Symbolism and the Flood in the Old Testament with Paul Hoskisson. (Released January 17, 2018)

LDS Perspectives Podcast Symbolism and the Flood in the Old Testament with Paul Hoskisson (Released January 17, 2018) This is not a verbatim transcript. Some grammar and wording has been modified for clarity. Hello and welcome to the LDS Perspectives podcast. This is Laura Harris Hales, and I am here today with Paul Hoskisson. Paul earned a PhD from Brandeis University in Ancient Near Eastern studies and taught in Europe before coming to BYU in 1981, where he taught for about 35 years. His areas of expertise include Ancient Near Eastern languages and history, including the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Mormon. It s his expertise in the area of the Hebrew Bible that we are going to draw on today. We talk about not getting past 2 Nephi, but I think a lot of us don t get past Genesis, either. Having studied the Hebrew Bible for decades, what would you say to someone who may be struggling to make sense of the Old Testament? I would say don t give up. Keep trying. The Old Testament is not an easy book to understand, and it s not easy to cull out of it the kind of things that we usually get when we read the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants, but it is well worth the effort because the Old Testament was very carefully crafted and put together in order to strengthen and bless us with gospel concepts and ideals. What is it that the authors were trying to do with their writings all those years ago? I think the authors were trying to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. They had a problem, though. At least some of them recognized the issue and tried to skirt around the problem. One of the issues was what people were going to do with their writings once they were put down. Would they accept them or would they censor them or would they toss them out into the garbage heap? We do know from the Book of Mormon that the books of Zenos and Zenoch were not included in the final copies of the Old Testament probably, in my mind, because they were too explicit about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, people like Isaiah had to be careful about what LDS Perspectives Podcast

they said in order to not be censored or even tossed out of the scriptures. Isaiah, I think, is a good example of that. There s a lot of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the book of Isaiah. Much more than we would ever glean from a casual reading of Isaiah. He s well worth the effort to dig in and try to understand what he s talking about. But we probably need a little bit of help. Old Testament authors used symbols, metaphors, puns, and complicated poetic structures to convey their messages. Simply reading our Bible is not going to get us anywhere unless we get some help from a biblical Hebrew scholar. Can you give us an example of how a poetic form is used in the Hebrew Bible say, a symbol? If we just look at a simple example like the coat of many colors that Joseph was given by his father, I doubt that that was simply Joseph haranguing his father until his father got him the latest fashion in those days. I think the coat of many colors whatever that term really means; we re not even certain what it means was really meant to symbolize the authority and the position that Joseph would eventually take on in the house of Israel. He was going to become the leader; the one who would set the stage for all that was going on later on. That fits in, I believe, with his calling as a symbol of Christ in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the only place in the scriptures where you get a complete picture of the plan of salvation in one place from beginning to end. If you re only going to use the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price, you ve got to skip around and piece it together. You get a nice picture a beautiful picture of the plan of salvation. In the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, we get a symbolic representation of the whole plan of salvation. Joseph s coat of many colors fits right in with his role in that symbolization of the plan of salvation in those books. This, of course, is played out later on when he had his dreams and told his brothers about them bowing down to him. His parents also became upset with him, but nevertheless, it s all there: the symbolism of Joseph and his coat of many colors. The symbolism seems to pop up over and over and over again through the Old Testament even though there s a passage of thousands of years. What I found interesting is how the biblical authors liked to tie the various stories together using similar words. For example, I recently read an article from biblical scholar Peter Enns who noted that the word used for ark in the Hebrew Bible is tevah, which means lined with pitch. Is that what it means? Is that close? http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 2 of 10

