Site talk:SS lessons/DC lesson 31

This page allows you to see in one place the talk pages associated with the commentary pages for the reading assignment for this Doctrine & Covenants Gospel Doctrine lesson. Click on the heading to go to a specific page. Click the edit links below to edit text on any page.

Talk:Gen 2:21-25

Talk:1 Cor 11:11-15

Talk:D&C 131:1-5

Talk:D&C 132:1-5

Law vs. covenants Joe, I like the question. Any thoughts on the answer? --Matthew Faulconer 05:08, 5 March 2007 (CET) I've got a rough idea of how to approach these verses, but I'm not quite settled yet with them. I'm going to do some work right now on them. --71.115.204.114 15:08, 5 March 2007 (CET) I would read "law" in general terms and "covenant" as a more specific case. Blessings come by obedience to laws, generally. Not all laws involve covenants, but all covenants are governed by laws (the "terms" of the covenant).--Rob Fergus 23:06, 5 March 2007 (CET) Interesting thoughts, Rob. I actually came to this section in hopes of finding something like that, since in the OT it is the other way around (the covenant comes to Abraham, and the Law of Moses then works within that covenant, which is fulfilled in Christ, though the covenant remains open for a time; see 3 Ne 15:1ff), and I have the sense that something like what you're describing is at work here. I'm still wrestling with the language here, and, as you can see, I'm trying first to do some contextual work so that I know exactly how to approach the language. Any help on these verses from anybody would be quite helpful. Thanks. --Joe Spencer 15:37, 6 March 2007 (CET) Bibliography for D&C background Joe, what sources are you finding most helpful in doing contextual work? My library is very poor in terms of church history, what would you recommend looking at? Surely there are some books that are esp. helpful in terms of getting context for reading the D&C. What's most interesting to me (rght now) is how the word covenant seems to be used differently here (or at least slightly differently) than in Genesis where God's promse to Abraham and extended specifically to Isaac (and not Ishmael) in a way that doesn't seem to imply conditionality (although it does seem that circumcision was a condition imposed early on in Gen 17).... --RobertC 18:47, 6 March 2007 (CET) Robert, for contextual work.... Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling is a beautiful introduction to the history behind the D&C, and his bibliography is an almost inexhaustible resource: I use it constantly. But for a particular verse, I usually go to Lyndon Cook's The Revelations of Joseph Smith or Robert Woodford's Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants (this latter is a CD-ROM BYU Studies puts out for about $20). This is a very good site for background and primary sources. After that, you have to go into particular works. I've found it helpful to use LDS Gospel Library and The New Mormon Studies CD-ROM as searchable resources (for example, I searched in both of these for "1831" and "132" to find resources on the claim in the section heading, etc.). The latter of these is really a great source on history, because it has most of the important LDS books published by either Signature or the University of Illinois, up through... 1998 I believe. One must take what one finds there with a grain of salt, but it is certainly helpful. At some point, I wrote up a bibliography of what I thought were the most important titles in studying the historical background of the D&C. I'll have to see if I can find it. --Joe Spencer 00:28, 7 March 2007 (CET) Thanks Joe, this is very, very helpful. --RobertC 03:44, 7 March 2007 (CET) I found the bibliography I had written up (buried on the desk). So here's brief list (with *'s by books that need to be read with an understanding that they are not necessarily favorable to the Church): Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People Harold Bloom, The American Religion Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling Waterman, The Prophet Puzzle * Kent Brown, The Historical Atlas of Mormonism Michael Quinn, Origins of Power * Jan Shipps, Mormonism (I very highly recommend this book!) Scott Faulring, An American Prophet's Record Dean Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith Leonard Arrington, The Mormon Experience Milton Backman, The Heavens Resound Robison, The First Mormon Temple Welch & Shipps, The Journals of William E. McLellin The Book of Commandments Andrew Ehat, The 1844 Succession Crisis, etc. Leonard Arrington, Brigham Young Ehat & Cook, Words of Joseph Smith Don Colvin, The Nauvoo Temple Lyndon Cook, The Revelations of Joseph Smith Milton Backman, Joseph Smith and the Doctrine and Covenants Robert Woodford, The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants Richard Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses Richard Anderson, Joseph Smith's New England Heritage Regional Studies (a series of books by BYU) Parley Pratt, Autobiography Kirtland Revelation Book Revelations in Addition to Those Found in the Doctrine and Covenants Marvin Hill, Quest for Refuge Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magin Worldview * B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History And so on. There are obviously many, many more books than this. But this was the basic bibliography that I worked up for studying the three "periods" of Joseph Smith's prophetic "career" (1820-1830, 1830-1835, 1835-1844; or if you will, The Book of Mormon, The JST, and The Book of Abraham). This list is great Joe, it'll keep my family, friends, and relative busy for several Christmases and birthdays to come (esp. b/c I have so few friends!). Another quick question that I keep wondering about that I think affects how we should read the JST and citations of the Bible: do we have any sense of how much Greek and Hebrew Joseph learned, and when? --RobertC 17:45, 8 March 2007 (CET) Joseph began to study Hebrew and Greek (much more Hebrew than Greek) in January of 1836, two and a half years after he had "finished" the JST. Quite simply, original languages had nothing to do with it (he didn't even have Greek or Hebrew texts to work from until late 1835). That should help. --Joe Spencer 00:10, 9 March 2007 (CET)

Talk:D&C 132:6-10

Talk:D&C 132:11-15

Talk:D&C 132:16-20

Pass By the Angels Brigham Young famously reported that the purpose fo the temple endowment was "to receive all those ordinances in the House of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the Holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell" (JD 2:31). While we often think of this as perhaps a literal passing of sentries at gaurded doors to the Celestial Kingdom, perhaps there is more to this statement than meets the eye. Perhaps it isn't so much that there are sentries that we have to satisfy with special "signs and tokens" in order to pass through their gaurded doors, perhaps the phrase "passing the angels" should be taken in the same way as the similar "pass by the angels" here in D&C 132:19--those who receive the "signs and tokens" of the endowment pass by the angels because they have received an ordinance or ordination to become more than mere angels. The ordained become gods by passing the station of angels to become "above all" with angels "subject unto them" (D&C 132:20). According to this view, the endowment described by Brigham Young, and the temple sealing as revealed here in this section, are perhaps a preliminary ordinations to godhood. Perhaps there are even different levels of exaltation implied by the various ordinances or ordinations entered into through these temple ceremonies.--Rob Fergus 14:36, 16 Nov 2006 (UTC) Good stuff, doesn't follow no quoting rule Recent work by an anonymous contributor in the exegesis section is interesting. It also happens to violate pretty strongly the rule against using quotes in the exegesis section which to date I've tried to enforce on this wiki. Because of this I'm going to move the information to the related links section. Rather than put it all in the related links section I will create a subpage and move most of it there. Hopefully this isn't interpretted as suggesting that the work is not good. That isn't the issue. Instead, the question is where work like this belongs. If anyone wishes to discuss, we can do so on this page. If someone would like to discuss the policy rule "Do not cite sources other than the scriptures in the questions and exegesis sections of the commentary pages," the best place would probably be the policy discussion page. Thanks, --Matthew Faulconer 06:39, 30 June 2008 (CEST)

Talk:D&C 132:21-25

Talk:D&C 132:26-30

Talk:D&C 132:31-35

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