Since Covid disrupted normal church, I haven’t followed adult LDS Sunday School much. Our local ward streamed it for about a year, then it stopped. Class meets only every other week. But of the four courses, New Testament is the most enjoyable, so let’s talk about it. The “new and improved” Come Follow Me manuals give teacher and students even less to work with than previous years, so what you get in your class is largely dependent on what the teacher brings to the lesson and possibly some good comments. I’ll take a quick look at the first five lessons then give a few comments on Mark, the earliest of the four gospels.
They Don’t Number the Lessons
I find this rather annoying. They are referenced only by date. Whatever.
Dec. 26 to Jan. 1: We Are Responsible for Our Own Learning. It’s almost like they are saying right up front, “don’t expect to learn anything from this manual, so go find better resources on your own and read them.” How about Marcus J. Borg’s Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written (HarperCollins, 2012). (Elisa mentioned this book in a comment to my post two weeks ago.) You get the full text of the New Testament (NRSV) plus short introductions to each book by Borg, as well as a few short chapters highlighting the chronological order of the books and what that means for content of the book.
The starting point of any clear understanding of any Bible book is to consider who wrote it, when it was written, and who it was written to. Not just the traditional claims or what the book itself might claim, but what critical study of the text reveals about who *really* wrote it and when it was *actually* written. The kind of serious discussion not found in LDS manuals. The kind of stuff the manual tells you that *you* are responsible to go learn on your own. If you think the Book of Matthew was written by Matthew, one of the Twelve, you are going to read it as something like a contemporaneous record of events and actual words spoken by Jesus (this is how the LDS manual treats Matthew and the other gospels). If you think Matthew was written in the 80s by a Greek-speaking Christian, based on material that circulated as oral stories for decades before some of it took written form, you are going to read it differently.
Jan. 2 to 8: Matthew 1, Luke 1 // Jan. 9 to 15, Matthew 2, Luke 2. These chapters cover what are termed the infancy narratives. You might have read Luke’s version with the family at Christmas. Here’s the thing. Mark, the earliest gospel, has no infancy narrative. Not a thing; it starts with the adult ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Furthermore, the accounts given in Matthew and Luke tell quite different stories. These stories were written at least fifty years after the events recounted. It’s likely any person who was an eyewitness to any of those events was no longer living. Bottom line: these are not reliable narratives.
Not a word of serious discussion about this in the manual, which takes everything at face value and ignores any problems raised by the texts (see prior paragraph and any serious book on the New Testament). And of course the lesson attributes the Book of Matthew to Matthew the disciple and the Book of Luke to Luke the colleague of Paul the Apostle. It includes this questionable statement about Luke: “He recorded eyewitness accounts of events in the Savior’s life.”
Jan. 23 to 29: Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3. I’ll skip the John 1 lesson and stick with the synoptic gospels. At least this lesson makes an accurate and helpful statement: “Mark’s Gospel was likely written before the other three.” But no discussion of when it was written (most scholars put it around 70) or what Markan priority means for reading Matthew and Luke.
Now I don’t expect LDS adult Sunday School to use an “Introduction to the New Testament” text from a university course as the manual. But material in the LDS manual should be informed, to some extent, by that scholarship. There ought to be, you know, some relevant and informative material in a lesson manual. Sadly, Come Follow Me is no improvement over prior manuals on this score, which is disappointing. I’m sure you’re aware that many LDS teachers largely ignore the manual and just teach the material in the scriptural chapters for that lesson. Good for them, but it’s unfair to make the teachers do all the work that the curriculum committee and manual writers should be doing! They collect millions and millions from the membership — and in return produce largely worthless manuals.
About Mark
Here are a few observations from Mark 1 that get things started for further discussion of the Gospels:
- It was written in Greek, as were Matthew and Luke. Which means the authors were Greek speakers. That alone almost certainly means Matthew didn’t write Matthew, as the first Galilean disciples were almost certainly illiterate and may not have even spoken Greek.
- John the Baptist material. He is such a charismatic figure. He baptized Jesus, which suggests Jesus was a follower of John for at least a short period. This creates problems for the gospels, which don’t want to paint John as a greater figure than Jesus. Mark 1:14 notes that Jesus began his public teaching only after John was arrested. One wonders how differently events would have turned out had John not been arrested.
