And I think Douglas has made a few important remarks on the way to interpreting that Article of Faith. Why did Joseph say “word of God” instead of “true” or “historically accurate”? Why would he choose to say “translated correctly” when he himself had revealed that the Bible was incomplete? Why doesn’t Joseph reduce the Bible to “instruction” or “pragmatic help” or “demythologizeable narratives”? Why “the word of God”? I think the phrasing is very important.

I suspect you are not reading me very closely. Note that my emphasis is on metaphor and interpertation. Also note that when I suggest something is fiction I am not devaluing it.

I admit that I strongly disagree with the idea that the Article of Faith you quoted earlier does not need interpertation. The first time I read it, I was floored. What a remarkable statement. It begs for interpertation! It has no meaning without interpertation. Its a powerful invitation to examine what is meant when we say something is the word of God, it invites us to ask what translation is, what are the various potentials of correctness. These questions are conspicious, and without them we can’t pertend to understand the fullness of its meaning.

Article of Faith “8 We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated ccorrectly;…” which is not a metaphor. And there are no JSTs indicating this is anything akin to fiction.

As a metaphor the “word of God” does not lead to historical assumptions, it does affirm the authority of the text and a serious comitment to it, but does not place an undue historical burden on the text. The editors / authors of the gospels were not historians, they were writing narratives to convince their audience of their beliefs.

According to Bart Ehrman’s introduction to the new Testament, in the four source hypothesis Q denotes material not found in Mark but that is common to Matt. and Luke. The four sourcs hypothesis does not claim any source for all three that Matt. and Luke did not recieve through Mark.

Wasn’t “Q” suppose to be resource for Matt, Luke AND Mark?

I understand the debate about Jesus’ genealogies, but my point was how it preceeded the pericope of the Temptation story, thereby emphasizing the doubting of the people and the challenge by Satan of Jesus’ divinity.

Nhilton “The only other option is that the authors or at least one author received revelation giving him the “inside” information about Jesus’ experience.”

Why is this the only other option? Couldn’t the story be made up, or a folk tale about Jesus, a useful fiction that was included in a text by authors who thought it had value for the reader?

There has been a lot of historical writings about the genealogies, including the fact that Jesus’s divine blood line is traced through Joseph in both Matt. and Luke, although these genealogies differ from one another. The important thing here seems to be not the historical percision of these lists but the fact that both tie Jesus to Abraham and in Luke’s list to “Adam son of God.” This is a way of making the case for both Jesus’ divinity and place within the Jewish tradition.

Additionally, I find it interesting that in Luke Christ’s son-ship is said to be of Joseph, then Joseph’s detailed genealogy follows, afterwhich Satan says, “IF you be the Son of God…” If being the operating word.

I esp. like BrianJ’s argument in the last paragraph–I’m ultimately not sure how persuasive this is (I’m truly agnostic b/c I haven’t thought about this or looked at the issue very carefully, not b/c I have any reason not to believe the argument), but it’s a nice fresh angle I hadn’t thought of or come across.

nhilton, you have to pay for access to JSTOR articles, unless you work with a university that pays for access for you (curse my distance from the university!). Since I’m without the service as well: Brian, can you provide full citation for the article for the rest of us?

(I’m going to abbreviate names below, using the first letter, okay?)

I can’t really summarize the article, except to say that it discusses the merits of four “Zachariases”: Z son of Jehoiada, Z the post-exile prophet and son of Berachiah, Z father of John, and Z son of Baruch slain by Zealots in 67 A.D. The article gives a fair (honest) assessment of the different views, but ultimately favors the third. Here’s (briefly) why:

1) Z son of Jehoiada. He’s not the son of Berachiah. We can think of ways to get around that: J. and B. are the same name, just different spellings; B. died early and so Z. was raised by his grandfather J. who was therefore referred to as Z’s father; some scribe inserted the “son of B.” into the text in Matthew; etc. But all of these rely on suppositions not supported in the text. (Please ignore the obvious “son of a B” joke.)

2) Z post-exile prophet. This gets the son of Berachiah part right. But there’s no evidence that he suffered any kind of martyrdom.

3) Z father of John. The text favors this, for reasons that have already been stated (though not using the JST or TPJS, of course). One addition is of interest: the article cites a tradition that states that Zacharias allowed Mary to enter a part of the temple reserved for virgins when she insisted that she was in fact virgin; for this he was killed.

4) Z of 67 AD and son of B. The Zealots stoned a man in the temple; the names and description of the murder all fit. But this is dismissed because the time period is wrong. It is a possibility that the author of Matthew inserted this after Christ’s death when the Gospel was being written, but it kind of ruins the discussion of what Jesus meant when he said it.

One more interesting point about the article: it completely dismisses the “son of Berachiah” portion of the scripture for two reasons: 1) it is not in the account in Luke, 2) in the Gospel of the Hebrews it reads “son of Jehoiada.” In other words, the author of the article thinks “son of B” was a scribal insertion.

(And just to be clear: I do not mean this comment to imply that the Zacharias story was made up or even wrong.)

One question that I haven’t seen addressed is why (in accord with the TPJS quotation) John would have fallen under Herod’s edict. From the biblical text, it seems that only children in Bethlehem and in the surrounding villages were in danger. But we don’t know whether that applied to Zacharias, we only know that he lived in “the hill country…into a city of Juda” (Luke 1:39). I suppose this could be near Bethlehem. Alternatively, Herod may have heard rumors about the miracle at John’s circumcision, and therefore singled out John even though he wasn’t living near Bethlehem.

The argument that Jesus was speaking in the present tense, “whom ye slew,” versus past, “whom your fathers slew,” is totally unconvincing. One could easily read this as Jesus lumping the people together as a whole: i.e. “you came out of Egypt, you rejected Moses, you slew the prophets, you will reject me also.” This reading agrees very nicely with the warning Jesus issues: that the people hearing him will be guilty not only of his blood, but of all the past blood that was shed by martyrs.

The JST, I think, actually weakens the TPJS. The JST reads, “Ye bear testimony against your fathers…” For what do they bear testimony against their fathers? Well, the Jews criticized their fathers for a lot of things (worshiping the golden calf, complaining about manna, etc.), but Jesus gives the particular context in the preceding verses, “the blood of [all the prophets].” But, of course, the people would not have been critical of the murder of Zacharias John’s father, so this argues for referring to a murder the audience would have criticized.

Jesus continues (in the JST) by saying, “when ye, yourselves, are partakers of the same wickedness.” How are they guilty of the same wickedness? If they killed Zacharias John’s father, then that is one way. But another way to read this is that Jesus knew that they had wanted Jesus dead for a while (John 7:1). (He also knows that they will eventually succeed.) So he’s saying, “You are guilty of murder, even though you haven’t yet murdered, because you are critical of murder and still you want to murder. You are therefore more guilty than your murderous fathers.”

Lastly, if Zacharias’ murder was truly performed at Herod’s command, I doubt that many (any?) of the Jews would have agreed with it. For all we know, Zacharias was a pretty well-liked guy around 1 B.C. (His son didn’t start ‘causing problems’ until decades later.) But they hated Herod. So it seems a little strange to say that the Jews were guilty of a murder that Herod committed. It’s like blaming them for the deaths of the children in Bethlehem.

My-real-”lastly”: Jesus specifically names only two martyrs: Abel and Zacharias. But he is talking about three murderers: Cain, the “fathers”, and his present audience. If we pair up martyrs to murderers, it makes the point: Cain and Abel; fathers and OT Zacharias; present audience and Jesus.

But I generally agree with Joe, and I think it’s very possible that what Jesus actually said, what Matthew and Luke recorded, what Joseph Smith thought, and what the Institute Manual correlation committee thought about all of the preceding could all be very different from one another, and yet they could all be “true”! (Sometimes I imagine a pretty big circle in the sense of all truth being circumscribed into one great whole!)

