George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl on 1 Nephi 13:28

In their commentary on the Book of Mormon, George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl offered the following commentary on 1 Nephi 13:28, arguing it refers to the removal/destruction of books no longer extant/part of the canon as opposed to textual corruption of those that are now extant:

 

VERSE 28

 

Many plain and precious things taken away from the book. This, as I understand it, refers to books and, perhaps, parts of books, that have been destroyed, rather than to the corruption of the texts in the books extant.

 

Many modern scholars are changing their attitude toward the Bible. They admit, for instance, that the books of the New Testament almost without exception belong to the first century, although they were not gathered together in a volume, as we know them, until a couple of centuries later. Archeological finds prove that the grammar, the vocabulary, the form of the letters, the diction and the historical background stamp them as products of that early age. They also admit that in all essential particulars the text we have is identical with the original writings. They consider these conclusions established by the scientific methods of criticism applied to thousands of manuscripts. 

 

There are discrepancies. And even apparent contradictions. In the Old Testament, and particularly in the Chronicles, dates and names are sometimes hopelessly changed. In fact, the entire chronology of the Old Testament, before the Temple of Solomon, is guesswork. Usher calculates the time from the creation to the flood to be, 1656 years; the Septuagint makes it, 2262 years; Josephus, 2256 years. Similar discrepancies appear in the following periods. From the flood to the call of Abraham, Usher, 427 years; Sept., 1207; Josephus, 1062. From the call of Abraham to the exodus, Usher, 430, Sept. 425, Josephus, 445. From the exodus to the foundation of the temple of Solomon, Usher, 479, Sept. 601, Josephus, 621. From the temple of Solomon, to the restoration of Cyrus, Usher, 476, Sept. 476, Josephus, 493. From the restoration by Cyrus to our Lord, Usher, 536, Sept. 537, and Josephus, 534 years. That is, the entire time from the creation to the beginning of our era appears thus:

 

Usher 4004 years

 

Septuagint 5508 years

 

Josephus 5411 years

 

To this may be added that the Samaritan text makes the period between the creation and the exodus 2809 years. 

 

In the New Testament, too, there are numerous variations. A few of these will have to suffice for illustrations. In Matthew 19:17: "Why callest thou me good?" Griesbach notes another reading: "Why asketh thou me concerning the good?" The doxology in the Lord's prayer, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen," is lacking in some MSS. Matt. 16:2, is omitted in some MSS. The last 12 verses of Mark are missing in some MSS. The story of an angel "moving" the water of Bethesda (John 5:4) is absent from some MSS. Many omit the story of the woman in John 8:1-11. Peter's visit to the grave (Luke 24:12) is omitted in some MSS, but Griesbach considers the verse genuine.

 

Such are the variations in the text. Dr. Joseph Angus remarks: "In the 7959 verses of the New Testament there are not more than ten or twelve various readings of great importance, and these affect not the doctrines of the Scriptures, but only the number of proof passages in which they are revealed."

 

Such variations are easily accounted for. Many of them are accidental. A copyist can accidentally mistake one letter for another. He can happen to leave out words or lines, or repeat sentences. Sometimes the changes are made deliberately, in order to correct grammar, or perhaps establish proof of a doctrine. Sometimes owners of a manuscript would make marginal notes, and a copyist may have incorporated them in the text, thinking that they belonged to it originally. An Armenian translation of St. Mark has been found in which the last 12 verses of Mark are said to have been written by a church father, Aristion. If that is correct, he, no doubt, added it to the gospel because it was an accepted tradition at that time in his part of the church. They may have been part of the original, for the end leaf of a papyrus might easily get lost.

 

Nephi, in his wonderful vision, sees that many precious things had been taken away from the book. For the reasons here given I believe this was fulfilled in the destruction of books that originally belonged to the collection of inspired literature. (George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, volume 1, emphasis added)

 

Further Reading

 

Not By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura

Refuting the Myth that all but 11 verses of the New Testament Can be Reconstructed from the Church Fathers

Refuting Christina Darlington's Claim the Bible has Been Preserved with 99.5% Accuracy

Modern (Evangelical Protestant) New Testament Scholarship vs. Christina Darlington

Brant Gardner on 1 Nephi 13:24-28 and a Note on Psalm 110:3 in the MT and LXX

Interesting Insights in Collin Cornell, ed., Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes (Eisenbrauns, 2020)

 

 

