In light of Barker’s work, the Latter-day Saint reading of the Old Testament turns out to be rather remarkable. If Barker’s thesis is correct, then Charles was misinformed. On exactly those points on which Charles asserts that Mormonism is irreconcilable with the Old Testament, Barker finds shifts in Israelite thought during the exile and beyond. At every point, the original picture corresponds to what we have in the Book of Mormon. One might be so bold as to suggest that the Latter-day Saint reading actually seems inspired. In making this suggestion, however, we must not forget that Charles’s experience raises another serious question. Is it enough to have been taught correct doctrines if you have not been prepared to defend those doctrines? Granted, we have to do the best we can with the materials available at any given time. If Charles ought not to be blamed for not having had access to Barker, neither should those she criticized be blamed for doing the best they could according to their light.

Nevertheless, if Mormon pedagogy fails to prepare some of our best students for what they encounter in the universities, part of the blame may lie with Mormon pedagogy. Our institutional teaching materials should be valued, not solely according to whether they fit a committee’s current notion of preaching the orthodox religion, but also for how they provide the light and knowledge that our students need to make their way through the world. Charles had correctly claimed that the Latter-day Saint commentaries on the Old Testament had relied on an overlay of modern revelation rather than on reading the text as it is. In the first number of the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Louis Midgley complained about the tendency of many Latter-day Saint scholars to rely on authoritative statements about scripture in ways that “divert attention away from the message and meaning in the text under consideration, and back towards what we already know. Such efforts do not enhance our understanding; they tend to make the very teachings they celebrate seem merely sentimental and insubstantial. Such endeavors also tend to close the door on the untapped possibilities within the scriptures.”

Barker’s approaches take us deeper into biblical texts and contexts and providentially open doors to untapped possibilities in Latter-day Saint scriptures, not only enhancing our understanding of them, but also encouraging the ongoing process of exploration and rediscovery.