If I can interpret Robert’s interpretation of Jim, I would say that the relation of faith requires an implicit trust in the historicity of a text. But that means that the faithful are called to a new understanding of history and its nature, not that the faithful are called to force the scriptures into some sort of secular understanding of history. That is, a faithful reader of the scriptures takes them absolutely as historical, but “historical” does not here mean the same thing it means in the secular classroom. I’ll have more to say on that…, and it might be worth an entire thread. I should probably make it a scriptural discussion. Job might be a good place to start (I take Job as entirely historical–I don’t doubt for a moment that Satan came before God/YHWH as the book describes; and yet I believe that the text we have is a theological recasting of a traditional legend). Jonah might be better (as I understand the book of Jonah, it is precisely about the nature of history and historicity).

We certainly have some thinking to do here. I might also note that this question is very closely related to the post on historico-critical method.

nhilton, regarding historicity of scripture, let me first strongly recommend that you read this post by Jim F. (following an endless blog discussion regarding the historicity of Noah and the flood covering the whole earth…). And briefly, let me add that I think this agnostic approach toward historicity seems to be a very good way in a SS class to sidestep the can-of-worms issues you mention. I think this is particularly effective when studying the Old Testament for which I think there is lots of evidence of redacting hands, some which I think are likely to have embellished or altered the original account (which perhaps was “historically accurate” in the beginning…). Also, I understand the importance of there being an historical basis for the scriptures, but I don’t think that aspect of the scriptures should play a very big role in our study of the scriptural texts themselves (esp. in SS!).

I love your Dostoevsky connection & HFC link. Thank you. I’ll think on that more.

So, to the point (since this is meant to be a discussion on teaching)…just how am I going to teach this on Sunday when I differ from the popular notion that Christ rose to the challenge and defeated the adversary…ugh. If I were Christ it’d have been a piece of cake for me, too (no pun, Robert, or disrespect intended).

Too often I find myself discounting the scriptures that I find idiotic in their characterization of diety (i.e. Job). I want to repent from doing this, especially when I do it aloud & might injure a fledgling testimony nearby, and instead find the liberating truth imbedded in the written word, figurative OR fact. By the way, I’ve learned a lot about Job this year and my view of it as being more than just a literary masterpiece has improved, tho I have a long way to go in understanding its spiritual gravity.

This is such an interesting statement. I agree that we should read passages for their spiritual significance but this significance does not necessairly have a fixed or predictable location. In other words, there is no need to try and link spiritual significance with historical truth. A text will have spiritual significance regardless of weather or not it can be said to be a historical record of actual events. I realize of course than some would reject this notion because they understand spiritual significance as arising in a very direct way from historical truth.

Anyway, the larger question about this particular narrative is: does it show Christ going through a significant psycho-spiritual crisis? I don’t think it does, but clearly there are a variety of opinions on this matter. My feeling is that there is a strong tradition of reading the narrative as if it does contain a significant struggle for Christ but I think this emphasis is misplaced since the context and the narrative itself do not describe or really imply this struggle. As an aside, the idea that he was hungry after a fast, is not the same as saying Christ found something enticing in what the devil asked of him in the first statement.

“I do wonder sometimes if Christ truly understands the agony of guilt–if he never really sinned, how can he understand how I feel when I sin? I can’t justify this, but I think he experienced this in the Garden of Gethsamane….”

I agree with this completely in that its in Gethsamane that we see Christ undergoing a serious spiritual and physical crisis in what he has to endure. Also we should add that Christ had, what should we call it, “divine empathy”. throughout the NT has actions are described through the idea that he took compassion on those he was dealing with. He had an abundant capacity for compassion and empathy with us, including our struggles.

You’re right that Matthew doesn’t focus on any particular struggle that Jesus has with these temptations, but the fact that he does describe these temptations and significantly notes “he was afterward an hungred” (Matt 4:2) just before the first temptation suggests to me that he was seriously tempted. (And I think the passages cited by Jim seem to corroborate this.)

