Review
Title: Verse by Verse : the Old Testament
Author: D. Kelly Ogden, Andrew C. Skinner
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Commentary on scripture
Year Published: 2013; revised edition 2021
Number of pages: Vol: 484; Vol 2: 492
Binding: Trade paperback
ISBN13, volume 1: 978-1-63993-000-5
ISBN13, volume 2: 978-1-63993-001-2
Price: $23.99 for each volume
Reviewed by Dennis Clark for the Association for Mormon Letters
This is not really a verse-by-verse commentary. Nor is it written to accompany the Come, Follow Me manual for study in 2022 of the Old Testament. As Ogden and Skinner declare in the preface, “the division between our volumes reflects the way in which courses on the Old Testament are structured in the institutes of religion … and on the campuses of Brigham Young University.” That structure is essentially chronological, with verses addressed, as nearly as can be determined, in chronological order. This order differs from both the order of books in the Authorized Version which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published in 1979 — commonly known as the “King James” translation — and the order established in the Masoretic text by Jewish scholars. Also, the primary focus of the commentary is “the human family’s first testament of Jesus Christ,” which means that other elements of the Old Testament will receive short shrift.
As noted at the end of both volumes, the authors have excellent credentials for undertaking a scholarly commentary on the Old Testament. But in writing this specifically for students in the institutes of religion and classes at BYU, they have to seek and get approval for everything said in the books, a process that tends to homogenize their work. And it means that at times they will write down to their audience.
An instance of their writing down occurs early in the introduction. Skinner and Ogden say that “In Jesus’ day, the scriptures were the canonical books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, often called the Torah, which included the Law, the Prophets and the Writings” [2; emphasis added]. It may be true that the Old Testament was often called the Torah, but not by the readers in Jesus’ day. Torah refers only to the Law, or the first five books; the Prophets, or Nevi’im were not included in that designation, nor were the Writings, or Ketuvim. And they may have been reading these works in the Septuagint, a Greek translation still in use among adherents to Orthodox churches today, which predates many of the texts used to establish the Masoretic text a millennium later, in the 10th century CE. At this point, it might have been a good idea to introduce the modern initialism Tanakh by which many Jewish readers now refer to all three collections. But it is far from certain which texts were in use in Jesus’ day, as the discovery of the Qumran library, the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, also attests.
The scrolls of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings were kept in synagogues to be used in worship, to be read aloud, and that is what the translators of the Authorized Version mean with the phrase “appointed to be read in churches.” They translated for the reading voice. Robert Alter, introducing his new translation of the Tanakh, cites Gerald Hammond’s conclusion that the King James Version “remains the closest approach for English readers to the original — despite its frequent and at time embarrassing inaccuracies, despite its archaisms, and despite its insistent substitution of Renaissance English tonalities and rhythms for biblical ones.” And his new translation, which he has been working on and publishing in parts for decades, is a decidedly literary translation, one which seeks to restore the tonalities and rhythms of the Hebrew and avoid those inaccuracies. Ogden and Skinner seem to have ignored Alter’s work, although it has been appearing since 1996 in parts.
On the next page, they describe the differences very plainly, in Tanakh order, discussing what and how Jesus taught: “He used three books as principal sources for his instruction: Deuteronomy to deal with hard questions and difficult situations, such as when others tried to tempt or entrap him,” which is from the Torah; “Isaiah to teach of himself and to teach his disciples,” which is from Nevi’im; and “Psalms to teach the people, and they were some of the scriptures from which he quoted most often” [3], which is from Ketuvim, the writings. This may seem like nit-picking because I have not read all 996 pages in the two weeks I have been reading these texts; but to me, such moments are missed opportunities.
Skinner and Ogden are silent as regards the Septuagint as well, which may have been the text known to many Jewish readers in Jesus’ day. Saul of Tarsus says that he could read Hebrew and Greek; as a Roman citizen he could probably read Latin as well, and among many Jews of the diaspora that ability would not have been unusual. Jesus, as a carpenter from Nazareth, however intelligent he was, may not have had access to that kind of education.
