Masenya (Ngwana' Mphahlele)'s Cultural (Re-)turn within South African Biblical Studies: Intersecting 'Culture' and 'Racial Capitalism'

Migrants, Vagrants, and the Making of the Anthropocene

From its beginnings, the sociology of work in South Africa has been preoccupied with three enduring themes: skill/deskilling, racism in the workplace, and Fordism/racial Fordism. With the advent of democracy in the 1990s there was a shift away from studying the labour process. We argue in this article that there has been a return to taking seriously the ways new forms of work in this postcolonial context pose new questions to the global study of work. A central preoccupation in the study of work has been the racialised reinscription of post-apartheid workplace orders, now in the context of new dynamics of externalisation and casualisation of employment. Another important theme is the shift away from studies of the formal sector workplace and toward the broader implications of the precarianisation and informalisation of labour. This focus coincided with the growth of new social movements by mostly unemployed (black) township residents around state services provision. This includes studies on working-class politics more broadly, with attention focusing on questions of organising and mobilising. More recently this interest in precarious labour has grown into studies of the gig economy, returning to earlier themes of technology and skill, as well as new forms of waged labour and wagelessness. We argue for the ongoing salience of labour process studies for understanding the specific issues of the securing and obscuring of value, and through the articulations of ‘racial capitalism’ offered by the long tradition of labour studies in South Africa.

This article engages Cedric Robinson's articulations of racial capitalism and Blackness as an important set of intellectual provocations not only for Black and African diaspora studies, but also for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between racial identity, capitalism, and the development of oppositional consciousness. Specifically, I argue that by following the analytical terms of racial capitalism, we can better consider the global and historical placements of ‘Asians’ – a racial category constituted by and entangled with European imperialism – in terms of class, labor, and more. Is it possible to conceive of ‘Asianness,’ like Blackness, as an ontological totality (a kind of collective racial ‘being’ that is both defined by and subsumes a particular relation to capitalism)? The answer will likely be an uneasy and ambivalent one, since one Asian group after another has functioned as an intermediary labor class between Black and White. Putting together racial capitalism and Edward Said's theorization of orientalism, however, to focus on how racial–economic tropes operate on the ground, offers productive possibilities for implementing a racial capitalism approach to theorize ‘Asianness’ alongside Blackness, as well as suggesting different and strategic ways of ‘being’ Asian.

This essay argues that Sarah Coakley's understanding of contemplation and the Spirit's dispossessive work can provide timely interruption of contemporary economic crises when read beside Willie Jennings's indictment of Christianity's imagination as the production of race. Read together, contemplation and dispossession provide useful frames for analyzing and reimagining the common good. Here, I argue that theologians and church communities can understand Coakley's and Jennings's work as confrontations with racial capitalism. In particular, I take Coakley's attention to the need for dispossession by the Spirit to correspond with black theologians’ assertions that we must turn to the dispossessed in the United States—the black and brown poor—to find where God is at work. The racialized subprime debtors who are perpetually dispossessed, failing, and criminal are the people Christian theology must align with in order to confront its relation to white supremacy. By contemplating alternative conceptions of property and ownership foregrounded by the concept of dispossession, we can begin to imagine, perceive, and practice an otherwise common good.

This article considers intersections between cultural studies and New Testament studies. It ponders and focuses on possible approaches to the bearing of the ‘cultural turn’ on biblical studies. Following a brief consideration of cultural studies and its potential value for New Testament studies, four promising developments in cultural studies approaches to the New Testament are noted.Keywords: Cultural Studies; Postcolonial; Gender; Ideology; Autobiography

This article explores the complex relationship of anthropology with the study of popular culture in southern Africa. In an insightful review of South African culture studies, Karin Barber argued a decade ago that while South African culture studies of the early post-apartheid era closely followed the model of British cultural studies, two of the British school’s characteristics were lacking in the South African studies, i.e., ethnographic depth and attention to audiences. These absences seemed astounding, Barber wrote, considering the distinguished history of South African anthropology.

There has been much criticism – and an overall unfortunate dismissal – of William R. Jones' Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology (1973) in the literature of Black liberation theology. What is undertheorized, however, is the constructive possibilities of Jones' work. Analyzing the theological debate between Jones and James H. Cone provides us with the necessary material in order to construct a Black theology that commences with the assumptions of Jones' theodicy. I argue that theodicy is a useful “controlling category” for Black liberation theology, but only – and here I am following Kant – as a result of how its collapses rational arguments for believing in God/liberation. And it is precisely this failure that makes it profoundly useful as an avenue into understanding the contours of “Black faith” that undergirds Black liberation theology.