The HB is not an unambiguously monotheistic book, and neither is the religion in ancient Israel to be seen as fully monotheistic. The HB refers to a variety of “other deities.” In the book of Exodus, monotheism as such is not taught by Moses. A reading of the text suggests that Moses did not want to preach a particular idea about God to his people, but he wanted to witness his encounter with a liberating God acting in history. Moses preached about YHWH as a living divine being who saves his people and wants to live in a relationship with them. In other words, Moses wanted to witness about his encounter with God-the-Savior. He did not elaborate on the question of whether this was the only divine being in the whole universe. A few glimpses of other divine beings can be seen, especially in the book of Psalms. The Psalms in the HB strongly imply a symbol system in which only one God should be venerated. Here too, the “forces of nature” have been particularly secularized, as can be inferred from the role of the “sun” in Pss 19 and 72.

 

Some Psalms, however, relate to a symbol system in which more than one god is venerated. Psalms 58 and 82 contain the concept that YHWH stands among or above the other deities. Here YHWH is part of a heavenly council. Of special interest is Ps 91. This hymn on trust among the dangers and threats of life mentions YHWH:

 

He will cover you with his wings
You will be safe in his care
His faithfulness will protect
And defend you

 

But in verses 5 and 6 we read:

 

You need not fear for the terror of the night
For the arrow that flies at daytime
For the pestilence that goes around in the dark
Or the demon that destroys at midday

 

These four nouns, “terror of the night,” “arrow,” “pestilence,” and “midday demon,” refer to threatening demons. Despite the partial secularization of the forces of nature that took place in the religion at state level in ancient Israel, these forces will still have been seen as demons at the level of personal life. Life was not completely disenchanted in ancient Israel.

 

Another text to be mentioned in this connection is Ruth 1. During the well-known encounter at the border, when Naomi wants Ruth to return to her home country, Ruth declares (Ruth 1:16-17):

 

But Ruth answered: “Do not ask me to leave you!
Let me go with you!
wherever you go,
I will go.
wherever you live,
I will live.
Your people will be my people
And your ‘elōhîm will be my ‘elōhîm.”

 

I deliberately left the Hebrew word ‘elōhîm untranslated. The word can be construed as a singular form, “God,” or as a plural, “gods.” Most translations render with “Your God will be my God,” taking Ruth’s vow as a monotheistic or at least a monolatrous confession. At the end of Ruth 1, however, two gods are mentioned. On return in Bethlehem, Naomi bewails her fate:

 

YHWH has witnesses against me
And Shadday has made my life bitter.

 

Traditionally, Shadday is rendered with “the Almighty,” taking the name as a qualification or an attribute of YHWH. Religio-historical research, however, has made clear that Shadday is the name of a divine being that had been venerated at the fringes of ancient Near Eastern agricultural societies (see Ernst Axel Knauf, “Shadday,” in DDD, 749-53). For Naomi, Shadday has left her with her bitterness instead of protecting her against the evils of time. (Bob Becking, “More Than One God? Three Models for Construing the Relations between YHWH and the Other Gods,” in Collin Cornell, ed., Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes [Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2020], 60-76, here, pp. 61-62)

 

YHWH is the only sufficient deity. Affirming YHWH’s sufficiency is one way to summarize a broad pattern in the OT: advocacy of monolatry. Israel should have no other ‘elōhîm beside YHWH (Exod 20:3; Deut 5:7), which covers anything from benign neglect of YHWH to hostile rejection. Such a profile differentiates the OT from much of the ANE tradition, with its various permutations of polytheism. Monolatry of this kind is not, however, unknown, and some of Israel’s neighbors (e.g., Ammon and Moab) may represent forms of it in their state cult.

 

YHWH’s sufficiency with respect to other deities is maintained more particularly against rival deities known collectively as “the baals” (Judg 2:11; Hos 2:19[17]), employing a common Semitic noun with the basic meanings of “owner,” “master,” or derivatively, “husband.” As with other appellatives and epithets, the term could function essentially as the name of a deity and was widely used in the Levant as a divine referent for gods and goddesses. In the category of forbidden deities, the baals are the most frequently opposed deities in the OT. How is, or is not, YHWH a baal? In order to explore that question, we ned not sort out definitively such matters as how many baals were YHWH’s rivals, nor why for a time there was such intense opposition to the baals among the OT tradents.

