When their daughter returned from studying
abroad at the BYU Jerusalem Center, James and Judith McConkie found themselves
wanting to learn more about the actual, historical Jesus — the man who lived in
first-century Palestine. In response, they turned to something that is often
overlooked by Mormons: biblical scholarship. And I don’t just mean books
written by BYU professors; I mean works from respected non-LDS scholars like
N.T. Wright, John Dominic Crossan, and Marcus Borg, and even secular scholars
like Bart Ehrman.
What value did the McConkies see in biblical
scholarship? They wanted to understand the historical context of Jesus’s life.
They were concerned that, without understanding the historical context, they
would run the risk of devising “a self-validating Jesus who just happened to
agree with our view of things.” They remind us that
during the Civil War, the Confederate States often justified slavery by quoting the New Testament and the Apostle Paul. Mormons used the same sources to justify priesthood restrictions. If Jesus and his disciples could be commandeered to support such practices, there is no limit to what his name might be used to justify. …