W THE theological and cultural history of the sixties is written, the black renaissance will surely be considered one of the dominant factors in the period. Not only in civil rights but also in literature, history, culture, and theology, the black awakening has led to a new awareness of black peoplehood and personhood. From a theological standpoint the most striking aspects of this whole revolution have been the new appraisals of black religion and the emergence of a distinctive black theology. The catalytic book in the movement now appears to have been Joseph Washington's Black Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1964), which showed that there are elements of black history and church life which do not fit into the established categories of white theology, and that in fact white Christianity (in all of its diverse traditional forms) is sick unto death because of its deep intertwinings with paternalistic and/or oppressive societies. A second influential book which deepened the analysis of a distinctive black theology and which showed its affinities with the emerging mood of black militancy was James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Seabury, 1968). Cone condemned the black churches for so docilely having subscribed to the white man's faith and thereby reinforcing the tentacles of racism in American society. The advocates of black power, he argued, have a more realistic appraisal of the black condition and hence offer a more viable alternative to blacks for the elimination of oppression. Black theology attempts to read the Bible from the distinctive perspective of black suffering and thereby provides a bridge between the Christian heritage and black militancy. The search for an authentic, indigenous black theology quickly spread beyond Washington and Cone, and soon a considerable body of literature was emerging which was analyzing the black church and the black religious heritage in a new light. Washington's The Politics of God (Boston: Beacon, 1967) and Albert B. Cleage, Jr.'s The Black Messiah (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968) received considerable attention, and Cone provided the first systematic exposition of a black theology in his A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970). The strident antiwhite posture of Cone made him the foremost interpreter of black theology and indeed a controversial figure even in the black community. Recently, however, two other attempts at a black

Transnational intra-African migration and intracontinental diasporas have increasingly become the focus of social science scholars who have attempted to shift attention away from the hegemonic Global North–centered study of migration toward the complexities and multiplicities of previously marginalized transnational movements within the African continent. This body of research has consistently rejected sensationalizing false claims of an “African exodus” to Europe and North America by highlighting that transnational migration within Africa is at least on par with migration away from the continent, while migration between different states in sub-Saharan Africa outweighs extracontinental migration. Studies on African migrations and diasporic narratives largely remain tethered to prevailing South-North frameworks that continue to structure literary migration studies globally. Existing work on transnational intracontinental migration and diasporic literatures mainly examines contemporary writing, which risks framing intracontinental movements as solely a present-day phenomenon. These studies often continue to rely on conventional teleological templates that closely link African literatures to narratives of the nation, moving from anticolonial resistance, cultural nationalism, and postcolonial disillusionment to experiences of migration and diaspora following the ruinous structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the 1980s. Rereading texts of the epic tradition, narratives of enslavement, literatures of the Mfecane, colonial labor migrations, anticolonial exile, and postindependence disillusionment for traces of intracontinental migratory lives places African migration and diasporic literatures onto a broader geographical and temporal canvas. It demonstrates that intra-African cross-border movements have been integral to African literary forms from the very beginning. The growing body of contemporary literary and cultural texts engaging with intracontinental migrations and other forms of mobilities and diasporic formations demonstrates how present-day neoliberal border regimes on the continent, born of the violence of colonial border impositions, elicit a wide range of cultural responses that demand a longer historical perspective. While these texts situate migratory movements within ongoing legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism, they also bring into view the deeply varied local political, economic, and social realities of intracontinental migratory and diasporic lives across time and different regions that bypass the Global North as a migratory center. Grounded in a pluriversal approach to migration literatures, the reading of intracontinental migration and diasporic works also calls for a broader generic canvas, incorporating oral literatures, newsprint literature, and various popular forms, which are often erased by the dominance of the novel in contemporary African literary migration and diasporic studies. A re-examination of African literary histories through the lens of intracontinental migrations and diaspora allows for the tracing of continuities and discontinuities between different generations of African writers rather than examining migration through the lens of recency.

