{"id":48029,"date":"2024-10-07T09:50:33","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T15:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=48029"},"modified":"2024-10-07T09:50:33","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T15:50:33","slug":"rethinking-the-biblical-narrative-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/10\/rethinking-the-biblical-narrative-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the Biblical Narrative: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having done a few posts<\/a> on being a practicing Mormonism<\/a> while disbelieving in Book of Mormon historicity<\/a>, I wanted to shift gears a little bit to explain a few more aspects of my believing framework. I\u2019ve talked about my views<\/a> on what I see as the good that our religion<\/a> (others too) does for the lives of its members here in life, and I want to start a series a posts on what I see as a historical framework to Mormon belief that I find compelling.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll go over this in more detail in upcoming posts, but the gist is that what I see as the combination of two themes. The first is what I\u2019ve found in the research on my book, that JS believed that a central calling of his was to restore was what was known in his day as the \u201cancient theology\u201d (sometimes called other names like the ancient religion, the universal religion, or simply, ancient philosophy.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Scholars in JS\u2019s day presented the ancient theology as a set of beliefs that came from the ancients to Plato, and as I point out in this presentation<\/a>, it contained a whole lot of Mormon doctrine. It did so, I argue, because JS (likely because of his father) believed that the ancient theology was a fuller truth, suppressed by contemporary and Christians, that that JS needed to restore. Again, the whole plan of salvation is in Plato.<\/p>\n

I find such a tendency significant because in my dabblings in biblical scholarship, I\u2019m seeing more cases of scholars arguing for Greek influence on both the Old and New Testament. As I blogged about, scholars are increasingly arguing that most of the OT is not historical<\/a>, and a number claim that much of the OT is the product much later Hellenistic period. Likewise, Jesus and much of his early interpretation (the Gospels) in a Hellenistic context as well.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I\u2019ll post most about all this, but as I see it, JS would appear (to me) to really be onto something in embracing the ancient theology. I see lots of ex evangelicals expressing faith crises about learning about biblical scholarship calling OT historicity into question, but though JS certainly believed the Bible was historical, embracing a bigger truth than the Protestants’ sola scriptura was important to him. So scholars pointing to the Greeks and Plato really gels with what I\u2019ve found about Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n

And I would argue that in drawing on such ideas and material, Joseph Smith did in fact create a compelling religious system, one that can be more flexible in light of contemporary biblical scholarship.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having done a few posts on being a practicing Mormonism while disbelieving in Book of Mormon historicity, I wanted to shift gears a little bit to explain a few more aspects of my believing framework. I\u2019ve talked about my views on what I see as the good that our religion (others too) does for the lives of its members here in life, and I want to start a series a posts on what I see as a historical framework to Mormon belief that I find compelling. I\u2019ll go over this in more detail in upcoming posts, but the gist is that what I see as the combination of two themes. The first is what I\u2019ve found in the research on my book, that JS believed that a central calling of his was to restore was what was known in his day as the \u201cancient theology\u201d (sometimes called other names like the ancient religion, the universal religion, or simply, ancient philosophy.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48029","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\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48030,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48029\/revisions\/48030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}