Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - Genesis 3-4, Moses 4-5 -- Part 1 : Dr. Shon D. Hopkin

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

How did Joseph Smith mend the rift between the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament? Dr. Shon Hopkin discusses how the biblical themes of a fortunate Fall, covenants, and sacrifice prepare us to understand the time of Jesus Christ and our own.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/episodesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive ProducersDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: MarketingLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsKrystal Roberts: French TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith and I'm John by the way. We love to learn, we love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow him. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my Zazzy co-host, John, by the way. Welcome, John. Please define Zazzy. I'm glad that you asked that because Sarah, who is 13 years old from Las Vegas, Nevada, wrote to me through our Follow Him.co website and she said, I think you should call John Zazzy because it's a basic cross between Zany, Pazaz and Snazzy to create an adjective,

listen to this, suggesting that something is too great to be confined to one word. I thought that was just a beautiful description. I think I need to stop and write in my journal for a second. Sarah, if I'm Las Vegas, call you Zaz. Thank you. And Hank, I'm going to call you Hank Cousin Smith today. I got an email from Jared, by the way, who said,

Hi, John, Hank's first cousin, Lance Smith, has a daughter, Rachel, who married my son, Brendan. I'm your second cousin. So Brendan is your second cousin once removed. I'll leave it to you to come up with a clever way to say how you are related to Hank. So, we are now related. Through a second cousin marriage, it's fantastic.

John, this is great. Since you are a family, do you think you could loan me 50 John I've been excited for today for a long time Our guest knows that I've been I've been kind of hinting it having you mom talking to him about having on and it's finally here It feels like a Disneyland day to me. Tell us who's with us Hank we have Sean Hopkins with us today and he is our boss. He is. So I'm going to sit up really straight.

Great colleague. Let me share with our listeners who Sean is. He was born in Denton, Texas, the son of Lorraine Hopkins and Arden Hopkins. Sean Hopkins attended Southwest High School in Fort Worth, Texas and graduated from Orham High Schools. So Sean received a bachelor's degree and master's degree from Brigham University in near Eastern studies with a focus on the Hebrew Bible. He received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin

in Hebrew studies with a focus on medieval Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish literature. Wow. Before coming to BYU, he taught in the seminaries and institutes for four years at Timphew High School, four years at Provo High School, and six years at the Austin Institute of Religion. At BYU, he has served as the Chair of the Book of Mormon Academy and the Chair of the BYU Religious Outreach Council. He's one of the principal organizers of the ongoing Jewish and Latter-day Saint Academic Interfaith Dialogue. Project, he is authored, co-authored, and edited numerous books and articles on Isaiah, the Hebrew Bible, Latter-day Saint Beliefs, and Medieval Literature, and Sean, what is your current

assignment? What's the official title? I'm serving as department chair of the Department of Ancient Scripture right now. A joyous response of building. Yeah. So Sean, the lesson this week is both in Genesis and the book of Moses. John and I kind of want to turn this over to you.

You're the expert. I do have a question for you to start. How would you suggest, since we're just starting the year out, how do you suggest to your students at BYU? How do you approach ancient text like the book of Genesis? I don't know. Is your approach different than you say would you with the doctrine of covenants that we studied last year? Well, I think so. So, with restoration texts, you have a prophet giving them to us in the latter days. We receive them as they're provided by, of course, primarily by Joseph Smith. And so we get them in English language that isn't exactly a translation in the way that

we would normally think of it, right? It's revealed text and with the Hebrew Bible with the Old Testament, you get this really ancient text that is then translated into English. There's a variety of really good translations. Of course, we primarily use the King James version, but there are other really excellent translations that can help as well. And I think a little bit if we feel that we are on foreign territory. In one sense, people have always been people, right? So these are sort of the same kind of humans that we are.

In another sense, there are some real differences in world view and an approach that we sort of think, oh, well, they're going to interpret things exactly the same as I would. And that's just not true. They live in a different part of the world. They live in a different time. We are sort of post-enlightenment thinkers. And it changes a lot as we come at these texts, the way that we view the world around us.

So keeping that in mind, so we don't impose too much. We want things to always look exactly the same. And we want to project ourselves onto them, but there are just differences, you know? They just live in a different world. When I teach a little bit of Genesis in religion 250, I frequently try to at least dabble in the idea of like, just the way they experience the sun, the sky,

the planets is totally different than the way you and I experience those things. They come from Egypt and Babylon, which are influencing the way they see the world around them, right? That's absolutely true. A big one, as you're studying the Old Testament this year, is a very significant difference in world view because of sort of our modern thinking. We are less comfortable describing God as doing everything that happens that is out of our control. We sort of look for other explanations. But in the ancient world, if a people's destroyed, well, God destroyed that people. If something big happens, well, God did it. God caused it, and we are much less comfortable, if you listen to modern prophets, we just don't talk that way as much.

So there's a difference in worldview, and we might assume that our worldview is the best worldview. It's the correct worldview. Or that, because it's in the Bible, their worldview, I don't know which worldview is better. They both have strengths. God is all powerful.

And so you can actually speak if God allows something to happen, then you could say that He caused it to happen because He could have prevented it. So we sort of have this modernist bias, our worldview is better. But then sometimes we have this biblical, but well, because it's in the Bible, then that worldview is better. And the tension there is something to keep in mind. It'll help you navigate some places where you think, wow, would God do this? Does he act this way? I don't think God does these kinds of things.

That's a worldview issue. God is God. God doesn't change, right? And so the God we believe in is the same God of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. But it can be tricky as we're reading words written by someone who lived in a very different time, a very different place. That's very helpful when we read about things like casting lots, like it seems to us like a game of chance, but to them it was this is how we can discover what God's will is. And that's really helpful to say, yeah, that worldview was everything that happens.

