This series is cross-posted with the permission of Book of Mormon Central from their website at Pearl of Great Price Central

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Though Biblical commentaries often derive the name “Eden” from the Sumerian edinu (i.e., “a plain”), an alternative meaning, based on an Aramaic-Akkadian bilingual description, is “luxuriance”[1] or “abundance”—more specifically referring to an abundance of life-enriching water.[2] The idea of luxuriance brings to mind the prominent place-name “Bountiful” in the Book of Mormon[3]—in fact, one proposed region for the Old World Bountiful was reputed to have been a place of such great plenty that its inhabitants were denounced by Islamic Hud traditions for their “attempt to create an earthly replica of Paradise.”[4]

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Given the picture of the naturally growing, life-sustaining yields of the Garden of Eden, coupled with the absence of any troublesome weeds, students of the Bible have made various attempts to understand how Adam and Eve managed to stave off the “curse of idleness”[5] during their sojourn in that happy place. For example, supposing that the daily labors of the first parents must have closely mirrored our own, Matthew Henry imagined that the man and the woman were placed in Eden to improve on God’s arrangements for the beauty and productivity of the fruit trees placed there. He reasoned that: “Nature, even in its primitive state, left room for the improvements of art and industry.”[6] Supposing that the “husbandman’s calling… was needed even in Paradise,” he drew out the lesson from God’s instructions to Adam and Eve to “dress” and “keep” the Garden that “[s]ecular employments will very well consist with a state of innocency and a life of communion with God.”[7]

In contrast to attempts to draw parallels between “secular employments” and the work of the first couple in Paradise, careful study will reveal that the very point of the scriptural injunction in Moses 3:15 is to inform Adam and Eve that no labor of the ordinary kind was required so long as they qualified to remain in that place. In this view, any conception that they were to focus their energies on digging and pruning the trees of Eden is surely mistaken, since the account makes clear that “man’s food was ever ready at hand.”[8]

In this essay, we will argue that a different, and even more strenuous and demanding kind of work was required of Adam and Eve while they lived in the Garden of Eden. Moreover,

A review of David Charles Gore, The Voice of the People: Political Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, 2019). 229 pp. $15.95 (paperback).

Abstract: David Gore’s book The Voice of the People: Political Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon is a welcome reading of Book of Mormon passages which engage in conversation with the biblical politeia — those parts of the Hebrew Bible that explore the constituent parts of the Israelite governance under judges and kings. Gore asserts that the Book of Mormon politeia in Mosiah is in allusive dialogue not just with the Bible but also the Jaredite experience of kingship in Ether. This allusive (intertextual) feature is present not just in the Book of Mormon but any text (Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and other writings) in the biblical tradition. The textual connection is conveyed when the biblical Noah is a type and King Noah the anti-type. The same is true of the biblical Gideon, who is a narrative bridge between the period of the judges and the transformation to monarchy; the Book of Mormon Gideon serves a similar typological function, bridging the reign of kings to the period of judges. Our modern notions of federalism and democracy owe much to the biblical legacy of covenant and republicanism, and although the Book of Mormon political structures share some features with modern federalism, the roots of both go deep into the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Mormon politeia, also a branch of that biblical political legacy, requires that readers understand that filiation, and demands awareness of the dialogue between the Book of Mormon and the Bible on the subject, so such reading can enrich our understanding of both Hebraic scriptures.

[Page 2]There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.1

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.2

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I come not to bury directness but to praise allusion and indirection, to exhume metalepsis and invigorate intertextuality in the practice of reading both the Book of Mormon and the Bible. To this end David Gore’s The Voice of the People: Political Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon participates in a salutary trend toward close exegesis of the theological-political elements of the Book of Mormon text. Along with Jim Faulconer’s brief theological introduction to Mosiah3 (Mosiah is the most politically weighted portion of the Book of Mormon) we are now getting readers who can read out of the text the political reverberations in the book of Mosiah (and other parts of the scripture) which continue and amplify the theological-political portions of the Hebrew Bible. Both Faulconer and Gore suggest that the book of Mosiah requires being read against the backdrop of the biblical politeia, the primary productive contribution in Gore’s and Faulconer’s analyses.

 

You can listen to or download the August 8 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The hosts were Terry Hutchinson, John Gee and Kevin Christensen. In this episode, our hosts discussed proper methodology of apologetics, a recent gathering of Interpreter Foundation volunteers as well as recapped the recent FAIR conference. The second portion of the show was a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #38 (D&C 102-105). The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: August 8, 2021. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

This week, we are pleased to add a new series of podcast posts to our Come, Follow Me offerings. During 1978, 1979, and 1980, Hugh Nibley taught a Doctrine and Covenants Sunday School class. Cassette recordings were made of these classes and some have survived and were recently digitized by Steve Whitlock. Most of the tapes were in pretty bad condition. The original recordings usually don’t stop or start at the beginning of the class and there is some background noise. Volumes vary, probably depending upon where the recorder was placed in the room. Many are very low volume but in most cases it’s possible to understand the words. In a couple of cases the ends of one class were put on some space left over from a different class. There’s some mixup around D&C90-100 that couldn’t be figured out so those recordings are as they were on the tapes. Even with these flaws and missing classes, we believe these these will be interesting to listen to and valuable to your Come, Follow Me study program.

