I am sympathetic to Adam’s reading in the sense that I think Sherem’s sincerity does come through. I’m not sure Boyce’s critique of Sherem’s purported duplicity works – especially if we read him as a more traditional deuteronomist opposed to Nephi’s innovations. He claims to know there is no coming Christ due to a very strong monotheism rather than due to prophesy. So I don’t think Boyce is reading charitably enough there. Likewise he treats Sherem’s success as evidence of a sort of sophistry which I don’t think follows. (Think of our own critics today) Finally the “arrogance” of Sherem is more just because Sherem thinks Jacob is a liar. Again conflicts between Mormon apologists and our naturalistic critics can be informative here. Most of Boyce’s critique is more or less just assuming the text gives an objective view of history rather than a biased view towards Nephi and Jacob’s view. So there I think Adam is right with his hermeneutics of suspicion. I’m sure Laman and Lemuel, as bad as they were, would give a very different report of things.

All that said, it seems undeniable though that Adam neglects the aspect of war that is going on. (This is partially why it matters if he is a lamanite) The effects of this is an odd blind spot in Adam’s analysis. That is if we’re going to read Jacob suspiciously, why not Sherem too? If he is from the forces attacking the Nephites, doesn’t that matter? Even if he is personally sincere how do his actions fit in the larger political situation? (Parallels to our own current situation are perhaps hard to resist) From this larger perspective relative to the safety and most important religiosity of the people, does Sherem’s sincerity matter? Adam suggests Jacob is at fault for uncharitably receiving Sherem, but what about the people Sherem is leading away? Do they not count in that calculus?

Finally is Sherem’s confession. I’ve always read that as a bit untrustworthy, but I think Boyce is completely right to bring it up. I think the way Adam engages with the confession is problematic for a variety of reasons. For one by making it purely a sign for Jacob, Adam oddly represses Sherem as a person. That is he engages in the very act he accuses Jacob of. Sherem is just a signifier for the real hidden sign of Laman and Lemuel. Sherem is robbed of his own humanity and his own place in the story.

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-brighter-future-for-mormon-theology-adam-s-millers-future-mormon/

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/reclaiming-jacob

(Candidly: what I like in Lindsay’s review is how he recounts his initial resistance to Adam’s less-than-rosy view of Jacob but then reconsiders in light of the question Adam poses. This, I think, is scriptural interpretation at it’s best.And what I like in Boyce is how he effectively shows where precisely Adam is making interpretive leaps. Though, I think Boyce is overly redundant in his writing and overly triumphalist in his tone–I had to look beyond these aspects of his writing to cull out what I think are in fact good counter-points to Adam’s essay and Lindsay’s account of why he became mostly convinced by Adam’s reading.)

Please do post some more of the Dueteronomist History Thesis. I think I have the basics of it already, but couldn’t say so with confidence, and I’m sure I’ll be a more useful interlocutor if I do some more reading. :)

I’ll try and put more links to where I’m coming from. I’ve been putting a few up on Twitter too such as a nice overview of the Deuteronomist History thesis.

The prophetic type-scene is I think important. My personal feeling is we can do a fruitful hermeneutics of suspicion analysis (perhaps minus a bit of the Freudianism) by considering what Jacob leaves out by mimicking the type scene. i.e. what is left out with fitting actual history into literary tropes?

Ultimately, I think your reading of the scenario is more fair to Jacob, and I find the parallels of the prophetic scene you bring up very enlightening. Both readings can exist in my head at the same time, and I get something different and of value out of each.

I think we’ve been missing some things that Adam is trying to do with “the law”, and obviously I’m missing some of the stuff about what “the law” means in scriptural context outside of the Christian context. I hope to take up Agamben’s influence on Adam’s treatment on the law in a later chapter. I’ve almost done enough reading to do it properly now, so I won’t entirely embarrass myself and might be able to prompt me in ways that I can learn.

While we’re here, do you have any suggestions to those of us amateurs interested in works like “Future Mormon” but haven’t read enough in Mormon to catch up? Personally speaking, this reading group is really useful for me, but there’s a lot more that I need to read before I can really meet you on your level! :D Your footnotes show me all sorts of interesting things that I feel like I should have already have known, but obviously you’ve been at it for years and obviously there’s more out there than anyone can really master in a short period of time. Any advice on putting together a good autodidact reading list?

That said, the content and origin of Sherem, while a bit mysterious, doesn’t really affect Adam’s point too much. I do agree that how Adam uses signs is a bit conflicted. I’m not sure his argument about signs and their phenomenological withdrawal is at odds with the use of signs in the Torah — particularly Deuteronomy. But you’re right he doesn’t really engage with the difference. His focus isn’t sign in the text but this psycho-analytic sense.

The other thing I touched upon but didn’t delve into was the notion of what is meant by Law. Adam takes it primarily in the Christian, especially Lutheran, view of Paul. Whereas I think both the pre-Josiah and Deuteronomist view of Law is not really that sense. However I think that a focus on Deuteronomy 12-26 wouldn’t necessarily change his argument that much. But it would be interesting contrasting Deut 12-26 with say Ex 20-23 and seeing how that affects the Sherem/Jacob debate. That said I suspect Sherem’s real concern is Deut 12:29-31 on worshipping other Gods and Jacob’s focus is on denying God as savior and head of the covenant. As I touched upon to my eyes the primary focus is who is guilty which puts the conflict into a form quite similar to Elijah.

Second, it seems like Miller needs to distinguish between the philosophical view of signs and what they signify or point to (which he seems to be using when he says we can “read the law itself as a sign”) and the Christian idea of a sign as evidence or proof of the existence of God or of the rightness of one’s particular view of God, which is how Jacob 7 and the Christian tradition use the term. And given how definitively the text in Jacob 7 embraces the idea of giving a sign, that needs to be defended in light of the rejection of just such a use of signs in the New Testament: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas …” (Matt. 12:39).

But I like the encouragement to view individuals on their own terms rather than as fitting into this or that stereotype. I think that mistake is common in LDS culture. Ironically, Korihor and Sherem often define a stereotype applied to internal or external critics of the Church.