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Mark Sneed, Social Scientific Approach to the Hebrew Bible, Religion Compass 2/3 (2008) pp. 287–300, 10.1111/j.1749‐8171.2008.00072.x Author’s Introduction The social science approach to the Hebrew Bible has steadily gained in popularity in recent years. It is heir to the older and formerly dominant historical critical approach to the Bible but focuses on society as whole instead of just kings, high priests, and the elite. And it goes beyond the also popular social history approach by incorporating social theory into its interpretation of texts and Israelite society. It transforms the two dimensional portrayal of biblical characters in Scripture into three dimensional flesh and blood figures whose lives are motivated and shaped by larger societal forces. The social science approach also aids in foregrounding the ‘Otherness’ of the biblical text, demonstrating how the biblical text reflects a culture that is unfamiliar to our modern Western world. It also serves as a check against the currently popular literary critical approach to the Bible that has a tendency to blunt that strangeness of the ancient text and read modern cultural assumptions and notions back into the same text. But the social science approach has also become more postmodern, and its adherents are not naïve about how their own social locations influence the way they interpret Scripture and the choices they make regarding what models they apply to the biblical text. Biblical sociologists have also become more skeptical about the reliability of ancient texts for reconstructing socio‐historical reality because of their inherently biased character and have proposed ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. And finally, the social science approach has become more self‐conscious of the speculative nature of applying theoretical models to ancient texts and the danger of making the text fit the model. However, in spite of this, biblical sociologists believe it is worth the risk and that their approach makes an important contribution to biblical criticism and that it makes biblical studies exciting and relevant. Online Materials 1. http://www.kchanson.com/ A fascinating site from a New Testament sociologist. It contains tremendous amounts of information including archaeological photos, bibliographies (e.g. ‘The Old Testament: Social Sciences &amp; Social Description’), and numerous links to other related sites like Ancient World on the Web (with over 250 www‐sites) and to electronic journals. 2. http://virtualreligion.net/vri/ Its Biblical Studies: Social World of the Bible provides links to electronic journals and other related sites, some with photos. 3. http://sites.google.com/site/biblicalstudiesresources/ This site has a Hebrew Bible Resources category that includes electronic journals and the homepages of three Hebrew Bible sociologists: Don Benjamin, David J. A. Clines, and Philip Davies, with some of their articles. 4. http://courses.missouristate.edu/VictorMatthews/ Homepage of a preeminent Hebrew Bible anthropologist and Ancient Near Eastern expert that contains bibliographies and numerous links to other related sites and to electronic journals. 5. http://www.socioweb.com/ The Socio Web has links to great sites that often have articles on various sociological topics and social theorists. 6. http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/index.html A Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace is an amazing site that is colourful and filled with articles about and guides to various aspects of sociology and links to numerous related sites. 7. http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/w3virtsoclib/index.html WWW Virtual Library: Sociology: Theories has wonderful articles on the primary theorists in sociology and related resources. 8. http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2005/0100/0101.php#trans The Denver Journal has various related resources, and its Annotated Old Testament Bibliography: Sociological and Anthropological Studies is helpful. Annotated Reading List 1. Weber, Max. Ancient Judaism. Translated by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale. New York: Free, 1952 So fortuitous for biblical sociologists, one of the fathers of sociology theorizes on the development of the Israelite religion from a comparative religion standpoint; a classic. It is not the easiest read, so it should be reserved for graduate students. 2. Gottwald, Norman K. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 bce. Paperback ed. The Biblical Seminar. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999 The father of modern Hebrew Bible sociology draws on Durkheim, Weber, and especially Marx to trace the development of the early Israelite faith that sprang from a confederation of recently liberated peasants; another classic. Compare the following reviews: Bernhard W. Anderson ( Theology Today 38 [1981]: 107–8 – mainly critical); Robert R. Wilson ( Interpretation 38 [1982]: 71–4 – generally positive); Carol Meyers ( Catholic Biblical Quarterly 43 [1981]: 104–9 – somewhat positive). 3. Gottwald, Norman K. The Hebrew Bible: A Brief Socio‐Literary Introduction. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009 This abridged version of the 1985 classic introduces the student broadly to biblical sociology and then applies it book by book to the Hebrew Bible. Compare the following reviews of the unabridged version: J. J. M. Roberts ( Theology Today 43 [1987]: 580–1 – generally negative); Robert Gnuse ( Currents in Theology and Mission 13 [1986]: 174–5 – generally positive). </jats:

