My First Taste of Biblical Scholarship (And Now I’m Hooked)

Up to this point in my life, I have not paid much attention to the work of biblical scholars. Perhaps I have been influenced by those within the LDS community who are highly suspicious of their work. Recently, however, I read Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis–Deuteronomy, by LDS scholar David Bokovoy. This outstanding book has piqued my interest in biblical scholarship and helped me see how biblical scholarship can contribute much to my understanding of the scriptures.

Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis–Deuteronomy is the first in a series of books that will “present[] a basic introduction to biblical scholarship and its relationship to Mormonism.” Bokovoy is one of those rare individuals who, to quote Lowell Bennion, tries to “carry water on both shoulders” — that is, Bokovoy believes in the importance of both religious faith and critical thinking. According to Bokovoy, “spirituality and critical thinking are not … mutually exclusive paradigms,” but rather “a united undertaking.”

The goal of this first book in the series is to “provide[] Latter-day Saint readers with an academic investigation into the question, ‘Who wrote the Bible’s first five books?’” I was taught in LDS Sunday School, seminary and institute classes that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch. It appears that this is still being taught today (see, for example, the current Old Testament seminary manual). However, biblical scholars see things differently. According to Bokovoy, “almost all contemporary biblical scholars recognize that the first five books of the Old Testament were not written by a single author and that they are in fact a compilation of separate sources composed by different schools of thought.”

At an earlier stage in my life, I probably would have simply dismissed the conclusions of these scholars because they conflict with what I was taught in seminary and institute classes. However, I have come to believe that a better approach is to consider why these scholars have reached their conclusions and whether I can learn anything from their insights. As I learned from reading Bokovoy’s book, biblical scholars have some pretty good reasons for questioning the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

For example, there are a number of repetitions and inconsistencies throughout the Pentateuch. “The Bible opens with two creation stories,” Bokovoy says, which “differ in sequence, vocabulary, focus, and even their understanding of God’s expectations for his creations.” But “it is not simply creation that is told two different times and in two separate ways, we actually find the same thing happening in biblical story after biblical story.” For example:

Abraham enters into two covenants with God (Gen. 15 and 17). Jacob leaves home two different times and for two different reasons (Gen. 27:43–45 and 27:46–28:9). God reveals his name as Yahweh to Moses twice (Ex. 3:13–16 and 6:2–3). Moses and Aaron draw water from the rock two times (Ex. 17:1–7 and Num. 20:1–6), and so on.

If the Pentateuch was written by Moses (or any single author), why are there so many repetitions and inconsistencies?

But it’s not just the presence of repetitions and inconsistencies alone that demonstrates the existence of multiple sources; it’s the fact that “[w]hen the sources are separated from one another … we can read each source as a flowing, sensible text; that is, the story continues without a break.” Bokovoy provides a detailed analysis of the story of Noah and the ark that illustrates this point quite nicely. If you read the story as it appears in the Old Testament (i.e., Genesis 6:5 — 8:22), there are a number of inconsistencies and contradictions. As Bokovoy explains:

Genesis 6:19 states that God commanded Noah to bring with him on the ark animals, “two of every sort … male and female.” However, … we read in 7:2 that God commanded Noah to bring with him not “two of every kind, male and female,” but rather seven pairs of clean animals and two of the unclean. … Genesis 8:6 tells us that the flood lasted for forty days, yet two verses earlier it states that the waters subsided at the end of a hundred and fifty days. Verse 7 indicates that in order to discover if dry land existed, Noah sent out a raven that did not return. Yet verses 8 and 9 tell us that the bird was actually a dove.

Scholars believe that the story of Noah and the ark is composed of two distinct sources. To demonstrate why, Bokovoy reproduces the entire text from the Old Testament story of Noah and the ark, and he uses bold text to visually separate the two sources. If you read the sources separately (e.g., read the text in bold by itself, and then read the unbolded text by itself), the two sources actually make sense on their own. Bokovoy asks, rhetorically: “How is this possible unless we really do have two separate narratives that have been simply spliced together by an editor?” Bokovoy provides a similarly detailed analysis for the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt.

According to Bokovoy, most contemporary scholars believe there are four major sources: the Priestly source (P), the Yahwistic source (J), the Elohist source (E), and the Deuteronomic source (D). Bokovoy explains the major distinguishing characteristics of these sources, and he provides an overview of what scholars have concluded about the relative dating for these sources. There is also a fascinating chapter explaining how these sources “were directly influenced by non-Israelite texts” such as the Babylonian epic Enūma Elish, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, Mesopotamian legal collections and vassal treaties, etc.

If biblical scholars are correct about who wrote the Pentateuch and when, there are implications for Mormon scripture. For example:

• If “Genesis is a compilation of Judean sources originally written several centuries after Moses,” as most biblical scholars believe, why does the Book of Moses present a revised version of the opening chapters of Genesis as words “that the Lord spake unto Moses”?
• A similar question can be asked about the Book of Abraham: What should we make of “the Book of Abraham’s textual dependency on late Judean sources that came into being over a millennium after the time of Abraham”?
• If “the Pentateuch most likely came together in its current form following the Babylonian exile,” as most biblical scholars believe, then why does 1 Nephi 5:11 say that the brass plates contained “the five books of Moses”?

Bokovoy wrestles with these and other difficult questions about Mormon scripture. But this is not a book that is intended to tear down faith. Although Bokovoy believes that biblical scholarship “creates some problems for some of our traditional paradigms,” he “offer[s] various paradigms that a believer might adopt to make sense of biblical scholarship in light of his or her spiritual convictions.”

Personally, I find Bokovoy’s conclusions to be both reasonable and faithful. I won’t discuss them in detail here, but his main point is that “we as Latter-day Saints should allow room for messiness in the production of scripture.” That is a perspective that resonates deeply with me.

Whether or not you agree with Bokovoy’s conclusions, his willingness to engage these difficult — but important — issues is admirable. I don’t believe that the proper response to biblical scholarship is to simply ignore or categorically deny it. What is sorely needed are perspectives that try to integrate traditional faith and scholarship. This is exactly what Bokovoy has given us. I highly recommend this outstanding book to anyone who wishes to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith,” and I can’t wait for the next one.