God did that outcome. I'm glad you said that. Let me just say a quick word about that, John. Yeah, that's absolutely right. The casting of lots of good and we want to think, oh, they're casting lots. Well, that means they're doing sustaining vote exactly the same way we do today. And they might be, that's not impossible, but probably not. They're probably, they sort of saw, what's the best way for God to give me an answer that my own feelings aren't influencing that answer? Well, you cast lots and then God can control that. When I'm involved in the decision making process,

maybe it's my decision. And of course, we are involved. We're trying to learn how to feel the spirit, how to receive revelation, and how to be involved in that process. But you could understand the value of saying, no, I want God to tell me. And so how am I going to do that? Well, I'm going to pick a stone out of a bag

and then God will help me pick the correct one, so to speak. Right. Coming into this is letting them speak from their worldview. And Hank, you shared the opening line from a British novelist who said the past is like a foreign country. They do things differently there. And we were using that to look at the world of 1830 and 1840. Imagine going back to a few thousand BC. That's a really foreign country, right? That's like another planet. So this is a world view that is even more different than the one we've discussed in doctrine of covenants. That is so true. It comes through in every sentence and we get a little confused because

it's translated into English, and so it just sounds like it's, well, King James version doesn't so much sound like it's our next door in Aver, unless you have a really archaic next door in Aver. But every sentence, there's some truth to that. That there's a sort of a different, they walk out the door, and in one sense,

it's the same world, and in one sense, it's a different world. Yeah. Let me just add one more that may be helpful, of a different, they walk out the door and in one sense it's the same world and in one sense it's a different world. Let me just add one more that may be helpful because I'm here today so I'll take my shot at it. And that is the idea of shale or the world of the spirits, the part of the spirits, what we would think of as the spirit world. To them was in the earth, was under the earth and it was watery. It was sort of a watery space because you know

they've got rivers that spring up out of the earth and they could sort of see a lot of evidence that the underworld was a watery kind of a place. And so you get this sense of sort of chaos of death, but then things that can then spring forth to make life. And water was, and watery areas like seas were a realm of chaos that humans don't really control. So when God creates the earth, then he brings up order out of that chaos. So the chaos isn't all bad, but it's like a watery birth, right? Just like a baby is born out of water, then you get life that comes out of the chaos.

It's uncontrollable. So God is going to make order out of all that. He brings life out of death. He brings life out of chaos. And then you see Moses parting the waters, having power over the waters. Then you see Jesus walking on the water in the New Testament, having power over the waters. Then you see Jesus walking on the water in the New Testament, having power over the waters.

Jonah descends into the waters and then he comes up out of the waters. You start seeing it everywhere and it's it's pretty helpful to have some guidance through that ancient world. Let's see. This is why we have people like Sean here. Yeah. It's great. Is there anything else you might say to our listeners to say, ancient world. I see. This is why we have people like Sean here today. Yeah. This is great.

Is there anything else you might say to our listeners to say, Hey, when you're reading this this year, keep this in mind. Do you feel like you've? I don't know that you want me to go any longer than that. If people are listening to this while they drive, we want them to stay awake. Keep your hands in ten and two. To the destination. Yes.

So Sean, with all this in mind, this is perfect. Let's jump into our lesson. Genesis 3, 4, Moses 4, 5. Where would you suggest we start? What's the difference between these two? By the way, as I approach them, they're going to sound a lot of like, right? Genesis 3, 4, Moses 4. They are very similar.

One of the main differences that you get in the Pearl of Great Price that we will probably dig into before we're all done here is you get a little bit more when Satan shows up. And so it digs into the nature of the serpent and you get a little bit more of a premortal sense of who the serpent is, which is really nice, I think. So, a good place to start is in the transition from the creation account into what we often think of as the account of the fall because there is some crossover, there's some transitioning that happens there. Maybe Hank, you asked if there's anything else, world view wise about the Bible.

So let me say something about the creation account that may be helpful, a couple of things about the creation account. We are talking about a different kind of world view. So the way this, the creation account sort of developed in both traditional Christian and the Jewish understanding is that God is creating out of nothing, creating ex nihilo. He's speaking and things, all of a sudden, just pop into existence because God is all

powerful and he controls all things. And that also means that he brings them out of nothingness into somethingness. And the biblical authors don't seem to be describing that. They seem to instead be describing organizing something. And this is very similar to the way Joseph Smith would teach this. It's really cool actually for Latter-day Saints because the way Joseph Smith talks about creation that it is instead an organization, the way the book of Abraham talks about it, is actually what's there in the biblical text, that he's working with things

that may already be existent to organize them, almost like you build a table, you create a table, well, but it's got wood, that, or you create a company, right? So you give it meaning and order, you define its roles. Here's what it's gonna do. You place it in the right place. And this is the act of creating or organizing,

the Hebrew word, barat. One of the, if you look up a Hebrew lexicon, you'll see to cut something out of something else, to shape, to form. And so you get this sense of things being set up. And then it starts from there. So we've just come out of this. I'm giving things order and purpose and almost immediately things start to behave a little bit differently, right? a little bit differently, right?

Choice starts to come into play. The other thing that I would say that's important is if you are, if I can just talk sort of nerdy Bible studies stuff for just a second, if we like nerdy here at Fondler, that if you are a Bible studies scholar who is pretty highly focused in on what would be called the documentary hypothesis, then you actually believe that there are a bunch of different manuscripts around that then are spliced together by a later editor and that you have someone tying

those things together. So they would sort of see, you've got two creation accounts going on here. And then I think for some Latter-day Saints, they would say, no, what we see, what many Latter-day Saints see, is sort of a general creation account and then a very specific creation account focused on Adam and Eve. And then it's that Adam and Eve story

that transitions into the fall. So you sort of get in Genesis 1, I'm creating man and woman, and then all of a sudden, by the end of Genesis 2, it's almost like you're recreating. You know, wait, there's no woman there yet, right? He created the male and female created he, them, and then you get halfway through Genesis 2, and he's creating the woman again.

You get two different accounts. And one way of reading that is, well, it really is two different accounts that were spliced together. And then I think for many later days, he ain't, no, he's just repeating doing, he's telling it from a different angle, right? And then I would add, there's some multivalency. So we're going gonna give some interpretations of what's going on here in the fall.

But I hope that it's just, this is just one reading or two readings. The power of the creation story, so much of which is likely figurative, teaching us lessons. Adam and Eve were real people. That's very important for us as Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith was very clear on that.

Adam is someone who actually shows up and talks to you He's a he's a real human being, right? A real child of God the head of the human family even Adam are but the ideas that There's the story is told in a way that it it gives you different things if you come at it from different angles So there's a variety of readings. And if somebody says, ah, I don't like this reading that they're giving, this, then there are other ways to read this, right?

And so I think we should continue to keep this as a living and a live story for us throughout our lives. And it will produce different things at different times in very powerful ways, very positive ways. I like that you're emphasizing that for us, for our theology, Adam and Eve's not a fable. The people, Adam and Eve were real people. We've got this sense that the Bible is an ancient document and that there have been fingers tinkering with it, but it's also divinely inspired. And so we're maybe a little bit more open to understanding the Bible

and less strictly, it's all, is every word is exactly what it's supposed to be, as some might view it. And yet we, the Bible figures, Adam and Eve are real people who show up in vision to prophets in the latter days. And so we have, it's not fable in the sense that this is just a nice story. And yet at the same time, it is a powerful story. We don't want to lose in our rush to focus in on.

