This is the sixth Scripture Roundtable from the Interpreter Foundation, in which we discuss Doctrine & Covenants section 1, bringing in various insights to help us better understand these scriptures. These roundtables will generally follow the 2013 Gospel Doctrine schedule of scriptures, a few weeks ahead of time.
Panelists for this roundtable include Ben McGuire, Brant Gardner, and William Hamblin.
This roundtable is also available as an audio podcast, and will be included in the podcast feed. You can listen by pressing the play button or download the podcast below:
Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:03 — 11.7MB)
Brant Gardner, I have a question regarding the list of Bible passages you give at 16:55-17:45, to which D&C 1:1-2 is alluding. Is there a reference or resource anywhere that catalogs all such allusions in the Doctrine and Covenants? I’ve done a few searches myself to find such allusions, but I would hate to reinvent the wheel if it’s already been done. Do you know of such a reference work, and perhaps where I could purchase or access it online?
Nathan:
I am unaware of any source listing the allusions. I suspect that any compilation would be incomplete since they depend upon someone recognizing the allusion. In the past, many more people memorized large sections of the scriptures and therefore were more immediately aware of the allusions. In our modern world, we depend more upon our search engines (myself included). That means that we need to be looking for them, and different people will recognize different ones, depending upon the extent of their memory.
I like the idea of a compilation, though. I sounds like it would be a nice collaborative online project for crowdsourcing.
A-whoppin’-men. I would love to see a project like this, and would be happy to join in. I’ve been trying to start a similar project for the hymns, a sort of hymn-scripture index cataloguing all quotes and major/clear allusions to scripture passages. I recruited a BYU religion professor or two to see if they would turn it into a class project (because, like you said, it could be accomplished in two semesters, maybe even one). But their interest fizzled out.
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to make these roundtables available to us. They are an excellent resource and one I will come back to time and again when preparing my GD lessons this next year.
There is a nice overview of the revelatory, and pre-publication refinement & editing processes that went into the Book of Commandments and D&C found in the Jan. 2013 Ensign: Great and Marvelous Are the Revelations of God
http://www.lds.org/ensign/2013/01/great-and-marvelous-are-the-revelations-of-god?lang=eng
The article dovetails nicely with portions of this Scripture Roundtable discussion.
While this refinement process makes perfect sense to me, I suspect it might indeed bring up questions in the minds of some who are of the opinion that a revelation should be some kind of “brain dump”—perfectly crafted upon receipt.
I’m glad this is out there for discussion. The more we understand about the processes of revelation as it pertained to Joseph, the more we can comprehend it as it applies to revelation in our own lives. It truly is “line upon line” as our capacity & understanding grows in this principle.