Sneak Preview of In God's Image and Likeness 2

Head over to the main site to take a peek at one of the chapters of Jeff Bradshaw's upcoming book, In God's Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. The book will wrap up the final chapters and stories of the Book of Moses, and should hit the stores in 2014! Read more about the book here, or head straight over to the excerpts page to see a chapter on the Tower of Babel here.

Feel free to leave comments for the author to let him know your thoughts!

2013 Sidney B. Sperry Symposium on the Old Testament

Jeff will be presenting "The Tree of Knowledge as the Veil of the Sanctuary" at this year's Sperry Symposium, held on the BYU campus. The all-day event is open to the public, so feel free to stop in to hear his insights. Details are as follows:

Date: 26 October 2013 (10am)
Place: 445 MARB, Brigham Young University (map)
Admission: Free to the public (no registration required)

Consistent with recent scholarship that sees the Garden of Eden as a temple prototype, Ephrem the Syrian, a fourth-century bishop, called the Tree of Knowledge "the veil for the sanctuary." He pictured Eden as a great mountain, with the Tree of Knowledge providing an inner boundary partway up the slopes. The Tree of Knowledge, Ephrem concluded, "acts as a sanctuary curtain [i.e., a veil] hiding the Holy of Holies which is the Tree of Life.

For more information, visit the 2013 Sperry Symposium site by clicking here. Also, don't forget to register for Symposium on Science and Mormonism: Cosmos, Earth, and Man, which will be held on November 9, 2013, at the Utah Valley Convention Center! Jeff will be speaking there as well. More information on that can be found here.

Education Week

As a reminder, Jeff is teaching a course at BYU's Campus Education Week, which started yesterday and is going through Friday.

Title: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel
Location: 2254 BYU Conference Center (Link)
Date: 1:50-2:45pm, 19-23 August 2013

This four-part class will be an in-depth study of the lives and missions of Enoch and Noah, based on the teachings of the Pearl of Great Price and modern prophets. The prominence of temple themes in these accounts will be emphasized, and striking parallels to modern revelation found in writings from the ancient Near East will be described. We will also discuss the story of the Tower of Babel in its biblical and ancient Near East setting, and will explore how lessons from the stories of Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel apply to the Saints in our day.

BYU-ID Forum this week!

Jeff will be speaking at the BYU-ID forum this Thursday. This is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a question-and answer session.

BYU-Idaho University Forum
"Assistive Systems: Technologies that help people do, sense, and think"

Date: Thursday, 16 May 2013
Time: 2:00pm

Brigham Young University — Idaho
Taylor Building Chapel
525 S Center St.
Rexburg, UT (map)

The abstract is as follows:

One of the central research themes of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) is "assistive systems" - technologies that help people do, sense, and think. From advanced NASA space rovers to robotic assistants, from robotic legs for the disabled to devices that allow the blind to see through their tongue, and from advanced visualization to software agents that help analysts make sense of complex, high-tempo cyber events, Bradshaw will describe how researchers at IHMC increase human performance through technological innovations.

For more information about forums at BYU-ID, go here. More of his upcoming presentations can be found here.

Conference next week and other events

As a reminder, Jeff Bradshaw will be speaking the upcoming "Enoch and the Temple" Conference. The title of his presentation is "Ancient Affinities with the LDS Book of Enoch". Attendance is free. More information can be found at the Academy for Temple Studies and Mormon Interpreter sites.

Enoch and the Temple Conference

Tuesday, 19 February 2013 Time: 4:30-7:00pm Utah State University Geology Building, Room 105 Logan, UT (map)

Friday, 22 February 2013 Time: 1:00-4:00pm Brigham Young University 303 JRCB, Moot Court Room Provo, UT (map)

If you can't make it to the conference next week, he also has a few other speaking engagements later this year:

• BYU-Idaho University Forum (Thursday, 16 May 2013)
  "Assistive Systems: Technologies that help people do, sense, and think"
• BYU Campus Education Week (19-23 August 2013)
  "Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel"
• 2013 Sidney B. Sperry Symposium on the Old Testament (25-26 October 2013)
  "The Tree of Life as the Veil of the Sanctuary"

More information can be found on his website, and will be posted as the dates approach.

A Strange Story Explained: Temple Symbolism and the Garment of Noah

A particular story in Genesis seems peculiar to us because we misunderstand it. As we noted in Part 5 of this article, according to a statement attributed to Joseph Smith, “Noah was not drunk, but in a vision.” Now we seek to understand something more about this story.

How do we make sense of Noah’s being “uncovered” during his vision? Perhaps the closest Old Testament parallel to this practice is when Saul, like the prophets who were with him, “stripped off his clothes… and prophesied before Samuel… and lay down naked all that day and all that night.” Jamieson clarifies that “lay down naked” in this instance means only that he was “divested of his armor and outer robes.” In a similar sense, when we read in John 21:7 that Peter “was naked” as he was fishing, it simply means that “he had laid off his outer garment, and had on only his inner garment or tunic.”

Now to verse 22. How do we understand the statement that Ham “saw the nakedness of his father”? Reluctant to attribute the apparent gravity of Ham’s misdeed to the mere act of seeing, readers have often concluded in addition that Ham must have done something. For example, a popular proposal is that Ham committed unspeakable crimes against his mother or his father.

Wenham, however, wisely observes that “these and other suggestions are disproved by the next verse” that recounts how Shem and Japheth covered their father:

As Cassuto points out: “If the covering was an adequate remedy, it follows that the misdemeanor was confined to seeing.” The elaborate efforts Shem and Japheth made to avoid looking at their father demonstrate that this was all Ham did in the tent.

This is consistent with the proposal that the misdeed of Ham was in that he intrusively entered the Tent of Yahweh and saw Noah in the presence of God while the latter was “in the course of revelation.” This idea also fits well with what Hendel, Carr, Mettinger, Oden, and others have identified as an underlying theme throughout Genesis 1-11, namely “transgressions of boundaries” that had been set up in the beginning to separate the general run of mankind from the dwelling place of Divinity. Noah the righteous and blameless (an exception to those in his generation) was in a position to speak with God face-to-face, however Ham was neither qualified nor authorized to see (let alone enter) a place of divine glory.

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"Enoch and the Temple" Conference

Jeff has been invited to present at the upcoming "Enoch and the Temple" Conference, which will be held in Logan on 19 February and in Provo on 22 February. The working title of his presentation is "Ancient Affinities with the LDS Book of Enoch".

The event is free of charge. More information can be found at the Academy for Temple Studies and Mormon Interpreter sites.

Event details

Tuesday, 19 February 2013 Time: 4:30-7:00pm Utah State University Geology Building, Room 105 Logan, UT (map)

Friday, 22 February 2013 Time: 1:00-4:00pm Brigham Young University 303 JRCB, Moot Court Room Provo, UT (map)

Excerpt from the Academy's site:

The Academy for Temple Studies and the USU Religious Studies Program are very pleased to announce a distinguished co-sponsored program on “Enoch and the Temple,” with a keynote address by George W. E. Nickelsburg, emeritus professor of religion at the University of Iowa, member of the Enoch Seminar, and highly recognized expert on 1 Enoch. Among his many publications on the Enoch traditions is his landmark two-volume Hermeneia commentary on 1 Enoch. The second volume was published in 2012 by Fortress Press.

Please plan to attend. The public is invited. There will be no charge for this event, although voluntary contributions are welcomed.