Paul Y. Hoskisson, ed. Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament. Salt Lake: Religious Studies Center, BYU, and Deseret Book, 2005.
Andrew C. Skinner. Prophets, Priests, and Kings: Old Testament Figures Who Symbolize Christ. Salt Lake: Deseret Book, 2005.
Mainstream Mormon publications on scripture studies follow a four-year calendar; after all, how large would the market be among rank-and-file Mormons for a book on the Old Testament in a year when the Sunday School reading is the Doctrine and Covenants or the Book of Mormon? Don’t most Mormons like to basically pretend that the Old Testament doesn’t even exist during the off years in the Sunday School calendar?
In keeping with this principle, Deseret Book late last year released two useful new volumes containing what might be described as the correlated view of the Old Testament. These books might be seen as useful for two reasons. First, they are clear and readable compilations of the ideas that most Latter-day Saints want to find in the Old Testament, and therefore can be helpful in terms of guiding readers to the components of the Hebrew Bible that best reflect specific Latter-day Saint ideas. Second, these books are a useful summary of what at least some mainstream Latter-day Saints want from the Hebrew Bible. As such, they can teach us quite a lot about Mormon scriptural culture and priorities.
Before I proceed with this review, let me first review my lack of special qualifications. I am not an expert in religious studies, the Bible, or any related field. I have no skills with Hebrew, and no familiarity with the various technical aspects of the Biblical text. I have read Richard E. Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible, as well as a couple of books about the Bible by Robert Alter. But that doesn’t even make me an educated consumer of Bible research. I am substantially more familiar with the history of debates over the interpretation of the Bible in the English-speaking world, and especially in the Americas. In other words, I have no qualifications for recommending for or against these books on the basis of their Old Testament content; I can tell you whether they read well and accomplish their purposes, and I will reflect on what makes those purposes distinctive.
Skinner’s book, Prophets, Priests, and Kings, is clearly useful Mormon devotional reading. In 138 pages of breezy and highly-readable prose, Skinner spells out extensive parallels between the lives of Old Testament figures (specifically, Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Boaz, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Cyrus, Esther, Deborah, and Huldah) and the mission of Jesus Christ. These include the classic parallelisms: for example, Moses-as-lawgiver, Christ-as-lawgiver, or Isaac-as-sacrifice, Christ-as-sacrifice.
Some parallels seemed less persuasive to me. For example, Noah was said to be “perfect in his generation” (Moses 8:27), and Jesus was also sinless and perfect. Yet Mormons typically believe Jesus to have been the only person to have lived on this earth without sin; hence, we would be hesitant to read the statement about Noah as meaning that Noah was without sin as a foreshadowing of Christ. But Skinner seems to adopt that reading (pg. 23). Likewise, Skinner highlights (pg. 37) the seemingly somewhat dubious parallel between Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21:1-7) and Isaac’s rather less triumphant travel to the place of his abortive sacrifice on a donkey (Genesis 22:3). One final example of a proposed parallel that I feel to reject: Skinner points out (pg. 49) that Joseph of Egypt was sold into slavery at the age of thirty (Genesis 41:43) and that Christ began his publis ministry at the age of thirty (Luke 3:23). So, important things happened to both men at the age of thirty? It is hard for me to see this overlap as terribly significant.
These quibbles notwithstanding, Skinner’s overall message is clear and skillfully articulated: the Old Testament is in effect an elaborate pre-enactment of Christ’s life and ministry. Not only did Old Testament prophets have contact with the same God that we worship today, they also taught the same message with the same emphases that we hear in general conference. For readers who feel that such a message would make the Old Testament more meaningful or accessible to them, I would wholeheartedly recommend Skinner’s book.
Hoskisson’s Sperry Symposium collection is perhaps even more useful, although somewhat less univocal in message. Sound recordings of recent Sperry Symposium speeches are available online; Hoskisson for the most part reaches further back into the archives to retrieve papers that aren’t available anywhere on the internet. These include broad overview statements from Elders Russell M. Nelson and John M. Madsen, and from scholars such as Robert J. Matthews, Robert L. Millet, Jennifer C. Lane, and David Rolph Seely. Also selected are much more specific statements such as Gaye Strathearn’s paper on Abraham’s decision to deceive Pharoah by calling Sarah his sister rather than his wife; Hoskisson’s own paper on the proper Latter-day Saint reading of Isaiah 6; or Gary P. Gillum’s essay on, in effect, a single sentence from the book of Obadiah.
Clearly, there is substantial divergence among the papers in this volume in terms of form and focus. Are there any thematic unifiers among these diverse perspectives? One element that I find pervasive in the book is the message that the teachings of Old Testament prophets are identical to those of our modern leaders. Such a perspective seems to support the repeated tendency of these writers to pull interpretive glosses regarding Old Testament passages from the speeches and writings of Bruce R. McConkie, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and other documents of the Restoration. Such statements from our dispensation are typically treated as evidence of the highest caliber, sometimes even more important than the words of the Hebrew Bible. This presentational strategy has the effect of making the Old Testament seem accessible and familiar, situated as it becomes in a dense network of ideas and personalities as familiar to the modern reader as the most recent copy of the Ensign.
For Latter-day Saint readers who are interested in moving past Skinner’s friendly gloss on the Old Testament to something that brings many of the more difficult and alien-seeming components of the Hebrew Bible within reach, I would happily recommend Hoskisson’s edited volume. A nugget of particular worth, to me at least, is Hugh Nibley’s (pgs. 177-195) characteristically eccentric sermon against capitalism, and in favor of pacifism and utopianism, using Isaiah as a text. In this entire paper, Nibley presents only a single citation, to Milton V. Backman’s edition of the First Vision accounts. Yet he routinely references supposed academic consensus: “To diffuse this uncomfortable teaching, the doctors have converted it into a theological exercise for the schools” (180). What doctors? What schools? Nibley leaves that for us to discover on our own. Nonetheless, the passion of Nibley’s theological argument for what would now mostly be seen as a somewhat left-wing social, political, and economic stance is invigorating.
What, in my opinion, most unites the many essays in Hoskisson’s volume, as well as Skinner’s extended essay, is a fixed determination to bring the Old Testament world closer to the modern Mormon reader. While many will find this approach helpful, I find it rather problematic. Even a superficial reading of the Old Testament reveals a worldview quite unlike our modern perspective. My favorite example of this is Jacob’s trick in which he makes Laban’s flocks all give birth to striped or spotted offspring by making sure that they are looking at something striped when they mate.
In light of these major differences in worldview, I have some questions about the mainstream Mormon approach to the Old Testament as reflected in these two volumes. Does it really make sense to suppose that prophets teaching such different people would have expressed the same themes, ideas, and especially emphases that we hear today? Isn’t continuous revelation at least in part about God adapting His message of love, redemption, and sanctification to the needs of each place and time? Isn’t it clear that the people of the Old Testament were different enough that their needs are not our needs?
Finally, and in my view most importantly, wouldn’t it be more helpful to try to help a modern Mormon audience move closer to the ancient Hebrew worldview when reading the Old Testament, rather than trying to move the text closer to our current worldview? Wouldn’t this sort of cultural empathy be good practice for missionaries and church leaders interacting with Mormons from other parts of the world? Wouldn’t it increase our reverence for God to learn how carefully He adjusts His message to fit the specific culture and people he’s working with?