Rereading last month’s post I see I was laying groundwork for talking about how audiences use and pass along sacred texts–and pass along, shape or reshape the meanings of those texts. Rhetoric includes how we express our relationships to sacred texts as well as the figures of speech we find in those texts, so I want to spend a moment talking about two Mormon attitudes toward scripture.
One is that scripture is shaped by editors. Because this is explicit in the Book of Mormon but not in the Hebrew or Christian Bibles we are likely to think the Book of Mormon is unique. But you can see it in the Hebrew Bible if you know what to look for. In Who Wrote the Bible? Richard Elliott Friedman argues that R, the redactor, wasn’t the only editor. D, the Deuteronomist, used the core of the book discovered in the temple renovations to start a history that continued through Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel and I & II Kings.
In a follow-up, The Hidden Book in the Bible, Friedman looks at J’s work, tracing it well beyond the Pentateuch. I’ve only read about 50 pages. I look forward to reading the rest on my morning commute, after I finish reading the JPS translation of Isaiah.)
Just recently I’ve started thinking Luke might be a redactor/editor as well. Think about those intriguing passages in Acts where Luke breaks into first person plural (Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18;27:1-28:16). Who is this we? If Luke was Paul’s traveling companion why does he only break into first person sporadically? Why not simply maintain it from chapter 16 to the end of the book?
Gary Gilbert suggests a reason in his comment on Acts 16:10 in the Jewish Annotated New Testament. He says the sporadic use of first person plural in the last half of Acts “may reflect either Luke’s use of an eyewitness source or his desire to create that impression” (231). So the studying Luke mentions in Luke 1:1-4 was not simply reading, but collecting source material; he’s not simply retelling a story but incorporating the documents he’s found into his story. I like that suggestion.
Wait, I may have been turning this over in my mind for a while longer than I was thinking. I just remembered suggesting a year or two back that the material Luke and Matthew share but Mark doesn’t might not be a separate source, Q, but something Luke lifted from Matthew in his research.
A second Mormon attitude toward scripture and prophets is the idea that scripture may comment on or correct earlier scripture, and that prophets edit and abridge the words of other prophets. I’ll give an example of correcting earlier scripture another time, and end with that passage in Alma 56:52 where the narrative shifts from Helaman’s first person account to a third person reference to Helaman leading his 2,000 into battle.
Apparently Mormon thought Helaman was getting a bit long-winded. Or did he think he was running out of space? Though I have plenty of space available I’ll use it another time when I haven’t been fighting a snot monster for several days. What are your favorite examples of prophetic editing?