Exemplary Scripture

If ancient scripture is not history and yet not exactly fiction either, then what is it? The question is a complicated one and thus not easily answerable in a single book, let alone a single blog post. The Bible is a collection of many different kinds of literature, so one cannot categorize all scripture as belonging to a single genre. Instead of doing that, I will talk about those scriptural texts that lay down in prose narrative a sacred story about the deep past. One example I am thinking of is Genesis. Genesis tells the story of the creation of the world, and the story of humankind down to the death of the patriarch Joseph. Although the text as we have it dates to about the sixth century BC, its story goes back to ca. 4000 BC, long before the story could have been committed to writing in anything like the form in which we encounter it.

If we want to understand the history of the formation of the Biblical text, we should read the works of reputable scholars, and if we want a straight historical understanding of this process, without the mediation or influence of theological agendas, then secular scholars will probably be more helpful than those scholars who have a strong religious agenda. The latter scholars, although decent, honest, skilled, and knowledgeable, are more likely to tell us a version of the story that conforms to their personal beliefs and the position of the community to which they belong. In this post, I am interested in a secular history of the text, but I do not reject the role that scholars of faith play. If we accept the most probable scenario for the composition of the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible, they were composed in the form we see them millennia after the events reported in Genesis.

The likelihood that a clear and accurate record of the events of Genesis was transmitted beginning in 4000 BC all the way down to the middle of the first millennium BC is, in reality, infinitesimally small. It is more likely the case that stories about the deep past that were meaningful to their original tellers were passed down orally and altered over time to meet the needs of the tellers and their contemporary listeners. Oral tradition is not known to be highly accurate in its factual details over centuries of time. Careful analysis of texts shows the fingerprints of later alterations that do not match the chronological setting of the story. It is not likely that the inspired writers of the Pentateuch in the sixth century BC and later had a video-recorded-like vision of historical events at the beginning of the world. We cannot be sure that they would have understood what they were looking at if they had. It is more likely that God inspired them to tell a story that was meaningful to the community at the time. God was not writing history to conform to modern standards.

If we come to see that scripture was not written with the intention of telling factually accurate history as one might expect today, then what was a book like Genesis designed to do? How might it be deeply important now, when it is so far removed from the realities of today's world? One of the jobs readers and interpreters of sacred texts have is to seek meaning in them, meaning for themselves, and, depending on their roles in their respective communities, meaning applicable to the community's situation. We read scripture because it is, to use an old anthropological maxim, "good to think with." Stories set in the deep past have an allure to them that piques our curiosity. We are primed to think that preceding generations had something important to say that we can learn from today. As individuals and communities, we wrestle with those texts we believe are inspired in order to draw lessons out of them.

Historians of the ancient world wrote their narratives of the past to transmit examples of moral excellence and moral failure. These ancient writers changed or created material that they ascribed to great figures of the past in order to teach lessons of different kinds. Today scholars call this paradigmatic or exemplary history. It is history as told to help inform readers in their moral, social, political, and spiritual views and choices. In the Book of Mormon, Nephi tells his readers that the Nephites "liken the scriptures" unto themselves, or, in other words view the actions of scriptural figures as guides in the readers' own lives. Apparently Nephi understood the value of paradigmatic or exemplary history. He did not see the past as a strictly factual narrative but as a story that was told to guide the lives of its readers for very specific spiritual goals, which the abridgers Mormon and Moroni seemed to have shared.

I would suggest to you that Nephi's reading strategy is deliberately set out in the Book of Mormon to help readers of Nephi's record understand how they are supposed to read the Book of Mormon. If one accepts as true that the small plates of Nephi were included in the abridgement for the Lord's "wise purpose," then it is important to read the text as a whole using the strategies that the authors recommend to the reader. Those strategies do not privilege thinking about history in a modern way. It is thus not important what the facts of Nephite history are in material terms. What matters to the authors, as they were inspired to compose their records, is that readers learn through the examples of the figures in the text, among whom are the putative authors themselves, how to "come unto Christ."

If you have come thus far with me, I will now say something that may be harder to accept. If you find it does not work for you, I still believe everything I have written thus far is useful without adding the following. But, I think the following can be useful for those who are ready for it. Let's say you don't believe that Nephi ever existed, but you are starting to think that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. I am not saying you have to believe that, but you may be one of those people. You may then ask yourself what the Book of Mormon is worth. Why believe it? Why not go back to just using the Bible, or why be religious at all? I have no prescription for people in their individual lives, but I will say this: Joseph Smith writing about Nephi is very similar to a Jewish author of the sixth century BC writing about Abraham. We have no way of knowing Abraham ever existed, and yet stories about Abraham continue to speak to the souls of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

It is, I believe, altogether reasonable and sustaining of faith, if one can but learn to see it, to view the inspiration of Joseph Smith as communicating a sacred message for the people of his time and place and for people today. A message that one can see as coming from God. One to wrestle with, search for meaning in, and place at the center of their devotional lives. It is not only possible, but I would also argue that it is in keeping with ancient traditions about telling sacred stories for Joseph Smith to be inspired to write of a branch of Israel in ways that were not historical in the modern sense but rather exemplary or paradigmatic in the ancient sense. He saw a potential Israel in his own environment, if people around him could only be brought to see their divine potential. Mormon scriptures are not ancient because the events in them happened a long time ago. They are ancient because they came about in ways that hark back to antiquity and because they can be read in the same way people read other ancient scripture with the same benefits.