extra credit

Joy Prior
REL A 304
Section 003
Extra Credit

I invited my parents to come to the symbolism in the scriptures with me. First they took me to dinner (so really it was a great deal for me) and afterwards we went to listen to the lectures. We listened to the last two lectures, so we were there for two hours. The first was about Baptism as a sign of obedience verses the concept that Baptism washes away our sins. Personally, I enjoyed the second lecture the most. In the second lecture the orator talked about the parable of the trend of two son parables in the Bible, namely the prodigal son, the man with two sons He asked to work in the field, Cain and Able, Ishmael and Isaac, and Lamanites and Nephites. Most of the lecture was spent developing the parable of the two sons working in the vineyard and the Prodigal son.
I have attached the copy of my notes from the lecture of the Prodigal Son… I would like to have my notes back. The speaker took away my paradigm of what the Prodigal Son is about. Most of his observations were centered around mistranslation or I guess more appropriately translation difficulties in the King James version of the Bible. It was remarkable to see how a single word made all of the difference in the sentence. The speaker used the translations in the Greek version of the Bible. For example when the Prodigal son chooses to leave the pigs and go home he says, “I will arise,” but in the Greek translation the word used more translates more closely to “resurrection.” The parable was littered with translation variations. What I appreciated though was that the speaker did not state, “this is what it means, and this is right,” but He left the parable open for translation and personal revelation.
My favorite part about the lecture was learning how to understand parables. Like I said before the speaker was very clear to not state, “this is what it means.” Instead He helped me learn how to receive personal understanding to parables. The secret He said was to discover why Jesus would use a specific parable in each situation. It had never been pointed out to me that Jesus was answering specific questions, and not just giving good stories to make the congregation more moral. This is something that I hope to be able to apply to my future scripture study, and it was by far my favorite thing that I learned while attending the lecture.