Yes, we assume it was pitch; there s not much else it would answer to. In Exodus, Moses is placed in a tevah (a basket) likewise lined with pitch. And from there, the parallels between the two stories begin to line up. Time and time again, the Israelite people are recreated to start anew. This is a particular theme that bleeds through to the New Testament with Christ, which takes us to how the authors of the Old Testament molded their telling of history to make a point. Can you speak more to that? Yes, I hope I can. Moses becomes the archetype of all prophets in the Old Testament. He is the prophet, per se. The things that happened to him are symbolic of our own lives, also; how we also should try and become prophets in our own little realms. Moses, as you remember, was born and set adrift, as you said, into the world. He s picked up by the world and is raised by the world as an Egyptian. It isn t until later in life that he becomes aware that he was Israelite by birth and ethnically, he s an Israelite. The authors, as they are putting the story together, are very careful to give you these little details that you re supposed to pick up on. He has one foot in the world; he has one foot in the kingdom of God and he s got to decide where he s going to go with it. Eventually, he has to flee Egypt, and there he can meet God. Once he leaves Egypt (the world), he can converse and meet with God, get his calling, and go back and have both feet in the kingdom of God rather than one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God. That s symbolic of our own lives: we also have to make that choice of having two feet in the world or one foot in the world or two feet in the kingdom of God. I m not insinuating that they made up facts, but do you think that the order they presented them in was done, so they would fit into this theme? Oh, absolutely. I think that they carefully chose how they were telling the story not that they were making up the story at all, but they wanted to give you certain facts along the way that would clue you in about what the deeper meaning was, what was going on in the story, and why they were telling you the story. There are very few stories in the Old Testament that are just stories. They re there to convey a message. Let me give you a rather innocent example. When Naaman comes the Syrian to be healed of his leprosy, he s told by the prophet, Go down and bathe seven times in the River Jordan. We would say, Oh, that s nice. He got upset, of course, when this happened. He thought, Come on http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 3 of 10

the river there in Damascus is a better river than this lousy Jordan River down here! I ve been in both places, and he was right the river in Damascus is a beautiful river. But the point is that you do what the Lord s servants ask you to do. It mentions seven times. If you stop and think about it, they are really seven efficacious ordinances that we have to perform in this life and Naaman s submersion seven times in the Jordan is symbolic of that. The authors are very carefully trying to give you clues about what s going on. Paul and the other New Testament authors went back and reinterpreted the original interpretation of the Old Testament in light of the birth of Christ and His death and resurrection. Latter-day Saint scholars have likewise gone back and interpreted the Old Testament in light of the information we have from the Restoration. In that way, the Old Testament has proven fairly malleable and open to interpretation again and again and again. Let s talk about how some of the symbolism in the Old Testament has been interpreted differently through time and by different groups of people. Let s start with Noah s Flood. I touched on one of the many interpretations floating around about what it could have meant to its original audience by tying it to Moses. By the 19th century, what was a symbolism attached to the Flood by the Protestants that early members of the church would have been familiar with? The Flood has always been somewhat of an issue among Christians. Early on, of course, the symbolic meaning of the Flood was proposed by many people, including Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish philosopher around the time of Christ. This symbolism is picked up in Christianity also and carried through the ages. By the time you get down to 19th-century America, there are really two strands: they view the Flood as a type and as an anti-type. When they say anti-type, it means that it s symbolically representing something other than what we normally think of it as. Paul talks about that in the New Testament: about baptism and the Flood, and the baptism also of the Israelites at the Red Sea and so on. This symbolism has permeated Christianity all these millennia. The anti-type is that the water represents the sins that are covering the world at the time of Noah and that he s saved from those sins in the ark that is, he s floating above the sins of the world. He s saved by that ark, which early Christians thought symbolized the church. You get in the church, and you re saved from the Flood of sin that s around you. But people also saw the Flood as a symbol of baptism. It s a natural symbol for that how the earth was covered with water and cleansed of the filth and the sin which had been on it before Noah. It could get a new beginning. http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 4 of 10

