The Book of Moses: Four Fold Interpretation

 I was listening to a podcast about the Book of Moses (in the Pearl of Great Price, one of the canonized scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) by the Maxwell Institute. During the podcast one of the presenters talked about how the Moses 6-7 taught Joseph Smith about what it meant to establish a Zion people.  The Book of Moses always seemed a bit "out there" as far as modern scripture goes, but the idea that it was given to Joseph Smith to provide him a model of his role as a prophet really made sense to me.  It also made me think about doing a four fold interpretation to try to explore what the Book of Moses is.

Here is a little background on the Book of Moses. Joseph Smith received the Book of Moses while he was doing a translation of the Bible in 1830-1831.  Translation here is used loosely.  He wasn't translating the Bible from one language to another.  Instead he was prayerfully reading the Bible and then writing inspirations he received about specific passages.  The Book of Moses was received while he was translating Genesis.  

1. Literal: The literal interpretation of Moses 6-7 is that Enoch was a historical character who really did found a city that became so righteous that it was eventually taken up to heaven.  It also would assert that that city will at some time come back down from heaven and the people of the city will join with earthly saints in establishing a New Jerusalem.  Moses knew about Enoch through vision and tradition and wrote his story in his original account of the creation, but that part was eventually lost from the record.  People who hold to this interpretation talk about how one of the reasons why the world was all wicked two generations later in the time of Noah was that all the righteous people were caught up to be with the City of Enoch.  

2. Symbolic: There is a lot to be learned from looking at the story of Enoch symbolically.  He is a type of perfect evangelist prophet.  He started his ministry like Moses, Lehi, and Isaiah, with a panoramic vision of the history of the world.  Like them he started out "slow of speech" and hated by the people.  The Lord promises to be with him and gives him power to preach persuasively.  Unlike the others, he is actually successful in converting his whole city.  As he is more dedicated to doing God's will he becomes more powerful and God-like, until, by the end, he returns to God's presence. This gives each of us hope that, despite our weaknesses, if we obey God and go forth with faith, we, too, may become worthy to return to live with God again.  

3. Context: This story of Enoch was given to Joseph Smith early in his ministry as the leader of the restored church.  What better way to teach Joseph Smith about his role as prophet than to give him a story about the perfect prophet?  After Joseph Smith received this revelation, establishing a Zion people became one of his greatest goals.  When the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants were first published, some of the church leaders were given pseudonyms to protect their identities. It is telling that Joseph Smith selected the name Enoch as his pseudonym.  Whether the events of the life of Enoch actually happened or not is not as important as what the story taught Joseph and how that informed the history of the restoration.

4. Secret or Sacred: Terryl Givens asserted that Chapters 6 and 7 of the Book of Moses are the most important passages, doctrinally, that were revealed during the restoration.  They portray God differently than any other Christian church of the time. The creeds of the 3rd and 4th century proclaimed that God was without body, parts, or passions, but in the story of Enoch we see God weeping over the fallen of his people. This suggests that we are not meerly God's creations intended to increase his glory, and if we fail, he discards us like a broken wrench.  Enoch's conversation with God shows him to be a concerned parent, and suggests that we, faulty as we are, are the most important things to him.  When we rebell, it hurts his feelings and when we are righteous he rejoices. This also suggests that by giving us free agency, God relinquished his control of our actions. Bad things can happen to us because of other's or our own choices, that he will not prevent. He can, however, through the Atonement, make restitution for anything we suffer if we will turn to him. 

Genesis 5

 This week's Come Follow Me reading assignment is Genesis 5 and Moses 6.  I was kind of surprised that they didn't skip Genesis 5 because it is mostly a geneology of the descendants of Adam.  I think they included it because it mentions Enoch, and the story of Enoch in Moses 6 and 7 is an important story in the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I think I will talk more about Enoch next week, but for this week, I want to mention two things I found in and about Genesis 5.  

Genesis 5 is kind of wierd because it states that the descendants of Adam up until the flood lived crazy long lives.  In fact, if you do the math, Methuselah lived past the time of the flood. So, clearly, it isn't supposed to be a historical account of the descendants of Adam.  If that is the case, what is it supposed to be? What symbolic meanings can those long lives have?  One podcast I listened to this week gave the best answer I have heard on this question.  The "Talking Scripture" podcast with Mike Day and Bryce Dunford mentioned that the practice making long lists of kings that lead ulitmately back to deity existed in other cultures contemporary to the Old Testament.  These lists were meant to increase the prestige of a dynasty by portraying its founders as super-human and semi-divine.  That made a lot of sense to me.  If that was a "thing" amoung the peoples that the House of Israel interacted, it would be tempting to create their own version. 