This article explores how the UK asylum system creates a sanctioned discrimination that racializes and marginalizes asylum seekers through legal, economic and moral exclusion. Using ethnoproduction, a visual, practice-based methodology developed to ethically engage with vulnerable participants, the research centres on the lived experiences of asylum seekers. Through the collaborative creation of the feature script Between, the study reveals how restrictions on work, housing and legal status intersect with racial capitalism and neoliberal governance to produce a liminal existence marked by waiting, dependency and dehumanization. This article argues that asylum policy operates as a covert form of racism, legitimized through state narratives of legality and moral worth. By foregrounding composite fictional characters, the research challenges dominant representations and offers a critical lens on how race, migration status and economic precarity are entangled in the UK's hostile environment.

Intertextuality is a hermeneutical strand of poststructuralism. In biblical scholarship, since Hays’s influential work Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989), the term has also been employed to refer to a later text’s interpretation of an earlier text. Regrettably, however, for the past three decades, scholars have failed to come to a consensus on how to understand and apply intertextuality in New Testament studies. Though both literary and biblical studies employ the same term intertextuality, their conception and application of intertextuality differs substantially. Accordingly, this essay will sketch how literary and biblical studies have perceived and utilized the concept of intertextuality. Following this, the study will evaluate these approaches. Finally, the present essay will conclude with a proposal for how to relate intertextuality and New Testament studies that is a cogent middle ground between poststructuralism and biblical studies, thereby compensating for both sides’ deficiencies.

In the context of a renewed interest in Marxism outside biblical studies, this article surveys and critiques the background and current status of a similar renewal in biblical studies. It begins with a consideration of the background of current studies in liberation, materialist and political theologies, and moves on to note the division between literary and social scientific uses of Marxist theories. While those who used Marxist literary methods were initially inspired by Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson, more recent work has begun to make use of a whole tradition of Marxist literary criticism largely ignored in biblical studies. More consistent work, however, has taken place in the social sciences in both Hebrew Bible and New Testament studies. In Hebrew Bible studies, debates focus on the question of mode of production, especially the domestic or household mode of production, while in New Testament studies, the concerns have been with reconstructing the context of the Jesus movement and, more recently, the Pauline correspondence. I close with a number of questions concerning the division into different areas of what is really a holistic approach to texts and history.

Thus far few effective contacts have been made between recent process thought and New Testament studies. Work on one side seems little affected by work on the other. Partly responsible for this alienation, which is indicative of the relationship between contemporary theology and biblical studies in general, is the direction that biblical studies took under the leadership of Rudolf Bultmann, for whom empirical and socio-historical concerns were not germane to faith. Equally responsible is the direction that process theology took under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Harshorne, who saw their task less as the explication of specifically Christian tradition and experience, and more as the elucidation of the general features of reality. Recently a body of literature in Old and New Testament studies that attempt to bridge this gap has been developed. Whatever importance the interaction between biblical studies and process thought may be for biblical scholarship, it is vital for process theology. John B. Cobb, Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology at the School of Theology at Claremont, Avery Professor of Religion at the Claremont Graduate School, and Director of the Center for Process Studies. He has published books and articles on various aspects of process theology, including Christ in a Pluralistic Age (The Westminster Press, 1975) and Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, coauthored with David R. Griffin (The Westminster Press, 1976).