Although this is a commentary, it does not usually comment verse by verse, but segment by segment. Ogden and Skinner begin verse by verse with Genesis, but by the time they get to the story of the testing of Abraham, they give 8 pages of commentary to 19 verses, drawing heavily on the parallels between Abraham’s being tested and then released from the test, and Elohim sacrificing his only begotten son. Alter points out that the phrase “Behold, here I am” with which Abraham answers the Lord, then soothes Isaac, then speaks to the angel, is a single word — hineni — in the Hebrew, which is a detail obscured by the translation in the Authorized Version “Behold, here I am”. The italicized words in that translation, as Skinner and Ogden pointed out early on, are supplied by the translators, but the single word in the Hebrew is not ambivalent. Alter translates it as “Here I am,” but in his notes is clear that it is a single word, repeated thrice. This is the kind of precision I would appreciate in a commentary on such a vexing story.
Another vexing story, just a few chapters further on, is Genesis 32:22-32, the story of Jacob’s night of wrestling with an antagonist who gives him the new name Israel, which, as we have been recently reminded, can be understood as “God will prevail.” Alter points out a subtlety that, as he says, “to my knowledge has not been noted” by other commentators: “the pronouncement about the new name is not completely fulfilled. Whereas Abraham is invariably called ‘Abraham’ once the name is changed from ‘Abram,’ the narrative continues to refer to this patriarch in most instances as ‘Jacob.’” As Alter pointed out earlier in his note, the name “Jacob” derives from a root meaning “crooked.” And Jacob has been a sneak and a heel-grabber. Alter’s larger point, which goes to his process of translation, is that “in the parallelism of biblical poetry … ‘Jacob’ is always used in the first half of the line and ‘Israel,’ the poetic variation, in the second half.”
Another missed opportunity, one they tease within their introduction, is this:
The Old Testament is the foundation for both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. The doctrine presented in the Book of Mormon is built upon the teachings of the brass plates, which may have been a version of the Old Testament originating in the northern kingdom, just as our current Old Testament (the King James Version) is a reflection of the southern kingdom, or Judahite, version of the Old Testament record. The great Book of Mormon scholar Sidney B. Sperry said, “The Brass Plates may well have been the official scripture of the Ten Tribes.” [5]
Those ten tribes are known as Israel and include the descendants of Joseph, from whom Lehi was descended through Manasseh, as well as at least three other prophets not found in the Old Testament: Zenock, Neum, and Zenos.
What they miss is an interesting speculation regarding the family dynamics of Lehi’s group. The family left Jerusalem at some time after Josiah’s reforms; the brass plates contain:
a record of the Jews from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah; and also the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah; and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah. [1 Nephi 5:12-13]
This Zedekiah was “the kingdom of Judah’s last king of the Davidic line” [88], and his ascension to the throne can be dated to 597 BCE, according to Brant A. Gardner, in his Second Witness: Analytical And Contextual Commentary On The Book of Mormon, published in 2007. Josiah’s reign ended in 610/609 BCE, according to Wikipedia. In the 12 or 13 years between Josiah’s death and the start of Zedekiah’s reign, Judah had three other kings, none of whom continued the reforms of Josiah.
Brant Gardner suggests that the family may have been split along generational lines. Ogden and Skinner note that “Lehi’s sons Laman and Lemuel did not believe that Jerusalem could be destroyed,” as many prophets had prophesied to the people [1 Nephi 1:4]. Lehi seems to have believed those prophets, which is one reason he took the family out of the city. It is possible that Laman and Lemuel were adherents of the new Deuteronomic emphasis, and Lehi was an adherent of the older, Israelite, religion, which included the worship of a mother goddess, or Asherah, and the acknowledgment of a host of other gods in the heavens, both of which were targets of Josiah’s reforms. As this is a review of Skinner and Ogden’s work, I will leave it to the interested reader to consult Gardner’s work. Both Gardner and Alter are scholars writing for readers intensely interested in their subject matter.
In summary, and keeping in mind that I have not read the entire two books, I would simply say that because of the origin and the emphases of this work, it will be a welcome companion to those people interested in a conservative reading of the Old Testament with an LDS emphasis. But it should not be considered a true commentary in the sense that Gardner’s or Alter’s works are commentaries on sacred texts. It is more like a meta-commentary, drawing on statements by LDS general authorities made from before the Church was organized down to the present, which are uncritically included, and accepted — rather than a commentary on the Old Testament itself. I will continue to read it, alongside Alter’s translation and others, for the LDS perspective, but not for a verse-by-verse analysis.