David R. Seely spoke at the 2021 Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses Conference on Saturday, April 24, 2021.

Based on the works of theorists like Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer there has emerged a model of hermeneutics based on the exploration of the three worlds of the text: the world BEHIIND the text which is the history and culture from which the text emerged; the world OF the text—how the text presents its story, the characters and action in the narrative and the structure and form of the text; and the world IN FRONT of the text which is the world in which the reader interprets the text and decides how to proceed. Much study has been done in all three of these areas, but I do not know of an extensive review and exploration of the World OF the text in terms of how the Book of Moses presents is story and message including its formal and structural characteristics, its narrative strategies and character description, and its rhetorical features. This study will explore the Book of Moses with a close reading of the text applying some of the methods of literary criticism including rhetorical, genre, and narrative criticism to better define the literary features and enhance the power of the narratives that are part of the World OF the Text of the Book of Moses.

All of the conference presentations were filmed, and both video and audio recordings of each presentation are available. Videos, audio recordings and transcripts are available at https://dev.interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2021-book-of-moses-conference/videos/. The videos are also available on the Interpreter Foundation YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/theinterpreterfoundation. A YouTube playlist is available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRMn4gyXMWLtulXZ-y4mAph138aNdAWlw.

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