In 2018, the Sunday School instructor of my Mormon congregation was assigned to teach the stories about Lot found in Genesis 19. The teacher confessed that he was very uncomfortable discussing these narratives. Instead, he chose to review several recent General Conference addresses. Not long after, another teacher was leading a discussion on the book of Numbers. One attendee noted that the passages portrayed a morally suspect deity,1 inconsistent with the God of Mormon teaching.Discomfort with conflicts between Old Testament teachings and contemporary beliefs has plagued Christians, including Mormons, from their respective beginnings.2 Whether and how to approach such problems while best promoting faith has occasioned considerable debate. Some LDS Church leaders have favored attempts to resolve inconsistencies while others have advocated shielding their adherents from controversies. The choice of the latter in recent decades has resulted in a generation of Mormons protected from difficult issues in biblical interpretation. Conversely, during the early twentieth century, Church leaders encouraged the production of educational materials that addressed scriptural problems. These were initially written by faithful scholars who had been formally educated in non-biblical fields. This effort was significantly advanced during the 1930s and 1940s when professionally trained biblical scholars became available.3 The two most prominent scholars to come out of this period were Sidney Sperry (1895–1977) and Heber Snell (1899–1974).Sperry and Snell were the first active Mormon scholars to obtain PhDs in biblical studies, both from the University of Chicago in 1931 and 1940, respectively.4 Both were highly respected college instructors in the Church Educational System throughout most of their careers. Church leaders requested both to author an Old Testament textbook for use in the Church's institutes of higher education, works intended to exemplify the best scholarship adapted to a Mormon context.5 Yet, Sperry and Snell disagreed over how such a project would be best accomplished. Their disputes exposed many important questions and methodological issues that needed addressing for such a task to succeed. In this study, we will examine some of the disputes that Sperry and Snell chose to address, their suggested approaches, and how these fared. I argue that, although presenting significant challenges, the work of Sperry and Snell show us that the integration of critical biblical scholarship and Mormon tradition is possible and helpful, at least for some disputes, and that their pioneering efforts are worth continuing.In the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, traditional Christian biblical interpretations were increasingly being challenged by liberal biblical scholars employing the modernist techniques of “higher criticism.” As Harvard historian William R. Hutchison has noted, these ideas had infiltrated virtually all American denominations and “had attained a voice equal to those of the older and newer conservatisms that opposed it.”6 The liberal biblical literary critics were principally concerned with (1) authorship, date, and place of composition, (2) literary form, and (3) historical value.7 As such, a primary aim was to discover the original meaning of the text, or, in other words, the literal meaning in historical context. As one scholar from the early twentieth century explained, such studies required the use of “scientific methods . . . without regard to authority of any kind.”8Disputes between conservative and liberal biblical scholars were often bitter and included personal attacks. Regarding the latter, New York liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick pointed out in a famous 1922 sermon that liberal and conservative theologians tend to view each other in unflattering stereotyped ways. Conservatives accuse liberal thinkers of being “reckless radicals gifted with intellectual ingenuity but lacking spiritual depth” whereas liberals characterize conservatives as “illiberal and intolerant.”9 As we will see, some liberal and conservative Mormon scholars were also not above leveling such assaults on the character of their opponents.At first, Mormon leaders found themselves challenged by the liberal biblical innovations.10 Early in the twentieth century, there were high-profile sanctions and defections, most visibly three professors who were dismissed from Brigham Young Academy in 1911.11 On one hand, this Mormon “modernism controversy” resulted in significant student support for the dismissed professors,12 making it more difficult for Church leaders to completely reject the new biblical scholarship. On the other hand, Church leaders retained serious concern that this kind of scholarship eroded the faith of the young. As apostle James E. Talmage observed in 1914: “higher critics of the scriptures . . . [who] profess doubt as to the truth and plain meaning of the Holy Scriptures” were having “pernicious” effects on young Mormons, who “are impressed by those who instruct them.”13 For Church leaders like Talmage, it was evident that a clearer definition of boundaries for the Church's religion instructors was needed.In response to the 1911 controversy at Brigham Young Academy, Church president Joseph F. Smith emphasized that the professors were dismissed not because they taught the new ideas but because they gave them inappropriate priority.14 He attempted to create a middle position, acknowledging that “the higher criticism” might reveal “many truths.”15 In so doing, Smith laid the groundwork for a moderate approach that allowed toleration of the findings of critical biblical scholars as long as they did not challenge core Mormon doctrines. Smith's policy of moderation was soon reflected in official Church teaching manuals.16 But none of the