The news is out that the Old Testament lessons will be exactly the same. No changes or updates to the manuals — not even updating the 1800s entry in the Bible Dictionary (the part we got for free from the printer) that Baal is a sun god (something only British Egyptologists believed) or anything else.
With that in mind, here are some of the things to prepare for and expect.
- Someone is bound to point out that the names of the first humans in the Garden of Eden are Ish and Isha. “almost all modern linguists say that ish and isha aren’t related. Ish comes from the root אוש, meaning strength (the related root אשש means “to strengthen”), and isha derives from אנש, meaning weak. (The common plural of both – anashim אנשים – “men” and nashim – נשים – “women” also derive from אנש).”
- Someone will also point out that Brigham Young taught that the name “Adam” is a title that many have had, it is not just one person or one man. Someone else will probably point out that one historic meaning of the mark of Cain was blue eyes. Other trivia will probably come out in classes.
When you get to the story of Abraham and Isaac, someone is going to point out that Abraham was a “dried up reed” (to use the poetic metaphor) and Isaac was thirty-five years old at the time of the story. So beyond the entire “Abraham should just have said no” which floods the bloggernacle every four years, you will get “just why did Isaac go along with this?” kind of questions.- Lots of other Abraham issues will come up. Count on it. Lots of them.
- Others will point out that Abraham goes from an outcast, fleeing his idol making father (that was the family business before dear old dad tried to sacrifice him to an idol) to a warrior-prince with hundreds of men under arms, including three centuries of men whose only purpose was war.
- Miriam and Moses as the prophets God sent to deliver Israel will come up (and that the Bible mentions the two of them and excludes Aaron).
- Aaron making a golden calf, leading the people in the worship of it, and then not being punished when others were will probably get raised by the class curmudgeon.
- The genocides in the early Bible will come up, along with the fact that the people who were supposed to have been eradicated show up later in the book, and that God tells the people of Israel that he will not eradicate their enemies because it would destroy the land. With any luck, someone will point out that the genocide moments in the scriptures tend to relate to triumph narratives or to conflicts with the sexually exploitation of children by some movements that were eradicated.
- Moses and Zipporah and their story may or may not come up. I had a friend who was ghostwriting a manual for teaching the Bible in her late 60s when she first read that story and was quite surprised at it (though she thought she was reading the Bible every year at church).
- Balaam and the Ass, while an interesting story, also ends too soon, as in the end, Balaam, the prophet, attempts to lead the Children of Israel into sin (so that God will let him curse them) and dies in battle fighting him.
- Ruth, Moab, her grandson David and the fact that marrying a Moabite disqualified you and your children from being a party of Israel will probably come up at some point.
- Which will also lead to a discussion of just when each part of the Old Testament was written, the differences between history, illustration, metaphor, parable, art and poetry (and that when you get a couple hundred years ago to several thousand years ago, history was not a collection of facts but collected in a way to illustrate points — or why Chronicles and Kings are so dramatically different in parts). Perhaps someone will have listened to the LDS Perspectives Podcast and bring up that the story of Jonah is about how though the prophet is the least obedient person in the story, God is the most forgiving and loving and values all life and every person. Other scripture might get a deeper lense from understanding genres in the Old Testament. Or it may not.
Those are just twelve points or twelve steps to get you started on what to expect in reading the Old Testament and in the Bloggernacle and your Sunday School classes, now that everyone has had the chance to read the same lessons 4-5 times and, perhaps, to have learned something.
- What do you expect to encounter?
- Do you think they will ever fix the Baal entry? (It sure makes understanding Elijah easier. Storm Gods make fire fall out of heaven on the tops of mountains. His challenge to the priests of Baal is to have Baal demonstrate one of his strong points. It would have been meaningless if Baal were a sun god).
- What else do you think they ought to consider fixing?
- What is your favorite bit of Old Testament trivia?
- What is your favorite trope that the bloggernacle recycles every four years?
Wheat & Tares 
All I can say is, “Isha shame” 🙂
Being bald myself, I think 2 Kings 2:23-24 gets short shift in GD lessons.
23 And he went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
I remain hopeful that someone will at least fix the Baal entry.
But the Old Testament is a story of flawed prophets. Over and over again God communicates through men and women with great flaws. Truly through a glass, darkly.
Hopefully I will be able to attend enough to use My Joseph Smith Translation to point out differences.
Minor correction – David is Ruth’s great-grandson.
There’s always room for teachers to go more in-depth on the scriptures than what the manuals say, so I don’t know that it’s just a repeat every 4 years. I got to teach OT as a gospel doctrine teacher, and it was a blast. There’s so many ways to talk about the assigned scripture passages, and the classmembers’ inevitable lack of familiarity with the OT (in most wards) means you can work with a relatively blank slate. But maybe I’m also working from naivete. I’ve only been able to attend an entire course of OT in Gospel Doctrine once with the various callings I’ve had (and I won’t be getting it this year because I work the Family History Center second hour). I’ll have to think longer about my answers to the discussion questions.