So there are these two conflicting ideas, although they re not really conflicting. They are just two different ways of reading the story of the Flood. We have not picked up on the anti-type of the Flood in Christian literature so much in the church as we have the other one, the type that the Flood was a type of baptism for Christians. We picked up on that in the church fairly early, beginning around 1832. Who was it that first started talking about it? It s an editorial in one of the church magazines. We don t know who really wrote it. W. W. Phelps was the editor of the journal at the time, but no one signed the article. Joseph Smith didn t really talk about it, so when did we pick it up in LDS dialogue again? No, as far as I can determine, Joseph never talked about the symbolic meaning of the Flood. We have to remember here that a symbolic meaning does not exclude the literal meaning also. You can have both at the same time. It s in the details of the story where you pick up on the symbolism, not just the whole story itself. We also have to be very careful here when we re analyzing this about the definition of words. For Latter-day Saints, baptism means immersion and that s it. End of story. But the word baptize coming from the Greek has several uses, particularly in New Testament times. It can mean to dip something; it can mean to wash something; it can mean to immerse something. We have to be very careful here that we re not reading into our analysis of the Flood story; that we re analyzing too much of the literal meaning of words and other ways in which the words were used in those days. These early Saints, they come to Mormonism with this understanding that the Flood was the baptism of the earth in the Protestant sense of baptism. Yeah. One of the issues here as the Protestants are talking about the baptism is that for them or some of them, anyway baptism was not a necessary ordinance. You really didn t need it to be saved. All you had to do was recognize Jesus as your Savior and accept Him as your Savior. In their world, then, it wasn t necessary for the earth to be baptized, but this Flood was a nice symbol of it. Latter-day Saints come along, and we say, Baptism is absolutely necessary. You can t make it into the kingdom without a baptism. Not only that, but it has to be done by someone who has proper authority. Any old baptism is not going to work. So when you re reading what the Latterday Saints were saying about the baptism of the earth in those days, you http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 5 of 10

need to be careful not to read into the word baptism too much our current understanding of the term. That is, it could mean an immersion in water; it could mean a cleansing; it could mean a bath; it could mean any of those things. It wasn t until after we got to Utah that we began to speak a lot more about how the Flood was an ordinance. We have to distinguish in our church between an ordinance and a symbol. It s true that baptism is symbolic in many ways, but it s a physical ordinance also that has to be done in a certain way. The question then in my mind has always been, Was the Flood a baptism or a wonderful symbol that happened physically or was it a priesthood ordinance that the earth needed to receive? There s a lot of ways of reading that. I don t believe there s ever been a definitive statement by the prophet of the church about what the Flood symbolized and how much of it was connected with a priesthood ordinance. Many priesthood leaders and some scholars have opined on the topic that it was an ordinance, but there s been no specific doctrine that this is an ordinance; that it s salvific; that the earth needed to be saved; that it somehow could make a choice. When we think of baptism, there s a whole bunch of baggage that goes along with that ordinance and senescence or the ability to choose is part of that. Yes. It s very clear in LDS doctrine at least, it seems to me, from the scriptures and what the Brethren have said that baptism is only necessary for those who are capable of making informed choices. They have to have been taught. They have to know what is right. And in my mind, I believe that they ve had to have felt the Holy Spirit nudging them in one direction or another. As Latter-day Saints, I don t think we need to worry about trying to baptize people who don t understand and who have not reached the age of accountability, whether that s in years or in understanding. We don t baptize those kinds of people. And yet it s very clear from the comments of many of the Brethren in the church that the Flood was a cleansing of the earth. In my mind, then, the question becomes, In what way was the earth cleansed? Had it committed sins that it needed to be cleansed of? Brigham Young talked about the sins that were upon the face of the earth and how the Flood washed them all away, but it wasn t until we got to Orson Whitney, I believe, who introduced the term ordinance for Noah s Flood. He did that on several occasions. The question in my mind is Does it have to be a priesthood ordinance like a baptism or can it be a cleansing of the earth, much like Doctrine and Covenants 88 talks about http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 6 of 10

