With respect to the larger issues, I agree that moving toward more thematic content in instructional curricula (rather than textual) exacerbates the lack of knowledge/ability to grapple with these questions. And I agree that it’s not enough just to say “tackle the gospel topics essays and complex questions at home” (#31-32). The larger question of how IMPORTANT it is to determine authorship (Brad #63, Clark #65) seems in many ways to be beside the point, as well… regardless of how important we think it is to care about authorship, it seems (especially with the OT) that it’s difficult to definitively determine, in any event. So the question (again, going back to the thrust of the OP) becomes: how important is it to tee up the idea that authorship might in fact be indeterminate? (Versus, say, following the manual and just asserting that Moses wrote the Pentateuch).

So on that front, there was a great discussion early in the comments. I can really appreciate the views of Pierce (comment #14, 29, 35) and I like the exchange with Julie (#23) and Dave (#26). In the end I’m more with Julie and Dave: I think it’s important to expose the youth to some of this kind of discussion as a component of Seminary. I suspect Pierce’s defending the status quo / manual has more to do with him being a release-time Seminary teacher (which I think makes Pierce a CES employee – correct me if I’m wrong). But to Pierce’s point, Seminary also doesn’t serve its purpose very well if ALL one does is delve into the gospel topics and controversies.

My view is that the purpose of Seminary (or at least, early morning Seminary, where I serve) is threefold: 1) to provide an opportunity to give a spiritual experience first thing in the morning – to help the youth feel the spirit and charge that battery for the day. 2) nominally, as best can be accomplished, it should also be about learning the material (church history last year, Old Testament this year, etc). But let’s be honest – – those two purposes aren’t enough, are they? I mean, if all we want is just to have the youth feel the spirit in the morning, they could stay home and watch a conference talk or a Mormon Message and call it good. Ditto for learning the material – if that’s the primary purpose, there are other (logistically easier) ways to accomplish this. Distance learning of institute religion classes, anyone? What I’m saying is: it’s a pain to get a bunch of youth in a rural county all together in one physical place for 50 minutes every morning, and if it’s just to feel the spirit, I’m all for employing church media or other means.

So to me that suggests that perhaps the most important objective of Seminary (and the reason to gather together, under the direction of a teacher) is the third one, which in my view is: 3) help the youth learn how to wrestle with, reflect on, and gain answers to questions they have about the gospel.

Given that, again I’m with Julie and Dave, and I think Dave (#26) summed it up best – mix it up with some scripture football, and you’ve got a winner. In other words, I think all three of the objectives of Seminary I outlined are important – – but you can’t always do all three every morning. This week we’ve had a couple of straightforward lessons, but then two days on Noah and then a third debriefing and focusing on how to think about these stories, which was a more reflective day. So this week has been a little heavier on the “let’s engage in the questions” approach. Other weeks are full of more scripture mastery games and object lessons.

Here are my two biggest challenges, however:

1) The CES manual and online materials are abysmal this year. I only have last year as a reference point, but I’ve been totally underwhelmed by the manual for OT. We’ve scrambled and gotten a Jewish Study Bible and the Holzapfel book and several other resources to help – – but I’d say this has been the biggest obstacle. Contrary to Pierce’s (#35) suggestions, the manual is NOT that great at dealing with complexities. The OP is absolutely correct on things like the Book of Abraham, for instance: the gospel topics essay is much more comprehensive (yet still brief and accessible) than the one pager in the CES manual, which neglects to even mention the PRIMARY controversy around the scrolls, i.e. that the fragments translate differently than what we have as the BoA! (It brings up that the scrolls date to more recently than Abraham etc, but in my opinion the manual obscures the biggest potential problem…) Furthermore, the OT manual tends to treat all the OT stories very simplistically, and the “takeaway lesson” every time seems to reduce to the same thing over and over: disobedience means bad things will happen to you. So it’s been a little bit more work to prepare the same quality of lessons I did last year. (The CES manual for church history/D&C was terrific.) This is why Pierce seems mostly like he’s shilling for CES, but in my view (as a stake-calling, early-morning Seminary teacher), the resources this year are mostly inadequate.

2) Some of the kids are feeling more challenged by me raising questions about the material than others. I think some of them may have never even thought about the possibility that the story of Noah’s ark might have been more metaphor than history, for instance. So, the kids are in different places on this stuff, and so that’s the other challenge: not all the kids (and their families) are as welcoming to the reflective approach, and it seems they might prefer the Sunbeam version of things.

Anyhow, a long winded way of saying: I agree with the OP; the CES materials for this year’s Seminary curriculum seem insufficient.

While the OT is used in correlated materials that’s hardly surprising considering a major course of study is the OT.

