followHIM - 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, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my Zazie co-host, John, by the way. Welcome, John. Please define Zazie. I'm glad that you asked that because Sarah, who is 13 years old from Las Vegas, Nevada,

wrote to me through our followhim.co website. And she said, I think you should call John Zazzy because it's a basic cross between zany, pizzazz, 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 Vegas called you Zazie. Thank you.

Great. 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. This is fantastic. John. Yeah. This is great. Good to see you, cuz.

Since you are family, do you think you could um loan me 50 bucks uh john i've been excited for today for a long time um our guest knows that i've been i've been kind of hinting at having him on talking to him about having him on and it's finally here it feels like a disneyland day to me tell us who's with. Hank, we have Sean Hopkin with us today, and he is our boss. He is. So I'm going to sit up really straight today. Friend, colleague. Let me share with our listeners who Sean is. He was born in Denton, Texas, the son of Lorraine Hopkin and Arden Hopkin. Sean Hopkin attended Southwest High School in Fort Worth, Texas,

and graduated from Orem High School. So Sean received a bachelor's degree and master's degree from Brigham Young 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 Timpheu 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 has 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 responsibility. 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 texts like the book of Genesis? I don't know. Is your approach

different than you say would you with the Doctrine and 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 worldview and an approach that we we sort of think oh well they're gonna 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 worldview 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, 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 of 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 is a good one. 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.

Yeah. 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 worldview that is even more different than the 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 neighbor, unless you have a really archaic next door neighbor. 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, 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. Please. That is the idea of Sheol or the world of the spirits, world of departed 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, you'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 uh and watery areas like seas were a realm of chaos that humans don't really um control so when

god creates the earth uh 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 pretty helpful to have some guidance through that ancient world. I 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, 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 and make it to their 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 alike, right? Genesis 3, 4, Moses 4, 5. They are very similar. One of the main differences that you get in the pearl of great price that we will, we'll probably dig into before we're all done here is you get a little bit more when Satan shows up. Uh, and so it digs into, you know, the nature of, uh, the serpent and you get a little bit more of a premortal sense of who the serpent is okay which is which is really nice i think so a good place to start um 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 worldview 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 worldview. 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 going to do. You place it in the right place. And this is the act of creating or organizing the Hebrew word Barah. 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? 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 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 one, I'm creating man and woman. And then all of a sudden, by the end of Genesis two, it's almost like you're recreating, you know, wait, there's no woman there yet. Right. He created them male and female created he them. And then you get halfway through Genesis two and he's, he's creating the woman again, you get two different accounts. And one way of reading that as well, it really is two different

accounts that were spliced together. And then I think for many Latter-day Saints, no, it's just, he's just repeating doing, he's telling it from a different angle. Right. And, and then I would add there's some multivalency. So we're going to 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 real human being, right? A real child of God, the head of the human family, even Adam are.

But the idea is that the story is told in a way that 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 alive 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.

I mean, the people, Adam and Eve, were real people. We've got this sense that the Bible's 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 in less strictly, it's all, 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 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 McConkie said, well, I don't know if there was actually a fruit. The fruit's 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 necessarily the point, right? What's the message that's there? President Kimball talked about the rib, you know, that Eve is created out of a rib. I often ask 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 the 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? Then you say, well, 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 McConkie. And I think that's where he talked about it. And he said they partook of the fruit or 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 of Mormon, and there was a Tower of Babel, and there was a Noah, 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 2 Nephi 2, tells us why it happened. Another way to look at that.

Often when I'm teaching Hebrew Bible, I'm teaching Old Testament, students will say, well, is Jonah, was he really swallowed by a whale, et cetera, et cetera. Did this really happen to Job? And my sort of standard, maybe wishy-washy response is, well, I actually do take them as literal. And then if I'm up in heaven and there's no, you know, Jonah's like, no, I mean the whale thing, that was just figurative. Then I'm like, 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,

there are miracles. There are things I don't understand. There are things that I don't want to 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, I take Jonah is a, and his story is a real person, a real story. And there's, 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, well, okay, fine. What I do want to do is make sure I get to the why, you know, I get to what's going going on what's being communicated because ancient cultures did communicate things differently than we do we take a very uh 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 it's but is this you know is the message true you know sometimes sometimes i'll 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 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 Adam to David,

or he's really into the number 14 trying to teach us Jesus was the son of David. So he's kind of being 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. Or 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. Yeah, you want a big one? Guess 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. Could God do it? Could God put Jonah in a whale? Of course he could.

Could he flood the earth? Of course he could. He's God. But let's get the message. Yeah. Well, and 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 tend 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 its meaning. 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 we jump in. Has most, I kind of hinted this in my class and I don't know if it's true, but so I better, I better check with somebody. I've never done that. There's you.

Has 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, of course, so many varieties and there are what, and these terms get really tricky, but if you want to use liberal Protestantism, that 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. And anything before Jesus is passe, it's old, it's done away with, it's subsumed 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 Saint. Joseph Smith, it was so important to him to view 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 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.