Mormon scholars of this era had the mastery afforded by formal training in biblical scholarship.The reasons for the subsequent integration of formally trained biblical scholars into the Church Educational System are complex and multifactorial. Historian Leonard Arrington observed that during the 1920s, “Scientists were taking over the study and interpretation of the Bible by means of the ‘Higher Criticism.’”17 This and other issues were challenging the traditional faith of the increasing number of young Mormons undergoing higher education. To address the problem, some Church leaders concluded that they needed more sophisticated college-level religious instruction in conjunction with the college curriculum. They organized the first Institute of Religion at the University of Idaho in 1926. Its first director, J. Wyley Sessions, wanted to include courses on “religious philosophy and Bible history” for college credit and successfully negotiated this with the university administration on the conditions that (1) the instructors had at least a master's degree and qualified for faculty appointments and (2) no course content could be “sectarian in religion or partisan in politics.”18 College credit was continuing at some institute programs twenty-five years later,19 suggesting the ongoing significance of having trained teachers of institute classes while Sperry and Snell were doing their work.Historian Casey Paul Griffiths has suggested other possible reasons underlying the impulse to upgrade the scholarly credentials of Church educators. One was the desire of Church leaders to pattern the new Mormon secondary school seminaries after the University of Idaho model. Another may have arisen from Church educators themselves, as evidenced by their enthusiastic responses following exposure to critical biblical scholarship. In the mid-1920s, Sperry and Snell sought outside formal education in biblical studies at the University of Chicago and the Pacific School of Religion, respectively. Both conveyed their new knowledge to their peers in the Church Educational System, receiving rave reviews. These were reinforced after University of Chicago New Testament scholar Edgar J. Goodspeed visited the educators’ annual Aspen Grove summer school in 1930.20 Additionally, Church leaders noted that Sperry did not seem to suffer any negative consequences following his exposure to liberal ideas.21 Thus resulted what Griffiths has dubbed “the Chicago experiment,” in which, beginning in 1930, several Church religious educators were encouraged to seek formal education at the University of Chicago Divinity School. These students returned to the Church Educational System and introduced innovations that were then disseminated in Church-sponsored manuals,22 in educational sessions for other Church instructors, and in the classroom. Yet Church leaders at the highest level remained split throughout this decade on some of the key issues in modernism. In 1934, Church president Heber J. Grant chose Joshua Reuben Clark Jr. as first counselor and David O. McKay as second in the First Presidency. McKay favored a moderate approach, while Clark opposed liberal biblical scholarship.23In 1938, Clark instructed Church educators that “You are not to teach the philosophes of the world. . . . Your sole field is the gospel.”24 Ecclesiastical leaders who supported Clark's positions became known as “Clark men,” most prominently senior apostle Joseph Fielding Smith Jr. Those favoring McKay's stance were “McKay men.”25 In 1940, Grant suffered a dominant hemisphere stroke, leaving him progressively disabled until his death in 1945. During this time, four new apostles were chosen, all Clark men, presumably due to Clark's influence. They would go on to figure prominently in the shift of Mormonism in a fundamentalist direction in the latter twentieth century, but that is another story.26As illustrated by these examples, there was a spectrum of opinions among Church leadership regarding biblical criticism during the 1920s and 1930s and afterward. Mormon philosopher Sterling McMurrin identified three categories: “unbelievers” who prioritize biblical criticism, “believers . . . who attempt a reconciliation,” and “believers . . . who reject knowledge and science and affirm faith and the revelation only.”27 McMurrin typified the first group, while Clark and Joseph Fielding Smith characterized the last. However, the ground between these two extremes was quite large. I suggest that Sperry and Snell represented the conservative- and liberal-leaning spectrums, respectively, of the middle group. By the 1960s, McMurrin noted: “For many years, Professors Snell and Sperry have been the undisputed leaders of the main wings of Bible scholarship in the LDS Church.”28 Not surprisingly, Sperry had the more amicable relationship with Smith and Snell with McMurrin.29By whatever combination of nature and nurture, Sperry came to his higher education with an inclination toward religious conservatism. In 1926, he received a master's degree in Old Testament from the University of Chicago Divinity School with the thesis “The Text of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.” But Sperry was not entirely comfortable with the liberal emphasis of the Divinity School instructors.30 In 1931 he received a PhD from the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature. Sperry then participated in the American Schools of Oriental Research Jerusalem School in 1931 and 1932, gaining expertise in Palestinian archeology.Sperry quickly became the Church's most respected formally educated Old Testament scholar, and his lectures on the Old Testament were enthusiastically received by his Church Educational System peers.31 Franklin L. West, the Commissioner of Church Education (1936–1953), requested that Sperry write a text for the study of the Old