. There were several periods in its history where the Israelites adopted the gods, myths, and cultus of their polytheistic neighbors. Through the discovery and comparison of the Ras Shamra texts and the Bible, Geo Widengren demonstrates that ancient Israel was profoundly influenced by the Canaanite-Syrian literature and culture (155). The Biblical text makes this very clear. One example is when Manasseh adopts foreign religious constructs wholesale, “For [Manasseh] built up again the high places [. . .] and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord [. . .]. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord (2 Kings 21.3-5). He was not the first king to do so. A close reading of the Old Testament text shows that all the way up until the Babylonian exile most of the Hebrew people practiced some form of polytheism. There were numerous cult groves built throughout Israel for worshiping various deities. This all becomes very clear during the reforms of Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson. Josiah is said to have found an ancient book in the temple describing the proper rites and laws of the Israelite temple cult. These rites and laws had not been lived for nearly three hundred years. Consequently, Josiah stripped the kingdom of all idolatrous images and creeds, including pagan icons and personnel (2 Kings 22.8-13; 23).

A second major problem exists in the natural erosive forces of textual transmission. Geo Widengren again reminds us that the Old Testament “as it is handed down to us in the Jewish Canon, is only one part—we do not even know if the greater part—of Israel’s national literature. And, moreover, this preserved part has in many passages quite obviously been exposed to censorship and correspondingly purged” (158). Emanuel Tov also observes, “Most of the [Old Testament] texts—ancient and modern—which have been transmitted from one generation to the next have been corrupted in one way or another” and that “during the textual transmission many complicated changes occurred, making it now almost impossible for us to reconstruct the original form of the text” (8, 177). According to Tov, these “complicated changes” began in the earliest periods of religious writing, where “massive changes [occurred] in the formative stage of the biblical literature” (266).

While the texts themselves have been modified, the transition from oral cult to written text produces another kind of purging. This transition brings up a third major problem when understanding ancient Israelite religion. The Biblical texts emerge from an oral, cultic, and cosmographic culture. Many of the texts were written by literate scribes numerous centuries after their original creation within the oral cult. Margaret Barker relates that within the non-canonical tradition it is said that an editor named Ezra divided the Jewish scriptures into two parts, the smaller part for public reading while the larger part was to be kept secret and reserved only for those initiated into the temple cultus (Hidden 7-8). Proper understanding of the Hebrew cult came by way of initiatory ritual and not by the reading of words. Like so many other aspects of oral myth and cult, when reading a text that descends from it, we are only getting half of the story and even less of the context.

The transition from oral rites to literate texts brings us to a fork in the road. On the one hand is the realization that the Old Testament is a late production of a localized tradition centering around the national idea of the Exodus and the Mosaic Law. This entire history and tradition is something different than the history and tradition of the ancient Patriarchs: Adam, Noah, Enoch, and Melchizedek. The Torah is rooted in Mosaic history and law. The older Hebrew religion, birthed in the days of Abraham centuries earlier, was rooted in temple cosmography and cult. This realization makes the reforms of Josiah more complex to interpret. Did he only remove foreign elements from their temple? Or did he remove the more ancient elements of Judaism as well? Or did the book discovered in the temple help restore the older religious practices which had already been lost? If so, what was changed when the older order was re-instituted? How could they fully understand what they were reading when the written text itself must have been something different than the much older oral rites?

These questions are only part of another curiosity embedded within the Old Testament text—our other fork in the road. From the time of the Israelite kings onward there is no mention of the Mosaic Law. Isaiah does not mention it. There are several allusions within Isaiah which deal with an older tradition rooted in temple cosmography (e.g. chapter 22). Was the Mosaic law itself a product of post-exiled Jews, emerging as an official Israelite code of conduct at the same time of the canonization of the Torah? If this is true, then not only is the Old Testament, as we have it, something entirely different from the earlier forms of worship practiced by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also, it might be an entirely different form of worship than practiced in the days of Moses and Aaron! Of course, there are elements within the law which hale to much older times, but this changes nothing. Martin Luther retained much of the older Christian theology after his schismatic break from Catholicism, but the religion of Luther and Calvin is something entirely different than that of Aquinas and Gregory. This metaphor is apt, as the Mosaic Law and the Old Testament as we have it may represent a sort of “Great Reformation” completely separated from the origins of the religion.

This is also why I find the “there is no myth in the Book of Mormon” to be problematic. Because what Lehi does in 2 Nephi 2 with Genesis 2 is fundamentally not that different from what people around the same time did when they compiled Genesis 2. The only difference is that the obvious signs of use of the text is missing. In that sense Lehi’s account is just a little more transparent as to what is going on. We don’t know the historic steps when the Torah was compiled into its form, but likely it was done by scribes with political and religious aims at some post-exilic period. It’s not myth at all precisely because it’s been divorced from that (theoretical) originary mythic context and grafted in for an other purpose. Genesis 2’s connection to myth is about on par with with the use of Song of Solomon in D&C 109 and 105. Less is used by Joseph there, but the fundamental relationship is as a kind of tool which is key to grafting of texts in general.