- Mark is a *narrative* and this matters. Mark presents the ministry of Jesus in three acts: activity and teaching in Galilee; the journey to Jerusalem; activity and teaching in Jerusalem, including death, burial, and an empty tomb story (no post-resurrection appearances). There were other sources that were collections of sayings, but Mark isn’t a collection of vignettes and sayings sort of thrown together. It is a highly structured narrative. Matthew and Luke both adopt Mark’s three-act narrative structure, but edit the material they take over from Mark, plus add their own new material, from Q and other sources.
- They each had a somewhat different story they wanted to tell about Jesus, and they structured their narrative and selected and edited their material to tell that particular story. What story did Mark want to tell? Matthew? Luke? You can’t really understand Mark or Matthew or Luke unless you ask those questions. The harmonization approach taken by the LDS manual sidesteps or simply ignores that whole line of inquiry.
- One unique aspect of Mark’s narrative is “the Messianic Secret.” While the gospel itself presents Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, Jesus does not *announce* himself as such and prohibits others from making such an announcement. In Mark 1:21-28, “a man with an unclean spirit” says to Jesus, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus replies, “Be silent.” There are other examples later in Mark. This surprising feature of Mark’s narrative has prompted a lot of scholarly reflection. As noted, the LDS manual harmonizes the four gospels in its presentation, which tends to minimize or simply ignore any unique features of a particular author and gospel.
I hope to do a similar post about once a month. The LDS manual spends six months on just the gospels, so there should be plenty of opportunities to discuss other features of the gospels. As for this post, here are some items to discuss.
- Have you attended any recent adult LDS Sunday School classes? Is it better with Come Follow Me?
- What do you think of the new Come Follow Me manuals, in particular for how it is used (or not used) in Sunday School lessons and teaching?
- Do you have a favorite gospel? Mine is Mark.
Wheat & Tares 
This is a wonderful post that points out how rich study of the New Testament can be—if done the right way. Sadly, that is rarely the case in the modern Gospel Doctrine class.
I join Dave B in issuing my strongest possible condemnation to the dumbing down of Gospel Doctrine materials. Instead of providing enlightened, in depth material as in times of old, it dumbs things down to the level of the lowest common denominator. It is as if the goal is not learning; the goal is to avoid offending anyone by pointing out that they are too lazy to know as much as someone else.
For true learning requires work and it requires effort. It is not enough to spend the week watching cats on TikTok and Dua Lipa on YouTube, rather than reading the scriptures. One cannot learn by giving no effort and seeking to absorb through osmosis. Especially when watching Dua Lipa videos during the class itself.
Sadly, the lesson materials encourage this lack of effort. Until the class is designed to require actual effort, Dave B and a few others will comprise the total of those who actually seek to learn, rather than be entertained in class.
As the Sunday school president in my local branch, I largely prefer Come Follow Me because it’s not as rigid with structure. It allows me some wiggle room to facilitate meaningful discussions without being limited by an overly strict lesson plan.
However, this can be a double-edged sword. When a class is filled with people who are earnest to learn and contribute, it can be very rewarding. But discussions can be easily derailed by folklore or general apathy. So in order for a class to be heartfelt and meaningful, both the teacher and students need to be passionate about what they’re teaching / learning. However, depending on the ward/branch, that can be quite rare.
As for my favorite gospel, I have to say Luke. As a gentile disciple, he had an “outside looking in” perspective when it came to the gospel. As a southerner in a Utah-based church, I can connect with that perspective.
You know what would really interest me? I’d love to see a complete comparison of the KJV Bible vs the Joseph Smith Translation so that we could analyze the changes he made. And then I’d like to compare all of that with verses in the BOM that duplicate the KJV. Among my questions:
1. Does the BOM (the most “correct” book) line up with the KJV or the JST?
2. To the extent that the BOM lines up with the KJV, what is the most likely theory behind that.?
I’ve never really been interested in Bible stories just for the sake of Bible study. What interests me is how Joseph Smith used the Bible (ancient scripture) in the construction of the BOM and the JST, modern day scripture.
