Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Now we get to the temptations that Christ suffered in the wilderness and at first I didn’t really understand what that was all about, but now I find it incredibly interesting. There are some serious misinterpretations in the biblical account here, starting with Matthew who says that “Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” The IM clarifies by quoting Elder Bruce R. McConkie as teaching, “Jesus did not go into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil; righteous men do not seek out temptation. He went ‘to be with God.’ Probably he was visited by the Father; without question he received transcendent spiritual manifestations. The temptations came after he ‘had communed with God,’ ‘after forty days.’” There is an excellent talk by President Howard W. Hunter entitled “The Temptations of Christ” which says, “soon after his baptism Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wild, uncultivated wilderness. There he remained for forty days and nights, prepar...

When I was studying the Book of Mormon I felt like I was assembling a beautiful 500 piece puzzle while looking at the box. With the D&C, it was another beautiful 500 piece puzzle while looking at the box, but the picture was more abstract, more colors and less detail so I had to work a little harder. With the New Testament, I feel like someone took 12 different 100 piece puzzles and dumped all the pieces into a bag, shook it up and now I have to sort them all out and put them back together. There are so many factors into the different accounts and the versions that we have and the IM’s different “see commentary for…” Needless to say it is a bit overwhelming and takes a lot of prep work especially now that we are working with all the gospels not must Matthew and Luke. The Savior begins his ministry by going to John the Baptist to be baptized, and this is a most interesting concept to me. The first reason why Jesus’ baptism is interesting is because it didn’t seem to be practi...

  Mary, Joseph, and Jesus stayed in Egypt until an angel came to Joseph saying, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.” I’m beginning to understand Joseph as an incredible spiritual giant the more I see how the Lord worked through him, directed him, and how he protected Jesus and Mary. JTC comments that “their stay in the foreign land was probably brief, for Herod did not long survive the babes he had slain in Bethlehem.” I bet that was an awkward meeting, when Herod got to the spirit world, I wonder if the spirits of all the babies he killed were waiting to me him. That would be pretty terrible for him, I would imagine. I’m pretty confused on where Joseph intended to take Jesus and Mary to establish themselves from here on out, because the Bible says simply that Joseph took them into Israel and went into Galilee instead of Judaea because “he heard that Archelaus did reign in Jud...

I wanted to do some more research on the wise men visiting Jesus, and while I was thinking about that I started thinking about all the other parables and events that take place in the first four gospels and became overwhelmed by how much there was and that some things were mentioned in all the gospels and some things were only mentioned in one of them, and how to go through them and make a chronological guide for myself but to make sure that I included everything. Needless to say, it became overwhelming very quickly. One of the things that is nice about studying the New Testament is that because the Bible is the only source of scripture that mainstream Christianity has, there is a lot on non-LDS information out there. Again, that information needs to be studied carefully and with caution because we must be sure of its doctrinal accuracy before taking it to heart, but some of it is quite profitable and President Uchtdorf has said, “We seek for truth wherever we might find it.” With th...

I had always imagined the shepherd in the field as coincidental bystanders but the more I read about their experience and how they reacted, the more I feel like they were handpicked and arranged to be there for that announcement. It was not a small occurrence about an unimportant event, an angel appeared to these shepherds “and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and said, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” We learn in JTC that “tidings of such import had never before been delivered by angel or received by man- good ...

Mary and Joseph are living in Nazareth, Mary pregnant and Joseph working as a carpenter. Luke describes their relationship in chapter 2 verse 5 as being “espoused,” which would make sense about how they knew about the status of their relations, they hadn’t been officially married yet. Surely they weren’t the first couple to be have a child before they were married, but even today, it’s frowned upon. I find it ironic that they were probably viewed as “sinners” because they were pregnant out of wedlock, when in fact they were probably some of the most righteous people on earth at the time, which is a lesson to all of us on outside judgment. While Mary was pretty far long “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” The whole world in this sense is the Roman world, which was extensive but clearly didn’t cover the Nephites, so it’s not the entire world as we know it. The IM tells us that the “taxing” “was an enrollment of persons for future taxation...

Joseph has agreed to marry Mary anyway, even though the child that she’s carrying isn’t biologically his, and accept all the public scorn and scrutiny that came with that decision. And he “took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.” Again, I don’t know why it is significant to note that Joseph didn’t have sex with his Mary, his wife, until after Jesus had been born. I mean, honestly, at that point they were already married, and she was already pregnant so there wasn’t anything morally wrong with them having sex and it couldn’t have been his baby because she was already pregnant. Unless they didn’t finalize the marriage like we talked about yesterday, which would make sense as to why they didn’t do anything and how everyone seemed to know about it. I think that this is a good place to note the important relationship that a boy has with the main father figure in his life. Jesus would not have been taught tha...