Some interesting word translation things.  When it says in "This is the book of the generation of Adam.  In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him, "  The word for Adam in the first sentence, and the word for "man" in the second sentence are both the same word .  I don't know why they translated it as a proper noun in one place and as more general terms in the second. It could be translated "This is the book of the generation of humans. In the day that God made humans, in the likeness of God made he them." Of course, this is supported in the next verse when it says, that God "called their name Adam" meaning both the male and female, together, were Adam, or humans. 

Here is a chart of the descendants of Adam on the Christian Truth Center website.  They also list the Hewbrew meanings of each of the names.

More about the Fall

In the previous post I talked about some of the sybolic words in the KJ version of the story of The Fall.  I would like to take a step back and do a four-fold interpretation of the story of the fall.  You can see an introduction to this kind of approach in an earlier post. As a recap, it is a method developed by Jewish scholars that follows an acronym for the word that means paradise. דספר

 פ= Peshat =פשט =literal

ר=Remez= רמז=symbolic

ד=Drash= דרש=context

ס=Sod =סוד =secret or sacred

1. Literal:  Where Adam and Eve historical characters?  Many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe so.  They believe that Adam  and Eve are the great patriarch and matriarch of the human race. They talk about how Eve must have felt when she had to decide whether or not to take the fruit and how Adam partook of the fruit out of love for Eve and an understanding that it was important that they stay together and produce offspring.  They see the story as the actual origan story of the existance of human beings on the earth and and explanation of how God set up this life to be a proving ground for his spirit children.

2. Symbolic:  There are a lot of Symbolic interpretations of The Fall.  Eve's decision to partake of the fruit so that she could gain wisdom and experience is symbolic of the decision all of God's spirit children made to leave the paradise of the pre-earth life in order to gain experience on the physical world.  It is also symbolic of the life cycle of faith.  Also, As children we are innocent in our faith, but as we age we experience trials that make us doubt and suffer. We can feel cut off from the presence of the Lord.  It takes effort and work to survive spiritually, but we grow and become better disciples through sacrifice and faith in our redemption. 

3. Context: Tradition suggests that this story was written by Moses to be part of the guiding scripture texts of the Children of Israel.  It gave them a cultural identity, established their relationship with God, but also explained why life is difficult.  The Isrealites in this time period had no clear doctrine or belief in "heaven," so when they thought of returning to live with God they pictured the Garden of Eden.  When Moses established the tabernacle it symbolized the Garden of Eden.  It had decorations that looked like the plants of the garden, the Menorah symbolized the Tree of Life, and, as I have already noted, Cheribim were painted on the veil guarding of the Holy of Holies. The Temple was a symbol of hope that one day Isrealites could return to live with God in a state of peace and happiness.

4. Sacred of Secret. The story of The Fall sets up the whole story of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.  The rest of the Old Testament is an account of Fallen Man. The Lord sends prophets and the Law to help guide people to live better lives, but people keep falling short, returning to sin
over and over again. The Law cannot save them and nothing the prophets say makes any permant improvement in human nature.  It is only when the one that is fortold in the story of The Fall, the offspring of the woman who is wounded by the Serpent, comes is there any hope for lasting salvation.  The final chapters of Revolation depict the great dragon, (the serpent from the Garden) being cast into Hell, never to return, not by a great warrior, but by a lamb that has been slain, the wounded son of Eve, as a sacrifice for all.  

The Fall

 Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a unique view of The Fall.  For Jews and most Christians, The Fall was a terrible thing that doomed all of humanity to suffer a life of hard labor that ends in death.  If Eve had not listened to the serpent, we all could have been born and raised in a beautiful garden where all our needs were met, and we were all happy. Latter-day Saints, however, see The Fall as essential for the purposes of God.  In the Book of Mormon Jacob teaches "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." (2 Nephi 2:25) In the Pearl of Great Price version of the creation story, Eve says "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which god giveth unto all the obedient." (Moses 5:11).

