Comments on: How the New Perspective on Paul Illustrates the Science-Religion Creation Debate

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 20:33:35 +0000

Gaucon (12), while I’m a big advocate for reading alternative translations – especially ones that don’t break verses out as self contained units – I really don’t think the NT is that hard to read in the KJV. The parts of Paul that are hard to make sense of (Romans) are frankly nearly as hard in other translations. The issue is the social background rather than the words themselves.

All that said, I do wish that the Church would at a minimum provide something like the New King James Version. Maybe there are issues with licensing but I think it’d be a nice middle ground – especially if the Church displayed text as paragraphs rather than verses.

By: Ben S.

Ben S. — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 02:10:48 +0000

Ok, I’ve edited one comment that was going even further afield. I appreciate the refrain from threadjacking Jeff G.

By: Jeff G

Jeff G — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 21:55:14 +0000

Martin,

I don’t want to get into a big thread-jack here since Ben’s posts are interesting enough on their own. I will just say that the teachings of any dead prophet are binding only so long as living prophets that actually have stewardship over us continue to quote and, thus, legitimize them. If people have to scrounge some quote up from the depths of the internet, we can probably bet good money that the living prophets aren’t discussing it much. (This goes for both pro- and anti-evolution statements.)

By: Martin James

Martin James — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:27:05 +0000

Jeff,

Is there a shelf life for recently deceased prophets or is “out with the old in with the new” immediately at death?

By: Jeff G

Jeff G — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:18:32 +0000

Great thoughts, Ben.

Once we realize that dead prophets had no stewardship over us and thus did not receive revelation for us, we can focus on living, contemporary prophets and the temptation toward anachronism simply never gets off the ground…. Well, maybe not totally (living prophets are fully authorized to anachronistically project things back onto the past (the New Translation of the Bible), but at least the everyday member won’t feel obligated to address every single quote from JD that any anti- on the internet might throw in their face. If we stick to the teachings of living prophets instead of dead texts, we’ll do just fine.

By: Glaucon

Glaucon — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 19:58:15 +0000

Mormons don’t read Paul because we haven’t the faintest idea what they say. The epistles in the KJV are utterly incomprehensible. Switch over to another translation (NRSV, NIV) and it would open up a whole new world in Sunday School.

By: Craig H.

Craig H. — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 19:10:20 +0000

Of course some Mormons have no problem with Paul, like, obviously, Adam Miller’s paraphrase of Romans…..

By: Ben S.

Ben S. — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 18:58:45 +0000

Bart- Not necessarily, though it does strongly challenge the idea of a special creation of homo sapiens in the last few thousand years. I find it significant that Adam and Eve are both given universalist, typological names, i.e. Human and Life.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 18:18:27 +0000

Dave, I think Mormons have often had trouble with Paul precisely because of Luther and Calvin. I'm not sure it's fair to say there's total silence though. A lot of the BoM parallels Paul in key ways. While this is typically taken as either Joseph aping Pauline passages to translate similar passages or (for critics) just naive plagiarism I think the New Perspectives gives a bit more depth to the consideration. That is a very Jewish and not necessarily uniquely Paul way of viewing the ideas. Beyond that though we have quite a few quotes of Paul by Joseph Smith who seemed to see in Paul a person with similar experiences. e.g. May 26, 1844 sermon or then strongly suggesting Paul's appearance as an angel. (Jan 5, 1841) It's also interesting that Joseph sees in Paul a lot of work on making ones election sure. (This is something McConkie does in his New Testament Commentary as well - people complain about this with McConkie but McConkie was largely just following Joseph's views or at least appropriation) Read through some of Joseph's sermons and one quickly realizes just how key Paul really was for a lot of Joseph's thought. And interestingly often in ways that make more since in a context of N T Wright rather than Calvin or Luther.

By: Username

Username — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 17:46:40 +0000

@Bart, I think a better description would be that it forces us to admit that whoever Adam and Eve were, we have precious little knowledge of them. Their very names should set off alarm bells that any attempt at historical reconstruction without a great deal more revelation will be very fraught. I think this is one of the hardest things for LDS people to admit–that we know bupkis about all kinds of ?important? things in the gospel.

By: Clay Cook

Clay Cook — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:00:23 +0000

As usual I enjoy your thought ad perspectives. I recently read an excellent book by John Walton. “The Lost World of Genesis 1.” He reminds us that the scriptures were written for but not to us and that we often make the mistake of trying to put them into our current cultural paradigm. We make the mistake of seeing Genesis as a description of material natural origins rather than functional origins. Walton suggests that stop trying force the text to fit science but see as a explanation of function and temple cosmology. An interesting approach. Thanks again Ben for you insights.

By: jader3rd

jader3rd — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 14:45:28 +0000

On Sunday we had some family over from my wife’s side and her step grandmother mentioned how for her whole life she hated Paul, but now she really likes his writings. I imagine it came from his few verses that I’m sure someone loves to point out in Seminary, or Sunday School, and as a result none of the girls feel like reading any of the rest of his epistles. At that point in the conversation my mother-in-law says that Paul was a small, mean single man. I responded that we have no evidence that Paul was single to which replied “Well if he was married he wasn’t married for long”. So I agree with Dave in that there probably is no LDS perspective on Paul and that may be due to the fact that LDS women (I admit my sample size is 2) refuse to read Paul.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 13:37:51 +0000

Nice post, Ben — the New Perspective on Paul deserves its own series of posts. I think the LDS position might be called No Perspective on Paul. He is strangely absent from the LDS script, which picks out obscure OT figures like Melchizedek and Enoch and highlights NT John the Baptist but ignores Paul. LDS seem to have take over Luther’s misunderstanding of grace versus works, although moving to the opposite end of the spectrum from Luther.

By: JKC

JKC — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 12:58:15 +0000

So maybe Luther misread Paul, but if he did, did he misread Paul any more than Nephi misread Isaiah, or was Luther just “likening” Paul’s writings to the controversies of his day?

By: Bart

Bart — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 10:25:08 +0000

Doesn’t this kill off the literal Adam and Eve?