After reading this post I thought to myself that Dave B. hit the nail in the head about the Come Follow Me lesson format. The overview of Mark and the other gospels you provided is very familiar to me. The leader of the adult Sunday School class in our ward tries to bring some outside scholarship in to the class, but he does use some discretion in what he does introduce because most of the class members know only what they have been taught all their lives in church settings. Which means they don’t know a while lot. The classes seem to me to be more for confirming already established biases or prejudices. I would like to see more and lively discussion but I have learned to go softly because of my the reasons given previously statements in this comment.
I don’t attend Sunday School, but I enjoyed this post and I look forward to your future postings. I took New Testament at BYU with Wilfred Griggs, and really loved the scholarship he brought in.
Dave, to answer the questions, yes, I attend Sunday School regularly and have all my adult life. I think, to an extent, the Come Follow Me curriculum is getting people to read the scriptures just a bit more than the previous curriculum did, and, if not the scriptures themselves, then at least the entry for in the manual for the week which is better than nothing (though not much). That’s a pretty low bar for improvement, but I’ll take a class with a bare minimum of preparation over none at all which is what I recall from the previous curriculum.
Our Sunday School class doesn’t use the Come Follow Me manual at all during class. It focuses on the assigned readings and the instructor supplements the discussion with some outside scholarship on occasion. For truly difficult ideas, I notice he tends to cite the New Testament Institute Study Manual where it discusses those ideas, probably to fend off any accusations that he is teaching his own philosophy mingled with scripture. Overall, the class seems pretty engaged.
As for a favorite Gospel, they’re like Pringles to me. I can’t have just one. They all have something to offer. John’s passion story is first-rate while Luke owns the story of the Nativity that Matthew can’t touch. However, Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount is just the best. And Mark? Well, Mark has a guy get his toga snatched away by one of the officials arresting Jesus, and then he sprints off into the night. naked as a jaybird. Truly, I can’t pick a favorite!
I’m currently in Sunday school presidency and the main gospel doctrine teacher. I cannot state emphatically enough how WORTHLESS the Come Follow Me manuals are (at best) and misleading (at worse).
One of my greatest hits from last year was to ask the class what the book of Obadiah was about…and one class member (who is REALLY smart, good member, good person, and a seminary teacher) responded “it’s about temple and family history work!” And then, I had the class actually READ vs 15 through the end of the chapter (which is essentially the Lord (through Obadiah) saying the heathen / house of Esau would be eliminated and that Israel would prevail and has NOTHING to do with temple or family history work)…and the class was taken aback, to say the least. The person who responded essentially said “so Obadiah has nothing to do with the temple after all…wow”.
And I would echo that regarding CFM…all I can say is… “wow” (and thank you, JCS for reminding stirring us up continually to a remembrance that Dua Lipa is the symbolic epitome of sin and sloth ;o)
@Dave B
I mentioned that after your previous post on CFM that I pulled out a book in our collection – Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman. It’s quite illuminating and interesting. I haven’t attended SS in several years because I was teaching Primary before the pandemic and the resent years have taken me further deeper in deconstructing everything I thought I believed.However, it does bother me that as members of the church there is a tendency to accept things on face value with a lot of dumbing down in curriculum. For example – I was quite surprised when people were still presenting The Book of Abraham as actually translated from the papyrus and the belief that the gospels were written by Jesus’s apostles.
I agree with what Ehrman says in his introduction –
“This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs…, their own theologies…”
And that only scratches the surface of the potential errors that arise over time and with transcribing texts, often by scribes that knew how to copy but not read etc.
As per the following:
It was written in Greek, as were Matthew and Luke. Which means the authors were Greek speakers. That alone almost certainly means Matthew didn’t write Matthew, as the first Galilean disciples were almost certainly illiterate and may not have even spoken Greek.
Correct that “Matthew” didn’t write Matthew, but one should note that all of the 4 canonical Gospels were anonymous until 100-150 years after Jesus lived. each book may reflect multiple authorships, and most certainly reflects some of the sources, but also different sources. And many other gospels were left on the cutting room floor.