Nevertheless, I do wonder sometimes if Christ truly understands the agony of guilt–if he never really sinned, how can he understand how I feel when I sin? I can’t justify this, but I think he experienced this in the Garden of Gethsamane….

nhilton: I think many great thinkers have tackled this question, but my favorite is Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor (there is a quite lengthy but very interesting essay here that addresses this…). In short, I see these temptations, very similar to the Protestant view outlined by Jim, as symbolic of: (1) physical and material pleasure, as opposed to things of a spiritual nature (esp. hope); (2) intellectual pride (i.e. sign-seeking), as opposed to a humble and patient faith; and (3) power, as opposed to a love that does not coerce. I think these temptations indeed symbolically capture all the tempations we might experience, which is why I tend to think of their antitheses in terms of hope, faith, and charity.

nhilton “Perhaps it’s similar to Christ’s baptism. Maybe being tempted is as necessary to our eternal progression as baptism. As Christ was baptized to “fulfill all righteousness” perhaps he was likewise tempted.”
In the Oxford new revised edition of the NT there is a footnote refering to the idea that God tests the faith of the righteous (gen 22.1; Deur. 13.3; and Ps.81.7) Again for me the historical understanding works well, in that early readers of Matthew would perhaps understand the temptation narrative in the context of OT test such as Abraham and Isaac. So its another link to the Jewish tradition, further evidence of Christ’s Jewishness.

Robert, I don’t really think the cake example holds up. In the Narrative Christ is not represented as *ultimately* being able to resist temptation, he does so immedately with no signs of struggle or enticement. Its just not there. Second, The narrative does tell us that Jesus knows that it is the devil who is presenting these offers to him. This kind of context matters. How many of us take seriously the words or offers of people who wish us harm?

Reading the comments, I think there is a more basic issue that could be fleshed out , how do we read this particular narrative? Do we read it as an historical account of Jesus’ life? Do we read it as a non-historical story that nonetheless has significance to Matthew, his readers and us? Do we consider it a teaching passage or something else?

I think that for one of the same reasons that the begining of Job is not considered historical, we should also think of the temptation narrative as non-historical.

Additionally, he surely experienced temptation in his childhood, all akin to those Satan put before him. So to interpolate that this temptation experience was his first or last is unrealistic. Something BIGGER & more symbolic is going on in this account.

He really experienced temptation, mine and yours, while in the garden. I know people say that the 3 temptations universally encompass all temptations we experience, but I don’t really buy it. It’s got to be metaphorical. There are so many things Christ didn’t experience that I do. The only way he can succor me is to have miraculously experienced my pains and sufferings in a unique way to each of us = Atonement.

I can’t subscribe to the thought that Christ was just made aware of his identity at baptism. At 12 he knew who he was. Scripture recounts his progression in a manner similar to ours, gradual. If he is to understand our temptation, he must likewise understand our educational process. Luke 2:52.

Which C.S. Lewis book are you citing? Mere Christianity?

Perhaps it’s similar to Christ’s baptism. Maybe being tempted is as necessary to our eternal progression as baptism. As Christ was baptized to “fulfill all righteousness” perhaps he was likewise tempted. This makes more sense to me than trying to imagine Jesus having to exert any effort to resist Satan. Laughable. I’ve always wondered about this story in light of D&C 20:22. Neal Maxwell commented that “Christ did not fantasize, reconsider or replay temptations.” –Ensign May ‘89. Not being educated in GR, I wonder if the “suffer” in KJV Matt.3:15 is anything related to the “suffered” used in the D&C. Even if not, I see the suffering as “allowing,” vs. being afflicted.

Certainly in this story Christ has provided a role model similar to what he did in being baptized.

#42, Jim, I know some BYU professors ARE crackpots since I’m BYU alumni & I’ve got a freshman daughter attending right now (don’t even get me started!!).

That aside, I want to say how impressed I’ve been with the discussion on this and the other threads. These are some of the best discussions of the scriptures and of teaching the Gospel that I know of. I’ve copied some of them and handed them out to other teachers at BYU to show them examples of good discussions of teaching.

NHilton: Indeed, I know your father and respect him very much, but you should be careful about taking his word for everything. As Joe points out, my being on the faculty at BYU doesn’t mean that I’m not a crackpot. In fact, it may be evidence that I am. But crackpot or not, I’m glad to hear that you’ve found my stuff useful.