Suppose we looked at each passage and evaluated whether they were revealed by God or just personal speculation about God’s words (perhaps while feeling the spirit or some rush of inspiration), and we drew up in percentages in the following categories (some categories could be added or altered, but my point should be clear):

1) x% likely to be direct revelation/solid representation of God’s words
2) x% likely to be personal speculation about God’s words
3) x% likely to be muddled representation of God’s words due to transmission of oral tradition
4) x% likely to be personal musings while having a spiritual feeling

An inerrantist would be high in category 1. Ben S and others like him, perhaps you as well, would likely be much lower in category 1 and higher in 2, 3, and 4 than an inerrantist. My question is how low can one go in category 1 before they can not really be said to believe that the OT is scripture and the word of God? It seems that some are so low in category one that it could be said that their beliefs about the OT are simply out of line with how the LDS church leaders view the OT. Also, if we have a very low category 1, then what is the point of considering the OT to be a text that stands apart as representation of God’s words than something like Tad Callister’s Infinite Atonement or Steve Robinson’s Believing Christ. Those are popular, influential books in Mormondom, but are they considered doctrine? No. Are they used in the correlated material? No. But the OT is.

As an aside, I am reminded of what G. K. Chesterton once wrote: “The ultimate paradox . . . is that the very things we cannot comprehend are the things we have to take for granted.” This is so true. Things like, life, consciousness, and the universe are full of mystery and we simply have to take them for granted when we discuss all our theories about them.

So it is with the “Word of God.” The Word is something we literate people take for granted. And this can lead to exaggerations, if not errors.

What is the Word of God to an oral society? Is it scripture? How could it be if they are oral? Is it the daily manifestation of angels? Now that’s absurd. So what is the Word? Once again we are told over and over that the Word of God is the scriptures (hold to the rod = read your scriptures). But this is again a completely literate view that takes almost all of oral history, which by the way, is almost all of human history, for granted. (On this point, I recently submitted an abstract to the Mormon Philosophy and Theology conference in October at BYU. The theme is on works and grace. My abstract asserted that the entire argument between works and grace is a literate construct. Oral peoples do not make that argument. My proposal was soundly rejected, so consider that as you read this.)

It turns out that if you do a word search in the Standard Works for “Word of God” you get 144 references. Most of them refer to a worldview (i.e. the word of god was preached unto them). We assume that means the scriptures were preached. Not so. This is the oral word. A theological tradition is being preached. It is true that oft times a text is involved, and several references to the Word of God in the Standard Works refers to a printed text. But there are some significant exceptions. Let me list a few:

Ephesians 6.17; Acts 4.31; Hebrews 4.12. In these verses the Word = the Holy Ghost
1 Kings 12.22; Luke 3.2. In these verse the Word = Revelation
Acts 6.5-7. In this verse the Word = Priesthood Organization
John 1.1; Heb 11.3; 1 Peter 1.23. In these verses the Word = Christ
John 1.1. This verse actually has several allusions to not only Christ, but to the framework of relationships that allow for the creation of the world (In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was WITH God, and the Word WAS God).

We can begin to see that the Word is not just a printed text that results from God speaking to a prophet and then that prophet writing what God spoke to him down on paper. The Word is the intercession of the divine into the mundane, accounted for through the medium of the Spirit, revelation, but even priesthood power and organization. Hold to the rod takes on different connotations in this context.

Principally, one of the definitions of the Word you will not read in a text is its liturgical basis. In oral societies the Word of God is the sacred rituals at the center of their cult. This is not idle speculation. Furthermore, in oral societies the sacred rituals are actually forbidden to be written down and are referred to through epithets and mythological tropes. Clement of Alexandria claimed that the true sacred things of God were never for writing. Well, that puts the “Word” in a new light.

In an Oral society, the gods and their myths can constitute the Word of God. We literate peoples do no comprehend this, but God was revealing his word to oral peoples for thousands of years before writing and the printing press. This word had to be transmitted, and myth and ritual remain the “imprinting press of preliterate peoples.” This imprinting press works on different cognitive rules. And this is why the Old Testament is often muddled, because we are imposing literate cognitive rules onto oral tradition. As such, this makes a simple “Well is it the Word of God or not?” kind of question irrelevant.

Sorry for the length of this post. You did say be thorough. But I am simply trying to show that many of our assumptions about the “Word of God” are modern and literate, and therefore quite temporal, and sometimes quite provincial. To an ancient priest of Britain, the Word would constitute the sacred dance within the wooden or stone henge that was aligned to the sun and stars as they, through ritual, song, and dance, reenacted the cosmogony. This was the Word for centuries, if not millennium. One ancient writer claimed that the entire philosophy of the Pythagoreans could be revealed in a dance. The Pyramid Texts tell us that Pharaoh knows the way through the celestial world because he has been properly initiated and knows the proper dances. All these references remind us that for oral peoples the divine Word was an acted ritual within a sacred space through initiation and dance. And this we have forgotten.

And yes, you don’t get this in Mormon Sunday School. Nor, apparently, at the Mormon Philosophy and Theology Conference as well. :)

Ultimately, I side with Clark and Ben when it comes to asserting that the divine word of God is a product of divine influence with a human touch. Prophets are not fax machines relating every word down that God wants us to know. This does not mean that the scriptures are less reliable. It does mean that they are a synthesis of divine will and human culture, and therefore are not inerrant or infallible. This latter idea is an evangelical fundamentalist position, and shockingly, and sadly, is a rampant assumption throughout LDS circles.

