And this lecture (which I’m sure builds on older material by Welch).
http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/john-w-welch-on-leviticus-as-an-archetypal-temple-template/

I don’t mind the technicality, obviously, but I don’t want someone’s first exposure to a real commentary to be original language technical/criticial, since it would be pretty useless. I don’t want to scare people off.

Oh, and the new AB on Genesis? When I visited with Hendel in 2007 or so, he thought he’d be done “soon.” So, don’t hold your breath.

Of course, none of these will be super helpful for a seminary teacher. Perhaps the Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible eds. Dunn and Rogerson is something that would be easier. It does have some technical material, but is aimed more for an educated lay reader. It also includes a short commentary on 1 Enoch by Daniel Olsen (and the Margaret Barker Isaiah is interesting as well).

For a short, readable commentary on Leviticus, I found Milgrom’s Continental Commentary which adapts his three volume AB on Leviticus is more helpful.

To give an example so people can say I’m fixated on seer stones, Joseph’s explanation of the U&T has some interesting parallels to some ideas from late antiquity – especially Josephus and the DSS. It’s not exact but surprisingly close. But this is quite at odds with the typical view of the U&T of the priests from before this era (where typically they’re seen as lots one throws out rather than someone indicating letters).

I think we thus have to be careful. I think sometimes we latch on to interpretations of pre-Christian Israel that line up with our views because they line up with those views. However often those interpretations are fairly controversial at best in terms of how the OT itself is viewed as history. A subtle but important distinctions. (Of course some might say that the scholarly reconstruction, often from extremely limited evidence, might be problematic – however one might think that one has then ceased really appealing to the historic OT literature)

-“much OT context that strengthened my faith that our modern prophets are reliable interpreters of the Old Testament”

I don’t think they are, but I also don’t think they are supposed to be.
Prophets throughout scripture are largely focused on their contemporary challenges and issues, and (whether knowingly or unknowingly) reinterpret the past to apply to the present.

For LDS who are aware of this, tension arises, because we tend not to distinguish between contextual interpretation (meaning, “what did this mean in its earliest context?”) and recontextual interpretation, which ignores context in order to apply to a new situation. This shouldn’t surprise us too much, since Nephi blatantly announces that he’s reinterpreting Isaiah for his people. As my friend Carl pointed out, you don’t need to “liken” something unless you’re applying it to something different than it was originally for. It’s a seminary scripture, 1 Nephi 19:23. This is precisely what the New Testament authors do, as well as Jesus, the Dead Sea Scroll authors, the Old Testament within the Old Testament and so on for a long time. Contextual interpretation develops fairly late in Christianity and Judaism.

So while I appreciate greater contextual awareness from our doctrinal and spiritual leaders, I generally don’t expect it and don’t consider the lack to be a prophetic failing.

As for your questions on context, I am interested in Ben’s answer as well.

I’ve faced this problem, too. I concluded that my initial conception of “prophetic” just didn’t jive well with reality. In other words, since I have a spiritual witness that Joseph Smith was a prophet, however he behaved is how a prophet behaves. I needed to change my definition of a prophet, rather than judge Joseph Smith as failing to hit the mark.