I’ve been working on this post for most of the last week, and it has become more and more difficult. So, I’m going to post three parts separately: a tentative proposal of my hermeneutical principles, my notes on Moses 5, and an exegesis of Moses 5. Today, Part I:
Adam and Eve in Moses 5:
Hermeneutical Principles, Notes, and an Exegesis
I’ve been writing about Adam and Eve for more than forty years, and thinking about them a little longer. One chapter of my dissertation was an interpretation of the Garden of Eden story, and I later published a related piece on it (thanks to Adam). But I’ve never, that I recall, written about Adam and Eve by reading the book of Moses. Because there is so much overlap in Genesis and Moses of the Garden story and the resulting expulsion, I will focus on what happens after that, Moses 5—though the story of human creation, the Garden of Eden, and the expulsion from the Garden is so rich that I feel a twinge of regret at skipping it.
Unlike Joe, however, I want to start by saying something about what I think are my principles of interpretation. I say think because it is always very difficult to know how accurate my reflections on my own practices are. Are these the things I wish I were doing rather than what I actually do? Are they things that I’ve learned to say ought to be done—what is à la mode—whether I do them or not? Will announcing a set of hermeneutical principles cause me to be less open to what the text has to say, channeling my understanding roughly across the open invitation of the text? These questions and their brothers, sisters, and cousins are genuine questions, announcements of possible difficulties in what follows, both in the list of principles, the notes on Moses 5, and the subsequent exegesis. In spite of those possible problems, I am going to list twelve hermeneutical principles that I think I use. (That they are twelve is genuinely the product of chance rather than of trying to give them numerological significance.) But why do so if I see what problems they can embody?
Stating these principles, even if only tentatively, may help us tease out the basic as well as differing principles of interpretation among us, especially if the principles are set up against an interpretation. We ought to be able to compare the principles to the interpretation, allowing us to criticize both. That said, here goes.
I. Tentative: My Hermeneutical Principles
1. Canonical texts are those that the church, broadly and narrowly conceived, has agreed to take as the standard for the self-understanding of the church and of individuals within the church.
What has been canonized is not purely accidental. Presumably it reflects the self-understanding of those who have agreed on it as canon (and I take communal agreement to be the defining mark of what makes something canonical—I have an essay on that, but it isn’t directly relevant here). The canon certainly could have been different than it is—something I take to be as true of the Book of Mormon as it is of the Bible, though perhaps it is more obviously true of the latter. But that doesn’t mean that the canon is arbitrary.
2. Presumably, the church has canonized its texts with guidance from the Holy Spirit, but that guidance may vary in its effect, both for the original writer and for the redactors—and, of course, for any reader.
For me, therefore, the phrase “as far as it is translated correctly” has as much to do with the original translation of inspiration into text as it does with the subsequent transmission of that text and its translation from one language to another. Ultimately it has especially to do with my translation of the text from text to understanding, perhaps one of the most obvious places where translation can go wrong.
3. Whatever the textual history of a particular scripture, I assume that most often the final redactor did not do his work blindly or unintelligently. So I stick to the received text unless I cannot avoid not doing so.
I assume that the redactor “knew what he was doing” in the same sense that a novelist—or writer of readable history—knows what she is doing. What she does, she does intentionally, though perhaps not everything that she does is a matter of conscious decision. Anyone who writes carefully says more than he or she knows explicitly. In sticking with the received text I have a precedent in Jesus who I assume knew something of the redaction history of the Bible. Yet as a friend recently pointed out “as redacted and worked over as these texts are, they [the received texts] are the texts Jesus taught from, what the early Christians knew.” So, I don’t deny the possibility of needing to emend the text, but I try to avoid doing so.
Insofar as possible, the text I’m interested is that in the original language. For our purposes, the original language of the Book of Mormon, and the books of Moses and Abraham is Joseph Smith’s English.