No, they're real people. We don't want to lose sight of the fact that there are lessons that can be learned with metaphorical meanings. So just a couple of examples along those lines, Elder Maconkey said, well, I don't know if there was actually a fruit. The fruit is probably figurative, right? Then you think, whoa, what is the fruit? I don't know. And maybe there was a fruit, but the fruit isn't Maybe there was a fruit, but the fruit isn't necessarily the point, right? What's the message that's there? President Kimball talked about the rib, you know, that Eve has created out of a rib by often asked my students, do men have one less rib than women? And I'll get a third of them to be like, yeah, they do.

And of course, they don't, right? We've got same number of ribs. And of course, they don't, right? We've got same number of ribs, and that's a figurative story, right? And we'll talk about that in just a moment. But that, what is figurative and what's literal thing is they will tell me which is which. And I don't know what's important is Adam and Eve were real, right?

And there is a fall. Yeah, I remember when I was on my mission, it was a pretty exciting day when the ensign came when I was on my mission in the Philippines. And I think I can remember it was June of 82, Christ and the creation by Elder McConkey. And I think that's where he talked about it. And he said they particularly the fruit are at least complied with whatever laws were necessary to bring about a change in their bodies or something. And I was like, whoa, you know. it and he said they particularly the fruit are at least complied with whatever laws were necessary to bring about a change in their bodies or something and I was like whoa you know so I like the way you've said that. Adam and Eve real people. The story don't know you know we're being taught a lot

of things in the story but what we're our anchor Adam and Eve were real people and then we discover from the book moment and there was a tower of abable and there was Anowa and these other people that were real that aren't just stories. Yeah, yeah, thank you. I think that's really important. Maybe it would be safe to say that these accounts are not how God does things, but why He does things. Well, I've heard Robert Millett say that the Bible tells us what happened. Book of Mormon, like, second Nephi, too, tells us why it happened. Another way to look at that. Often when I'm teaching Hebrew Bible, I'm teaching Old Testament students, they'll say, well, did this re—is Jonah?

Was he really swallowed by a whale? You know, et cetera, et cetera. Did this really happen to Job? And my sort of standard, maybe maybe wishy-washy responses. Well, I actually do take them as literal and then if I'm up in heaven and there's no You know, Jonas like no, I mean the whale thing that was just figurative then I'm okay. Thanks for letting me know Jonah But I don't get hung up on too much on whether it was or not I don't what I really care about is what's the message that's being portrayed, right?

So I sort of start with this. Yeah, I don't have, there are miracles, there are things I don't understand, there are things that I don't wanna say, well, I'm smarter, I'm smart enough to know exactly what's literal and exactly what's figurative. So I sort of start with, well, you know, I take Jonah and his story is a real,

first and a real story, and there's people who are listening who are like, well, you idiot, you know? Obviously, he was swallowed by a whale or obviously he wasn't swallowed by a whale. Okay, fine. What I do want to do is make sure I get to the why. You know, I get to what's going on,

what's being communicated? Because ancient cultures did communicate things differently than we do. We take a very, again, a very enlightenment approach to our storytelling where, you know, there's got to be a, and what we would view as an accuracy of the details, and ancient people often, it would be more important. The accuracy is in the message that's being conveyed. That's what really matters, who cares about the little details, but is the message true. Sometimes I'll, for my students, make a continuum of an architect and an artist and an architect

super specific. Everything has to be exact and pre-planned out. And an artist will be, and the architects can be artists. I don't offend any architects out there. But sometimes the scripture writers are so beautiful and are doing it artistically. And there's kind of combining a little bit. Like when Matthew is, there were 14 generations from Madame to David, or he's really into the number 14 trying to teach us Jesus was the son of David. So it's kind of been a little bit of an artist there to make his genealogies fit to give us the message, Jesus is the son of David. So architect or artist,

or maybe somewhere in between there sometimes. I've told my students who say, well, I don't think Jonah being swallowed by a whale is scientifically possible. I don't think it's scientifically possible for the earth to be flooded. Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? And they say, well, yeah, you want a big one? Yes, what? We've stepped outside the realm of what science can tell us, right? Once we believe in that. So, I think you're right, Sean, whether it's literal or figurative, doesn't really matter. believe in that. So I think you're right, John, whether it's literal or figurative, doesn't really matter. Could God do it? It could God put John in a well? Of course he could. Could he flood the earth? Of course he could. He's God. But let's get the message.

Yeah. Well, I'm back to John's point. There can be this sort of slippery scale where what we don't want is to end up where it's just the Bible's just a nice story. That's not how Latter-day Saints tends to view this, right? That's certainly not how Joseph Smith, who is seeing ancient prophets, right? And you know, you get to the point where it's all just a nice story and all of a sudden it loses potentially a lot of it.

I mean, not everybody in the world views it that way. They're like, no, the Bible can be very powerful and just be a story, right? But for Latter-day Saints, yeah, some of it's figurative, some of it's literal, but there's these are real people and they had real lives, right? So awesome. Good. Sean, I have one more question for you before you jump in. Has most of it? I kind of hinted this in my class, and I don't know if it's true. So I better check with somebody. I've never done that Yeah, there's you as most of the Christian world kind of given up on the old testament Because I've heard that and so I kind of say well, you know a lot of people just don't read it anymore in the Christian world

Is that true? I would really think it just really depends there are in the Christian world. Is that true? I would really think it just really depends. There are, of course, so many varieties, and there are what, and these terms get really tricky, but if you want to use liberal Protestantism, it sort of really has come to just these nice allegories, but the story starts with Jesus. I sat in an interfaith experience where another Christian preacher, we were talking about the Tabernacle and he basically said, none of this matters, why do we even care?

The power starts with Jesus. That's where the strength is in anything before Jesus is passé. It's old, it's done away with. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's consumed in Christ. And I thought, well, I mean, there's part of that that really resonates with me. And the part of that really does not resonate for me as a latter day. St. Joseph's myth, it was so important to him to view and, and to show the overarching unified pattern of the plan of God that God is always God.

And so you get Latter-day prophets, and you get early day, and you get middle Meridian day prophets. And so that's a big deal for Latter-day saints. It is a bigger deal for us than for many, I would say. But there are, there are certainly Christians who care deeply about the Hebrew Bible, about the Old Testament,

and who continue to focus there. And know it at least as well as we do. Of course, that's a very generalized statement, right? So, yeah. And so you're telling our audience, don't skip this year. Don't just say, oh, yeah. Listen, yeah, you've got me, I'll just soapbox, but I won't be too long to do it. This, yeah, to understand the book of Mormon and then what happens in the,

what, what we call the new testament or the new covenant and doctrine and covenants, it, I teach Isaiah often and there's so much of Isaiah's words that the Lord uses in doctrine and covenants and that just have meaning and richness. If you want to understand how Nephi got to be Nephi, then the Old Testament is where you see it. So you've got this so much of what we care about and talk about and live out as Latter-day Saints is connected to the ancient world of the Hebrew

Bible, of the Old Testament. Prophets, patriarchs, temples, scattering of Israel and gathering of Israel in the last days. Covenants and covenant theology, covenant making, just over and over and over again. You say, well, why do Latter-day Saints care about these? This is not the... I don't see these as being terribly important in the New Testament, but it's this unified program of God that spans both Old Testament, New Testament. Phil Barlow did a really nice article. He's a Latter-day Saint thinker where he said, Joseph's prophetic project was to heal a broken fractured reality.

