Biblical scholars were most responsible for cultivating a
perception of historical distance, but this perception also grew among
Americans with little or no direct exposure to biblical criticism. Early
followers of Joseph Smith, for example, highlighted the distance between
biblical pasts and American present to prioritize new scripture and new
revelation. As a Baptist minister observed in an 1832 letter to the Christian
Watchman, Sidney Rigdon, a prominent Mormon preacher, proclaimed that “the
Epistles are not and were not given for our instruction, but for the
instruction of a people of another age and country, far removed from ours, of
different habits and manners . . . and that it is altogether inconsistent for
us to take the Epistles written for that people and that age of the world, as
containing suitable instruction for this people at this age of the world” (B.
Pixley, “Intelligence Respecting Mormonites,” Christian Watchman [November
9, 1832]:177). The correspondent quoted Rigdon without comment – the absurdity
of the belief did not need to be explained. And yet, while some scoffed at the
idea that biblical texts were no longer relevant and that new times called for
new revelations, a range of biblical scholars had begun to read the Bible in
ways that pushed biblical times further into the past. In succeeding decades,
as the slavery debates brought increased attention to the meaning of biblical
passages, historical readings were drawn out into the open, which increased the
potential for Americans to sense historical distance from the biblical pasts.
(Jordan T. Watkins, Slavery and Sacred Texts: The Bible, the Constitution,
and Historical Consciousness in Antebellum American [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2021], 67)
Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (2d ed.)