On the contrary, LDS theology is rich and grand and more connected with the hoary past than all of Christendom. Go to the temple and witness the Word of God. Is it perfect and infallible? No. It is not. (And with these new temple films I am finding more fallibility with my culture all the time.) It is sufficient. And in a world that thrives on willful, spiritual ignorance, sufficient is a miracle.

The other problem with your (a) beyond it even being a stronger position than Evangelical inerrancy, is that we’d expect to have a single voice style in all scripture. We don’t see that.

By presenting what I see as a false dichotomy you really are pushing people towards your (b) quite unnecessarily.

Does the Old Testament actually consist of God’s words and ideas/is it the word of God? If so, how exactly? And be as specific as you can.

We always treat oral traditions like texts. This leads to errors and caricatures. I would not call oral traditions “fictions” either, even though they are not literate histories (i.e. give me the facts and only the facts). To believe that everything in the Old Testament is as reported is to project a literate view onto a literate text that has been rewritten by several scribes over centuries after transforming the older oral traditions. Please, there is going to be lots of problems. Ben S. likes to talk about genres, but the truth is by the time we get the Old Testament text it has already shifted through several genres. We have all lumped it together as “history” or “doctrine” because that is how modern literate people read these kinds of texts.

And that’s okay. We should be able to talk about it, wrestle with it, disagree about it, etc. And I think that is what a lot of these blogs do. Sometimes the conversation becomes less civil, and that should not let us stop poking and prodding at these issues.

When I taught the book of Job in GD last year (one 45 minute session for the entire book) I discussed how the wisdom texts in the Bible did not begin as texts; that is why Proverbs and Psalms are written and structured as they are (in Hebraic poetry, or in song, for example), because such things are how oral peoples transmit information. Parables are part of the Wisdom tradition, for stories are easily remembered by oral peoples. The primary audience for Jesus was not a bunch of literate scholars or apostles who are writing commentaries; his primary audience were oral, non-literate people, and he delivered his doctrine using oral, non-literate methods. On this point Ben S. is right when he says that Jesus uses fictions to teach. Once again though, in describing it in this way we are labeling literate methods onto oral practices.

Wisdom texts are not historical as we define them, though they can be and often are rooted in historical fact. I suggested that Job was part of the Wisdom text tradition and probably was a compilation of a few different sources. I also suggested that Job need not be a historical person, and that the first chapter may have descended from an ancient drama as it reads like a prologue to an acted out play (a few scholars have suggested this before). It turns out that everyone enjoyed the lesson, even the “fundamentalists” of Mormondom who attended thanked me for pointing out things they had never thought of. So I think that if it is approached right, and with humility, we can discuss these things in GD, or Seminary, or Sacrament Meeting, etc. In fact, I think we should.

Yet, what are you taking to mean “divinely inspired text”? Towards which of the following understandings are you leaning?

a) words and ideas that a mortal human is not generating of his own accord but because God is revealing those ideas to him
or
b) words and ideas that a mortal human is generating from their own mind, but feel strongly would probably be in line with what God might say.

If a, then authorship can still be attributed to God, and the text can be considered doctrinal.

If b, then authorship must be attributed to fallible human minds, and its doctrinal content becomes questionable.

Also, if b, why is the LDS church revering the standard works so much? Wouldn’t these “inspired words” be equivalent to a general authority’s opinion on doctrine written down in some book published through Deseret Book? I can’t imagine the LDS leaders saying, “don’t place too much stock in the Pauline Epistles or the words of Alma.”

I think you’d have a point if God dictated everything. But that typically seems the rarity. Again, I’d point you to Ether 12 where Moroni seems quite upset at the effects of his human frailties. You seem to be discounting that element.

If author = originator of words and ideas
If the scriptures = God’s words
If doctrine = God’s words

Then it logically follows:

The more you attribute the words and ideas of scripture to mere mortals and people who weren’t supposedly God’s direct representatives, the less you can coherently say that the scriptures constitute doctrine.

Call this simplistic, but then reflect on the 8th article of faith.

Contrast this with more important things like whether there were really Nephites and Lamanites or a real Jesus who was resurrected. So clearly in some cases the historicity matters a great deal. But even when we have historicity we can always raise the issue of historical accuracy (such as contradictions within the gospels). So even rejecting fiction hermeneutically doesn’t avoid the issue of discerning error.

The easy solution is the sola scripture and inerrancy views. That is the Bible was inspired to be written such that a typical reader wouldn’t make major errors in their reading and what they read is correct within reason. I find a whole slew of problems with that view. I do think that via the spirit we can avoid error. (I take that to be the message of Ether 12 – as we read in the spirit we’ll get the message) Yet the weaknesses of men is always present. Simple reading aided only by our reason just isn’t trustworthy IMO. Likewise many questions we might have about what the text says are unanswerable or require much more careful reading and study.