I think it’s worth questioning the idea that this narrative actually presents us with a temptation in any real sense of the word. An offer that has some sort of emotional appeal, something that has allure or that entices us. For a temptation to be a temptation is has to stir this kind of emotional response. Now, while the word temptation is used in the chapter, looking at the narrative world of the scripture and Christs’ replies, it seems that Christ knows who he is speaking with, and its also widely accepted by readers that the devil is offering things that Christ knows are not his to offer primarily “all the kingdom’s of the world and all their splendor”. So what does it mean to say that Christ is being tempted in this context? To say that Christ is tempted by these offers is to imply that at the very least there was something compelling to Christ in what the devil was saying, or that Christ took the proposals seriously in some way. If this is not the case then they can’t be called temptations, they are simply offers. Offers that Christ is not going to take seriously considering he knows their source. Offers that the devil can’t take seriously knowing whom they are being made to. Of course we are encouraged to read this scripture as an allegory on temptations we face in our own lives, and perhaps this is harmless, even if it does misrepresent the content of the narrative. But Christ is not represented in the text as someone who struggles to over come the emotional appeal of an offer that he knows is sinful but that he finds enticing nonetheless. If anything Christ is clearly “above the influence” to use the language of an anti-drug ad I saw on TV the other day.

On the other hand I suppose there is one way that the story could be seen as a temptation or a trick. In the exchange between Jesus and the devil, this is the first time in the NT that Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. In the first and second statement from the devil the phrase “Son of God” is used. Jesus does not confirm or deny this identity. He proceeds to address other aspects of the devil’s statement as if the very significant title Son of God had not even been used. So maybe, (and only maybe) an element of temptation can be seen on this level. The temptation or trick would be get Christ to claim this identity for himself (rather than have others claim it for him) or assert his authority or power over the devil by merit of his divinity rather than by the merit of his knowledge of Jewish scripture and their application.

Granted I’m not making a very strong case for this understanding of the passage but such a reading is consonant with the historical understanding that the emphasis of Matthew is to place Jesus in a Jewish context, or to show his “Jewishness”. For example, In the birth narrative, Matthew is directly quotes Jewish scripture and states that the events of Jesus’ life are to be seen as a fulfillment of these scripture. In chapter 3 Jesus’ divinity is suggested by John who is to said to be the fulfillment of Isaiah; then Jesus’ divinity is stated by god himself, but I think we can see it as significant that John is said to fulfill Isaiah first, and that Jesus does not state his own divinity. Then in chapter 4 the “temptation” takes place in terms of quoted scripture. Both Jesus and the devil quote scriptures to make claims, but Jesus’ quotations go unanswered, he gets the last word in each case. His knowledge and use of Jewish scripture are so authoritative that the devil does not attempt a reply he just moves on. So chapter 4 shows examples of Jesus’ authoritative knowledge of Jewish scripture, then in chapter 5 he preaches the sermon on the mount in which he offers his own interpretation of Jewish scriptures / law. Considering this sequence I think it makes more sense to think of chapter 4 not so much as a narrative of temptations concerning food, or glory but as a key element in Matthew’s establishing Jesus’ as thoroughly Jewish and as having excellent knowledge of Jewish scriptures. Making this case would be essential if Matthew’s Jewish readers were to take seriously Jesus’ reinterpretation of scripture and Jewish law that follow in the Sermon on the Mount.

My take on the essenes:

First, I think it’s very important to take Margaret Barker’s work on the first century situation very seriously. As she reads things, the essenes were an extreme example of a rather widespread faith (they ritualized it and left the city, etc., but they were not too different from others in a lot of ways). That is, any who didn’t follow the Sadducees or Pharisees was likely to have beliefs similar to the beliefs of the essenes (though not practices like the practices of the essenes).

