The Ensign Gets Scholarly. Kinda.

Last updated on: December 23, 2010 at 2:15 pm by benspackman

The Ensign Gets Scholarly. Kinda. 2010-12-23T14:15:54-07:00 benspackman

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The January Ensign (not available on-line yet) includes “The New Testament: The Historical Context” by BYU prof Thomas Wayment. PhD from Claremont, focused on textual criticism (as I recall), Wayment is one of the young movers and shakers at BYU. He co-authored Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament, which garnered all kinds of positive press from lds blogs.

The Ensign article includes several statements that represent long-time scholarly consensus but may not be well known to LDS (some more significant than others), as well as a few that cut the other direction. Let’s look at a few.

Gospel = ‘”good news’ referring to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.” Often in the Church we use Gospel as an all-encompassing term for all doctrine, tradition, LDS culture, etc.
The current canon of 27 books wasn’t fixed until the 4th century. [The first time we find our current canon is from Athanasius, c. 367 CE.]
Mark and Luke are not Apostles like Matthew and John.
Paul’s letters pre-date the Gospels.
Hebrews is only traditionally ascribed to Paul.
The authors of the New Testament were writing primarily for their contemporaries, not for those millennia later.

Only one assertion made in passing really struck me as incomplete. I assume this results primarily from the spatial and institutional constraint of writing in the Ensign.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really wrote Matthew Mark, Luke and John. The writing of the Gospels is much more complicated, but Wayment himself has written about this elsewhere.

This is a great article, and I’ll be referencing it with my Gospel Doctrine classes. Is it a movement in a particular direction for the Ensign? I hope so.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 22, 2010

With God, nothing shall be impossible

Next Post

January 2, 2011 On character and ideals

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Around the internet Arts Bible Church Church teaching Culture Current Events Doctrine History Interfaith Movies Personal Narratives Podcast Politics Priesthood/Relief Society Quotes of Note Scripture Speculation Study teaching Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"

Select your answer to see how you score.

The father of a sick boy Mary Peter Thomas