Item Detail
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30284
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2
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0
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English
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Teaching the Poetry of Latter-day Saint Scripture
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Religious Educator
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3
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2
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Religious Studies Center, BYU
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Provo, UT
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Heaven knows we need the comfort, and so do the students who come to our classes. Why does God give it to us in the form of two parallel lines quoted from Isaiah? Why poetry instead of discourse or prose? At least a third of the Old Testament comes to us in poetic form, and the other standard works are sprinkled with poetry as lavishly as mountain flowers on a green meadow. Why so much poetry in scripture? Maybe God gives us His comfort in poetic form because of this form’s potent effect, because poetry works deeper and more lastingly than the prescriptive drugs of archaic prose, or because poetry gets further into our systems and does more ultimate good. [From the text]