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Part 2 of 2: Why Is the Story of David and Bathsheba Significant? (Gospel Doctrine Lesson 24B)

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Angelika Kauffmann: “Thou Art the Man!”

 

An Old Testament KnoWhy relating to the reading assignment for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 24: “Create in Me a Clean Heart” (2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 51) (JBOTL24B)

This article continues a detailed commentary begun in article JBOTL24A on 2 Samuel 11-12, the story of the fall of David. Robert Alter summarizes this tragic story as follows:

The Book of Samuel is one of those rare masterworks that … evinces an unblinking and abidingly instructive knowingness about man as a political animal in all his contradictions and venality and in all his susceptibility to the brutalization and the seductions of exercising power. And yet, David is more than a probing representation of the ambiguities of political power. He is also an affecting and troubling image of human destiny as husband and father and as a man moving from youth to prime to the decrepitude of old age. The great pivotal moment of the whole story in this regard is when he turns to his perplexed courtiers, after putting aside the trappings of mourning he had assumed for his ailing infant son, now dead, and says, ‘I am going to him. He will not come back to me.’ These … words … have no conceivable political motive[; they] give us a glimpse into his inwardness, revealing his sense of naked vulnerability to the inexorable mortality that is the fate of all humankind. For the rest of the story, we see David’s weakness and his bonds of intimate attachment in fluctuating conflict with the imperatives of power that drive him as a king surrounded by potential enemies and betrayers.

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL24B — Why Is the Story of David and Bathsheba Significant? (Part 2 of 2)

 

Part 1 of 2: Why Is the Story of David and Bathsheba Significant? (Gospel Doctrine Lesson 24A)

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James Tissot: David Sees Bathsheba from the Roof

An Old Testament KnoWhy relating to the reading assignment for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 24: “Create in Me a Clean Heart” (2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 51) (JBOTL24A)

Question: Why is the story of David and Bathsheba significant?

Summary: Chapters 11 and 12 of 2 Samuel are among the treasures of scripture. There are several reasons for their importance:

  • Historically, these chapters constitute the turning point that marks the end of the rise and the beginning of the fall of the house of David;
  • Doctrinally, the setting provides a context for discussions of the consequences of adultery and murder, and of abuses stemming from David and Solomon’s often politically motivated taking of “many wives and concubines”;
  • As a literary composition, we can experience and appreciate how an inspired and skilled author selectively presents details with incredible focus and economy of expression, thus revealing with exceptional clarity the central messages of the story;
  • As a tragic personal account of the steps leading to temptation and damning sin, we can draw moral lessons that can fortify and protect us against similar mistakes.

Because of the incredible richness of this account, it is best discussed verse by verse. Before entering into detailed commentary, three questions relating to the story will be discussed as background.

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL24A — Why Is the Story of David and Bathsheba Significant? (Part 1 of 2)

Articles of Faith: Samuel M. Brown – First Principles and Ordinances (Book)

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headshot-MikeStack-2014-09-24-art-background-croppedSAMUEL M. BROWN is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of Utah and an intensive care physician in the Shock Trauma ICU at Intermountain Medical Center. His award-winning book In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early  Mormon Conquest of Death was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. He is also translator of Aleksandr Men’s Son of Man: The Story of Christ and Christianity. Here is here today to talk about his book First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple being published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

Questions addressed in this interview:

Your book addresses, among other things, the topic of faith, but your journey through your own faith crisis becomes an important backdrop for your perspective as a writer. Perhaps you could give the cliff notes version of that to set the stage.

Your book is part of the Living Faith Book Series that is being put out by the Maxwell Institute at BYU. As I understand the series as a whole, and therefore part of the feel and function of your book, is the reconciliation of faith and knowledge which is particularly notable challenge some are having in discourse about Mormonism. How do you seek to approach the challenge of reconciling faith and knowledge with your book?

There is a statement that opens the promotional one-sheet that I received on your book that was quite gripping and thought provoking. I don’t know if you wrote it or if it was someone with the publishing side of this effort, but I want to share it and give you a chance to expound upon that in context of your book: “Familiarity can lead to a kind of blindness in life and in religion. The first principles and ordinances of the Latter-day Saint gospel are particularly at risk for misunderstanding through such familiar neglect.”

While not set up in such a way that it addresses critical questions that some may have about the church, there is a sort of positive apologetic angle, almost devotional feel to your book. Is that a fair assessment?

Your book addresses active faith initially. This is something that I have been studying and feeling for years now so it was nice to see some confirmation in your writings to that idea. You speak of two main models of faith at least the way Latter-day Saints talk about Faith, what are those two models?