Comments on: How We Taught This Lesson in the Past: Old Testament Manual

By: Maurine

Maurine — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:42:26 +0000

I totally agree with Jeans, #5. I got really tired of the lessons taught last year by teachers with no understanding of the history behind the revelations. All the teachers could do was hand out papers for people to read (“Who has number 5?”) followed by asking what the statement or scriptures meant. Because the answers were so obvious, nobody would answer the question. I can see the same thing happening again this year, where we won’t be taught any historical information at all. I could handle the new method of teaching if I had an Ardis for a teacher to give an introduction at the beginning of class.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:45:20 +0000

When I taught the Doctrine & Covenants this year, I found that taking the first three or four minutes of class to tell, in narrative form, what was happening that provoked whatever revelation was our subject for the day, worked very well. Everybody likes a story, and it satisfied in a small way my need for historical context.

I hope to do something similar this year — not that we can adequately cover in four minutes what theologians and scholars have required entire volumes to cover, but I hope to maintain a little sense of the Old Testament as a text and not merely a miscellaneous collection of quotations on miscellaneous subjects of relevance to 21st century Latter-day Saint living.

By: David G.

David G. — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:34:38 +0000

Count me as one who is disappointed in this change. I find that I can get a bit more excited about the new principle-based structure when I change my expectations–rather than getting a good lesson on the contextual background of the sacred text, I’m getting a good look into how those texts are interpreted by 21st century Mormons. Reception history can be just as interesting as the historical/critical approach. Luckily, a friend who is a Hebrew Bible student at TCU, teaches a stake institute class on the OT that really gets into the text, so what I don’t get in SS I’ll get there.

By: jeans

jeans — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:59:48 +0000

I suppose we leave the study of scripture in its historical context, to the extent that we do that at all, to Institute. It seems that many Mormons are profoundly uncomfortable with (or ignorant of) the Old Testament, and that in general we only focus on those parts that point to Christ. Sometimes we then force the rest of the text to conform to that, jamming the OT’s square peg into the round hole of “must foreshadow Jesus Christ,” or “must be part of a continuum that leads inexorably to latter-day gospel restoration” rather than studying the OT on its own merits and for its own sake. It’s too bad, that since the Gospel Principles topics have migrated into the 3rd hour, that the SS hour couldn’t return to old-style study of a book of scripture not as a chopped-up book of LDS quotations, but as an ancient text.

By: Allison Sullivan

Allison Sullivan — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:10:08 +0000

Pres. Kimball asked them to change it to “do” at the end of “I’m A Child Of God”. I like the principles-based instruction much better since the order of the books in the OT is not very easy to follow.

Thanks for doing this Ardis!

By: CS Eric

CS Eric — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:10:32 +0000

For your last point in the OP, my favorite HB Lee quote goes something like: "Unless you know the gospel, you don't know the gospel." Maybe that is the point for the current manuals going back to the basics.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:02:25 +0000

I’d put it toward the end of that span, Eric, since I remember it, too, but would have had to have been very precocious to remember it any earlier. They must have made a big deal of it in our ward, too, to recall it all these years later.

By: CS Eric

CS Eric — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:56:09 +0000

Ardis,

The best I can guess, the change to that verse happened around 1963-65. I learned the original words in Primary, and I remember the Primary chorister making a big deal out of it when it happened. That guess comes from the ward we were living in when it happened.