how the elders of the church have to be cleansed from the blood and sins of this generation. It doesn t bother me too much. I don t think about it a lot because it s not up to me to decide which way it really is or isn t. There are 15 other people on this earth that are supposed to do that. I just like to think about it. Yeah, that s how we gain knowledge, and it s interesting and fun as well. Some past leaders have written on this topic very strong conclusions; not the united voice of the Brethren, but they ve said, This is how it is. Now we re saying, Well, maybe it s more symbolic than that. Should this distress people or is this just kind of how we work? Are we expecting too much of our leaders? Are we expecting them not to opine on anything? How should we approach this to make ourselves feel comfortable about reexamining how we look at the Flood? I think it s always important to reexamine how we think about all things. If the brethren have spoken with united voice, that ends discussion as far as I m concerned, but it doesn t mean that I have to stop thinking about it, pondering it, and trying to understand it. I think this is true of the Flood and many other issues along this same line. I m very comforted with what Elders Oaks and Maxwell said in their 1988 interview about Official Declaration #2, especially Elder Oaks when he said, The Lord hardly ever explains what s going on when He gives commandments, and that we offer explanations because we don t understand exactly why God commands something. We invent reasons for the commandments, and often those reasons are manmade. They re just made up out of whole cloth. In retrospect and he was talking there about priesthood conferral we were spectacularly wrong about those things. I rather enjoy that that is, I can speculate all I want about things as long as I m not preaching it. I can know that someday I will be corrected and, therefore, I don t need to worry about it and I do look forward to correction. If we don t look at the Flood as a necessary ordinance that the world had to go through, so it could be celestialized, as some have supposed, is there another way to interpret this story from the Bible to justify it as a cleansing? Yes, I think there is another way to look at it. This is my own personal opinion about it. It seems to me that there really was a Flood. I have no question about that. I don t know what kind of a Flood it was. It can be http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 7 of 10

any way that the Lord wants it to be. I m more than happy with that. But it seems to me that the Lord in these latter days, in the Restoration, can be explained in D&C 88:25 And again, verily I say unto you, the earth abideth the law of a celestial kingdom, for it fillets the measure of its creation, and transgressed not the law. Whether or not the earth is senescent is another question. I rather doubt that it s senescent in the way we usually think of people being senescent, but it does become filthy because of what happens on the face of the earth and it does need to be cleansed. The Lord told the elders in the Doctrine and Covenants also that they needed to become clean from the blood and sins of this generation in other words, all of us need to be cleansed from our environment in addition to being cleansed from our own sins. It seems to me that the earth really didn t commit any sins, but there were a lot of people making the earth filthy because of their own sins, and that at some point, the earth had to go through a cleansing process to cleanse it from the sins of this world. I rather like that concept, but you know, this is pure speculation on my part. I m happy with it, but I d be happy to give it up too if I learned better later on. A lot of people get hung up on the Flood by splitting hairs, whether it was a local phenomenon or total immersion of every bit of the earth. They discard it, I think. From the time we re very small, as children, we have our little Noah s ark toys, our 2 x 2. In our heads, we know it would be pretty difficult to get every critter on the earth and to, even with 40 days of rain, cover the whole earth up to the mountain tops. What do we lose if we discard this Flood story by just going by the words and the literalness of it instead of looking at it and saying, Hey, what were the writers trying to convey here? What symbolism were they trying to preserve for me? That s a tricky because number one, we don t know what the earth looked like in the days of Noah. We re told that after the days of Noah, the earth divided or at least, that s how most of us read that passage in the book of Genesis. We don t know what the mountains were; we don t know what the valleys were; we don t know what the configuration of the continents were. We really have no clue, and, therefore, it doesn t really matter too much whether we think that the earth was totally covered with water or whether it was a local Flood. The thing that does bother me is that if we reason in circular matters on this that is, we say the Flood was universal because the Bible says that it covered the whole earth is that the Bible is actually ambiguous on that point in the Hebrew text. It just means the land was covered; it doesn t mean the whole earth was covered. I m willing to read it either http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 8 of 10

