Review
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Title: From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration.
Editors: Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade
Publisher: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University/Deseret Book
Genre: Scripture Studies
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: xii + 620.
Binding: Cloth
ISBN: 978-1-9503-0419-6
Price: $32.99
Reviwed by Samuel Mitchell for the Association for Mormon Letters
The editors of From Creation to Sinai commence their work with a brief anecdote that sets the stage for the rest of the volume: A person was told by an ecclesiastical leader that in order to have an effective scripture study, they should “skip the Old Testament, as it has no real value, and go straight into the Book of Mormon” (vii). Belnap and Schade, while acknowledging that there are “difficulties in trying to understand” the Old Testament (viii), seek to show that this strain of thought is misguided. Rather, they hope to help their (primarily Latter-day Saint) audience “recognize the value and importance of the Old Testament” (xi). As part of their project, From Creation to Sinai’s essays are meant to exemplify how one can “productively integrate academic scholarship into scripture study in a meaningful and uplifting way” (xi). Devotional or spiritual themes are addressed throughout the volume, though the amount ranges from essay to essay.
Seventeen chapters from thirteen Latter-day Saint scholars are divided into the following parts, dealing with material from the first five books of the Old Testament: 1) “The Antediluvian Narratives” (pp. 1–161); 2) “Historical Context” of Genesis through Deuteronomy (pp. 163–278); 3) “The Patriarchal Narratives” (pp. 279–446), and 4) “The Exodus and Sinai” (pp. 447–598). Belnap, Schade, and other contributors seek to combine the exegetical with the eisegetical, and the academic with the revelatory (viii-ix). While some wax more devotional than others, all are interested not only in the academic and historical contexts of biblical narratives but also in Latter-day Saint connections to and readings of the given material. For instance, John Gee in his essay “The Wanderings of Abraham” (pp. 251–278), uses Egyptian linguistics to make sense of the Book of Abraham: “Following a commandment of God (Abraham 2:22–25), Abraham instructed his wife Sarah to say that she was Abraham’s sister. Although many have thought that Abraham was asking Sarah to lie, that is not the case. In the Egyptian of Abraham’s day, there are two words for wife. One … means only ‘wife’; the other … means principally ‘sister’ but can also mean ‘wife.’ So by using an ambiguous term, Abraham was not saying something that was false” (p. 265).
For me, From Creation to Sinai helpfully 1) introduces readers to Latter-day Saint biblical scholars and 2) offers contextualization for Old Testament figures and episodes. The volume’s featured scholars are not “new to the game”—all have been established in and associated with biblical studies for some time. Such an assortment of scholars, while imperfect (viz., the lack of representation of “up-and-coming” Latter-day Saint scholars interested in these and other related fields), does offer a seasoned and expert approach to a number of issues in the Old Testament’s first five books. Egyptology and the material culture of the ancient world are particularly well-represented in this volume. Moments of speculation, devotional, and even disagreement with other scholars are scattered throughout its essays, highlighting the fact that scholarship is not a singular, monolithic structure. Rather, it is made up of a variety of individual voices. In that sense, From Creation to Sinai certainly resembles the Old Testament!
Perhaps my favorite aspect of the volume were those essays that focused chiefly on contextualizing the Old Testament in its ancient settings. The lived experiences of biblical women and men are often vacuums that can quickly be filled with and filtered through personal, twenty-first-century experiences. While scholars will likely never be able to paint the full picture of ancient life, there are several essays in From Creation to Sinai that certainly offer compelling ideas for what the worlds of Abraham, Sarah, and other biblical figures could have looked like. Below are the summaries of just a few of these essays:
George A. Pierce’s “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC” (pp. 163–192) offers “an archaeological and historical overview of Canaan in the second millennium BC during the period known as the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1950 – 1550 BC), situating Abraham and his family members in their geographic and cultural contexts and examining the economic interactions between the ancestors of Israel and the land of Canaan and its inhabitants” (164). Pierce discusses aspects of the ancient Canaanite landscape during Abraham’s time, including climate, trade, urbanization, specific archaeological sites, and ancient pastoral lifestyles. He succeeds in mapping a world of social and geographic interactions that Abraham would have encountered in Canaan.
Kerry Muhlestein’s “Israel, Egypt, and Canaan” (pp. 193–222) similarly concentrates on the world Abraham and Moses would have inhabited, though he focuses not on Canaan but on Egypt. Says Muhlestein: “The military and political clout that sprang from the Nile Valley—and the prestige that accompanied the Egyptian culture and its achievements—played a larger role in biblical stories than we often realize. If we truly desire to understand the world of the Bible, then we have to explore the interactions that the people of the Bible had with their powerful southwestern neighbor” (194). Muhlestein discusses the chronology of Egyptian-Canaanite interactions (including trade and politics). All of these facets of the ancient world would have impacted Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and the Israelites as they entered Canaan. While at times Muhlestein can only speculate about how biblical persons would have interacted with Egypt or Egyptians in a given situation, he does so in a professional, informed, and sincere manner.
One of the longer entries in From Creation to Sinai, Camille Fronk Olson’s “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings” (pp. 385–424) discusses the lives of Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, Tamar, and Zipporah. Olson likewise seeks to offer historical context (often in the form of various Mesopotamian law codes as they applied to a given biblical story) in order to ground the lived experiences of these matriarchs. I particularly appreciated her not shying away from aspects of trickery or other morally questionable actions that some of these women (Rebekah, Rachel, and Tamar especially) performed in the biblical narratives.
The quest to better situate biblical figures into a realistic rendering of the ancient world is one that fascinates me, and one that I felt excited to travel while reading various essays from Creation to Sinai. The volume’s editors note that they hope to make the Old Testament something more than a throwaway element of Latter-day Saint theology and canon. Certainly, the work of From Creation to Sinai’s contributors are not flawless, and each reader will find those essays to which they gravitate more naturally (as is evident from my own review here). Overall, however, I believe that this volume can help readers better conceptualize the Old Testament as a multi-layered text that can enrich and challenge believers, skeptics, academics, and laymen alike.