The following is part of a facebook message I sent to someone who had questions about modern biblical scholarship (e.g., Higher Criticism) and its relationship to Latter-day Saint theology and Scripture. While it was not exhaustive (being a message on facebook message), but hopefully will add some food for thought.
Firstly, with respect to "myth" and mythology," one has to be sure that they are using the terms in the proper sense; they do not mean something that is made up or not true; instead, anthropologists, theologians, historians, and the like use such terms to denote a narrative that is highly symbolic. For instance, New Testament scholarship understands (correctly) the temptation of Christ in the wilderness (Mark 1:12-13; Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13) to be mythological, not because there was no historical event informing it, but the narratives employ a lot of symbolism (e.g., the presentation of Christ as a New Moses; New Adam; the nature of Satan's temptations, etc).
In the same way, as some such as Ben Spackman noted on the thread you started about Adam on the LDS Students of the ANE f/b page, Adam/Eve can both be historical individuals and yet "mythological"--how the author(s) of Genesis presented Adam and Eve are clearly mythological (in the scholarly sense of the term)--Adam, of course, means "man," while Eve means "life giver." Furthermore, Adam is symbolic of Israel (e.g., both were part of covenant/gracious relationship with Yahweh, but due to rebellion, a more forensic/less personal relationship was instituted).
There are other things which are "true" and yet mythological--the LDS endowment, for instance, would fall under such as it is a narrative that utilises a lot of symbolism.
The importance of presuppositions
Within much of higher criticism, both presently and historically (e.g. FC Bauer et al), there is often a presupposition of metaphysical naturalism. This is one of the reasons why so much scholarship rejects certain portions of scripture and concepts. For instance, take the issue of 2nd Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. According to many higher critics, Isaiah of Jerusalem could not have written chs. 40-66. Why? One of the main reasons is that those chapters contain predictions of then-future events, and of course, there is no such thing as true predictive prophecy, so ergo, written after the fact by someone during/after the Babylonian exile (similar to why so many reject a pre-70 dating to the Synoptic Gospels as Jesus is presented as prophesying the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, so, in their view, such proves a post-70 CE dating—again, the a priori assumption of naturalism).
Granted, there are other purported evidences (e.g., the question of whether chs. 40-66 are dependent upon the book of Lamentations), but such informs much of the claim that Isaiah of Jerusalem could not have written the entire book attributed to him. However, if one believes, as do, that not only is there a God, but a God who can and has revealed himself and his will to prophets, one cannot accept such assumptions. If one accepts, for instance, that God can and has spoken and revealed the future to prophets, one cannot accept such arguments as evidences against the unity of the book of Isaiah (and view such as a meaningful argument against the historicity of the Book of Mormon). Furthermore, there is still a strong minority report within scholarship that argue in favour of the unity of the book of Isaiah, as well as other issues (e.g., early dating and accuracy of the Gospels—Richard Bauckham has done a stellar job in arguing that the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts in his *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*; while I think he stretched things at times, JAT Robinson, *Redating the New Testament* did a good job at calling up other scholars for their faulty assumptions [and he was a liberal himself]). Oftentimes, there is no definite conclusion in many of these fields on a whole host of topics, so one must tread carefully. Oftentimes, a scholar will have their own “quirk” and will defend it until the cows come home. For instance, Bart Ehrman used to argue that the New Testament differentiated between the “Son of Man” and Jesus; he has modified it a bit, arguing that the NT is inconsistent, with the “historical” Jesus differentiating himself from the Son of Man figure, but that the Gospel authors introduced the inconsistency.
As for myself, while I affirm the historical-critical method, one recognises that unwarranted conclusions may be drawn from it (as noted, if a conclusion denies a supernatural event on the basis of disbelief in the supernatural, I consider it an invalid conclusion). One must also assess the relevant scholarship to see if there is a significant academic minority report indicating the consensus may be vulnerable to criticism or even susceptible to eventual change.
To give one example, for some time, many scholars have claimed that the Priestly source (P in JEPD if you are familiar with the documentary hypothesis) was exilic/post-exilic. However, current scholarship has overturned this. One recent volume, for instance, has (persuasively) argued that the priestly blessing in Numbers 6 (part of the “P” source) is pre-exilic, and such has been attested by pre-exilic artefacts. The study is Jeremy D. Smoak, The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture: The early history of Numbers 6:24-26 (Oxford, 2015). This also refutes a recent argument, based on higher criticism, that the Book of Mormon is in error for having P material contained therein (Ryan Thomas has made that argument against the historicity of 1 Nephi).