That includes the fracture between the Old Testament and New Testament that had occurred in Christianity, the fractures and families, the fractures in the Old World and the New World, the East and West, and to bring it into harmony and unity, to bind it all together and to bring it to life through God's power. So this is a big deal for us as Latter-day Saints. It's part of what makes us who we are.

And let me just make sure that I emphasize this idea of the scattering of Israel and the gathering of Israel. This is emphasized over and over by Old Testament prophets that this is going to be a reality and that then these latter day Israelites will spring up almost out of the dust of the ground and will multiply. And this is where this imagery in Isaiah comes of, you've got a broad and your tents, you need to move your stakes and strengthen those down, lengthen out the cords. I'm gathering Israel in the last days. And of course, President Nelson has cared a little bit about this, right?

He's emphasized this in ways that I think a lot of times our students think, eh, why are we talking about this? We're so oriented to our personal salvation story in the last, yeah, it's just, we're very individualistic in our modern society. But this prophetic view of what God is doing with the peoples of the world and how he is pulling, he cares about communities and he cares about individuals.

And it is so satisfying for an Old Testament scholar like me to hear President Nelson emphasizing these biblical themes and making sure they stay present with us that they don't disappear from our thinking, from our theology, from the way that we view the world. These are biblical themes that can be ignored and our modern day prophet is making sure we don't ignore those powerful themes. So.

That's one thing I've learned as being a New Testament teacher. If you want to understand the New Testament, understand the old, because so much of what happens in Jesus' life relates to the Old Testament. Oh, I was going to ask you a quick question, Sean. You've used the term Hebrew Bible. Maybe all of our listeners might not know what you're saying when you just say that word, that term, Hebrew Bible. So one of the reasons I am sensitive to that difference in language, as Latter-day Saints, we tend to use old testament as sort of the Christian way of speaking

about the two books of the Bible. Because I'm engaged so heavily in that with my Jewish friends, I recognize that what some Christians mean when they say old testament is it's a pejorative. It's a, it's an almost an insult like, well, that's the stuff that doesn't matter. New Testament is the new and living stuff. So that old, it means that passe or done away with are unimportant. And, and of course, they don't have, well, they've got our new Testament,

but they don't use it as their scriptural text, as their sacred text. And so Hebrew Bible, I'm not, when I say Hebrew Bible, I'm not trying to talk about the Hebrew of the Bible. It's the language they use when we say Old Testament. And I'm just a little bit oddly sensitive to that. I'm a Hebrew Studies guy in my PhD work as well. Which is fantastic. So when you say Hebrew Bible, it means in our language it would be Old Testament, but hey, let's use the term Hebrew Bible since it's the Jews sacred scripture. That's sort of like, yeah, you hear me saying both so that I, and I probably

just pick one Sean and it'll be fine. But the, yeah, so the Hebrew Bible is basically synonymous with the Old Testament. Tanach is sort of the technical word that Jewish readers would often use the Hebrew word. That actually is Torah, which is the first five books, also known as the Pentateuch, Neviim. That's the Ta, Torah, Na, Neviim, and Chah is Ketuvim or the writings. And so Tanach is the Torah, the Neviim, and the writings. And that's basically the same as our Old Testament. Could you maybe connect that to when Jesus talks about the law and the prophets?

So which one of those would be each one? Because I know our listeners probably heard that and have wondered what that means. Yes, so the law, of course, is the first five books. That's the way they would understand the Torah or the Pentateuch as Christians often call it. Those first five books that are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And that's what he's talking about. And that's where you get the description of the mosaic covenant or the mosaic law, the law of Moses. And then

the Neviim or the prophets, he's actually talking about a division in the Bible is what your The prophets, he's actually talking about a division in the Bible is what you're signifying John and you're absolutely right. The law and the prophecies are two different segments of the Hebrew Bible. Interestingly enough, we divided a little bit differently as Christians, the King James version, at least does where you've got the Pentateuch. And then you've got historical writings, first king, second kings, first annals, second sammule, those are included in the prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible, and then you get the writings, that's Psalms, and we call those the wisdom books, right? Psalms,

ecclesiastes, proverbs. Yeah, exactly. Just a little bit of a different way of thinking about the way those books are organized and what they mean. Yeah, I think it's been really helpful when, for example, Jesus is asked, what's the great commandment of the law? Love God, love your neighbor. On these two, hang all the law and the prophets. For them to see, oh, he's talking about books. He's talking about their scriptures, the law, and not the prophets, like, oh, that's what

Isaiah said, that's what, but the prophets were a set of books. And that kind of light goes on when they see, when they see that, I think he's talking about books there, especially when there's verse in the New Testament, it says the law and the prophets were until John, sounding like God doesn't have any more prophets. We'll know he's talking about a set of books there. Am I getting that right? You're getting that absolutely right. In fact, sometimes the point is made. The end, when it says the end of the prophets,

sometimes as Christians and as Latter-day Saints, we sort of, oh, well, they're saying there are no more prophets, but they're just saying this is the end of the section of the books that are written by prophets. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I wanted. Awesome. Good. That's really helpful.

I think we've got a great intro to the Old Testament. The The Less. That's what I wanted. Yeah. Good. That's really helpful. I think we've got a great intro to the Old Testament. The The Lesson. A very lengthy intro. No, no, no, but it's awesome because here we are starting a new year and you're giving us a skill set for our listeners to come in and to use in future lessons, not just this one. So Sean, this has just been wonderful. Where would you like to jump in and take us into the text? We're going to go back into Genesis 2 and take a running head start to get into Genesis 3 because there's some crossover that I think helps set up the account of the fall right at the end of Genesis 2. So go all the way back to verse 18 where we get the description of Eve. The Lord God said, it is

not good that the man should be alone. I will make and help meet for him. I want to just take a moment on this beautiful language. This idea of an Ezair Kanegdo, a help as K, as Negid opposite and oh his, as his opposite. Negid is used in discussions, in modern Hebrew. So if you've got a Nagid, you've got a dialogue partner, someone who is you're looking at them face to face as the implication and you're equals. You're speaking as equals. And so if you think almost like a mirror image, Eve is his mirror image and a mirror image is similar to you, but it's opposite of you, right? So there's this complimentary nature. but it's opposite of you, right? So there's this complimentary nature,

and Ezair is a very powerful word, Don Perry from BYU has done some really nice work on Ezair often being associated with the kinds of help that God gives. Ezair means help and then meet, one who meets him, one who, and if we're gonna be more liberal now with the idea and Includes some later day, saying thinking in this one who does that which he does not or cannot one who completes