 

Evidence for invoking YHWH as “Baal” is explicit in the eighth century, such as in the prophecy of Hosea 2:18[16], where the practice is opposed (The prophet proposes that YHWH can be called ‘îšî [“my husband”], but “no longer my baal.”). In this instance, differentiation is not simply distinction but includes opposition to a popular means of invoking deity when applied to YHWH. YHWH may share some of the characteristics of the baals, but not the common epithet itself.

 

The practice of invoking YHWH as Baal, however, is implicit elsewhere in the OT, and not always opposed. Saul’s family had male members named Ish-baal and Meribbal, and David has a son named Beeliada These theophoric names plausibly represent a cultural convergence of religious practice in portraying YHWH as a divine baal, just as the name Adonijah, another son of David, explicitly represents YHWH as a divine ‘ādôn. Neither Saul nor David are portrayed as worshipping a “foreign” deity invoked as “Baal.” A report f YHWH’s victory over the Philistines in 2 Sam 5:20 notes that the place of battle is named Baal Perazim, because there YHWH “broke through” (p-r-ṣ) David’s enemies. This etiological comment is most naturally taken as a reference to YHWH as the baal (master) who defeated the enemies of Israel and David. (J. Andrew Dearman, “Who Is Like You Among the Gods? Some Observations on Configuring YHWH in the Old Testament,” in Collin Cornell, ed., Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes [Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2020], 77-87, here, pp. 81-82)

 

Origen and Certain "Divine Mysteries" only being accessible to mature Christians

 

 

All these things—to take the Psalm, to give a drum and so on, and to do what has been said already—are ordinances to Israel, to the one seeing God. And it is a judgement, pronounced by the God of Jacob: “he set it as a testimony against Joseph” (Ps 80.6a). He made this ordinance “a testimony against Joseph.” What is the testimony, and to whom was it made? Not to the Patriarch Joseph but to the one from Joseph, the one from Ephraim, to Jeroboam, who divided the people. These oracles become a testimony against that man. This has often been interpreted by us against those who are dividing from the Church, because they are heterodox; thus the oracles and ordinances of God become a testimony against that person. (Psalm 80 Homily 1 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 420)

 

In the footnote to the above, we read the following from Trigg, the translator of this work:

 

Again addressing the question, “Who is worthy?” Origen states that, to refute heretics in advance, the prophet reveals what should otherwise remain secret, namely that Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, is actually the language for speaking to God. In rejecting the Old Testament, by implication, heretics are rejecting God. In his homily, Origen’s own speech falls into alignment with Asaph. By the logic of Origen’s interpretation so far, someone such as he with fuller access to divine mysteries—things not known to, or knowable by, simple Christians—may disclose them in the restricted circumstances symbolized by the new moon. Thus Origen, like Asaph, may share secrets about the beginning and end of creation with those who deny the goodness of the creator-god because those secrets testify to the goodness of the creator. Such motivated by fear, so sharing them entails risk. In Cels. 5.15 we see this principle applied to similar criticisms from a Platonist. On the way in which Jeroboam’s schism prefigures Christian heresy . . . (Ibid., 420 n. 72, emphasis added)

 

Origen on 1 Corinthians 8:5 in his Commentary on the Psalms

  

First one must keep in mind the Apostle’s words, howe he did indeed say somewhere, “There are so-called gods either in heaven or on earth, just as there are many gods” (1 Cor 8.5). But, look, catechumen, do not be perplexed and run back to idols because Christians says that there are many gods. For listen to God’s Scripture saying: “All of the gods of the gentiles are demons” (Ps 95.5). But just because he does not begrudge his beneficence, God says: “For I said, ‘You are all gods and sons of the highest’” (Ps 81.6). The Scripture says that if someone has received God’s logos, he becomes a god (See Jn 10.34-35), but also “God stood in the gathering of the gods, but in the midst he distinguishes gods” (Ps 81.1), and if you are gathered as human beings, God is not in the gathering. If the gathering itself is of gods, gods are being called such because the logos of God is among them and they do not walk as human beings do; God is in such a gathering, and there is where “God stood in the gathering of gods; in the midst he distinguishes gods.” (Psalm 76 Homily 2 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 260)

 

Origen Touching upon the Eucharist in his Commentary on the Psalter

  