Notwithstanding this, there have been sound discoveries within the realm of higher criticism and other biblical studies that have served to vindicate “Mormonism.” For instance, the Book of Mormon reflects the A (pre-exilic) but not B (post-exilic) material for the David/Goliath epic (see Benjamin McGuire, Nephi and Goliath: A Case Study of Literary Allusion in the Book of Mormon [URL:http://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/18/1/S00004-5074648ca9094McGuire.pdf]), something that only recent scholarship has discovered and discussed. Other examples (e.g., recent studies vindicating the authenticity of Luke 22:43-44 and Mark 16:9-20 could be mentioned). A mutual facebook friend, Blake Ostler, using form criticism, wrote an excellent article on the prophetic call narrative in 1 Nephi 1, which is another example of how, when used carefully, modern biblical scholarship (both higher and lower criticism) can add to one’s appreciation of the historicity of the Scriptures. See "The Throne-Theophany and Prophetic Commission in I Nephi: A Form-Critical Analysis." BYU Studies 26, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 67-87 URL:
https://byustudies.byu.edu/PDFLibrary/26.4OstlerThrone-Theophany-cf65ed80-0dff-44d3-ad98-6f842ce25628.pdf
Furthermore, one has to realise that many scholars tend to make claims that are not supported by the evidence of the text itself. For instance, Raymond Brown and Rudolf Bultmann, in their commentaries on John, argued that John 6:51f (the bread of life sermon) must be a later interpolation. Why? Because of the strong Eucharistic/Sacramental theology of the text. However, when one reads the Greek text, there is not evidence of it being disjoined or evidence of it being part of a later redactional effort by the so-called Johannine community. Furthermore, when one examines the text of John’s gospel, that section of John 6 is with the rest of the text. Brown et al. are guilty of reading a faulty assumption (that such theology post-dated the time of John et al) and then trying to explain away the evidence. Many liberal scholars believe that this portion of the text to be original, not just conservatives; Udo Schnelle, a German scholar, notes (correctly) that John wrote that text to combat Doceticism, an early Christological heresy (Schnelle, Antidocetic Christology in the Gospel of John).
Often, the methods used to "prove" one theory, in light of future research and discoveries, tend to refute so-called "mainstream" scholarship. To take the Gospel of John again, it used to be popular to believe that it was written very late, well into the second century, However, discoveries (e.g., P52) have disproven this thesis. Furthermore, with respect to the Pastoral Epistles, although most scholarship tends to doubt Pauline authorship of 1-2 Tim/Titus, such a consensus rests, in part, on the work of a study from almost a century ago (Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles [1921]). However, the minority report that holds to Pauline authorship, has been strenghtened over the years by improved statistical studies of greater sophisication, using more advanced technology and better methodologies than Harrison's earlier study, most notably Barr, Scalometry and the Pauline Epistles, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, volume 261 (2004).
In spite of these limitations, the historical-critical method is very useful for assessing various interpretations of the text, to determine which interpretations are more likely to reflect genuine historicity and the proper interpretation thereof. For example, interpretations of Genesis 11 which view the confusion of languages at Babel as *the* origi of the diverse human languages are indisputably unhistorical interpreations with no basis in fact (and reads too much into the text, I would submit).
I think the following quote is instructive in how Latter-day Saints should approach biblical scholarship:
Higher criticism is not feared by Latter-day Saints. New facts with regard to the Bible are eagerly sought. Suggested influences are respectfully considered and accepted or rejected as they merit. Least of all do Latter-day Saints accept every new hypothesis of Biblical origin or history. We distinguish carefully between facts and inferences and claim the right with other intelligent people to determine for ourselves the weight of probability of the truth of any presented opinion.
publications.mi.byu.edu
publications.mi.byu.edu
The only worthy criticism, whether of the Bible or of any other human possession, is one that seeks for truth. There is a class of students who always seek for the errors in things. Such negative critics become menaces, for they find the errors inherent in all human works, and fail to note the truths. The positive critic searches for the truth in the book or science of man he studies; naturally, he discovers the errors as he moves along; but, out of his search comes a balanced judgment. It is by our strength, not by our weakness, that we are to be judged. We are not concerned with "the mistakes of Moses;" we need to understand his successes, if we are to know how and why Israel entered the holy land.