4. Because it comes to us with a much less difficult history of transmission (though not without questions of translation and transmission internal to it), the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith called it, “the most correct book of any book.” Whatever its imperfections, no book teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ better. In virtue of that I assume that the Book of Mormon provides a standard for understanding the Bible.
Nevertheless, the Book of Mormon is not a standard that is always easy to use. It may provide teachings to which we can compare what we find in, for example, the Bible, but primarily it helps us remember the gospel that we are trying to read in all scripture.
5. Give their deuterocanonical status, I assume that the teachings of the latter-day prophets also serve to help us understand scripture.
Rarely are their teachings about the exegesis or even the hermeneutic of a particular passage. Like the Book of Mormon, they help us remember the gospel that scripture preaches. It is a common mistake to forget that when reading either the modern prophets or the Book of Mormon.
6. Reading scripture is ultimately about achieving self-understanding and coming to repentance. It is only tangentially about recovering lost meaning from ancient texts.
The latter is scholarship and has its place, but it isn’t scripture reading. I take it that this distinction can make sense at least because we read scripture differently than most (though perhaps not all) other texts. Since Spinoza it has been a matter of common sense that scripture is to be read as any other document: all books are to be read in the same way. (Spinoza’s argument against treating the Bible differently occurs in various places throughout his Theological-Political Treatise.) On its face the argument against dealing with scripture differently than with other texts makes sense: just as the study of nature admits of no special knowledge on the part of the investigator, but must be conducted according to rational, public standards, so too must we conduct our study of the Bible by such standards, according to which it is an historical document, a natural rather than a supernatural artefact. That is the assumption behind the historico-critical methods of much biblical scholarship. That kind of study certainly has its place.
Nevertheless, Spinoza is mistaken. Every discipline and textually mediated practice, not just religion, has its canon, so the requirement that some texts be read differently than others is not just a religious claim. It is also philosophical, literary, historical, sociological, and so on. In other words, not all books are to be read in the same way: a community interprets itself by interpreting its texts, and the texts by which it interprets itself are not read in the same way as the texts that are not canonical. (I assume that the redaction history and the final text in which it results is largely a record of how the text has been used for self-understanding, another reason for using it.)
7. Self-understanding comes more in responding to questions than in learning new facts about ancient events or about some state of affairs in which one finds oneself. Questions are more important than answers, but not more important than responses.
8. Self-understanding is unavoidably an ongoing project. It has no final point, at least not for mortals.
9. I assume that repentance of some kind is always a result when a person or a family or a church is genuinely engaged in self-understanding.
In the short term repentance means “change for the better,” but real repentance is the change of heart, the change of one’s being promised by the Savior.
10. The questions that bring self-understanding are rarely those with which I begin. Rather, they are questions that come to me from the text.
So self-understanding requires an openness to the text, openness to the possibility that I do not understand what seems obvious or that what I do not understand and, so, am tempted to dismiss as untrue, or at least irrelevant, may in fact be important.
11. Most often, these questions come to me—and may overcome me—when I focus on the details of the text rather than on the big questions that I am always tempted to ask at first.
Questions about details can range from the question of genre (an oft-neglected question in LDS scripture study) to grammatical questions such as “What is the referent for this pronoun?” (another neglected question-type). The big questions almost always have to do with doctrinal or even philosophical issues: “Is Job preaching resurrection in Job 19:26?” “How can I resolve God’s love of human beings with the slaughter of innocents that we see over and over in the Old Testament?”
12. The most important, though not the only important thing one can have when reading scripture is imagination. Perhaps the most important question one can ask to set imagination to work is “How can I read this passage otherwise than I usually would and yet remain true to the text and true to the gospel preached through the Restoration?” The answer may be that it cannot be done, but I have an obligation to try.
I take it that this is a version of what Adam remarked as Joe’s freedom with the text.
More to come tonight or tomorrow, but this should be enough for some conversation.
