FIRST YEAR.
Outline History of the Seventy
AND
A Survey of the Books of Holy Scripture
COMPILED AND EDITED BY
ELDER B. H. ROBERTS
Of the First Council of the Seventy
To become a Seventy means mental activity, intellectual development,and the attainment of spiritual power
Salt Lake City
1907
To become a Seventy means mental activity, intellectual development,and the attainment of spiritual power.
The first three opening lessons of this year's course of study aredevoted to the history, organization and duties of the Seventy. Theyshould be thoroughly mastered by the present membership of the quorums,and as fast as new members are brought in their attention should becalled to these lessons, and they be required to master them also thatall our Seventies may have a proper understanding of the dignity andimportance and the responsibility of this office in the Holy Priesthood.
The body of the present year's course of study deals with the fourbooks of the scriptures, recognized by the Church as the onlyauthoritative written embodiment of the doctrines of the Church;namely, the Bible, comprising the Old and New Testament, the Americanvolume of scripture, the Book of Mormon, modern revelation, containedin the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The year'scourse of study is intended to be a rapid survey, not an exhaustivetreatment, of these books; and this in order that all our Seventiesmay as soon as possible be made acquainted in a general, even ifonly in a superficial way, for the present, with this body of sacredliterature; that they may know something of its history and character.The dominating idea of the whole course being,
A Workman Should Know His Tools.
In the past, a too exclusive adherence to merely "text methods" ofwork has been followed. That is to say, there has been a selectionof separate and disconnected texts marshalled together in supportof a given subject without sufficient care being taken to know thecontext and historical association of the scriptural utterances, oftenattended with great danger of forming misconceptions of such texts,resulting in wrong deductions and conclusions. The present aim is tomake our Seventies familiar with the spirit of the scriptures, learningsomething of the individual books, as a whole, something of theirgeneral import and their relationship one to another; that from thisgeneral acquaintance with the whole volume of scripture, the Seventiesmay become more competent to use separate passages more intelligentlyand effectively, and with less likelihood of making mistakes.
The fear has been expressed that since so many lessons are devoted tothe Bible, nearly half the years' course, there will be some danger ofthe work becoming monotonous; but that fear is based upon the commonmisconception that the Bible is one book, instead of a collection ofbooks, thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New ofour common English Bibles. Since the books are so many and the timeperiod covered so great—about 2500 years, from Moses to St. John—andthe books being composed by many writers—there is promise of plenty ofvariety, both as to books and subject matter. It is the rapid survey ofa whole library of books that is contemplated, rather than the studyof one book, albeit the many books are bound together in one volume.T