(Mis)reading Scripture

A seemingly evergreen issue in the bloggernacle: what do we do about prooftexting? On the one hand, it allows us to apply scripture to ourselves. On the other, it suggests that scripture, as written, is not up to the task of explicating the gospel and, instead, must be stretched and tortured to tell us what we need to know.[fn1]

An example: at church last year, discussion briefly turned to what we do when traditional Mormon readings of scripture turn out to be significant misreadings.[fn2] It came up in the context of God commanding Ezekiel to combine the stick of Joseph with the stick of Judah. The Gospel Doctrine manual explains that the stick of Judah is the Bible and the stick of Joseph is the Book of Mormon. 

This interpretation has a long and distinguished pedigree in Mormonism. The first mention I can find of it by an apostle was by Orson Pratt in 1855.[fn3] And this intepretation has been name-checked in General Conference as recently as 2013 by Elder Nelson.

If you’re not familiar with the identification of the Book of Mormon with Ezekiel’s “stick of Joseph” and the Bible with his “stick of Judah,” Pres. Packer explained the Mormon interpretation in General Conference; after reading the relevant passages from Ezekiel, he said:

The sticks, of course, are records or books. In ancient Israel records were written upon tablets of wood or scrolls rolled upon sticks. The record of Judah and the record of Ephraim, according to the prophecy, were to become one in our hands. . . .

The stick or record of Judah—the Old Testament and the New Testament—and the stick or record of Ephraim—the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ—are now woven together in such a way that as you pore over one you are drawn to the other; as you learn from one you are enlightened by the other. They are indeed one in our hands. Ezekiel’s prophecy now stands fulfilled.

The problem? Our interpretation—expounded by apostles, no less!—may well be wrong in its historical context. In the notes, my Jewish Study Bible says, “On the use of a stick or staff to represent a tribe, see Num. 17.1-26.”

Of course, even if our cherished interpretation is wrong, it’s not immediately clear why this is a problem. Misreading scripture has a long and storied history, tracing its roots back at least to Jesus’ use of scripture in the New Testament.

In his Pedagogy of the Bible, Dale Martin diplomatically explains that “when Jesus does intepret Scripture in the Gospels, he exercises what from a modern point of view is quite a bit of freedom.” Asked about divorce, for example, Jesus “pass[es] over a clear text that allowed divorce and remarriage, and instead interpret[s] a text that says nothing explicit about divorce at all, and he then reads it as a prohibition of divorce and remarriage” (47-48). Dr. Martin goes on to describe various premodern interpretations of scripture, interpretations which could best be described today as prooftexting, but which, he explains, provided interesting and valuable meaning.

On the other hand, there are real dangers to distancing our interpretation from the text itself. And for that, a story from my mission:

My companion and I ran into a teenage boy one day; he seemed eager to talk, but he had to get somewhere. So we left him a Book of Mormon and made an appointment to see him the next day.

When we showed up the next day, he didn’t seem thrilled to see us. Almost instantly, in fact, he pulled out his Book of Mormon. It was dogeared to Alma 30, and he’d marked verses 13-16.

Angrily, he asked us to explain why the Book of Mormon derided Christ and argued against his eventual Atonement. We tried to convince him to read verse 12, tried to contextualize the fact that this passage was a foil to Nephite belief, rather than an expression of it. But the boy would have none of it; the acontextual reading he’d been given was the reading—these four verses laid out the religious philosophy of the Book of Mormon, and of Mormonism itself.

Eventually we left, frustrated, either that he was so stubborn or that we couldn’t communicate what was obvious to us, or (given that we were probably 20 or 21 at the time) a little of both.

That teenager’s misreading of scripture is clearly an extreme example. But where we cling to an explanation we’ve heard before without really investigating the text and context of the scriptures, I’m afraid we do the same kind of thing, even absent the extremes.

I’m not going to end this with any kind of conclusion. I don’t know what to do with this. I try to be charitable of prooftexts, keeping in mind various premodern interpretive strategies, including those of the Savior himself.

At the same time, he is the Savior. I’m not; I’m pretty sure that Jesus has more latitude in misreading scripture than I do—that his misreading may be scriptural, where mine is just misreading. For me, I try to be careful about reading scripture just to arrive at my personally-held beliefs; I try to let scripture shock and surprise and confuse and teach me.

—

[fn1] Not that I’m signalling my personal preferences, of course.

[fn2] Yes, I realize it’s March of New Testament year already. And it’s not like I’ve been reliving this moment in my mind since December. This post builds on the skeleton of a post I started back then, though, and then, in the course of the holiday season, I never finished. I’m sure I could find Mormon-specific prooftexting in the New Testament, too, but it’s easier to use an example I’ve already spent some time on.

[fn3] It may show up even earlier; D&C 27:5 refers to the Book of Mormon as the “record of the stick of Ephraim,” which, I think, is actually a better match than calling the Book of Mormon the “stick of Ephraim,” But Pratt’s reference is the first that shows up in Corpus of LDS General Conference Talks if you search for stick of Judah.