Second, I think there are some very important historical considerations to take up. For hundreds of years, the Law had been a fundamentally political thing: it was the literal lawcode of an actually existant political state. Whether it was meant to be so at the beginning, by the 7th century B.C. the Law of Moses had become so profoundly interwoven with the nature of the state that when the nation fell to Babylon there was a sort of crisis: if the Law had been tied to the state, did the dissolution of the state amount to a dissolution of the Law (and the fall of the national God, YHWH)? The resolution–or at least a resolution–of this crisis took place in the Babylonian captivity, where a sort of reinvented Law of Moses emerged. The Law, no longer interwoven with the political reality of the state (and its implicit promise of a still-future universal justice), was reinterpreted such that it could be binding and yet not fundamentally political. When the Jews returned to Jerusalem a few years later, but ultimately without political power, the older interpretation of the Law (political interpretation) began to do battle with the newer one (generating, of course, several other interpretations to vie for power as well). A few centuries of this interpretive conflict resulted in the situation we call “the times of Jesus.” Essenes obviously represent a strain of the political interpretation, while the Pharisees represent a strain of the non-political interpretation. Sadducees seem originally to have been somewhat ambivalent, but by Jesus’ time they had a very specific position: they stood by an overtly non-political interpretation but precisely so that they could gain more political power in the divided nation. To be a practicing Jew at the time meant that one almost had to take sides on all of these issues. It is fascinating to read the New Testament in this context and to read the political overtones of Matthew over against the totally non-political (or perhaps super-political) overtones of Luke, etc.

But which of all of these groups was apostate? I think if apostasy is thought of as departure from a covenant, I don’t know whether any of them was apostate. It may be for this reason that Jesus came to all of them and invited them to come and take up that covenant (in the fulfillment–the making good–of the Law). I’m hesitant, for that reason, to call the Essenes apostate, or any other group at the time.

Those who veer from the law originally in OT times and those who veer from the law as Christ gave it in NT & was carried on thru his apostles then & after restoration all fall into this apostate group…? This is my catch all for the term. Maybe too general for those good intentioned, but I think the scriptures point out that there are only 2 churches: that of God & then the other one. No fence sitting.

I disagree. There were people throughout the OT who were living the law that God gave them–a law that was very different than the one Peter later promoted. During Jesus’ time, there was no ‘restored’ Church, there was only the law of Moses. And there are people we regard as righteous (which perhaps is not the exact opposite of apostate, but works in this discussion) even as they were living the law of Moses: e.g. Zacharias.

I see–as, I think, so do you–varying degrees of apostasy in all people. Just to give you an idea of how I understood your use of “apostate”: in #33 you wrote, “I consider the Essenes to be an apostate group of Jews…I doubt John would have had anything to do with them.” That sounds like you are saying that they were apostate to such a degree that John would avoid them.

So, yeah, I’m uncomfortable with calling the Essenes apostate. Yes, they took asceticism to an extreme, but I don’t know that that disqualifies them from righteousness. And I think many of their views seem appropriate for a person with John’s calling. I’d be interested to read specific reasons why the Essenes were too “far off the mark.”

(I’m sorry if the wikipedia article addresses this; I didn’t read it. I’m going off of books talking about the Essenes I read a while ago—which is why my memory of Simon as high priest is a bit fuzzy.)

Re: John the Baptist being a nazarite, I think it’s pretty much a consensus that he was considering Luke 1:15; BD pg. 737. That’s why I wondered about the term of his service. I consider the Essenes to be an apostate group of Jews, from all I’ve read concerning their lifestyle and apocolyptic writings, and tho they lived the lifestyle of a nazarite I doubt John would have had anything to do with them.I found the Meridian article very interesting. I guess there’s no real answer to my question.

RE: #28, do you mean “cumulative” in the sense that they add up to a greater whole or “sequential” meaning a line-upon-line process? I see the sermon as being both, like a math equation. If I could post a graphic I’d be able to better show what I mean, but I don’t think I can do that here. I see the sermon like the 13 Articles of Faith, each sequential and cumulative, beginning with faith in God and ending with striving for purification and enduring to the end.

Your “shoe” thoughts are great! Thanks!

That “wilderness” & “boundary” motif is likewise powerful & definitely will be included in my lesson next Sunday.

(In #26 I edited Joshua to Elisha in your comment b/c I thought that’s what you meant, please let me know if I’m misreading you–look for “Joshua” crossed out.)