Personally I think we as Mormons need to value the same ideals when we look at the BOM as others have with the Bible. The ideas presented in other blogs of the concept of a political and various religious bents coming out in the BOM.

Once we start to question view points of various writers and its editors, Mormon, Moroni, and Ether, I think we will start to flesh out the Book of Mormon and make it real in scholarly discussion. I have to thank those, like Kevin, who are doing just that. Because it makes reading the Book of Mormon interesting in whole new ways as you decipher more than just the story or even the religious lesson but why those views are expressed and why the editors chose them over other possibilities.

The concept that the OT and the NT were caught in “as far as translated correctly” is so obvious. I find it fascinating to think of the way political, religious change and general revision fashioned the books we call the Bible.

Looking at how the Jewish rabbinic community from 200 AD and onwards evalutated each section of law and discussion in the OT in the Talmud, and its derivatives it is just amazing to see how much effect these self discussions had on the succeeding documents.

Much of the TaNaK (Jewish version of the OT) is effected by the surviving Pharisees and their judgment on the Law, their school won the debate because the others were exterminated. Only as Khabbalahist influenced Jewish thinking like the Sufis in Muslim thought did the philosophy of the Pharisaical inheritors actually transform at least somewhat.

Anyways fascinating dialogue for sure.

#15, throughout history, mankind has represented God, Christ, etc., through symbols. The Cross, altars, temples, garments, Sacrament, Baptism… Shall I go on?

All of these symbols help the worshiper to understand his/her relationship with God. Christ is represented by Moses’ brazen serpent in the Book of Mormon, which King Josiah destroyed! This effort of his to destroy the brazen serpent demonstrates one aspect of the Deuteronomists’ antagonism towards worship outside the temple.

While Friedman and a few others tie Jeremiah in with the Reformers, I agree with Kevin Christensen that he was not one of them. Jeremiah presented the Rekhabites as the exemplar Jews to follow, and not the temple priests (whom he condemned). The Rekhabites were akin to Bedouin, who rejected the centralized temple worship for an Abrahamic-like worship in the desert. Yet, Josiah had destroyed the altars and high places to Yahweh, so as to establish a centralized worship. Interestingly, Lehi would pick up on the wilderness form of worship. He built altars in the wilderness, sacrificing at them, against the command to worship only at the temple.

Margaret Barker showed in her Joseph Smith/Library of Congress Seminar talk in 2005 that Lehi’s Vision of the Tree of Life was exactly in line with First Temple worship: including the Tree of Life, which represented Asherah. It was very normal for Nephi to recognize the mother Mary as representative of Asherah, with Jesus the fruit of the tree. You’ll notice in the following discussion, much focus is placed on the fruit: the condescension of God/Jesus, therefore is the giving of the fruit of the tree (Christ), being born for others to taste of his flesh/love.

Daniel Peterson’s Nephi and His Asherah essay includes a note saying that symbols have have more than one referent. That is, the tree can be a symbol of Christ as well as of Asherah. Neither association precludes the other. Back in May of 2003, when I was having lunch with Truman and Ann Madsen, Noel Reynolds, Alyson Von Feldt, and Margaret Barker, in discussing Daniel’s essay, I noted that “the love of God” can be a who as well as a what. Daniel’s essay points out the way that Proverbs has passages that chiastically link Asherah and the tree of life.

Jeremiah 1:18 notes that he is called against the Kings, Priests, Princes (who would be the Elders, the sarim), and the people of the land. It was the people of the land who installed Josiah in power, and it was the Kings, Princes, and Priests who began the reform a year before Jeremiah’s call. Ezekiel 23 has a longer tirade targeting the same list of people. When scholars try to align Jeremiah with the reformers, I notice that they do so on linguistic and political grounds. Yet the reform, as Margaret Barker so astutely noticed was directed at the priesthood and the objects kept in the Holy of Holies, to which only the high priests had access. Despite shared language and political agreements, Jeremiah contradicts Deuteronomy on exactly the points that Margaret sees as key to the reform, on issues having to do with the role of the high priest, revelation, and the Day of Atonement.

In my reading Lehi’s first public discourse and Jacob 4:14 both directly address the reforms in relation to the changes to the Day of the Atonement and the anointed high priest.

Where Jeremiah 45 shows his dispute with those who blamed the recent defeat on their neglect of the Queen of Heaven, I notice that his critique there resembles his tirades against those who thought the temple would protect Jerusalem. In my reading, Jeremiah is pointing out that moral reform is more important that ritual behavior. Righteousness is not just matter of performing the right rituals, and thereby buying divine favor. He welcomes temple practice that would come after moral reform. Jeremiah differs from our Genesis and agrees with Proverbs in having Wisdom as being involved with the creation.

For those interested, Margaret’s new Christmas book explores some of the ways that Ancient Asherah imagery became attached to Mary. I’d also plug Alyson Von Feldt’s FARMS Review of Dever’s Did God Have a Wife? and her Occassional Paper essay on Wisdom Teaching in the Book of Mormon. And of course there is an interesting line in D&C 1 saying that, “Inasmuch as they sought wisdom, they might be instructed.”

It has occurred to me lately that we learn from the range of Divine titles, roles, and names associated with Christ. We may also learn from the range of titles and names associated with the Divine Feminine. Mother in Heaven is just one name, and one role.

Personally, I applaud Daniel’s essay, and Kevin Barney’s and Alyson’s and Eugene Seaich’s, and Dever’s, and Welch’s on the Hymn of the Pearl compared to Oh My Father, and Patai’s, and Margaret’s work. Unlike Allred’s papers, they are rooted in research, rather than personal speculation. You don’t have to agree with them, but they do point out much that has to be accounted for somehow. It’s new wine that has to find a container somewhere.

Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA