A Need for the Humanities

Today I listened to a BYU forum talk by Scott Sprenger, one of my former professors in the French department.  His talk from July 2014 was entitled “When the Humanities Become the World” and he spoke about the decline in interest in the humanities in general across universities the United States.  He argued that despite popular perception, there is a need for even students earning technical degrees to study humanities.  If we define humanities as the study of people, cultures, literature, languages, etc., then the scriptures clearly support this idea of a need for all of us to be educated in the humanities. 

The Lord said to the Prophet Joseph Smith, “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith” (D&C 109:7). More specifically, we are encouraged to learn “of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms” (D&C 88:79).  In another revelation the Prophet was told to “study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people” (D&C 90:15).  If those words are not an endorsement for the study of humanities, I’m not sure what is.  In the Old Testament there’s an interesting example of the need for the understanding of languages.  The Gileadites were apparently enemies of the Ephraimites and they took control of passages across the Jordan where the Ephraimites crossed.  When someone would come to cross, they would test whether they were an Ephraimite in this way: “The men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right” (Judges 12:5-6).  If the man’s pronunciation convicted him then the Gileadite slew him on the spot—a high price to pay for mispronunciation!  At any rate, there are certainly more examples we could cite underscoring the importance of what we call the humanities.  Nephi studied “the language of [his] father” which included Egyptian and Hebrew, and he understood the “manner of the things of the Jews” which enabled him to make his record and teach his people (1 Nephi 1:2, 2 Nephi 25:5).  The Mulekites who had kept no records became a people “whose language had become corrupted” and who “denied the being of their Creator” despite the fact that they originated from the religious Jews only a few hundred years before.  To remedy the situation Mosiah caused that “they were taught in the language of Mosiah” (Omni 1:17-18).  King Benjamin also ensured that his sons “should be taught in all the language of his fathers” (Mosiah 1:2).  All of these scriptural references thus confirm the importance for us to study and understand language, literature, cultures, and the people of the world—even the prophet Joseph studied languages (in particular Hebrew) despite the numerous demands on his time.  Ultimately our need to understand the world is so that we can be better emissaries of the gospel: we study and learn from the best books because “all have not faith” and will need to be taught by those who understand both them and the principles of the gospel.