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I find Walton’s perspective refreshing. He helps demonstrate well why it is important to read ancient scripture through the eyes of its ancient authors who wrote these scriptures “for us and not to us” as their target audience who were the people of their time.
The Book of Mormon clearly tells us who the authors of the bible were.
1 Nephi 13:24
“And the angel of the Lord said unto me: Thou hast beheld that the book proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew; and when it proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew it contained the fullness of the gospel of the Lord, of whom the twelve apostles bear record; and they bear record according to the truth which is in the Lamb of God.”
The authors were Jews. So it is with the Jewish milieu in mind that we are to interpret the bible and not to overlay our modern notions over ancient scripture.
Haven’t read this yet but I’ve watched his lectures and read his ‘Lost World of Ancient Scripture’ which is a great intro to how the authors of scripture approached what they we’re writing differently than we do now.
Nice. It’s clear that Walton’s more traditional type of Christianity is still controlling some aspects of his understanding (a negative view of the Fall, for instance), but I definitely agree that his reading is very helpful. He has quite a few videos on YouTube that condense the information pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZddI-Tr4I
On the subject of the ancient cosmology and the Temple, I followed up on Hugh Nibley’s recommendation of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend’s amazing book Hamlet’s Mill, which I proselytize for every chance I get. The entire text is available online here – it’s a tough read the first time through, but it’s so important that it’s more than worth it: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill.htm
Specifically, it shows how the 4-sided ‘flat earth’ cosmology is an ancient metaphorical image based around the 4 points of the solstices and equinoxes, which inscribe a Square within the Circle of the ecliptic, forming a ‘frame of time’ centered upon the axis mundi, conceptualized as the Sacred Tree of many traditions. This image-based understanding of the sacred calendar is the source of the cosmological ‘floods’ in which one world-age is ‘submerged’ and a ‘new world’ – a new Age – is born. Each Age is signaled by images in the scriptures that gain new significance when we read from a calendrical viewpoint – Christ the [Pisces] Fish, born of a [Virgo] Virgin to signal the revolution to a new Aeon; the zodiacal symbolism that finally makes John’s Revelation more comprehensible and much less scary, etc. It also functions to tie together practically every major world religion and bind them back to their source in their shared calendrical cosmology.
I’ve found this book to be utterly invaluable – it solves *so* many problems by returning our focus to cosmology and astronomy, which, as Nibley often pointed out, was part of the original purpose of the Temple-as-Observatory.