Every morning during high school, like hundreds of thousands of other Latter-day Saint youth, I woke when it was still dark outside. By 6 a.m. I was sitting on a couch in my seminary teacher’s house, drowsy but ready to learn more about God’s word as revealed through the Scriptures. For an hour, we read and discussed the Old Testament, New Testament, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine & Covenants, one volume each year for four years. I had some of my first deeply spiritual experiences with the Scriptures as a teenager before most of my friends were even awake.
My freshman year we studied the Old Testament. One morning the teacher movingly recounted what she felt Abraham’s struggles must have been as he prepared to sacrifice his precious son, Isaac. I remember being startled to see tears in her eyes as she testified that God fulfills his promises, even when we can’t see how it would be possible. I wanted to feel the same connection to holy writ that she obviously did.
I became an avid student of the Scriptures, completing all four years of seminary and then, as a student at Brigham Young University, taking religion classes every semester even beyond those required. I read from the standard works — the LDS term for our canonized scriptures including the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine & Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price — every day, and I still do. I have had experience after experience when the Scriptures provided answers to both my doctrinal and personal questions, when I felt God’s love for me through the words on the tissue-thin pages.
In all of this, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that the Scriptures were flawed.
Bart Ehrman’s lecture last Thursday, “Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who Changed the Scriptures and Readers Who May Never Know,” provided fascinating details on exactly how and why there are mistakes in the Bible (as does his book “Misquoting Jesus” which I recently reviewed on my blog). He outlined the large number of New Testament manuscripts that have been discovered (approximately 5500!), the challenges with determining what the original text said, and the kinds of mistakes found in the manuscripts, both accidental and intentional. I learned that scholars often date ancient manuscripts on the basis of handwriting analysis and that there are more differences in the extant manuscripts of the New Testament than there are words in the New Testament. These specific details may have been new to me, but the general idea was one I’d learned since my earliest Primary lessons at church.
Latter-day Saints are taught from a young age that Scripture is important, but not inerrant. One of our Articles of Faith states “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly,” explicitly acknowledging that errors exist. The writers of the Book of Mormon also admitted their own fallibility in the text. Every child and convert is taught Joseph Smith’s story, that he was confused by the multiple interpretations different preachers gave for a single passage of Scripture, that he was reading the New Testament, specifically James 1:5, and felt impressed to take his questions directly to God and that, as a result, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him. The Scriptures, despite their imperfections, prompted Joseph’s search for truth and were the impetus for personal revelation. And they can and should do the same for us.
Mormons are unique among Christian denominations not only because we have canonized additional books of Scripture, but also because we believe in modern prophets. This creates a “second-tier” of Scripture that, while not canonized, recognizes the words of the president of the church, his counselors in the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophetic guidance meant specifically for us today.
What all these forms of Scripture have in common are people. Ehrman emphasized in his lecture that people wrote Scriptures, translated and transcribed them. People interpreted them, passed them on, read them aloud. And people make mistakes; even well-meaning, well-intentioned people working on very important things mess up sometimes.
It’s an ongoing exercise to parse out what each of these sources of Scripture mean to me personally, and how to apply them in my life. With all of these Scriptures — the Bible, the Book of Mormon and other latter-day Scripture, the words of living prophets today — I have had transcendent moments of deep spiritual understanding. I’ve also had moments that revealed to me the very fallible human(s) behind the Scripture. While it’s harder than accepting every word at face value, I believe there is great worth in this struggle to decipher God’s will for me through these imperfect vehicles. I learn more in the engagement with difficult questions and the refusal to accept easy answers than I would otherwise, and the knowledge is all the more valuable to me because it is hard-won.
I think Ehrman agrees. While his spiritual journey led him from evangelical Christianity to agnosticism, Ehrman expressed respect and appreciation on Thursday evening for those who still believe.
“Even though I’m now an agnostic, I’m no smarter now than I was when I was a Christian,” he said. “I know atheists who are smarter than me. I know Christians who are smarter than me. It’s not a matter of smarts…People of faith should be pushed to think about hard issues. Atheists should be pushed to think about hard issues. We should push each other.”
I can’t discount the experiences I’ve had studying the scriptures — in all their forms — that have pushed me and how they have facilitated a better understanding of God and what he wants for me, in spite of any errors or mistakes they contain. Knowing the Scriptures are flawed, rather than causing doubts, has strengthened my faith. It’s simply evidence to me that God works with fallible humans to accomplish his purposes, which means he can use a flawed and fallible person like me, too, and that he can overcome whatever limitations I, and others, have.
Nice commentary on Ehrman’s talk as well as your LDS faith. I like how you worked them together.
Thanks, Bruce. I thoroughly enjoyed Ehrman’s lecture and appreciated how well it dovetailed with LDS beliefs on scripture.
Wow Emily, great post!
Your emphasis on spiritual experience is really interesting to me. I have this idea that if I look at religion from a functionalist perspective, I can see that there are several functions that it serves:
• Forming groups and community
• Establishing in-group boundaries that promote survival and prosperity
• Establish moral norms for society
• Create rituals to help cope with and demarcate life cycle changes in the individual (coming of, age, marriage, death etc.)
• Provide un-falsifiable beliefs that people can use to form stable identities and social groups around.
• Provide access to mind altering experiences
That last one speaks to your post, and I’m really curious about it. I have come to view religion as a kind of evolved social technology. There are psychologically transformative processes at work all through religious experience, and as a trained hypnotist, I can tell you that there is a LOT of hypnotic language in the bible and other religious texts. So if you were to step outside of your religious experience and look at it from a Martian’s perspective, what is it about your relationship with the scriptures that has caused you to have those experiences?
Excellent review and insightful I think. I especially appreciate your vision and passion as a member of the LDS church and your patience with people who can hurt or irritate from their own self righteous beliefs. This is of course from an earlier blog where you discussed the joy of a feast and such great interfaith discussions.
I was not aware that the LDS church always taught that the Bible was flawed and that somehow elevates this church to a higher level of appreciation in my mind. In the Episcopal Church there is much room for discussion and perhaps as many interpretations as there are Episcopalians! I found Ehrman’s talk inspiring and interesting and I especially like seeing the ancient torn pieces of manuscript.
Thank you Emily for such an insightful review. Episcopalians applaud you.