They need to fix the notion that the story of Deborah and Barak was a sign of “true friendship” (OT lesson 19). It is a major stretch of the scripture to reach this interpretation…. it is small but annoying…!!!
Mary Ann — good point.
Dave — I always like that he asked her to come, she told him that if she did, he wouldn’t get credit for winning, he did not care. But I never saw the story as a story of friendship.
I wish we’d ditch the KJV and use a better translation. GD class spends so much time just defining Old English vocabulary and trying to understand what’s going on.
What would the best alternative be to the KJV?
I like the New English Translation (NET) Bible.
Of interest is their copyright statement (a huge issue in changing from the KJV is is both free and does not require permissions, is the paying of royalties and the obtaining of permission in order to use a translation. As a result, the vast majority of printed sermons still use KJV citations for the print).
Quote:
Bible copyright policies typically require special permission before Internet posting, writing commentaries, allowing mission organizations to translate works into other languages, or when quotations exceed some verse limit. The result is that an author is forced to delay writing until permission is granted, use an old public domain text, or proceed illegally in order to serve missions.
Other authors have found that a valuable work is simply not publishable because they lack permission for the Bible translation quoted in it. We want all authors to know that the NET Bible is a safe choice. We intend to make quoting the NET Bible easy for both commercial publications and ministry by making the vast majority of requests covered by an automatic “yes.”
This new copyright permission policy, when implemented, will result in many more works being created for charitable use and Internet distribution. A second major historical reason used to justify prior written approval of papers, books, and commentaries quoting Bibles is to ensure that nothing embarrassing is written using a copyrighted Bible. We’d rather risk embarrassment than hamper thousands of worthwhile projects.
We’ll let the Internet community label the rare bad works and bad authors. We’d rather remove barriers so that the other 99.9% of Christian authors can be more productive. We solicit your ideas for an optimal solution for Bible quotations in the Internet age..”
https://bible.org/netbible/index.htm?pre.htm
I’m sure others will have other preferences.
When teaching the OT I would often use the NRSV in preparation and also in the lesson for difficult passages. I really don’t think it matters what modern version is used as long as it properly supports the lesson.
Saul’s seance conjuring up Samuel (1 Sam 28) and how that might have influenced Joseph Smith and his visions of Moroni, Elijah, et. al.
To many people it is perfectly understandable that a dead ancient American Christian prophet buried golden plates containing the best sacred account of the gospel, then 1400 years later appeared as an angel and showed young Joseph where to get them, and after sufficient spiritual preparation, helped him translate them. But to trained ministers of Joseph’s day, still battling the remnants of folk religions including witchcraft, etc. the appearance of a dead person in a vision was a definite sign of the well-described evil of necromancy. Saul lost his life and that of his son the next day according to the biblical text for this sin. What happened to Joseph?
A couple of years ago my bishop (who is a MD) gave me two small white stones he says are mostly Himalayan rock salt and further claims wearing them will help treat autoimmune diseases like my wife’s asthma-(which prevents her from making it through the day in the Salt Lake valley in the winter while visiting relatives, you know, when the inversions turn the air orange-green) so we can return to Zion (Utah). I think I might bring them to class and see if they work as seer stones. I’ve kept them marinating in a vase from Pakistan that resembles Aladdin’s lamp.
And while we are stoning gays, we need to stone hetero. adulterers too. See Lev 20:10.
Trump, both Clintons, Obama, probably junior Bush, definitely senior Bush, all the Kennedys, MLK, Bro. Hamula, 99% of professional athletes and movie stars, half my missionary companions, some of my boy scouts; where does it end?
By the wind of Balaam’s ass, Amen.
“And while we are stoning gays, we need to stone hetero. adulterers too. See Lev 20:10.
Trump, both Clintons, Obama, probably junior Bush, definitely senior Bush, all the Kennedys, MLK, Bro. Hamula, 99% of professional athletes and movie stars, half my missionary companions, some of my boy scouts; where does it end?”
I have been waiting a week for someone to call BS on this…
Why is Melania Trump exempted from this list, since all the money she ever earned was by flaunting her body, and she is the only U.S. first lady to pose nude?
I do not believe that President Obama was ever unfaithful to his wife, or it would have been headlines on Fox News. Given how much scrutiny his birth certificate received, certainly zipper problems possibilities were being investigated even more thoroughly?
Perhaps there is some joke I am missing? But accusing good people of adultery is never OK in my book.
Mike? Your comments seem to have nothing to do with the original post.
Naismith–I think you are spot on as to Obama. I don’t know why anyone would accuse him of adultery.