Next is a figurative expression; who cannot allegorize? Say, you who are stumbling and not reckoning that we should say these things forcefully, “You have rushed the heads of the serpent, You have given him as good to the Ethiopians” (Ps 73.14). Do the Ethiopians, the people from the edges of the inhabited world, actually take the serpent’s body from God and cut it into pieces, so that they may eat the flesh of the serpent? Is this notion worthy of the Holy Spirit? Is this worthy of prophetic grace? Why are they stumbling at logoi that lift up our soul? But it is possible to set forth that, just as the holy ones eat the body of Christ and the Lord says: “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (Jn 6.55), so sinners eat the serpent’s body. Whenever the Valentinians and Basilideans and the others from the sects make thanksgiving, do they then actually eat the body of Christ, whom they blaspheme, whom they do not know? Perish the thought (Mē genoito. This expression is characteristic of the Apostle Paul, who uses it fourteen times)! But, on the one hand, if we also pray to eat Christ’s body, then, on the other, pray to eat the body of the serpent, about whom it is written, “You have given him as food to the Ethiopians” (Ps 73.14b), those in ignorance, those in darkness (“darkness possibly indicates a negative symbolism associated with dark skin pigmentation. See the reproaches of Abba Moses, an Ethiopian, in Alphabetical Apophthegmata Patrum, Moses 3), those who have been led apart by ignorance and by sins. (Psalm 73 Homily 2 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 201-2—note here that Origen seems to reject an ex opere operato approach to the Eucharist and “Real Presence” instead, arguing that Jesus’ “presence” is contingent upon the recipient having faith [N.B.: Origen did not hold to a concept of “Real Presence” similar to Transubstantiation. See here, here, and here])

 

Origen: God (the Father) Can Choose to become Spatially Present

  

The rest of this passage is “God in his holy place” (Ps 67.6b. The stumbling block in this statement is the ascription of a “place” to God; God has no spatial location). God, whom neither heaven nor earth contains—for all creation is smaller than the creator—when he chooses, becomes spatially present; he becomes spatially present in a holy place, for wherever a place is defiled and profane, God cannot be there. What, then, is the holy place? That place, concerning which the Apostle tells you, “Do not give a place to the devil” (Eph 4.27. Origen asks “what” the place is, not “where” it is) concerning which Solomon says to you, “If the spirit of one having authority rises upon you, do not cede your place” (Eccl 10.4). But Judas had given a place to the devil, so that “with the sop Satan entered into him” (Jn 13.27). (Psalm 67 Homily 2 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 175)

 

Origen on αιων/αιωνος denoting a very long time, but not "eternal" in the modern understanding

  

“I reviewed the ancient days, and I remembered the eonic years, and I took care” (Ps 76.16). One who wants to be helped also considers the ancient days beginning from Adam. What occurred to Adam? What befell Cain? What did Enoch accomplish? What worked out right for Noah? And, so to speak, considering in detail all the days from the beginning, he stretches his mind over all the matters recorded to have occurred in the earliest days. “I reviewed,” then, “ancient days.” And then, having reviewed ancient days, he still refers them higher to things of eonic years. But, if one must say so, since things that are seen are temporary and years among temporary things are temporary, the years before the cosmos are “eonic” in a different sense, perhaps also those after the cosmos, which years are encompassed in, “The law has the shadow of future good things” (Heb 10.1), teaching about what one must do every seven years and what one must do every fifty years (see Lev 25.10-12. Origen refers to the jubilee year, in which debts are canceled and slaves are freed, and suggests that it is the shadow of an eschatological reality. Origen makes this clear in Or. 28.14-16). (Psalm 76 Homily 1 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 249-50)

 

On “eonic” in the phrase “eonic years” we have the following footnote from Trigg, the translator of the work:

 

Origen generally construes the Greek word aiōnios to mean “lasting for an eon.” An eon is a very long, but limited, time, the length of an entire world. This world is often translated “eternal” or “everlasting,” but Origen understands it, as we shall see, to refer to a fixed, temporal period. I have therefore coined the term “eonic” as a translation, since “eternal” would imply a lack of temporality altogether and “everlasting” would seem to imply an unlimited period of time. (Ibid., 249 n. 67)

 

Elsewhere, on Origen’s use of Heb 10:1 we have this note:

 

Here Origen seems to imply that aiōn and aiōnios can have a second meaning when applied to the periods before the creation of the cosmos and after its end, “eternal” in the sense of non-temporal. This is a distinction we first find in Plato, who distinguishes between our world of becoming, characterized by change and subject to time, and a transcendent reality of “being,” in which there is neither change nor time. (Ibid., 250 n. 69)

 

Further Reading

Resources for "We Agree with Moroni 8:18" day (18 August)