This is a video of my presentation at the SANE Conference. The title of my paper was: “Two High Priesthoods? Evidence for Changes in the Priesthood from First to Second Temple Judaism.”
This was originally a paper that I wrote for an Old Testament class at Marquette University. I had to actually cut out a lot of it to fit it in the given time period. In fact, the paper I am reading for this presentation is about half the size of the original work. So, when you cut out that much, you end up losing some details. I hope, however, that in the end enough of my argument was preserved to make sense.
This presentation should not be taken as my final conclusions on these matters. Some of you may notice that some of the material in this paper has also been the subject of posts I have made here on this blog. This is a work in progress and I readily admit that there could be inconsistencies, speculation, faulty arguments, and errant conclusions. If anyone has any questions about the presentation, please feel free to contact me. I value all comments, corrections, complaints, and criticisms. Thanks!
I give great thanks to Bryce Haymond, of www.templestudy.com, for the great job of filming, editing, and posting these presentations. Thanks also to Dan McClellan, who did an excellent job of putting together this wonderful conference. Thanks also goes to all the other helpful hands who made this conference (and my participation in it) a possibility, especially my family and dear friends. Thank you for all your support!
Other SANE Presentations
Instead of posting each of the SANE presentations separately, I am providing a link here to Bryce Haymond’s post, where he provides links to all of the available presentations. He has done such a great job of putting all this together–I highly recommend looking at them via his site.
7 Comments
David:
Great job. I very much enjoyed the video!
This is a fascinating subject. But, I have used it for more than just idle curiosity. Having followed your thoughts on this, I have gathered a little more ammo into my possession.
My son is reading the Old Testament and he has been asking me some very interesting questions. Your insights have really helped me address those questions. Thanks!
-Littlefield
Hi David – I want to thank you for a very insightful presentation on this important topic. I thoroughly enjoyed it and consequently posted the video to my blog. Thank you for working with Bryce to make your presentation available. When I have worked as an ordinance worker at our temples, some of these concepts you mention have been illuminated.
Well done David. I finally got both time and a working PC together. Have you shared this with Margaret?
Kevin Christensen
Bethel Park, PA
Thanks, David! I’m glad some of these ideas were helpful to you in teaching your son. He may have had some of the same questions I did and that’s why I wrote the paper!
Thank you, Greg! I really appreciate your interest in the topic and thank you for posting the presentation on your blog! Your blog, by the way, is very well done, and I am posting a link to it here.
Kevin–I appreciate you taking a look at it. You know, I haven’t shared it with Margaret. Do you think I should? I guess I see her as being so busy with all her writing that I just didn’t imagine she would have time to see it. But maybe I will send it to her, now that you mention it. Thanks!
David
Whether she has time to comment or not, particularly at this time of year, I think she wouldn’t mind hearing about what you’re doing. And she’d probably be interested in the whole Sane meeting. She’s organzing her own Temple study group in England, and I understand the first papers from that group will soon be posted online. In Hamblin’s interviews, I recall some cross talk about the two temple study groups having common interests.
Kevin Christensen.
Bethel Park, PA
David:
Thank you for your interesting paper given at the SANE symposium. It provoked a lot of thought in my mind. If by Margaret you mean Margaret Barker, I think she would be very receptive to your paper. I e-mailed her once, a total stranger to her. She immediately sent me a reply as though I were a long lost friend. The related scriptures that you mentioned in the Bible referring to the order of Melchizedek are Gen. 14:18 which refers to Melchizedek as both a priest and king, Psalms 110:4, which is the central scripture of your paper and Hebrews 5 which focuses all these related concepts of priest, king, son, and holy order of Melchizedek on Christ. It is fascinating to me that what seems to be obscure references in the Old Testament to the “order of Melchizedek” which then suddenly blossoms again with the meridian Christ is so illuminated in Alma 13 and Abraham 1&2. How was that uneducated New York farm boy able to understand these concepts?
Mark,
Thanks for your insights. It is amazing how Joseph Smith got all this right. A fellow classmate once asked me how the Mormon church new so much about Melchizedek and his priesthood, imagining that Joseph Smith or someone had done all kinds of research into the subject. I told them that Joseph said he got it from God and that is all we know. And we can see how inspired he was now that there is so much more about Melchizedek available to us.
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[...] I recently returned (got back 1:00 am this morning) from the Regional American Academy of Religion/ Society of Biblical Literature conference for the Upper Midwest Region (held at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN). These smaller regional conferences are a great place to meet students and professors in your area who are studying topics involving religion. They are also a great venue for students to present research they have done — a number of my fellow students from Marquette University presented papers there. I had the opportunity to give a presentation on some of the research I’ve been doing on the Priesthood in the Old Testament — a version of the paper that I presented at the SANE conference at BYU in November (for more on this, see here). [...]