Only Matthew and Luke talk about the immaculate conception of the Savior and his birth and childhood. Matthew comments that Mary “was found with child of the Holy Ghost” when she was espoused to Joseph. Luke gives us a much more detailed account beginning with when the angel Gabriel “was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth.” I used to watch those Living Scriptures movies when I was a kid and the one that was about Jesus’s birth had one part that was particularly interesting to me and that’s when the angel Gabriel shows up. Mary doesn’t seem to be that surprised to see an angel, and their conversation flows pretty naturally, which makes me wonder if she had been spiritually taught to such a point that an angelic appearance wasn’t shocking to her. It’s also interesting to me that the angel came to her and not to her father. Again, I don’t know the particulars of society back then but it would seem to me that a father who found out that his unmarried daughter was pregna...

This account was published in the Times and Seasons newspaper as an unsigned article that was assumed to be written by Joseph Smith, though the article “The Confusing Case of Zachariah” disputes whether or not it was actually written as doctrine, it was an interesting point, but it seems possible that this was the case. What happened to John from the time he fled into the wilderness to when he was preaching and baptizing in the wilderness is not mentioned in the scriptures. The January 1991 Ensign article “There is Not a Greater Prophet” says, “Latter-day revelation shows that John’s preaching and knowledge of the gospel were far more extensive than the King James Version of the Bible credits him. The Joseph Smith Translation states that John ‘came into the world for a witness,… to bear record of the gospel through the Son, unto all.’ He taught personal righteousness, emphasizing repentance, confession, baptism, prayer, fasting, and receiving the Holy Ghost. He discussed brotherly ki...

Zacharias is cursed so that he can’t talk “and the people waited for Zacharias, and marveled that he tarried so long in the temple.” Like I said last time, I believe that it had been several hundred years since there had been a visitation to the temple, so it was pretty unusual for him to be long in the temple. When he finally does come out he can’t talk and the people deduced that “he had seen a vision in the temple.” It seems that even with the speech loss it didn’t get him out of the temple service, he finished up and went home. And “after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived.” Interestingly, I don’t know how often old people have sex usually, but Zacharias apparently believed the angel enough to go home and at least do his part to get his wife pregnant. Elizabeth is ecstatic, but hides “herself five months.” The Ensign Article from September 1972 entitled “John the Baptist: A Burning and a Shining Light” he says, “In selecting the mortal lineage through which John would com...

Luke’s famous account of the birth of the Savior doesn’t start in chapter one, it starts in chapter 2 because he starts his background in chapter 1 with Zacharias and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist. Interestingly, and I didn’t know this, Luke was not one of the original 12 apostles who ministered with the Savior, which just goes to show how much I actually know my scriptures and history. The IM says that Luke writes his account “to help Theophilus ‘know the certainty of those things’ he had previous learned about Jesus Christ.” This begs the question, in what way did the knowledge of the birth of John the Baptist strength the testimony of Theophilus? Why include the account of Zacharias and Elizabeth at all? It’s possible that one of the reasons that Luke included this information was because Theophilus was familiar with John the Baptist, either as a follower or just having general knowledge of him and Luke was trying to show the connection between John the Baptist (JTB f...

Matthew starts out with the lineage of the Savior and I didn’t think anything of it until the IM quoted JTC as saying, “The consensus of judgment on the part of investigators in that Matthew’s account is that of the royal lineage, establishing the order of sequence among the legal successors to the throne of David, while the account given by Luke is a personal pedigree, demonstrating descent from David without adherence to the line of legal succession to the throne through primogeniture or nearness of kin. Luke’s record is regarded by many, however, as the pedigree of Mary, while Matthew’s is accepted as that of Joseph.” Matthew’s account goes: Joseph-> Jacob-> Matthan->Eleazar-> Eluid-> Achim-> Sadoc-> Azor-> Eliakim-> Abiud-> Zorobabel-> Salathiel-> Jechonias-> Josias-> Amon-> Manasses-> Ezekias-> Achaz-> Joatham-> Ozias-> Joram-> Josaphat-> Asa-> Abia-> Roboam-> Solomon-> David-> Jesse-> Obed-...