Feast upon the Word Blog

I’ll leave the “From the Life of Joseph Smith” section out of my comments this week: marvelous experiences, but they don’t seem to me to shed any light on the teachings in the lesson. So far as the “Teachings of Joseph Smith” section goes, in this chapter, I find it interesting that so much of the material comes from the pre-Nauvoo era. That is, at least so far in this manual, rather unusual: because Joseph wrote and spoke publicly much more often in Nauvoo than in New York, Ohio, or Missouri, and because many more saints were keeping a careful record of what Joseph had to say in Nauvoo than previously, a great deal more of Joseph’s teachings have survived from the Nauvoo era, and the lessons in the manual reflect these facts generally. This lesson, however, is an exception. In fact, nearly half of the lesson’s teaching come from a single letter Joseph wrote to his uncle in 1833. The result: this lesson provides, the section on personal revelation excepted, a view primarily of Mormonism minus the “Nauvoo theology.” But I imagine that I should explain what I mean by that just a bit. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in the middle of a cross-country move, which means that I have had plenty of “ponder time” driving through America’s heartland. I’ll share a little thought that came to me in Iowa as I thought about King Corn, food chains, ethanol fuel, housing costs, and the focus of many of my Gospel Doctrine lessons: grace. Read the rest of this entry »

The great majority of this lesson comes from a single editorial published in the Church’s Nauvoo periodical, the Times and Seasons. I’ll confess I was disappointed to see this, because many of the editorials published while Joseph was editor of the paper were not written by Joseph. This one, however, I was pleased to discover, seems actually to have been his work. The style of argumentation, the manner of using scripture, and the conclusions drawn are much more like Joseph’s recorded sermons and canonized writings than other editorials cited in the manual thus far. I’ll proceed, then, with the assumption that everything in this lesson came from Joseph himself. Read the rest of this entry »

I taught this Gospel Doctrine lesson this week and we barely got out of the first two verses of Chapter 1! Read the rest of this entry »

First things first, a word or two about how I read Benjamin’s speech as a whole.

It seems absolutely vital to me that Benjamin reports the words of an angel (ch. 3): this signals immediately to me that there is some kind of creation/fall/atonement/veil business afoot, since atonement (in this pattern) is, in the Book of Mormon, almost always a question of angelic messengers being sent (and, of course, since this is all happening at the temple…). And indeed, the first half of the discourse quite clearly works according to this pattern:

Creation — 2:19-28 (note not only the many explicit mentions of creation, but also the talk the council in verse 28, etc.)
Fall — 2:29-41 (Benjamin goes on and on here about rebellion, obeying the evil spirit, withdrawing oneself from God, shrinking from the presence of God, etc.)
Atonement — 3:1-27 (the angelic messenger now delivers a message detailing the meaning of the atonement, and what a message!)

Two questions, then: (1) What of 2:9-18? (2) What of the veil? Well, here we go! Read the rest of this entry »

In the classic Bill Cosby sketch, after the LORD tells Noah to build an Ark, Noah responds with “Right. What’s an ark?”

Recently, University of London professor Tudor Parfitt is challenging our own perceptions of another ark by claiming to have found the Ark of the Covenant in Africa. Unlike the gold-plated weapon of mass destruction from the original Indiana Jones movie, the real ark, according to Parfitt, was and is a wooden drum and primitive gunpowder spewing tribal relic carried by temple priests from Jerusalem to Yemen and eventually to Africa.

Check out the Time magazine summary of the argument here, or for a more complete treatment you can check out Parfitt’s book The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark.

But regardless of how close Parfitt is to the truth here, he does provide an interesting challenge to our scriptural preconceptions, as well as a nice case study of how to carefully examine a cherished text.

BOM Lesson 15: Mosiah 1-3

I’m on vacation writing this, so it’s going to be more of a collection of notes than a finished piece of writing. Mainly, I’m going to be summarizing and responding to what Joe Spencer has written about Mosiah 2:23-24 on the wiki. Enjoy.

Other links

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, one of my Gospel Doctrine teachers was released unexpectedly, and as I sat in Sacrament Meeting pondering who might best replace her, I wondered if instead of calling a new teacher, I might take D&C 50 to heart and, considering everyone a potential teacher, ask ward members to take turns leading the weekly Gospel Doctrine discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

Because I am behind, I combined #12 and 13 into one lesson (not easy!) These notes are based on the work of Mack Sterling and Ben McGuire, mostly.

Jacob
Note: the BOM dates Jacob from 544-421 B.C. This date cannot possibly be accurate on the near end. 421 BC (assuming that Lehi leaves Jerusalem about 600 BC) would make Jacob at least 171 years old (born between 600-593 B.C.).

Read the rest of this entry »

I am behind in posting, but will post the last 3 lessons anyway. I hope to be caught up and with everyone else in about two-three weeks.  This outline is mostly from Mack Sterling’s class of a decade or so ago. The addition of commentary on righteousness is mine.

Read the rest of this entry »