Also, using Greek as a language of literature and learning did not really make one a Greek speaker. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent as it had been for centuries. Even though the Romans using Latin were now the rulers, the Eastern provinces of the empire were quite stubborn about sticking with Greek, in fact, a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint) was completed no later than 200 BC and is the source of all OT quotations in the earliest extant complete Christian Bible. That would be the Codex Sinaiticus (4th century). This was because many Jews no longer understood Biblical Hebrew, which was a “dead” language at that point, as Latin is to us today. Greek was quite stubborn–in Egypt, the earliest Arabic documents found are often bilingual (Arabic and Greek). Administrative stuff This would be mid 7th Century. Egypt was certainly not Greek “speaking” then.
Would it be sinful to read,study and bring forward for class discussion current scholarship findings from the likes of authors Diarmaid MacCulloch, John Crossman, E.P. Sanders or even Bart D. Ehrman? Would the church approve and see these sources as compliant with “go search and study on your own”? All of these authors are recognized world wide as New Testament experts. All have published their study results in several books available to read and contemplate. MacCulloch’s book titled “Christianity” has been recognised as a product of electrifying scholarship. and deals with Old Testament as background to his study on the New Testament. Just wondering…
I must have missed the Obadiah lesson. I don’t do much more than give the manual a cursory look. Big miss by the correlation committee on that topic.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Southern Saint, glad the manual is sort of working for you. Yes, sometimes it’s tough to get a good discussion going in LDS class. When I taught I built my lessons around good discussion questions.
Raymond Dunn and gerald0121, yes you can use outside sources — discreetly. If you can cite an LDS source to make your point, that’s better. Also some discretion is called for in the points you want to make. It’s an LDS gospel doctrine class, not a graduate seminar. So I’ll only bring in outside sources to make a point directly related to the scriptures we are looking at that day, in a fairly LDS-positive way.
Jade, the LDS manual treatment of the Old Testament is just the worst.
Di, Ehrman’s book shows how important it is to read the scriptures critically rather than just taking every verse and book at face value, at least for personal study and learning.
englecameron, good points. It comes as a surprise to most people that “the scriptures” the early Christians used were a different edition of the Old Testament (the Greek Septuagint) than the Hebrew-based Old Testament we use today.
Thank you for pointing out how awful the manual is to teach from. Did you know that the same exact manual is used for the youth?! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to fill an hour of class time for teenagers with the one page lesson the manual has? If not for a Facebook group, I have no idea how I would do this calling. Why have I spent thousands in tithing dollars over the years to be stuck with such poor manuals? What is SLC doing with my money to treat me as a youth teacher with such disrespect? The only thing keeping me going is that I’m teaching my own kid and I only have to do it once a month because I have a partner. I hate the every other week format too. So discombobulated for the teens. They never know if it’s youth or Sunday School when they show up. They can’t keep it straight. Sunday school should be 30 minutes and RS/youth/priesthood 30 minutes like the Primary does. Especially if SLC is going to give us such anemic lessons to work with. The manual makes me feel like my church hates me.
Generally, I cannot anymore attend Gospel Doctrine class—with the sole temptation to attend an occasional New Testament session to accompany my wife and in the unlikely hope of edification.
I once spent a year reading just six chapters in Romans, as guided by James Faulconer’s book, Life of Holiness. There, Faulconer demonstrates what close personal reading of the New Testament by a LDS scholar can look like. (Faulconer is a Philosophy professor and a scholarly, Greek-reading amateur as regards the New Testament.) Gospel Doctrine class makes it a point NOT to closely read anything. “Stay in the boat” looms over the entire curriculum. Meanwhile, Jesus of Nazareth is busy overturning nearly every institution and shibboleth of his time.
LDS Sunday School infantilizes the members with error, incompleteness, and indoctrination. Maybe it should be rebranded as Gospel Indoctrination class. Even if the teacher is unable to smuggle into class insights from today’s best scholars, use of the faithful Faulconer’s “New Testament Made Harder” could alone rescue the whole enterprise. That book provides probing questions to provoke real thought, reflection, and discussion. It likely could train a lay teacher how to craft his or her own excellent questions. I think a teacher who has 3-4 really good questions ready could fill the class time productively.