They complete each other is the idea right as equals so it's a help a divine help who is his complementary opposite right Complementary opposite. I'm gonna use that with my wife. That sounds romantic. Well, and it is sort of a love story. This, I can be read as a love story, this moment where Adam looks at Eve, sees Eve, and there's even this really beautiful

for Latter-day Saints who understand the concept of Heavenly Father and then a heavenly mother, and then the week in here these echoes in when God says it is not good that man should be alone. For me, I think of my marriage and I think of my understanding of heavenly Father, is he pondering, he knows this deeply from his own reality, is he thinking of Heavenly Mother there. And by the way, we should add that President Kimball has said this. There's some symbolic stuff going on here that we like to literalize probably a little

bit too much in the creation of Eve. If indeed the symbol of her being pulled from Adam is that they were the same being. So the idea isn't, oh, you've just got Adam the guy. Now, let's make Eve the woman. It symbolically speaking, it's more like there's this composite going on. There's this composite figure, and this isn't literal, this is figurative, right? But it's sort of like Adam Eve, right? Or as President Kimball put it, Mr. and Mrs. Adam, right? And then God's like, no, that's not what we're looking for. Their power is in two fully formed individuals. And then the symbolism of the rib,

I have cleaved you apart, but you belong together. And it even says, when he closed up the flesh, that he can't see it. So you look at it and you're like, no, I'm fine. And then God is saying, no, you need each other. So relationship, marriage, family relationships are all implied here. This text is setting all of that up. You know, when I was dating my wife, we probably all do

this. We sort of mirror each other almost like I'm the same person, right? So my wife, I thought she liked camping for the first five years of our marriage. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, what are camp outs? Are never working out. And finally, she's like, yeah, sabotage those. I hate camping. I never want to go camping. Like, well, I feel like that was misrepresented when we were dating.

And then I can remember very clearly going to see the movie Little Women. This is the earlier version of Little Women. And when we were dating, and while I said, did you like that? And I said, oh, that was so good. I loved it. And I think what I meant was I loved being with you watching that movie. I actually like the current little women a little bit better. But anyway, and, you know, shortly into our marriage, I came home one day and she said, I bought little women, and it dawned on me. I don't like that movie at all. You know, that, and I think I said, I never it dawned on me. I don't like that movie at all.

You know, and I think I said, I never wanna watch that again. That was, but I, you love each other, so you mirror each other. But then the power is two different people who make a decision to come together and unite as one. And that's what God, it seems to be setting up here. And I know this is creation stuff,

but I'm sort of setting up our discussion of the fall. My in-laws, Rod and Marlene Savage, when they've been married 40 years, and I was there at the moment, someone said, hey, why do you put the bananas in the jello? And Marlene said, oh, Rod loves it. And Rod looked at her and said, I only eat it because you make it.

40 years. He was eating it because he thought she liked making it. She was making it because she thought he loved it. And we laughed so hard. 40 years of eating green jello with bananas. Banana is in jello. Green jello. And it was only, it was just the two of them

trying to make each other happy. Well, it's so funny. That probably started early on when he was so enamored with her that anything she made was a delicious, automatically. 40 years later, that was still true, but there's a little more honesty to say, oh, but I've got my own opinions and you've got your opinions. And that's actually, as we we know the great challenge and the great power of relationship. Not when you just mirror each other, you know, whatever I think my wife

automatically agrees with me, that's sort of what everybody I think deep down sort of wants. You know, I'm going to say something, you're just going to tell me how brilliant I am. But the power is that you do things a little bit differently, and then you gotta triangulate and bring that together. Awesome. His complimentary opposite. I wrote that in my picture. Yes, yes, good, good.

And again, very liberal with this, but the one who does that, which he cannot or does not, right? And that's gonna set up something that's about, a very later date, saying reading of the fall here. See that one more time. One who can do what he cannot, who does that which he cannot or does not, right? So that we complete each other. It doesn't work to just have one person in this story. You need two people in this story for the story to work. And then God is the creator of it, all the God who sets this all up. And so, verse 23, this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, she shall be

called woman in Hebrew. This is e-shah because she was taken out of man, e-sh. So there's a, this is really nice. It works out in English as well, actually, but the English is sort of mirroring something that happens in the Hebrew. Therefore, she'll a man leave his father and his mother and they and she'll cleave. So notice he cleaved them apart and then you've learned the lesson here is, he shall cleave on his wife and they shall be one flesh, right? So that's an important setup

for then what all of a sudden, sort of out of nowhere chapter three starts and the image has shifted. The picture has changed and Adam is nowhere to be found. All of a sudden you get this serpent and this is where perla grape price is important because you get some really nice discussion about who the serpent is, who Satan is. And by the way, this question of what's going on here is Satan possessing a serpent, does Satan act serpent like? This is, I think there's a lot of different ways of understanding this, and I certainly don't wanna say, I know the one correct way to get this. I do find it intriguing that the serpent

in the ancient Near East is a more ambivalent, so it's a figure of great power. You can actually see this in Mesoamerica as well, the idea of a Ketzelquaddle, this sort of flying serpent, and then you get it in Moses. He's lifting the serpent. So the serpent has power to give death, but then the serpent's venom also acts as an antidote for death and gives life.

And so almost a god-like power that the serpent has. And then it's intriguing that in, and let me give you the right verse. In 2 Nephi 9 verse 9, it says, Nephi 9 verse 9, it says, Satan begiled our first parents who transformeth himself and die unto an angel of light. So that may imply that Satan is showing up in a way that it looks like he can be trusted. So the serpent is tricky. Later in the law, Moses the serpent is going to be an unclean creature. And so there's a little bit of pointing both directions with is the serpent an unclean sort of bad image as my wife would think like snakes. What what oh man when we moved to when we moved to

Texas you know I grew up in text she said Sean there I don't want to move there there snakes down there and I like, there's snakes everywhere. And then we ended up, we actually lived behind a field and they were doing construction. And so multiple times we found snakes in our house, like a four and a half, two different times, four and a half foot long snakes. And one of them, wow, curled up in the toilet tank. And we had a friend in the ward who sort of raised snakes and he came to search for it. We couldn't find it. We saw it on the bathroom floor and then we sort of closed it. My

wife's hyperventilating on the bed. And then we opened the bathroom door. It's not there and he's like, Oh, I bet it's in your walls. They're probably breeding in there. My wife just, you know, we are we're moving for sure. And then he's going around, if I was a snake, where would I be? You know, I'd like you. Great guy. Anyway, and a good friend. But we pulled off, finally we pulled off the lid of the tank. And the snake was caught up in there.

