FAIR conference: LDS doctrine clear on divinity of one God

SALT LAKE CITY — A frequent point of contention by critics against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the doctrine that there is not just one, but a multiplicity of gods.

Yet allusions to that concept pervade the Bible as well as ancient Near Eastern culture, Mormon scholar David Bokovoy said Thursday. He spoke at the annual conference of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, at the South Towne Exposition Centre in Sandy.

Not formally affiliated with the church, the foundation seeks to counter criticism of Mormonism, primarily by means of websites and the annual conference. Formerly an instructor in the church's seminary and institute programs, Bokovoy holds a master's degree and is a doctoral candidate studying the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East studies. He spoke on the topic "Joseph Smith and the Biblical Council of Gods."

"The Prophet Joseph Smith, of course, produces that inspired Book of Abraham (in the Pearl of Great Price) that really rocks the foundation of the Christian world at the time," Bokovoy said, "when he, through this translation, revises Genesis, Chapter 1, the priestly version of the Creation, and introduces this concept of gods organizing the world."

He quoted Joseph Smith as sermonizing, "In the beginning, the head of the gods called a council of the gods. They came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it. When we begin to learn this way, that God exists in this council structure with other divine beings that he calls gods, we begin to learn the only true God and what kind of a being we have got to worship."

Bokovoy commented, "So this is not a superficial topic; it is really quite significant in terms of the Restoration."

There are differences, he acknowledged, "but there are some remarkable similarities between what Joseph introduces theologically through the Restoration and what biblical scholars now know to be true regarding the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and ancient Near Eastern tradition."

Bokovoy said William Dever, a renowned American biblical archaeologist, wrote that a generation ago, biblical scholars were nearly unanimous in thinking that belief in a single God had been predominant in ancient Israelite religion from the beginning. "Today, all that has changed," Dever wrote. "Virtually all mainstream scholars and even a few conservatives acknowledge that true monotheism emerged only in the period of the exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C. as the canon of the Hebrew Bible was taking shape."

"The canon," Bokovoy remarked, "not the books themselves. Because the books themselves clearly point to this concept of a multiplicity of gods who govern the affairs of the universe."

Textual evidence of this is "everywhere," he said.