June 7, 2010 at 1:19 pm
A couple of caveats on this first part of your post, Jim:
You say: “primarily [the Book of Mormon] helps us remember the gospel that we are trying to read in all scripture.”
Unless you are defining “the gospel” quite broadly, I wonder if you want to say this. It sounds like you’re saying that the Book of Mormon is primarily a doctrinal treatise that outlines the basic principles of the gospel that we should allow to inflect our reading of the Bible—as if it were a kind of clarifying footnote to a much more important text. I assume at once that you actually do mean something like this (you’ve never been one to hide your preference for the Bible), and that you do not at all mean to reduce the Book of Mormon to a flat, doctrinal treatise. Can you say more about what you’re saying about the Book of Mormon here?
You say: “Questions are more important than answers, but not more important than responses.”
Drat. I wish I’d said that.
You say: “Most often, these questions come to me—and may overcome me—when I focus on the details of the text rather than on the big questions that I am always tempted to ask at first.”
The examples you go on to use of the two categories of question are interesting because they seem to me to differ less in their focus on detail than in how much they presuppose or take for granted. It seems to me the problem with asking about resurrection in Job 19:26 or about God’s love in stories of slaughter in the OT is primarily a question of the reader’s presupposing that s/he knows what the resurrection is, or knows how God’s love functions. The consequence: it seems to me that large questions as much as questions of detail can be productive in studying scripture; what makes the difference is whether one assumes that the text can reshape my understanding of what I take to be givens (whether personal or doctrinal).
June 7, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I think your reading of my sentence doesn’t take enough account of the first part of the sentence–or, perhaps more likely, I need to make myself more clear. The point of the first part of the sentence, about understanding the Book of Mormon as providing doctrines against which we can compare the doctrines we find in the Bible was to reject that way of reading. As I understand gospel in the second half of the sentence, it is not a set of doctrines. But if we take it to be a doctrine, the it is the gospel understood rather narrowly, as it is defined by Christ in the Book of Mormon, faith, repentance, baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Neverthelss, remembering that gospel doesn’t mean remembering a memorized doctrine, not even that list. It means remembering the good news of Jesus’ life and teaching, which is only good news if it includes hope for both the individual and the family / community / church.
My preference for the Bible is a stylistic preference only, by the way. I assume that the Book of Mormon calls us to remember what great things the Lord has done for his people and what great things he will do.
I agree that, in principle, large questions can be helpful, but my experience teaching scripture reading is that when students begin with those large questions, they rarely get to the point where their understanding can be reshaped.
June 7, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for the clarifications, Jim. This helps.
And I entirely agree with your third paragraph, experientially speaking. I would just add, however, that my experience is also that if one doesn’t hold forth the possibility of addressing those large questions, students are generally bored by questions of detail. So maybe: one seduces students into the work of reading scripture by holding out the carrot of the big questions, hoping that the student loses sight of the carrot sooner than later in the work of addressing questions of detail. And if one discovers a way of answering large questions along the way—and by answering I mean “responding to” or “repenting because of” in the senses you talk about in your post—then all the better!
June 7, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Right, you do have to hold out hope of getting to something that students find interesting, engaging. I’ve tried to do that by showing them exegeses that result from looking at the details: the carrot of the big questions.
June 7, 2010 at 11:04 pm
All, I apologize, but I am unlikely to be adding any more to this post this week. I have some notes on Moses 5, but they aren’t finished. I have an exegetical idea or two, but I can’t go forward with them until I’ve finished the notes. And I’m not likely to finish the notes because Friday morning I’m to address an interdenominational crowd in LA on Mormon relations to Catholic and Orthodox Christians. I’m woefully unprepared for that address, so it is going to take the rest of my time this week.
Perhaps the hermeneutical principles will be enough for some conversation, a conversation that I promise to take part in. I’ll use that as my reward for working on the other piece.