Testament.32 His finished work, The Spirit of the Old Testament, was published by the Church in 1940. The book reflected both a sympathy for Mormon tradition, including quotations from Mormon scripture, and a high level of scholarship. Sperry described his methodology: “Where questions of Biblical criticism have been dealt with, conservative views have generally been adopted.”33 Sperry's book was used by instructors in the Church Educational System for many years, including by Snell.34 In 1970, at the urging of “friends and colleagues,” Sperry published a second, expanded edition of his book.35 Sperry's expertise in the Old Testament was also utilized in the composition of Church manuals for Sunday worship.36 Sperry taught at Brigham Young University until his mid-seventies, retiring in 1971.Snell came to his higher education comfortable within a liberal environment. He had been a student of William Chamberlin, one of the professors who came under criticism in the 1911 controversy at Brigham Young Academy. James M. McLachlan has termed Chamberlin “Mormonism's first professionally trained philosopher and theologian.”37 Snell adopted Chamberlin's linear progressive development view of Old Testament theological beliefs, which beliefs, Chamberlin felt, gradually matured under intermittent divine interventions.38 Snell received his PhD in New Testament studies in 1941 under the supervision of University of Chicago historian and liberal New Testament scholar Shirley Jackson Case. Under Case's sociohistorical method, a linear progressive view of Christian history was postulated in which early Christians progressed in their knowledge and understanding in stages.39 Snell likely had some sympathies for this view, although he probably would have amended Case's model with a greater degree of divine guidance.While Snell was writing a manual for Church instruction in the New Testament and early Christian history, Franklin West requested that he produce a text for Old Testament study.40 This may seem surprising since Snell was a New Testament scholar, and Sperry had already published a textbook. Several factors may have contributed to the request for another manual. First, as noted above, a few non-Church colleges were still granting college credit for some institute courses. College certification would require the use of a textbook that reflected adequate scholarship and, unlike Sperry's, that lacked denominational dogma.41 Second, West was impressed with Snell's approaches to the Old Testament problems, which Snell had enumerated in enthusiastically received presentations to Mormon educators.42 Snell had also delivered a popular series of lectures on the Bible, which West felt were “very fine.” West expressed admiration for Snell's scholarship.43 In addition, West was intrigued by Snell's emphasis on Old Testament history and his progressive idealistic approach.44 Referring to one purpose for his book, Snell noted that “It is worth everything to our youth, in these days of confusion, to accept the view that God was, and is, vitally at work in history.”45 Thus, Snell's task was more difficult than Sperry's; Snell was to write a text that would be compatible with Mormon teaching, help Mormon college-age young adults resolve intellectual and theological problems, and be acceptable to secular college administrators. Conflicts among these goals would prove problematic.Despite his support of Snell's work, West ultimately declined to publish the book with the Church because, as Richard Sherlock has pointed out, “he knew that some of his superiors would not approve” of Snell's scholarship.46 West's primary concern was Joseph Fielding Smith. Smith, a formidable conservative adversary, chaired the executive committee of the Church Board of Education and, more importantly, the Church Publications Committee, which approved “all literature of a religious nature to be used in texts for our schools, seminaries, and auxiliaries.47 A key to the success of any work intended for Church education was avoiding the opposition of Smith.48 We will encounter some examples of Smith's considerable influence below.Snell privately published the resulting book, Ancient Israel: Its Story and Meaning, in 1948. West purchased 121 copies for the institute and seminary libraries as a reference work, where many copies remained several years later.49 The book received positive reviews in non-Mormon venues and was used by Snell and a few other Mormon and non-Mormon instructors in institute and college courses, demonstrating its intended versatility.50West was right not to try to get the book past Joseph Fielding Smith. After the book was published, Smith objected to Snell's acceptance of biblical historical criticism, the lack of references to Mormon biblical proof texts, and Snell's progressive view of history. Some other Church leaders disagreed. Levi Edgar Young characterized the book as “a fine piece of work” and John Widtsoe as doing “very well in retaining the Latter-day Saint interpretation of the Old Testament.”51 Former Commissioner of Church Education and apostle Joseph F. Merrill characterized the work as “scholarly” and “conservative,” aptly suited for institute “credit courses.”52 Yet, Smith's influence proved decisive. Smith ultimately banned Snell's book for use in Mormon institute courses and crystalized his anti-liberal views, specifically unfavorably quoting Snell's book, in his Man, His Origin and Destiny (1954).53 Snell appealed to Church presidents George Albert Smith and David O. McKay to reverse Smith's ban on his book with no resolution.54 Despite continued vigor and desire to remain in his teaching position,55 Snell's contract was not renewed in 1950,56 and he retired at the age of sixty-seven. Snell's book was published in a revised second edition in 1957 and reprinted by the University of