John, I am in Provo. I’ve honestly not thought a lot about this stuff in a while. My background is physics and philosophy but I studied a lot of Heidegger and Derrida although my my philosophical interest is Peirce. Thus I end up thinking through a lot of these via semiotics. But I do have views. I think the problem I have with a lot is that psychoanalysis ends up behind a lot of it but most psychoanalysis is just bad pseudo-science. (Why it got kept to be a thread in a lot of semiotics escapes me but I think it’s part and parcel of the structuralist heritage)

Anyway, a lot of what I think important in texts is what’s there by accident rather than put there by some “essence” behind the texts. While I think the way many used Derrida and postmodernism in the 70’s through early 90’s is horrible (at least as bad as psychoanalysis) there is a point to it. Any given text is under a lot of tensions and to reduce it to a structure is to miss those tensions that form a given text.

These definitions have absolutely nothing to do with how ancient myth was created and modeled.

In the past two centuries there have been numerous and very smart scholars in different fields trying to wrestle with “myth”: James Frazer, Max Muller, Jane Harrison, Gilburt Murry, Otto Rank, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Claude Levi-Strauss, Mircea Eliade, etc. It is a field with rich inquiry and philosophical speculation. Because we are dealing with structures that hale from ancient history and out of an oral age there is no final say; ancient myth is a gordian knot wrapped in a mobius strip. If you would like a more refined treatment in defining ancient myth, abandon your Webster’s Dictionary and pick up, perhaps:

A Very Short Introduction to Myth, by Robert Segal

Myth and Meaning, by Claude Levi-Strauss

Language and Myth, by Enrst Cassirer

Myth, Its Meaning and Function, by G. S. Kirk

Cosmos and History, by Mircea Eliade

In Quest of the Hero, by Rank, Raglan, and Dundes

Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell

These are basic texts that introduce the complex ideas associated with ancient myth. They are introductory, and good reading for someone just beginning to explore the subject. The very first book is really an overview of the many different theories of ancient myth, and in reading its small and slim pages you can begin to sense just how “loaded” the term myth can be.

If you are looking for a more LDS oriented discussion of ancient myth and scriptural text, the closest you can come to it is Hugh Nibley’s Old Testament and Related Studies, also a good read, especially for an LDS. However, he does not get into myth, only admits that the Old Testament has mythic structures. Other LDS scholars do not touch the stuff. It will be interesting to see how Ben S. handles it. :)

I can say that there are strengths and weaknesses in each of these theories. Clark is very hesitant, I think, to apply a universal model that each theorist wants to apply to their own version of myth. As for myself, I like Eliade, but disagree with Campbell’s monomyth theory, and by extension the psychological school of myth; though I love reading Jung and Campbell, and they have important contributions to make. Freud is a bore.

I have a doctorate in this stuff, actually. I give my own theory of myth in my upcoming book, which is a mixture of some of those listed. If you would like to see a small treatment of how oral people’s used myth outside of our tradition, I suggest you watch this 17 minute video I made, based off a presentation I gave at a conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5oWoA9mZK4&feature=youtu.be

As for you Clark, I see you have put a lot of thought and work into your ideas. I’d love to have lunch with you and pick your brain. I don’t suppose you live in the land of Zion? By which I mean New Jersey. (lol, actually I live in Utah….)

–Josh Smith

I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment, Clark. This entire discussion would probably be more productive if we used other people’s myths. They’re safer, emotionally safer.

Presumably Ben S., and John Lundwall, and you could express what you’re trying to say about oral and literate peoples and myths using someone else’s myths?

I’m no expert on myths, but it kind of sounds like you’re expressing some the ideas of Joseph Campbell. Is that about right?

“It also in some contexts, especially the structuralist project of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and even psychology involves some key claims about the text and often there can’t be any significant historical basis to it.”

The idea is that whether myth was tied to loose events (say the spring/winter cycle) or even history of particular people (think the Romulus/Remus myth that starts more literate histories of Rome) treating the myth means denying the history. I think Romulus/Remus is a great example without the baggage we bring from the scriptures due to how we value scripture. Romulus/Remus in say the opening of Livy has a similar connection to his more formal history that say the Old Testament does with Gen 1&2 to say 1 & 2 Chronicles. Now the weird thing about Romulus/Remus and the related stories is that they are really weird as a founding myth. (The stories of them being born of a prostitute being a great example of how they are weird – which led to all sorts of issue in Roman self-identity) There’s no agreement on how to take Remus and Romulus and I think it an excellent place to destabilize myth as a structure with great bearing on how we take up Gen 1 & 2.

The issue John is getting at is slightly more complex and is an argument about what happens to narratives in a pre-literate society. It sounds to me like it still partakes too much of some of those early 20th century models, although I’ll fully admit I’m not an anthropologist so I don’t know the current models nor the empirical basis (if any) for them. I confess I’m really skeptical of reductive stories about categories like myth which is why it’s a loaded term for me. I think people push texts and people into categories that don’t fully fit.

For regular lay people it’s loaded both because of the assumption of falsehood, as you noted but also due to assuming if a story is myth there can’t be anything historical too it. I’m not sure Jonah is the best example there but perhaps Christ is. People have long noted the similarities of many near eastern myths and the Christ narrative of the gospels for instance.

I actually think John’s model provides a bit of an explanation for this. If myths are structures that narratives are fit to in oral societies then it’s hardly surprising that remember a narrative involves fitting it (more or less) into existing structures. Likewise those structures actually become a lens through which narratives are understood. For a more modern example think the classic adventure story structure with its opposition, typically three loose act structure (occasionally four), and a climax at the end where the conflect is resolved in some way with the protagonist. Now think about how true narratives when told even today get cast into those literary structures.

In scriptures, even ignoring the complexities of myth, that happens even more with what are called type settings. You see it Nephi’s narrative for instance which fits his life into the exodus story, the Noah story, and so forth.