From Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute podcast, Faith Illuminating Scholarship.

In 2026, we are producing a new series called Old Testament Reflections.

Each week, a scholar offers a short reflection on the Come Follow Me reading.

Today's reflection, Glory Reflections on Moses One, is written and read by Philip L. Barlow.

For many years, I co-taught a course at Hanover College called the History of Biblical Interpretation.

My colleague was a specialist in the Bible. I was trained as a historian of religion.

As we were conceiving the chorus one summer, we met periodically to shape the syllabus.

Each time we met, we saw more clearly that we needed to reduce the scriptural texts we would consider.

After all, we would be tracing changes across great spans of time and cultures, not only in interpretation, but also in philosophies and methods

of interpretation, as well as in notions of what scripture is and to what uses it might be put.

By fall, we surprised ourselves by deciding to spend the entire semester

on the history of interpretation of a single chapter, Genesis 3.

This chapter was to be our case study through which history would pass. Our

surprised students, some initially disappointed, soon learned that we had our hands full,

and our minds too. This memory comes to me as I sit to sketch a blog post limited to a few hundred words

about Moses I and Abraham III, two of the richest, most provocative chapters in our

comparatively large canon.

These two are chapters which we might fruitfully spend a semester on.

So you will pardon me for electing to focus on a single verse from these chapters.

Moses 1 and 39, among the most cited passages in all Restoration discourse, may not

seem a surprising choice.

It orientes and inspires us.

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