He took it home, and the snake gave laid eggs just a few days later. And I've got this image of all these little imagine that so that's how How many people feel about snakes, but it's sort of interesting that you get this the sort of complex image that had some power To it and this idea in the book of Mormon who transformed with himself Nianton angel of light, but then we do have this sense that snakes are Many people that snakes are sort of creepy, right? It's very interesting.

That is very interesting. So if I was gonna pin you down on the snake being literal, Satan is really a snake, or it's figurative, you're not gonna, you're just gonna say, let's learn the lesson. I honestly have nothing there. I really don't know if Satan is possessing a snake, if Satan just acts serpent-like.

I like that. I like the ambiguity. We don't know. Let's look for the lesson. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for not making me pick one. You know, often tell my students, this is where we vote. Now I'll write that down. I'll send it up to the first presidency so that they know the correct answer from our classroom vote on this. For some people, it is so helpful to have the correct answer, but I worry about that here in these kinds of biblical accounts because we want to dot the eye and cross the T and then we don't have to think about it anymore. We got the right answer. And I think keeping it open so that it continues to be productive for us in the future so that

we don't just come to, oh, it's the snake. I know this is really this. I don't have to think about this anymore. No, it's alive and we're still thinking about it because then it produces different insights as we go along. The multivalency is what we call that of the scriptural accounts. I think we want to keep that more open rather than shut it all down and close it all up and put a bow on it. If you were going to define multivailancy, how would you just define that for someone who

wants to use the term, but doesn't know how? Yeah. So it's the ability for something to be seen or interpreted in different ways and from different angles. It can mean different things if it's multivailant. And so you want to leave it that way. I think there's some power to it. And you don't just want to say, oh, well, let's not even think about it. But the other danger is, well, let's think about it.

So we get the one right answer. Now I'm going to pour cement on that thing. I like to sometimes say to my students, you know, we live in the center of the tree, if we're living on a tree, I guess. I don't know that anybody does that, but we live in the center of the tree, if we're living on a tree, I guess. I don't know that anybody does that, but we live in the center of the tree. That's where the power is, that's where the strength is, but the tree has branches,

and we don't wanna pretend those don't exist. That's what gives the tree its beauty, its vitality, its life. But what we wanna do is go explore on those branches, and then pour cement out there and live out there. That's not where the power is, the power is in the middle of the tree. But we can explore, we just don't want all the sudden explore and say, ah, now I'm the person who has the one right answer and everybody needs

to listen to me. And I hear so, I probably do that too, right? I hear so much of that. Oh, this has been revealed to me or I read this great book and now I have the one correct answer here and okay but a little bit of humility for all of us. President Nelson probably gets to be a little more definitive than I do when I'm exploring those branches. Awesome. All right so you've set us up for the fall here right? Yes except I keep taking us a thousand different directions. So So this is important and so I were on this little aside here that the Perler at Price Moses for actually helps us understand that the that Satan really is an important figure here and

that he desires to destroy agency and that agency that this story can and should be read with agency in mind. And then of course when we go to the book of Mormon to second Nephi too, Lehigh is going to very much care about and read this story in the terms of, okay, what does this say for choice, for the ability to choose, for options that Adam and Eve might have? What is this story trying to set up and tell us? Okay. I did notice that the first four verses of Moses four

are not in Genesis three. So that's what you're saying. Joseph Smith is giving this additional knowledge about agency and Satan that we don't have in Genesis. Yeah, and we could maybe say one more thing about this before we move away from those really great verses that talk about the pre-mortal reality of Satan who was cast down, Lucifer, as he comes to be understood, being cast down from heaven. You get this all here in these first four verses. Now a really fun exercise that families could do

as they're studying this, count the number of words that Satan uses. So you get a quote from Satan. How rare is that? Count the number of words he uses, and then count the number of words that Jesus uses in verse 3, as we're talking about this premortal battle there in the Council in heaven. And Satan, this is embarrassing to me as a teacher, as a verbose teacher.

Satan uses lots more words than Jesus. Jesus succinct, and it's, yeah, it's not, he doesn't seem to use eloquence, at least he's not oriented to doing that to try to persuade. He's just, this is the reality. The other fun thing you can do in that little exercise is look at the pronouns when Satan speaks. I mean, if we just glance at our own, verse one and verse two, right? Verse one and verse two. course. It's it's verse one and verse. Oh, yeah, I'm thank you. I said verse three, verse one and verse two.

So right after the dash, right, that's where you get the quotation from Satan and verse one and then in verse two, you get it from Jesus and look at those pronouns in verse one. It just jumps off the page as soon as you know. Here am I send me I will be thy son. I will redeem all mankind. Not one social be lost. I will do it.

Give me thy honor. And then you want to stick at verse two, the universe to the savior, father, they will be done and the glory be dying forever. Definitely two different statements. Isn't that beautiful? So here's a fun little aside, John Hilton, who's a colleague of ours at BYU, and Jennifer

Riggraft Platt, Randall. There's a few of us that worked on this. We did a word study with the Bukamor, and we created a database so that we could evaluate in the English what different speakers are doing. And one of the ways we separated out is anytime Jesus is identified as Jesus, because a lot of time in the book of Mormon it's the Lord, right? But when he's identified as Jesus Christ, Jesus or Christ or Jesus Christ, we pulled all those words and we put them in a word bucket so to speak and we made a word cloud

out of them and the word clouds are where then it sort of shows which words show up the most frequently because they're larger, they're more prominent in this sort of word cloud, this word arrangement. And it's so beautiful. Jesus' word cloud is the thigh and father. You don't really even see me or my in there. You have to look really carefully. It's so small. And I just think, wow, Joseph Smith

was pretty clever when back in, you know, 1829, he wrote the book Amorment in a way that when you made a word, some random humans, you know, 200 years later made a word cloud. Jesus, his nature of the in line is what shows up. That's awesome. That's really beautiful. It's really powerful. Yeah, I like those two statements. One is very selfish. One is very selfless. Good.

