Comments on: Parallelomania

By: Ben McGuire

Ben McGuire — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:37:55 +0000

Keller – I will have to give your question some thought before I try to put together an answer.

By: Robert Boylan

Robert Boylan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:54:55 +0000

Among the best texts determining how one evaluates parallels between texts, one should pursue:

Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel by Michael Fishbane

Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul by Richard B. Hays (cf. his Conversion of the Imagination)

A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66 by Benjamin Sommer.

FWIW.

Robert Boylan

By: SmallAxe

SmallAxe — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:41:12 +0000

Hmm… I suppose I would politely disagree about what would be most interesting as far as the BoM is concerned. I think projects that focus on 19c American and/or 4c Meso American comparisons are stuck in the mode of certifying the BoM’s authenticity. IMO, more interesting, whereby I mean likely to develop Mormon thought, are comparisons with things outside those that have too much potential to keep falling back on the historicity issue.

For instance, I came across an article in the recent issue of Element that was a Confucian reading of Mormon ritual. Rather than focusing on the issue of parallels for the sake of certifying the authenticity of Mormon ritual, the article provides an interpretation of Mormon ritual from a Confucian perspective that helped me to see ritual in a new way–in short the “embodied” learning that takes place in ritual as a broadly construed category of religious practice.

By: Keller

Keller — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 06:06:18 +0000

Smallaxe I like your example of another reason to study paralells. Answering how some one from cultural millieu Y would/could have read text Y is a worthwhile pursuit. Of course I think the most interesting Y’s for the Book of Mormon will be 19C America and 4C MesoAmerica will dominate the literature for some time. Brant Gardner’s work seems to me to be more about what you suggest for MesoAmerica than about histority.

By: Keller

Keller — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 05:57:28 +0000

Ben,

I should have known that, having waited a few months, I would fall behind in scholarship published in Mormo-oriented journals. I just read your article. Very well done!

Are you suggesting that the bit about one man perishing to save a bunch might have been in the original Northern text. If so, why do you thimk a Davidic or Messianic passage got excised?

By: SmallAxe

SmallAxe — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:49:39 +0000

I think the significance of any given parallel depends (at least partially) on the purpose for which the two things being compared are brought together. Personally, I find the issue of the historicity of the BoM to be a less than ideal context for comparative work. This is because, as laid out in Hamblin’s methodology, the conclusion of the comparative work is mostly complete before the project even begins. While I find this work valuable, especially in responding to challenges of the historicity of the BoM, it’s often too rigidly shaped by agendas other than doing good comparative work.

Doing comparison to prove or disprove historical causality or connectiveness is only one reason for doing comparative work. Other reasons could be more intriguing. For instance, comparative work could be done to offer new insights on a particular religious tradition. This might lead to questions such as, how do Buddhists read sacred texts in comparison with Mormons? Then, following on this, what would it look like to do a Buddhist reading of the BoM? In this sense a “good” comparison is one which leads to a fruitful re-reading of a particular aspect of a tradition.

By: Ben McGuire

Ben McGuire — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:53:42 +0000

My article in the recent Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture is also relevant.

http://mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=18&num=1&id=475