way, but the point is that you can t argue from the fact that the Bible says the earth was covered. You can t argue from that point that it had to be baptized, and, therefore, if it was baptized, it had to be a total immersion. That seems to be a circular argument for me. I hope somebody will correct me someday and help me understand this, although we may have to wait until we get to the celestial kingdom and check out the celestial Netflix on the Flood and see what happened. That s funny. I think we are running into the same problem that we sometimes have with Adam and Eve. I don t think it was ever meant as a scientific book; it was meant as a religious book full of symbolism. So people will quibble with Noah s ark and say that scientifically this couldn t happen, but that s beside the point, isn t it? I think it is beside the point. The point is that the earth needed to be cleansed and the mechanism for the cleansing is really not that critical in my mind. It s a little bit like people quibble over the accounts of the creation in Genesis 1 4. It seems to be that they re one account. Genesis 1 says basically that God created the earth. Everything else doesn t matter very much, because He did it and He did it how He did it we don t know very much about it. Even Elder McConkie said that it s all metaphorical and symbolic. For instance, the fruit that Adam and Eve partook of may or may not have been a literal fruit. What they really did, in fact, was to comply with the laws that would bring about mortality for both of them: a change in their bodies from being paradisiacal immortal to a mortal body, so they could continue on with the plan of salvation. How much of the creation story is symbolic and metaphorical? I think that s way up for debate, and it s the same thing with the Flood and some of the other stories in the book of Genesis. We need to concentrate not so much on the discrepancies between what we see as science or what people see as science in the Old Testament and what the Lord is trying to convey in these stories. I don t think we have to decide, Was it really a fruit that they partook of in the Garden of Eden? Maybe there was. Maybe that was part of the law that they needed to comply with to make the change into mortality. I don t see that the symbolic meaning of something and the metaphors that are used exclude a literal reading of the text either. The mistake is when we try to make it either one or the other. That s wonderful. Before I wrap things up, I want to mention that Paul has authored a book chapter called Was Noah s Flood the Baptism of the earth? He co-authored this with Stephen Smoot. If you re interested, I ll put a link in the show notes, so you can access that book chapter. http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 9 of 10

Paul, can you sum up what listeners can gain from going beyond the literal interpretation of Old Testament scripture and looking for the deeper symbolism? I think they can see in the Old Testament some gospel teachings. Don t forget the literal interpretation of it, but try and look beyond that also. I think they re both very important. For instance, when the Israelites sacrificed the firstborn male lamb and put the blood on the door at the Passover, that really was literally what was going on. But if that s where you leave it, you re going to miss out on what the teaching is there: it s the blood of the Lamb that saves us. It s not all the other things that were going on at the time. The blood of the Lamb saves the firstborn in Egypt because that firstborn represents your inheritance and your progeny what s going to go on through the eternities. All of that is saved because of the blood of the Lamb. The fact that it had to be roasted it specifically was not allowed to be boiled really means to me, symbolically, that you have to partake of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the Spirit. The Spirit is symbolized in the Old Testament with fire. You get that right at the beginning of the book of Genesis. You get it throughout the whole history there the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of smoke by day. It all symbolizes the presence of the Holy Spirit. The fact that you had to consume all of the lamb before morning, not leaving anything undone, to me symbolizes that you accept the whole gospel of Jesus Christ, not a piece here and not a piece there. You consume it with the Spirit, and the blood saves you of that lamb. The symbolism here goes way beyond the literal reading of the text. I m glad that in the church, we don t always get hung up on the literal meaning of the text because then you can go on to what the message really is all about. Disclaimer: Thank you, Paul. I appreciate you taking time with us today. I m glad to do it. LDS Perspectives Podcast is not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The opinions expressed on this episode represent the views of the guys and the podcaster alone, and LDS Perspectives Podcast and its parent organization may or may not agree with them. While the ideas presented may vary from traditional understandings or teachings, they in no way reflect criticism of LDS Church leaders, policies, or practices. http://www.ldsperspectives.com Page 10 of 10