Let's look at the Biblical version of the Fall.  We have three characters, Adam, his wife, and the serpent.  Let's talk about the serpent.  He is not named here, and the term Satan or Lucifer doesn't show up for hundreds of years. He mostly represents temptation, death, and hell.  He is discribed as "subtile."  I did a word chase on the Hebrew word used here, and it means either crafty in a pajorative sense, or clever in a positive sense.  I think they chose the word subtile in the KJ because the word in English also means bendy, like a snake, but I don't think that meaning carries over to Hebrew.  When he is cursed, God says, "Upon thy belly thou shalt go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life" (Gen 3:14). In a previous blog I talked about how later God calls Adam "dust" when he has sinned.  In the Hebrew, as in many languages, the belly is associated with physical desire.  In stories that follow we will see over and over again how physical desire leads people to rebell against God.  Cain kills Able for his flocks, Esau sells his birthright for a bowl of pottage, and Kind David becomes a murderer because of his desire for Bathsheba. The Lord's pronouncement on the Serpent shows, symbolically, that rebellious people and those who give in to physical desire become prey to Death and Hell.

The Lord also says "I will put emnity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise they head and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Gen 3:15)  The term used for "bruise" really is stronger than that.  It is שופ pronounced, Shuph, and it is  onomonopeic. It could be translated "wound" but suggests maybe "stomp" or "smite". The idea is that Eve's offspring will kill the serpent, but at the same time the serpent will rise up and attack the offspring.  It is a powerful forshadowing of the Savior, who was killed, but in dying conquered death. One podcaster I listened to pointed out that it is the offspring of a woman, not the man's.  This is another forshadowing of Jesus who had no mortal father, but did have a mortal mother.

Adam and Eve suffer consequenses for their decision to partake of the fruit.  The KJ says that the Lord would greatly multiply Eve's "sorrow and thy conception" (Gen 3:16).  That is kind of a loose translation.  It really says that Eve would become "very great, and toil in delivering children".   The Lord told Adam the ground will be cursed so that "in sorrow shalt thou eat of it" (Gen 3:17).  It is the same Hebrew word as in the previous verse, that means "toil."  So Eve will toil delivering and raising children and Adam will toil to raise and care for crops.  

Ok, this blog post is getting too long  but I will add one more "ohhh" moment I had at the end of Gen 3. The Lord places Cheribim "east of the garden of Eden" "to keep the way of the tree of life." (Gen 3: 24) Two things about this verse.  We will see in the next few stories that eastward=rebellion.  Also, I never realized that this verse is why the veil in front of the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle has Cheribim on it.  The Cheribim guard access to the presence of the Lord both in the garden and in the Temple.  In a way the Temple is a symbol of the Garden of Eden and teaches us what to do to return to live with God as Adam did in the Garden.

Genesis 1-2: Introducing Symbols.

 I am excited to at last start a week by week blog about the Come Follow Me reading assignment.  This week is Genesis 1-2.  If you have been following my blog, you know I have already dealt with a lot of ideas from these chapters, but here is one more.  I must acknowlege that some of these ideas came from Tim Mackie's lectures on the Pentateuch available on Youtube.

One thing that Moses does in Genesis 1-2 is to set up symbols that stand for ideas that are going to show up over and over in the stories that follow.  In order to understand both the Old Testament and the New, we need to understand these symbols because they were an integral part of Hebrew culture and those who wrote the Old and New Testaments expected the reader to pick up on the symbolic meanings.

The seven days of creation contain several of these important cultural symbols.  The first few days teach us symbols of order vs chaos which is associated with good vs evil. Light vs darkness, deep water vs dry land, wilderness vs a garden; all of these are symbols that will be used in later stories.  As an example, think of the Exodus story.  When Moses leads the children of Israel the Lord parts the water (=chaos/evil) and the Israelites cross on dry ground (order/good).  Then a pillar of fire (light=order/good) leads them through the wilderness (chaos/evil).  

We also learn in Genesis 1 about the Lord's Spirit or רוח (ruach), which is a word that also means breath, or wind.  It will come up again in the story of Noah where the wind dried up the flood, and in the story of Joseph as the "spirit" that impelled Pharoah to look for an interpretation of his dream.  Often when you see this word show up, the message is that the inspiration from the Lord is at work. (even our word, inspiration, contains the root word that means to "breath".)

There are more, but you get the idea. With the creation story we are literally and literarily setting the scene for the rest of the Bible.