So then Satan shows up. And then if we go back to Genesis, okay, we're now at the beginning of Genesis 3. We're now at the beginning of Genesis 3. And the weird thing about this image is, as I mentioned, Adams's nowhere to be found. You have Eve and you have the serpent. And we, if you, that's why it's important to go back to chapter two because it wasn't

what we just read, you're going to cleave together and then they're apart. And I'm not saying that husband and wife need to always be in the same room. I don't think that's the lesson here, but it is interesting to note. And we struggle with this as Latter-day Saints. Eve, does she understand everything? And she's a perfect hero that gets it all. I think if we just look at sort of mortality, there is this reality that women tend to mature in general a little bit faster than men, physically and emotionally, and that

Eve gets it, seems to get it maybe a little bit better than Adam. But then if we're going to read just Genesis, just the biblical account, we see some things here as Latter-day Saints because of the Book of Mormon and because of Pearl of Great Price and because of other sacred spaces where we're thinking about this story, that aren't necessarily clearly there in the Old Testament account, right? And so we're going to see Eve in much more positive ways. And by the way, I would add Jewish readers tends to be closer to Latter-day Saint readers readers than they are to what we might call Pauline readers, right? So Paul is going to read and understand this story and emphasize the fall and in

traditional Christianity, for many Christians, this becomes this idea of original sin. They say, ah, you can see original sin in the biblical account. Well, not really, it's not quite that sinister in the storyline. So there's a decision set up, don't eat the fruit, and multiply and replenish the earth. And I think as Latter-day Saints, we're pretty oriented to come at this and say, wow, there's tension in that decision. And you can almost, and I don't want to throw Adam under the bus if I ever get to go to heaven, Adam will be like, hey, you almost, and I don't wanna throw Adam under the bus, if I ever get to go to heaven, Adam will be like,

hey, you know, why are you talking about me like that? I was trying really hard here, but you know, if we're gonna approach it negatively, the honorable Adam that we would wish to be like, and some of my evangelical friends are like, no, when we see Adam, we wanna like gut punch him. You're like, well, how could you do this to us? And you, Latter-day Saints, you're like, no, Adam, you're the man, right?

And I'm definitely oriented to Adam's man. But you might say, why is Eve alone with the serpent? Well, is that Eve's fault or is it Adam's fault? Or is it both of their error that sort of puts her in this position where they cannot make this decision together. But I think you'd say they're complicit in that. But Adam, the way I like to picture it, is he's on the couch with the remote. He's like, man, I love this garden. This is awesome. You know, I had somebody in my ward say once it come to me when I was serving his bishop and say,

oh, Bishop, my wife really wants to start having children, start our family and I am terrified. I love just having her to myself. I don't think this is going to work out very well. And I said, I think you probably out of, it's time to follow Eve out of the garden. I think you got to follow your wife's lead on this. Well, he ended up buying his wife a puppy

and that was the solution. So that worked out for him for a while. But so you've got Adam, whatever he's doing, maybe he's working really hard, maybe he's off building something. I don't know, or he's playing with the lion's. He's like, man, this is great. I love this garden thing.

I can just get any food I want anytime. Let's turn it to ESPN. Here we go. Right. Good time. Yeah. And Eve has a Latter-day Saint Reader. I can I personally, this is what I'm saying about multivalency. If those of you who are listening, oh, that's not the way I read the story. This is a multivalent story. There's different lessons, right? Because you can also read the story to sort of show how the serpent sat Eve up. But I'm oriented to see reading Eve as there's this tension in her where she says, well, yes, we're not supposed to eat the fruit. But what about this? What about having children? What about a family? What? There's more to this. I don't know about other, other, your marriages,

but that definitely was my marriage where my wife was thinking about, let's maybe we should have children. I'm going, yeah, maybe, maybe. And it's hard to know whether these kind of gender differences are inherent in us or if they're sort of created by the way I don't know how to understand all those things, but I do think there's some general truths that tend to show up. In fact, back to the Perla Great Price account for just a moment, if we were to skip forward,

if you jump forward to chapter five, Moses chapter five versus 10 and 11, this is when you get Adam and Eve after the garden and they're commenting on what in the world just happened. You know, how do we understand all of this? And Adams is very linear and it's very progress and hey, because I fall and I can do this and I can return to live with God is sort of the personal salvation road. And it's a valuable sort of approach, right? It's a valid way of understanding that, okay, boy, this terrible thing happened and yet

there's positives that'll come out of it because we've got a savior. Eve beautifully so, it's more about our transgression. And we shouldn't have known this in verse 11. Let's just read it. Eve, his wife, heard all these things with the last saying, were it not for our transgression? And if you go the verse up, whereas Adam talking, my transgression,

my eyes are opened. And for Eve, it's our transgression. And never we shouldn't have ever known good and evil if it weren't for our, and the joy of our redemption and the eternal life. So his is more, well, you know, I can return into God's presence. Hers is more. No, we can live these God-like lives in more talented eternal life as Moses 139 might put it. And so you get this sense that Eve is a

little further along as far as at least as far as seeing this as a group kind of effort here. I use that in a marriage conference to talk about Eve as always thinking about the family and the relationship and Adam's, because of my transgression, my eyes are open in this life, I shall have joy in the flesh, I shall see God, Eve heard this and said, we're not for our transgression. We never should have had seed, never should have known good and evil to enjoy our redemption. And yeah, that that is it reminds me of something president, then elder Oak said in October 1983, he said, note the different

perspective and special wisdom of Eve, who focused on the purpose and effect of the great plan of happiness and Then quoted Moses 5-11. So yeah, they they're looking kind of at different things and maybe that's another example of What did we call it before I keep thinking of the elder Maxwell phrase compensating compensating competency. Oh, that's the best phrase all day long, and that's because Elder Maxwell produced it, right? Yeah, of course. But what did I write down? A complimentary opposite, yeah, Elder Maxwell, compensating competencies. Adam sees it one way, you've seen it another way, but they're not ones right ones wrong, they are together, all of it together is a good way to. Well, and I want to acknowledge again that some of my friends, particularly those that aren't from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, say, are you reading too much into the text here? I read this text differently, and I'm not embarrassed to say yes, you know, I do think can you get all of that

inherently out of Genesis 1 through 3? There are some moments where Genesis, you know, 3 is probably in the Old Testament version of it is pointing a little bit. It's emphasizing some different things, but this is very important for us in our understanding of his later days. Saints and I would say it's true, right? It's helpful. And then I would add, John, I think you'll agree on this. So what you just read and what you just said, you're seeing the story a little bit the same way. I am that sort of, well, they're seeing different things

and it's both positive. There is a nicer way you can read what Adam is saying here when he says my my transgression, what about this sort of sweet, sort of sweet approach where Eve is the one who first took the fruit, but Adam is owning it as his own transgression. But I chose you didn't, yeah, you didn't force me, you didn't manipulate me, it's my transgression. Because we do this badly in marriage at times. And Adam, you could come at it from a different angle and say

