Friday, September 11, 2020

Oscar W. McConkie's High View of the Bible

 

Commenting on the value and importance of the Bible we now currently possess, Oscar McConkie wrote the following about its reliability, historically and spiritually:

 

The Old and New Testaments are the most complete sources available [of the Jews], and are the most reliable . . . The Lord disappointed crafty men, who would have destroyed the Scriptures, and he destroyed their devices, that the word of the Lord might be preserved. In the light of what we have said, errors are understandable, although God led the keepers of the Scriptures to preserve them . . . [the New Testament] is our most authentic record of the people of the Meridian of Time, and of their beliefs and doctrines, and the life and the trial of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, Biblical writers surpass all others in accuracy, detail and clarity. The Old and the New Testaments are without rival. A knowledge of their parts is more understandable if one has a knowledge of the whole. The Old Testament is wonderfully written, and is the literature of a great people. The New Testament, from the “center to every side,” discloses far more accurate and intimate knowledge about the Meridian of Time than all other records combined. (Oscar W. McConkie, A Dialogue at Golgotha: An Analysis of Judaism and Christianity, and of the Laws, Government and Institutions of the Jews, and of the Jewish and Roman Trials of Jesus of Nazareth [Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1945], 17, 24, 26, comments in square brackets added for clarification)

 

Interestingly, McConkie spoke of Hellenistic Jews canonising certain books of the Apocrypha (“Deutero-canon”):

 

Hellenistic Jews canonized more than twenty-four books, and the Church accepted them as a part of the Greek Bible. Judith, Tobit, First and Second Maccabees, Baruch, the Epistles of Jeremy, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom of Solomon were among them. The Greek Scriptures contained many other works, as the Psalter of Solomon, the Translation of Moses, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Apocalypses of Enoch, Baruch and Ezra. Most of these were originally in Hebrew or Aramaic, although some were written in Greek. As Christianity spread they were translated into Latin and into many other languages. (Ibid., 19)

 

While McConkie was speaking of Hellenistic Jews, what he said, to some degree, has been further vindicated. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, we have found Aramaic fragments of Sirach and Tobit, showing that some Jews (not simply those within the Diaspora) accepted, to some degree, the book of the Apocrypha as authoritative. I just found that interesting.