{"id":1310,"date":"2004-09-08T22:41:31","date_gmt":"2004-09-09T02:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2004-09-09T00:41:38","modified_gmt":"2004-09-09T04:41:38","slug":"a-different-kind-of-likening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/09\/a-different-kind-of-likening\/","title":{"rendered":"A Different Kind of ‘Likening’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a great conversation over at that other blog <\/a>about that classically difficult story, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. Among the many excellent comments, this one from danithew stood out to me:<\/p>\n

“In my Quranic Studies course today the professor talked about how one of the first things Islamic scholars used to do was look at a test and identify the problems\/challenges\/dilemmas that were imposed on the reader by the text.”<\/p>\n

This concept seems as if it would be more at home among the reader-response-flavored lit critics than it would among Islamic scholars, but I am nonetheless intrigued by the idea and I can’t recall it being applied in an LDS setting. I think it has a lot of potential for expanding the (sometimes stale and shallow) practice of likening the scriptures unto ourselves. I think it might be a less-threatening way to introduce a subject to a class that might otherwise be controversial:<\/p>\n

BAD: “I can’t buy the idea that God would want Nephi to violate a major commandment.”
\nGOOD: “When we read that the Spirit tells Nephi to kill Laban, what challenges does it place on us as readers of this story–and how do we resolve them?”<\/p>\n

So, now that we have a new tool, let’s trot out our favorite dead horses and see what we can do with them: Judah and Tamar<\/a>, Nephi and Laban<\/a>, Abraham and Isaac<\/a>, Abraham and Sarah’s identity in Egypt<\/a>, Rebekah and the blessing.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m too pregnant and tired to think right now, so I’ll be heading over to www.geosense.net <\/a>to waste some time and cultivate my feelings of ignorance, and leave it to y’all to get the ball rolling. I’ll add some comments tomorrow, maybe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a great conversation over at that other blog about that classically difficult story, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. Among the many excellent comments, this one from danithew stood out to me: “In my Quranic Studies course today the professor talked about how one of the first things Islamic scholars used to do was look at a test and identify the problems\/challenges\/dilemmas that were imposed on the reader by the text.” This concept seems as if it would be more at home among the reader-response-flavored lit critics than it would among Islamic scholars, but I am nonetheless intrigued by the idea and I can’t recall it being applied in an LDS setting. I think it has a lot of potential for expanding the (sometimes stale and shallow) practice of likening the scriptures unto ourselves. I think it might be a less-threatening way to introduce a subject to a class that might otherwise be controversial: BAD: “I can’t buy the idea that God would want Nephi to violate a major commandment.” GOOD: “When we read that the Spirit tells Nephi to kill Laban, what challenges does it place on us as readers of this story–and how do we resolve them?” So, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn","category-scriptures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}