Each week through the rest of the year, we will post an article with the one or more lectures relevant to the next week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. All 26 recordings are available immediately as follows:

* Come, Follow Me Resource Index: Doctrine and Covenants — 2021 at https://interpreterfoundation.org/come-follow-me/doctrine-covenants-2021-index/

* The individual Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants 2021 Lesson pages found at https://interpreterfoundation.org/come-follow-me/doctrine-covenants-2021-lessons/

* In the Complete Bibliography for Hugh Nibley (CBHN) through any of the indexes or through a search. For example, on the Topical Bibliography (https://interpreterfoundation.org/bibliographies/hugh-w-nibley/topical/) look under Doctrine and Covenants for a complete listing.

 Lectures covering Come, Follow Me Lesson 36 on D&C Sections 94-97

 

Recording: December 16, 1979, D&C 90-101

This is an Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 36, “For the Salvation of Zion” on D&C 94-97. The panelists for this roundtable were Mark Johnson, Matthew Bowen and Martin Tanner. This roundtable was extracted from the July 25, 2021 broadcast of Interpreter Radio. The complete show may be heard at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-july-25-2021/. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

This series is cross-posted with the permission of Book of Mormon Central from their website at Pearl of Great Price Central

Listen to an audio recording of this Essay:

Download PDF

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East of Eden

In his characteristic epic style, Thomas Cole depicted Adam and Eve being driven from the lush garden to live in the relative wilderness of the mortal world. The exit of the Garden of Eden—and presumably the only means of access—is on the east side, at the end farthest away from the mountain of God’s presence. The image of the tiny couple is almost lost in the wide expanse of the landscape, emphasizing the greatness of the power of God and the grandeur of His Creation as compared with the forced humility of fallen mankind. The light emanating from the Garden contrasts with the darkness of the way ahead for Adam and Eve.

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Adam and Eve’s expulsion is described twice in Moses’ account, with different terms used in each case.[1] The Hebrew word shillah (“send him forth”) in verse 23 is followed by the harsher term geresh (“drove out”), used in Genesis 3:24. Significantly, the same two terms are used in the same order by the Lord to describe how Pharaoh would drive Israel away from their familiar comforts in Egypt[2]—their erstwhile “Eden”—suggesting that we are not meant to read Adam and Eve’s exit from Eden as depicting a unique event but rather, in the case of their expulsion from Eden, as demonstrating a repeated type of mankind’s difficulty, in its fallen state, to “stand in holy places” and not be “moved.”[3]

Though the scriptural admonition to “stand in holy places and be not moved”[4] is a familiar one, the relevance of its symbolism to the story of Adam and Eve has been underappreciated. In this essay, we will explore how one’s fitness to stand in holy places was understood in ancient sources, showing the paramount importance of this idea in the Old and New Testament—and its particular relevance for our own time. Indeed, Avivah Zornberg has argued that to “hold [one’s] ground” in sacred circumstances is the meaning of being itself—“kiyyum: to rise up (la-koom), to be tall (koma zokufa) in the presence of God.”[5]

Adam and Eve’s Standing in Eden

According to Jewish tradition, the dust used to create Adam was taken from two places: 1. From the four corners of the earth (so that wherever he died, he would be accepted for burial), and 2. From the “sacred center,” the place of Adam’s altar and the location of the temple:

“God took his dust from the place of which it is said, ‘You shall make an altar of earth for Me—I wish that he may gain atonement, and that he may be able to stand.’”[...

Abstract: We are called to take the Gospel to the entire world, but our numbers are few and our time and resources are limited. This is where cold calculation can help. A field-surgical technique pioneered during the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century and refined in the butchery of World War I a century later offers a useful model for making our missionary efforts more efficient and more effective.

Many years ago in Switzerland, I learned a very valuable lesson from my first missionary companion. I say that I “learned” it, but in this case, I’m afraid that my subsequent behavior has, all too often, been a textbook example of “faith without works.” I’ve put it into practice far too inconsistently.

When I arrived in Switzerland, it evidently wasn’t yet time for missionary transfers. I would eventually be assigned to Burgdorf, the largest town in the Emmental region of the canton of Bern. For about two weeks, though, I remained in the mission home at Pilatusstrasse 11, on a hill overlooking Zürich, and I went tracting every day with a member of the mission home staff, Elder David J. Cannon, who was assigned to be my temporary senior companion.

I very soon saw for myself what I had already been told before arriving in Switzerland, that tracting was hard and frustrating work, that very few of the very few people who were home during the daytime were interested in talking with us. Time after time after time, doors were closed in our faces. Usually politely, but not always.

On a few occasions, though, we were able to speak at least briefly with those we met, and one of those occasions has remained etched rather clearly in my memory.