That still leaves a gap for context… geopolitical, theological, cultural, etc. I found Between the Testaments to be helpful, there. A good teacher should deliver at least a spoonful of context before the scripture reading and the probing question. And so a good teacher has no choice but to do outside reading.
Faulconer quips that we’re unable to mingle the philosophies of men with scripture because we never actually get to the scriptures. Alas, true.
From thechair: “LDS Sunday School infantilizes the members with error, incompleteness, and indoctrination. Maybe it should be rebranded as Gospel Indoctrination class.” Couldn’t say it better myself.
I teach out of the primary CFM manual and it is everything the adult manuals are but with suggested activities for children. Sigh. That is a sad state of how the church treats both children and adults. SLC can’t bear to admit that the LDS church is not the single authoritative source of true doctrine and correct scriptural interpretation and so the result is the current CFM manuals.
Here’s the conundrum. Many (most?) active LDS members want the comfort food of the current CFM manuals. They come to church to be reassured and have the stories and doctrines they learned in primary be reaffirmed over and over even if they are in their 60s and 70s. They don’t want to hear that the gospels weren’t written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John or that they were written decades later and aren’t eyewitness accounts. That no one witnessed the birth of Jesus.
And they don’t want teachers or other students raising those scholarly facts because then that throws into question everything else and that is just too painful. (And I’d add that in primary, most parents probably don’t want their kids hearing about those things either. )
And who I am to mess that up? If that’s what the majority of people coming to church want, then maybe — like many of us here — adult SS class is not worth attending because it doesn’t add any value for me and what I want to talk about that might add value (and, for me, honesty), doesn’t add value to the other attendees who just want to feel good. And I don’t condemn that. Everybody wants to feel good. And if someone’s else’s way of feeling good is different than mine, that’s okay.
From thechair: “LDS Sunday School infantilizes the members with error, incompleteness, and indoctrination. Maybe it should be rebranded as Gospel Indoctrination class.” Couldn’t say it better myself.
I teach out of the primary CFM manual and it is everything the adult manuals are but with suggested activities for children. Sigh. That is a sad state of how the church treats both children and adults. SLC can’t bear to admit that the LDS church is not the single authoritative source of true doctrine and correct scriptural interpretation and so the result is the current CFM manuals.
Here’s the conundrum. I think many (most?) active LDS members want the comfort food of the current CFM manuals. They come to church to be reassured. They enjoy having the stories and doctrines they learned in primary be reaffirmed every few years. They don’t want to hear that the gospels weren’t authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Or that the gospels were written decades later and aren’t eyewitness accounts. Or that no one witnessed the birth of Jesus.
And consequently they don’t want teachers or other students raising those scholarly facts because then that throws into question everything else and that is just too painful and makes church unpleasant. (And I’d add that in primary, most parents probably don’t want their kids hearing about those things either. )
And so who I am to mess that up? If that’s what the majority of people coming to church want, then maybe — like many of us here — adult SS class is not worth attending because it doesn’t add much value for me. What I want to talk about that would add value (and, for me, honesty), doesn’t add value to the other attendees who just want to feel good. And I don’t condemn that. Everybody wants to feel good. And if someone else’s way of feeling good is different than mine, that’s okay.
A good teacher inspires a class to seek understanding. A good manual pushes ideas to explore. Come Follow Me is not a good manual but more like a series of post mission discussion. There is very little effort to apply the great beauty of the New Testament to today’s issues and problems.
I have hated Gospel Doctrine class for years for multiple reasons. CFM made it worse. I love the New Testament broadly, so I can’t pick a favorite gospel. We need resources for members to understand context. Example: Wish we would unpack the antisemitism in the Gospels. Most LDS readers accept it as factual. As far as resources, I recommend NT Wright’s material for students and teachers. His translation of the Bible is excellent. And no one should teach Gospel Doctrine who does not own and use a study Bible. I recommend the Oxford Study Bible. The Jewish Annotated New Testament is also a winner.