So, you're telling our audience, don't skip this year. Don't just say, you know. Oh, yeah. Listen, yeah, you got me. I'll just soapbox, but I won't take too long to do it. Yeah, to understand the Book of Mormon and then what happens in what we call the New Testament or the New Covenant and Doctrine and Covenants. 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 in 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 up. You got to broaden 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, uh, 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, 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's 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 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 passe or done away with or unimportant.

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 texts. 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, I'm just a little bit oddly sensitive to that. I'm a Hebrew studies guy in my PhD work as well. Which is, it's 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 why, yeah, you hear me saying both so that I, and I probably just pick one, and it'll be fine. But yeah, so the Hebrew Bible is basically synonymous with the Old Testament. Tanakh 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. Nevi'im, that's the Ta, Torah, Na, Nevi'im, and Ch is Ketuvim, or the writings. And so Tanakh is the Torah, the Nevi'im, 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. Yeah, 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 Nevi'im or 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 prophets, these are two different segments of the Hebrew Bible. Interestingly enough, we divide it 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, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel. 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. 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 in 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 that. I think he's talking about books there, especially when there's a verse in the New Testament that says the law and the prophets were until John, sounding like God doesn't have any more prophets. Well, no, 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, you know, 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 want. Awesome. Yeah. Good. That's really helpful. I think we've got a great intro to the Old Testament.

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 ezer kenegdo, a help, as, ka, as, neged, opposite, and o, his, as his, opposite. Neged is used in discussions in modern Hebrew. So, if you've got a negidid you've got a dialogue partner someone who is you're looking at them face to face is the implication and you're equals you're speaking as equals and and so if you think almost like a mirror image eve is his mirror image and a mirror image is similar to you uh but it's opposite of you, right? So there's this complementary nature. And ezer is a very powerful word. Don Perry from BYU has done some really nice work on ezer often being associated with the kinds of help that God gives. Ezer means help and then meet.

One who meets him. One who, and if we're going to be more liberal now with the idea, and it includes some Latter-day Saint 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 going to use that with my wife. That sounds romantic. Well, and it is, it's sort of a love story.

This 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 we can hear 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. 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, right? And it even says when he closed up the flesh that you 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, wait, our campouts are never working out. And finally she's like, yeah, I 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 my wife 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, and I think I said, I never want to watch that again. That was, but I, you love each other, so you marry 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, they'd been married 40 years. And I was there the moment someone said, Hey, why do you put the bananas in the Jell-O? 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. Bananas and 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 delicious automatically. And 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 know, the great challenge and the great power of relationship. Not when you just mirror each other, we just, 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, Oh, 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 got to triangulate and bring that together. Awesome. His complimentary opposite. I wrote that in my scripture. 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 going to set up something that's about a very Latter-day Saint reading of of the fall here. Say 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 Esha because she was taken out of man, Esh. So, there's this really nice, it works out in English as well, actually, but the English is sort of mirroring something that happens in the Hebrew. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall 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. 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 want to 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 quetzalcoatl, 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 godlike 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, Satan beguiled our first parents who transformeth himself nigh 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. And so the serpent is tricky. Later in the law, most of the serpent is going to be an unclean creature. And so it, you know, there's a little bit of pointing both directions with, is the serpent, uh, uh, an unclean sort of, uh, bad image as my wife, uh, would think, uh, like snakes. Oh man. When we moved to, when we moved to Texas, uh, you know, I grew up in Texas. She said, Sean there, I don't want to move there. There's snakes down there. And I'm like, well, 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 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 and 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, we're moving for sure. And then he's going around. If I was a snake, where would I be?

You know, I hate you. Great guy. Anyway, and a good friend. But we pulled off, finally we pulled off the lid of the tank and there was, the snake was coiled up in there. He took it home and the snake gave, you know, laid eggs just a few days later. And I've got this image of all these little, imagine that. So that's how many people feel about snakes, but it's sort of interesting that you get this, this sort of complex image that had some power to it. And this idea in the book of Mormon,

who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light. But then we do have this sense that snakes are many people that snakes are sort of creepy, right? That's sort of interesting. That is very interesting. So if I was going to pin you down on the snake being literal, Satan is really a snake, or it's figurative, you're just going to say, let's learn the lesson. I honestly have nothing there. I really don't.

I 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. I 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 I and cross the T and then we don't have to think about it anymore 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 multivalency, 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 multivalent. 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 want to pretend those don't exist. That's what gives the tree its beauty, its vitality, its life. But what we want to 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 to all of a 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 much. 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. Um, and, uh, okay. But a little bit of humility for, for all of us, you know, President Nelson probably gets to be a little more definitive than, than I do when I'm exploring those branches. So. 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 this is important. So we're on this little aside here that the pearly great price, Moses four actually helps us understand 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 two, Lehi 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? I did notice that the first four verses of Moses 4 are not in Genesis 3. 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. 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 premortal 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 three, 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 is 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 it right now. So we're looking at verse one and verse two, right? Verse one and verse two. It's verse one and verse. Oh yeah. 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 in 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 me i will be thy son i will redeem all mankind not one soul shall be lost i will do it give me thine honor and then you want us to look at verse two the end of verse two the savior father thy will be done and the glory be thine forever definitely two different statements isn't that beautiful so here's a fun little aside uh john hilton who's a colleague of ours at byu and i uh and Jennifer Ringcroft Platt, Randall Wright, there's a few of us that worked on this.