[Page viii]A man invited us into his apartment and sat us down, obviously quite willing to speak with us. This was exciting. It was such a refreshing change of pace from rejection after rejection after rejection. We began to lay out the story of the Restoration. Soon, though, he interjected his opinion that churches such as ours were all about financial gain — an assertion that he repeated multiple times, quite calmly and in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, while rubbing his thumb and his index and middle fingers together as if he were manipulating cash. He continued to do so even after we indicated that we were serving at our own expense. (He didn’t believe us.). All religion was a scam. Our religion was a scam. We were just in it for the money. (Why didn’t we just come clean and admit it?)

After ten minutes or so of this sort of exchange, my missionary companion, Elder Cannon, politely thanked him for his time, indicated that we had other obligations, and stood up to go.

Once we were outside, I asked him why we had left. At least this fellow was willing to talk to us! We had managed to get through a door!

I’ve never forgotten what this more experienced missionary told me: Zürich, he said, was a fairly large city, and there were far more people in it than we would ever be able to contact. We had no time to waste on folks who weren’t interested, even if they enjoyed arguing with us. We weren’t there to argue. We were there to find those who could be benefited by the message that we had been divinely called to bring to them. Maybe that fellow’s time would come someday, but it plainly wasn’t his time then.

I’ve thought about that simple but important point quite a bit since that day in Zürich. In October 2007, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered a conference talk under the title of “Good, Better, Best” that is closely related to what I want to say here. The opening words of that talk convey an important principle:

Most of us have more things expected of us than we can possibly do. As breadwinners, as parents, as Church workers and members, we face many choices on what we will do with our time and other resources.

This is an Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 35, “Receive of His Fulness” on D&C 93. The panelists for this roundtable were Terry Hutchinson, Kris Frederickson and Mike Parker. This roundtable was extracted from the July 18, 2021 broadcast of Interpreter Radio. The complete show may be heard at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-july-18-2021/. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

 

You can listen to or download the August 1 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show below. It will also be included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast). The hosts were Neal and Jasmin Rappleye and the wise and newly located Hales Swift. In this episode, our hosts interviewed Dr. Taylor Halverson about his new Interpreter journal article as well as recapped the recent FAIR conference. The second portion of the show was a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #37 (D&C 98-101). The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Call in to 801-254-1640 with your questions and comments during the live show.

 

Original air date: August 1, 2021. This recording has been edited to remove commercial breaks.

The Interpreter Radio Show is a weekly discussion of matters of interest to the hosts, guests, and callers of the show. The views expressed on the Interpreter Radio Show are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Interpreter Foundation, nor should statements made on the show be construed as official doctrinal statements of the Church.

 

Abstract: For nearly 200 years, skeptics have promoted different naturalistic explanations to describe how Joseph Smith generated all the words of the Book of Mormon. The more popular theories include plagiarism (e.g. of the Solomon Spaulding manuscript), collaboration (with Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, etc.), mental illness (bipolar, dissociative, or narcissistic personality disorders) and automatic writing, also called “spirit writing, “trance writing,” or “channeling.” A fifth and currently the most popular theory posits that Joseph Smith possessed all the intellectual abilities needed to complete the task. A variation on this last explanation proposes that he used the methods of professional storytellers. For millennia, bards and minstrels have entertained their audiences with tales that extended over many hours and over several days. This article explores their techniques to assess whether Joseph Smith might have adopted such methodologies during the three-month dictation of the Book of Mormon. Through extensive fieldwork and research, the secrets of the Serbo-Croatian storytellers’ abilities to dictate polished stories in real time have been identified. Their technique, also found with modification among bards throughout the world, involves the memorization of formulaic language organized into formula systems in order to minimize the number of mental choices the tale-teller must make while wordsmithing each phrase. These formulas are evident in the meter, syntax, or lexical combinations employed in the storyteller’s sentences. Professional bards train for many years to learn the patterns and commit them to memory. When compared to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, the historical record fails to support that he had trained in the use of formula systems prior to 1829 or that his dictation employed a rhythmic delivery of the phrases. Neither are formula patterns detected in the printed 1830 Book of Mormon. Apparently, Smith did not adopt this traditional storyteller’s methodology to dictate the Book of Mormon.

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[Page 254]The tavern’s lights flicker across the faces of the male crowd who gather almost ceremoniously at the end of another Bosnian workday in July of 1935. As scattered greetings and gossiping rumble in subdued tones, a famous visiting bard, hoping to earn a dinar or two, takes his place on the makeshift stage in the corner of the room. After tuning his gusle, a one-stringed instrument he plays as he recites, Avdo Međedović begins a musical rendition of the renowned story The Wedding of Meho, Son of Smail. The lengthy tale of over 12,000 lines describes an imaginary Meho’s ambition, betrayal, and ultimate victory. Međedović’s melodic prose unfolds for hours until the crowd departs or sleeps.1 On the morrow, they know Avdo will return to continue the tale, repeating this process day after day, until Meho triumphs and marries his bride.