Destructive Biblical criticism leads us nowhere. Constructive Biblical criticism enhances greatly the joy of reading and studying the Book of Books. All knowledge should be applied in the study of the Bible, but the labor should be approached as a search for truth, and with prayer for truth, Thus bidden, truth always arrives. (From the tract, "The Bible centennial Series-Nineteen: Origin" in Handbook of the Restoration: A Selection of Gospel Themes Discussed by Various Authors; Also Other Items of Interest to Gospel Students [Independence: Zion's Printing and Publishing Co., 1944], 259-64, here, p. 263)
On the issue of borrowing from other ANE texts and cultures
Let me try to deal with the following:
[I] if the Bible just takes stories from other cultures and just uses them, what does that do to our truth claims found in the Pearl of Great Price, where we believe that those people historically lived and had the ordinances of the Gospel?
Firstly, while some scholars claim, for example, that the narrative about Noah in Genesis to be borrowed from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and that other narratives in Gen 1-11 are borrowings from other ANE literature, a lot of parallelomania is in view.
Furthermore, while critical scholars came to believe, beginning at the end of the 19th century with the discovery of various Mesopotamian texts, that the biblical authors had simply copied form these texts, later scholarship noted significant differences between the biblical and Mesopotamian narratives, with the Mesopotamian creation narratives being viewed as parallels, based on their common ANE background, to the Genesis narrative, but not the purported source. As one scholar noted:
Nevertheless, it adds much that is significant for the Near Eastern mythological horizon, and perhaps even provides a number of interesting parallels to the motifs of the biblical paradise story as told in the second and third chapters of Genesis. (Kramer, Sumerian Myths and Epic tales, in Pritchard, ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 37)
As for the claim, made by some scholars that the Genesis (and Babylonian) accounts shared and earlier Mesopotamian oral source, other scholars have long refuted that. As a professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic languages has observed:
However, it has yet to be shown that there was borrowing, even indirectly. Differences between the Babylonian and the Hebrew traditions can be found in factual details of the Flood narrative (form of the Ark; duration of the Flood; the identity of the birds and their dispatch) and are most obvious in the ethical and religious concepts of the whole of each composition. All who suspect or suggest borrowing by the Hebrews are compelled to admit large-scale revision, alternation, and reinterpretation in a fashion that cannot be substantiated for any other composition from the ancient Near East or in any other Hebrew writing. If there was borrowing then it can have extended only as far as the “historical” framework, and not included intention or interpretation.” Millard, A New Babylonian “Genesis” Story in Hess and Tsmura, eds. I Studied the Inscriptions Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary Approaches to Genesis 1-11, p. 127)
Now, it is true that the biblical authors would often borrow other material and rework it, but it was often a deliberate attempt to demytholigize/deconstruct such material in a way that their audience would have picked up on. For instance, take 1 Peter 3:18-21 where the author is interacting with 1 Enoch and the "Watchers." The author, however, is not endorsing it, as some commentators argue, but instead, is deconstructing As one scholarly source stated on this pericope:
Having looked at the many sin and punishment traditions concerning angels, giants, spirits, and humans, the present study finds that, individually, none of them provide the background to 1 Pet 3:18-22. Rather, the stories of angelic sin and punishment, the birth of the giants, the presence of evil spirits, the examples of human evil, and the proclamations made to them exist in such multiple and conflated forms from the third century B.C.E. to the composition of 1 Peter that it is impossible to specify a single tradition-historical explanation behind this passage in 1 Peter. (Chad T. Pierce, Spirits and the Proclamation of Christ: 1 Peter 3:18-22 in Light of Sin and Punishment Traditions in early Jewish and Christian Literature, p. 236)
Could the same thing be possible for Genesis and other narratives? We see this in the Exodus narrative, where the gods of the Egyptian pantheon were demythologized and “deconstructed,” if you will, by the author (each plague in Exodus was related to deities from the pantheon) to show the superiority of Yahweh. Such does not mean that there is no historicity to Exodus (here, the plagues narrative), but that a historical event was presented by the later author(s)/redactor(s) of Exodus to demonstrate a theological point—Yahweh’s superiority over the gods of the nations.