June 7, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Jim, there’s obviously a lot here to work with. Reading through today, this particular point struck me:
“8. Self-understanding is unavoidably an ongoing project. It has no final point, at least not for mortals.”
What I like about this is that there seems to be an implicit parallel between one’s self-understanding and one’s textual understanding, at least (or especially) with regards to scripture texts. I’ve been wondering about the question as to why God uses scripture in particular (and especially scripture in the form of written texts) to communicate with and engage his children. And I wonder if there isn’t some kind of almost ontological overlap between scripture and human soul—understanding each being an “ongoing project” as well as an ongoing projection. And perhaps as we find our desires to read and study scripture we also open ourselves to a desire for self-understanding, and vice versa. I don’t know, but it’s given me something to chew on this evening….
June 8, 2010 at 12:38 am
Jim’s #5:
I for one have seen enough of your actual scriptural work to know that you really do follow the principles you’ve laid out here. If we can’t see any actual exegesis this week, I think we’ve got enough to work on with your comments. But whenever you do finish those notes, I think we’d all appreciate seeing them.
June 8, 2010 at 1:45 am
Another way of making the point of the sub-paragraph of principle #4: D&C 20:10-11 tells us that the Book of Mormon proves “to the world that the holy scriptures [i.e., in context, the Bible] are true.” I take that claim seriously, though I don’t understand the truth of scripture to be found in its recitation of doctrine, though often such recitations are necessary to conveying that truth.
Jenny: “Why does God use scripture?” My answer would be that he uses all kinds of things, including texts (but, as Jane points out, perhaps initially and most often orality). We select some of the things he gives us and canonize it.
Joe: You are being too kind, and that could get you in trouble. But never fear, I will provide the rest: notes and exegesis.
June 8, 2010 at 8:06 am
Jenny #6 (re: Jim’s point #8), yes and so this point about on-going understanding seems to suggest a deep link between the (distinctive Mormon) notions of on-going revelation and eternal progression—no?
Jim’s point #12 regarding imagination also makes me wonder about deep links I haven’t pondered before, this time between
freedom (including interpretive freedom produced by texts, esp. narrative and poetic texts, and its relation to our own gift of agency, which the Book of Moses itself is not silent on as Satan tries to destroy per Moses 4:3…)
and
creation (including the importance of pro-creation and the still-to-me-puzzling importance-of-place given to creation accounts in scripture and the temple—again, including an emphasis in the Book of Moses itself…).
It’ll surely take a lot of time and thought before I have anything very coherent or productive to say about the above questions, but they occur to me as very important for me to respond to. Thanks.
June 10, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Jim,
This breakdown is very helpful and I’m largely (entirely?) in agreement with your outline. I’ve got two questions though:
1. With respect to your fourth point:
I’m curious about this argument (though I don’t mean to question Joseph’s position on the Book of Mormon!).
Why not assume that the difficulty of the Bible’s history of transmission is salutary? That it’s many trials (ecclesiastical, hermeneutical, translational, political, etc.) produce, in the end, a text that is more dependable?
Having been through the fire of so many hands and so many generations, why not assume that this makes it a more trust-worthy expression of God’s will? I wonder if the way you express this point here falls prey to a kind of “arche”-infatuation? With a privileging of the “original” text or “original” intent as being nearer to an expression of God’s will?
I think there may be good reasons to doubt this.
2. I’m curious about (though very sympathetic to) the claim that reading scripture is about coming to “self-understanding.” I agree that this is largely the case for me, but is this a curious feature of our contemporary situation in which we read scripture privately and silently?
I wonder, too, if the way that scripture induces repentance necessarily passes through the eye of self-understanding’s needle.