Utah Press in 1963.Although Snell's text was officially rejected, some of his approaches lived on through West, who himself published a textbook for Old Testament study in Mormon secondary school seminaries in 1950.57 Apparently designed for a high school accredited seminary course, West's text was also devoid of Mormon teachings, presented in a historical format, and even contained a final chapter entitled “God in History.”A major challenge facing Sperry and Snell in writing their textbooks on the Old Testament was devising effective ways to handle the conflicts between liberal biblical scholarship and traditional Mormon teaching. The effort to reconcile these two perspectives entails a high level of intellectual command of both sides, the ability to compromise, a sincere belief in Mormonism, and considerable ingenuity. As apostle and John who had his attempts to address the conflicts between science and “It is very difficult . . . to write a book on any that the scholarship of the and the of these latter In addressing Sperry and Snell could among three the liberal or the traditional In this one attempts to the other that the and are and be We will this a a of A of may several The following will be important in the that or found in the scriptures themselves may be on author author or In a of scriptural are as of We will use a of as a more of an in which of both scholarly positions are into a new A may a into the of and that the positions are also the more on the In their Sperry and Snell also needed to be to and to be of the include from is because it has not been proved to inappropriate not from the and the than the is also important to which to often and The most important for this study are the the under and the with Mormon core addressing the This may be in several the at a of a of in which both of the are presented leaving the final to the an for that the is not of adequate for what we will examine key the approaches of Sperry and and how the ideas of each fared. The first three issues are from an address Snell gave to a of Church educators in issues that Snell felt were important to his Old Testament institute The two are issues that Sperry and respectively, were concerned I will to the scholarly biblical critical that Sperry and Snell themselves or one of into the In to for and other problems in the biblical critics had that three had been a to the Genesis through to which had been The were all well after The is known as the and it with the traditional view of authorship, which to be at least for the first of by Mormon for the a He that this the of For the of to the such problems be best he I a which that the several come from a resolve these problems and I of no other which Another of interpretation in this is that we to be in our by of the themselves, and by such as may than by both the of the critical and the of in Mormon tradition, to a of it be that the of the Old was in the days of by could that the Old Testament the of over a period of about one Sperry to the of Genesis as the or in the leaving for the to on the and the Sperry's stance of is is by his of as the author and of Genesis in a Church to because of attempts to Joseph Fielding Smith. Smith that Snell's of liberal scholarship on the of both evidenced by a from Smith, and of of Smith Snell for lacking and since “the of God are not by the of work did not the level of criticism from Smith and was adopted by some of his in their Church For the for Sperry student other materials have been to from which he could in by and as a number of Old Testament passages that we tend to these negative with and this our in these of doubt on the of the Old Testament and its favored an author on his view of progressive history. He that of God are due to into of the personal and of the “The stories which of the Old Testament some in a they are as of out of which, by the of the the he some student might not God the in all we at that to Bible teaching He But this by no means with it the that ideas of God are the in all These have even within the Old Testament who was in scriptural and a that because of their are not to an For this were to by employing which Sperry in a As he noted: Another was to reveal God to is so portrayed as to him more to the of His The is represented as in with He to the to their understanding and He was described as being of the to truth and and to who all As a of and He was with since that which they was designed for their . . . was above all a God of is on and where God that are of and were my in their after the of their that they might come to demonstrating its Snell could for his by the of such as who the of in his writing his of progressive and his of scriptural and were by conservative Mormons like Smith. in response to Smith that “The knowledge of God was known among the first of this and of the Church . . . are under to accept the Bible as the of God as as it is Sperry's was in his official by the also in the second edition of his book, which was published and by the Church's Book by a in the for three biblical scholars the of the book of Conversely, liberal biblical critics concluded that the be as and the book of is, as scholars from the had of historical but a with a . . . that is not the God of the but the God of all the that the book of although not completely may historical the has in to a “The I use is the that the book of is not history not possible historical but a with a teaching with Snell that it is to on the of the but also the problems in some as Sperry felt that of and were are more concerned with the teachings of the Book of than with or problems of criticism.” For those to it more Sperry the the view and the He then to the interpretation of the Book of the student of course, due to all of the pointed out Sperry suggested several divine is the of to divine the of is