We did a word study with the Book of Mormon where we created a database so that we could sort of evaluate in the English what different speakers are doing. And one of the ways we separated out is any time Jesus is identified as Jesus, because a lot of times 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 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's word cloud is the, thy, 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 i just think wow joseph smith was pretty clever when back in you know 1829 he wrote the book of mormon in a way that when you made a word some random humans you know 200 years later made a word cloud jesus his his nature of the and nine is what shows up that's really really beautiful. It's really powerful. Yeah. I like those,

those two, those, these two statements. One is very selfish. One is very selfless. Uh, good. So then Satan shows up.

And then if we go back to Genesis, okay. Uh, we're, we're, we're now at the beginning of Genesis three. Mm. Hmm.

And the weird thing about this image is, as I mentioned, Adam's nowhere to be found. You have Eve and you have the serpent. And 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 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 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 know, why are you talking about me like that?

I was doing, I was trying really hard here, but you know, if we're going to approach it negatively, the honorable Adam that we would wish to be like, and, and, you know, some of my evangelical friends are like, no, when we see Adam, we want to like gut punch him. You're like, well, how could you do this to us? And you Latter-day Saints are 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, come to me when I was serving as 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, you know, I think you probably ought to, it's time to follow Eve out of the garden. You know, I think you got to follow your wife's lead on this. Well, he ended up buying his wife a puppy and that was his 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 lions.

He's like, man, this is great. I love this garden thing. I can just get any food I want any time. Let's turn it to espn here we go right this is good time yeah and eve as a latter-day saint reader i can i personally this and this is what i'm saying about multivalency if those of you who are listening think 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 set 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 um and it's hard to know whether these kind of gender differences are inherent in us or if they're sort of created by our the way our society i don't 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 Pearl of Great Price account for just a moment, if we were to skip forward, if you jump forward to chapter five, Moses chapter five, verses 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 Adam's 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, we couldn't have known this in verse 11. Let's just read it.

Eve, his wife heard all these things of the last thing, were it not for our transgression. And if you go the verse up, where's 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, immortality and 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 is always thinking about the family and the relationship. And Adam is, 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, the joy of our redemption. And yeah, that is, it reminds me of something President, then Elder Oaks 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 511. So, yeah, 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 Maxwellwell phrase compensating competencies oh that's that's the best phrase all day long and that's because elder maxwell uh produced it right yeah of course but we what did we write what did i write down a complementary opposites yeah the elder maxwell compensating competencies adam sees it one way you've sees it another way but they're not one's right one one's wrong. They are together. All of it together is a good way. Well, and I want to acknowledge again that, you know, some of my friends, particularly those that aren't from aren't 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 as Latter-day 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 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 and 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 but but i do want to point out you know lest we bump into adam someday and he's like um you know yeah there was a little more going on there, you know, yeah. In 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 even know who you are, but I don't know why you're here, but I will not partake. And when he approaches Eve, she says, who are you? Welcome. How interesting it's for her. It's all relationships and, oh, who are you? But I

love that difference there. It's all about the relationships where Adam, no, I got the rule here. No. 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. Kim'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 of 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 Eve and it's like, whoa, you know? And that's why I love to show the 2 Nephi 2 account, which softens it so much and even says, no, this is kind of a good thing. This was a fortunate fall as we sometimes put 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. And it's helpful to have 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 is 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. Lehi, 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. Humankind, I think is what he's referring to there, right? Humankind is that it might have joy. And yet it's way more complicated than that in the Book of Mormon. If you read Jacob,

2 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 meridian of time is going to model that. But the fall's a disaster if there is no savior. And because there's a savior, then Lehi 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. You know, because of the fall, look at all of these things. And we get this, you know, Adam and Eve commenting on that as well.

This isn't all bad. Good can come out of this. Good can come out of this. Good can come out of it. And Jacob says, you know, 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 to wanting Eve to be this perfect hero. She gets it all.

She's got it all figured out. And they're sort of tired of women being thrown under the bus, you know, as often happened 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. Eve's the hero and others, you know, sort of take that. No, Eve's the, Eve messed it all up. And, and, and instead there's this sort of, well, Eve's 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. 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 F. 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. In fact, let me just read for a moment, if I could, a statement by Dallin 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 formally a transgression, but eternally a glorious necessity to open the doorway toward 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. He 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 Saints are 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. You know, 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. 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 than 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 holds true in my life.

I think, no, I don't rely on my wife to feed me. You know, she often does a lot of the cooking in, 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, well, 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, you know? And again, that's embarrassing to confess, but it is interesting to see that play out maybe a little bit in Adam, the way he's talking here. Please join us for part two of this podcast.