Just some additional thoughts to keep you from finishing up the work that actually has to be done by tomorrow. (You can thank me later for offering a diversion :)
Adam
June 13, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Jim,
This is great. Thanks. Adam’s thought is provocative, since a much translated text also makes it more revealing of its “human stains” and if this is part of what makes the Bible pedagogically valuable, then it would seem to make its case for human truth even more powerfully. But then again, since its history is so remote and the kind of linguistic and exegetical expertise required to determine its various gaps really only serves to remind us that the text is ours, for our own self-understanding as you rightly say. I would only add that it seemed you were arriving at the conclusion that true reading is repentance. That reading is rereading, and it is self-reflexive, in the end. I don’t think that has to sound like a formula for “wresting the scriptures unto ourselves” like some reader-response fundamentalist, but it does mean that the openness you describe has to ultimately provide occasion for self-examination.
It will help me to think about Moses to consider this question concerning the relative purity of the translation of Genesis versus the relative messiness of multiple (but unknown) translations.
June 14, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I’ve been wondering more about imagination, and various approaches to scripture, and learning more generally. Our family is visiting family and I have visited a few different Sunday school classes these past few weeks, and I think the various strengths and weaknesses of the classes can be nicely made sense of in terms of imagination and freedom.
In some classes, the teacher seems anxious to share knowledge—knowledge of the kind that does not require imagination. This often comes in the form of historical or textual facts about the text. Or it sometimes comes in the form of (quasi-)authoritative statements about the text or about doctrine. When questions are asked, there is a small range of correct answers. The text in these kinds of classrooms becomes non-generative. In the language of Alma 32, the seed is given, but it is not given room to breathe or space to explore its own creative potential.
On the other hand, like water and soil for the word-as-seed, an imagination engaged by the text (which is very different from free-for-all imagination) allows the ideas and words presented by the text to create all sorts of meaningful significations, meanings (albeit within certain bounds), resonances and interconnections. Conducive soil prods the seed, like a good teacher, striving to pull the best from it, though not in any predetermined or preset direction. The seed, like the student, is challenged, engaged, drawn out, and encouraged. The teacher-as-soil makes way for the growing roots—cognizant of particular weaknesses inherent to immature roots, but excited to see productive growth. The growth itself, then, becomes more important than any particular fruit. The fruit of knowledge is an inevitable by-product of the productive process—a process we might call imaginative thinkin—not an end that is single-mindedly pursued for the sake of itself. Imagination applied to the text is, then, an enactment of fidelity to the text. Imagination, like faith itself, is not constrained by finite propositions of doctrine or creedal understandings of a finite/damned world. Rather, imagination and faith are infinite and eternal in terms of creative possibility. Like the uncarved block in Taoist thought, or the bright future of possibility that makes the energy and eyes of youth glow with life, it is creative possibility that our own likeness to God as a (pro)creative, generative being, that can respond to our environment in undetermined ways that constitutes life itself, in the text as well as beyond….
June 14, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Robert, your thoughts here are interesting. I was in Sunday School yesterday where a new teacher was teaching, and I was struck by a similar tension. This teacher is historically and textually well-informed, and there was definitely less discussion going on than in the other teacher’s classes.
But, at the same time, I found this teacher’s class to be much more engaging, productive, and fruitful in terms of my own learning and growth. In the classes with more discussion, this discussion more often than not fell into the parameters you describe as unimaginative. And while this new teacher wasn’t leaving as much room for discussion, the way in which he presented information was much more open. The background, context, etc. of the section was presented in order to provoke questions and re-reading in the class, and the effect was more imaginative.
I wonder, then, if your second paragraph might be revised somewhat. Perhaps it’s not the desire to share knowledge that can be problematic so much as it is the asking of limited questions with predetermined answers. As a church, we tend to view the scriptures as a source of answers, but, following Jim’s original post, it seems more productive to view them as a seedbed for open-ended questions.
August 3, 2010 at 7:54 pm
[...] ambitious in terms of tackling what Jim pejoratively referred to as “the big questions” (his hermeneutic principle #10). I thus plead guilty to grand pontification, with the simple apology that the big questions are [...]