Adam's modeling some ownership there that's that's really positive. I'm more oriented to reading it the way you just did John and the way I've been reading it but but I do want to point out you know let it lest we bump into Adam some day and he's like um you know yeah, yeah, there was a little morgo went on there. Yeah, yeah, and one creation story account. It's interesting that when Satan shows up Eve always about relationships and community says Who are you Adam says I will not partake and I don't know who you are But I don't know why you're here, but I will not partake and and he approaches. He says, who are you? Welcome. How interesting it's for her. It's all relationship. And oh, who are you? And but I'd love that difference

there. It's all about the relationships where Adam, now I got the rule here. Now, John, that's totally you and Kim. That's totally you and Kim, when you meet people, John's like, no thanks, have a good day. Tim's like, well come in, sit down. What can I help you with? Sean, you said, and I loved this, a Pauline, meaning looking at it from kind of Paul's writings, because when I teach the fall, I love to ask my class,

well, when I teach doctrines and teachings of the book Mormon, that's class specifically, what if the only information we had about the fall came from the Bible? What if it only came from Paul and we read about even, it's like, whoa, you know, and that's why I love to show the second Nephi to account, which to show the second Nephi II account, which softens it so much and even says, no, this is kind of a good thing. This was a fortune at fall as we sometimes look at it. I think that's really helpful. I might just give a little side nod to the possibility that pretty strong and good Bible

studies work with the text where Paul is most potentially negative about Eve may not have been Paul. That may have been added in later. So that's at least of interest to note, although I think there's ways you can read what is there. And if Paul wrote it, we can understand it. But and it's helpful to have the Book of Mormon helping us with this with Eve. And let me let me go on to say I love the Book of Mormon helping us with this with Eve. Let me go on to say, I love the Book of Mormon because I was saying, you know, Jewish readers don't sort of have this sort of, the benefit and if you want to put it this way,

the challenge of understanding Paul's teachings about just how significant the effects of the fall have been. But we have both the Genesis account and Paul's readings and Paul's an apostle for us. And it's fascinating to me as I read the book of Mormon that to me anyway, as I read the book of Mormon, the book of Mormon actually carves a middle path here. You just said it, John, of a fortunate fall. Lehigh, of course, makes this famous statement because it's short and easy to remember. Adam fell that men might be men are that they might have joy. Human kind, I think, is what is referring to there, right? Human kind is that it might have joy.

And yet, it's way more complicated than that in the Book of Mormon. If you read Jacob, 2nd Nephi 9, if the only reason the fall is a positive thing is because there's a redeemer. There's a way prepared to turn potential disasters into actual triumphs. And the savior then in the murder of time is gonna model that. But that falls a disaster if there is no savior. And because there's a savior, then

Lee High can say what he says. And so I love that the Book of Mormon isn't, it sort of does say, hey, it's not all bad. Because of the fall, look at all of these things. And we get this, Adam and Eve commenting on that as well. This isn't all bad, good can come out of this. Good can come out of it. And Jacob says, hey, if there was no redemption, we would all be devils, angels to a devil for all eternity. But because there's a redemption that's been made, look at the good.

So then the question that remains is, how much did Eve understand when she took that fruit? And this is an answer I don't have, right? And I think some of us are oriented wanting Eve to be this perfect hero. She gets it all, she's got it all figured out and there's sort of tired of women being thrown under the bus, you know, as often happen in the history of the world, and has happened historically often in traditional Christianity and Judaism, the seductress, the one who ruins it all, right?

They don't want that, eaves the hero, and others sort of take that. No, eaves the, eaves messed it all up, and instead there's this sort of, well, eaves sort of like us. She has feelings, She's got wisdom. She's got inspiration. She also is human, right?

Although, I guess at this point, she hasn't fallen yet. So how we describe that, I don't know, but Eve is complex. And I like complex a little bit better when I'm thinking of Mother Eve. I like that she's not just univalent, right? But what she's modeling there is helpful to me in a variety of different ways in my life. So. There's just a line that we studied several weeks ago

when doctrine and covenants was our come follow me curriculum that I just thought, wow, will you find that anywhere else in traditional Christianity when Joseph H. Smith said, I saw our glorious mother Eve and many of her faithful daughters. And I think, wow, just please read that and realize how differently that is than much of traditional Christianity that they messed everything up. Yeah, in fact, let me just read for a moment, if I could,

a statement by Dalin H. Oaks by President Oaks. It was Eve who first transgressed the limits of Eden in order to initiate the conditions of mortality. Her act, whatever its nature was formerly a transgression, but eternally a glorious necessity to open the doorway to ward eternal life. Adam showed his wisdom by doing the same. The way I like to say this to my students is, Adam is following Eve's lead. Adam showed his wisdom by doing the same and thus Eve and Adam fell that men might be.

Some Christians condemn Eve for her act. And I think it's appropriate to say some Christians. This is not just one storyline in traditional Christianity. Some have done that. Concluding that she and her daughters are somehow flawed by it, not the Latter-day Saints, informed by Revelation. We celebrate Eve's act and honor her wisdom and courage in the great episode called The Fall. You said that back in 1993 in general conference. Can I add something that our friend and colleague,

Brad Wilcox, said in his book, because of the Messiah in a manger, he said, Latter-day Sancer unique among Christians, because we understand that God did not create the world with the goal for all of us to live forever in the Garden of Eden. Mortality was plan A, not plan B.

The Atonement of Christ was not a last-ditch attempt to salvage the wreckage Adam and Eve made of the world. It was planned from the beginning. C. Mosiah 4.6, where King Benjamin says the Atonement, which was from the foundation of the world. It was always the plan. Repentance was not provided as a safety net for those weak souls who could not be perfectly obedient. It was designed as an essential part of the perfecting process for each one of us. I love that idea. The sending the Savior wasn't to clean up the problems Adam and Eve caused.

The fall was Plan A and the Atonement was Plan A from the beginning. Before we move back away from Adam and Eve's statement, and again, you know, this is going to make me sound way too traditional. I'm sure there are men who are much better and I am and more progressed than I am in their, you know, their relationships and the way they interact in their families. But it's sort of funny to think this is, holds true in my life. I think, no, I don't rely on my wife to feed me. She often does a lot of the cooking in our family. She's really good at it and she does a lot of that. But if I'm hungry and there's something else going on, I make myself a meal. But that's then the fact that I would be proud of that is the first embarrassment. But then the second thing is to note, and this says more about me than anything else,

but it is so true that I think, oh, I'll make myself a meal. Well, when my wife gets hungry, she's like, wait a minute. If I'm hungry, then I've got a family and they're hungry and she prepares for the family, right? And I think, oh, I got this, I can take care of myself, and again, that's And I think, oh, I got this, I can take care of myself, you know, and again, that's embarrassing to confess, but it is interesting to see that play out of

maybe a little bit in Adam the way he's talking here. Please join us for part two of this podcast. you