Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

The State of the Evidence


How do you feel about evidence in favor of LDS truth-claims?  

77 members have voted

  1. 1. What best describes your assessment of evidence regarding LDS truth-claims

    • If I didn't have a testimony, I would not believe based on the evidence.
      18
    • The evidence leaves room for faith and belief, but on its own I don't find it compelling.
      33
    • On balance, the evidence is compelling in supporting LDS truth-claims.
      20
    • The evidence is overwhelming in favor of LDS truth-claims.
      6


Recommended Posts

I'm not as troubled about LDS prospects in light of Biblical Studies for a few reasons.  One comes from the light that went on when I read an article by Professor John McDade surveying life of Jesus Research.

Quote

Here, weighting is all and what should strike us about this helpful taxonomy is the selective and constructed character of the images of Jesus offered by historians, depending on their choice of emphasis, what counts as primary data, which heuristic models are used, etc. Telford speaks of a consensus today ‘that a combination of teacher, prophet, healer best captures historically his social identity or role’ (Telford, p.55).

 

 

Foreground data

 

 

·      If weight is given to the miracle tradition, then Jesus emerges as an ancient magician (Morton Smith) or as a Jewish charismatic healer and exorcist (Vermes).

·      If the weight is given to the sayings tradition, then a range of images of Jesus is adduced. 

·      If the wisdom sayings (proverbs, parables, aphorisms etc.) are given prominence, then Jesus emerges as a sage (Vermes, Flusser) or even an itinerant subversive sage (Borg, Robinson, Funk).

·      If an emphasis on the authenticity of the prophetic and apocalyptic sayings is retained, then Jesus emerges as an eschatological prophet (Meyer, Sanders, Charlesworth).

·      If his Kingdom saying are interpreted apocalyptically (following Schweitzer), and linked with the Son of Man sayings, then Jesus is an other-worldly figure, expecting cosmic catastrophe and relatively indifferent to social concerns.

·      If the Kingdom sayings are not interpreted apocalyptically, and the Son of Man sayings are viewed as secondary, then Jesus emerges as a this-worldly figure, a social prophet, with a social programme (Borg, Horsley, Hollenbach).

·      If the emphasis is placed on the opposition to him and his death at the hands of the Romans, then Jesus emerges as a para-Zealot revolutionary (Brandon) or the pacifist victim of oppression.

 

 

Background data

 

 

The choice of context in which to place Jesus affects the estimate given of him:

·      When emphasis is placed on the Palestinian Jewish context and within that on the Rabbinic tradition (although that did not flourish till after 70AD), then Jesus can be seen as the inspired Rabbi (Flusser, Chilton) or the Pharisee (Falk).

·      If the choice is made to place him in the context of apocalyptic Judaism, then he can be seen as the ‘humane apocalyptist’ (Charlesworth) or the ‘reasonable visionary’ (Sanders).

·      If his Galilean provenance is emphasised, then he becomes a charismatic holy man or hasid in the same tradition as Honi the Circle-Drawer or Hanina ben Dosa (Vermes).

·      If Hellenistic influences in Galilee are emphasised, then he can be seen as a Cynic teacher (Mack, Crossan)

·      If it is judged that he conforms to no particular social type, he cannot be placed in one of these categories (Hengel)

 

 

The Jesus who is envisaged in these accounts is the pre-canonical Jesus, arrived at through certain judgements about the nature of the Gospel traditions (both canonical and extra-canonical -- the Gospel of Thomas is now a controversial card in the game), and set in the dynamics of the religious, social and economic life of Palestine.  There is then a radical dependence between the reconstructed Jesus and the reconstructed context/model: how the context and social model are understood determines how Jesus is understood.  ‘Determines’ is not too strong a word, for one of the problems with this approach is that the grid of social and economic context is such a strong factor it can inhibit responsible handling of the actual textual evidence we have for Jesus.

If I remember that reconstruction of the Old or New Testaments are highly dependent on the school of thought, the methods and assumptions, the "group licensed way of seeing" involved, then I am less likely to panic when a particular author or school makes some authoritative, once and for all declaration about what was, what is, and what is or is not possible.  After all, this study includes a range of big name scholars all using a range of critical tools and evidence, and somehow, not only not arriving at a unified consensus, but also arriving in mutually contradictory positions.

And when it comes to specific problems:

Quote

On the subject of messianic expectation, Marinus de Jonge has written: "One should realize that in the OT the term 'anointed' is never used of a future savior/redeemer, and that in later Jewish writings of the period between 200 B.C. and A.D. 100 the term is used only infrequently in connection with agents of divine deliverance expected in the future" (Marinus de Jonge, “Messiah,” Anchor Bible Dictionary[New York: Doubleday, 1992], 777). Benjamin, on the other hand, doesn't contemplate any "Christ" other than Jesus of Nazareth, who offers remission of sins and salvation through faith on his name. 

In The Revelation of Jesus Christ, page 134, Barker observes that "There is one extra letter in 1Q Isa 52.14 giving mshty 'I have anointed' rather than msht 'disfigured'" Which means that:

Quote

On the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained to the two disciples that it was necessary for the Anointed One to suffer and enter his glory (Luke 24.26); this must refer to the Qumran version of the fourth Servant Song [Isaiah 53], since there is no other passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which speaks of a suffering Anointed One. (Barker, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, 136) 

It makes a great deal of difference to our picture of the Messiah in the New Testament, if the name had formerly meant the anointed one who enjoyed the presence of God and had the status of an angel. In the pattern beginning to emerge, the vision of God was linked to knowledge, to the judgement, to ascent, and to angelic status, and all these were linked to the anointed one. All these also come through as a pattern in early Christian thought. The ascent visions were associated with the temple and its rituals. (Barker, Lost Prophet, 54)

And if you read her essays on the Fourth Servant Song and the Atonement, it turns out that Isaiah 53 is modeled on the anointed high priest and the Day of Atonement ritual as see by Isaiah of Jerusalem.

Poke around www.margaretbarker.com

She also notes the ideological engines behind much biblical scholarship, quoting Watson in her Reflections on Biblical Studies essay:

Quote

‘The lines of demarcation between systematic theology and Old and New Testament scholarship represent
more than mere division of labour; they are ideologically motivated. They represent a collective decision of biblical scholarship that biblical texts are to be construed as something other than Christian scripture.’ (p.6). 

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/ReflectionsOnBiblicalStudies.pdf

The gist is, I don't see the future for Book of Mormon or Biblical studies to be that bleak and unpromising, though I recognize that a lot of that depends on which paradigm one explores, which scholars one goes to for light.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Edited by Kevin Christensen
Link to comment
9 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Poke around www.margaretbarker.com

How come your response always seems to come down to "read this one maverick biblical scholar that validates my views and never mind all the rest"? I have read Barker. I regard her oddball theories in much the same way as I regard John Marco Allegro's theories in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross—learned and provocative but ultimately unconvincing.

Just out of curiosity, are there any biblical scholars you find worthwhile besides Margaret Barker? Are there any books or articles by scholars not named Margaret Barker or John McDade that you would recommend on any of the topics covered in my previous post?

You say you're not troubled by critical biblical scholarship but I get the sense that you haven't read much of it.

Edited by Nevo
Link to comment
18 hours ago, Nevo said:

How come your response always seems to come down to "read this one maverick biblical scholar that validates my views and never mind all the rest"? I have read Barker. I regard her oddball theories in much the same way as I regard John Marco Allegro's theories in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross—learned and provocative but ultimately unconvincing.

Just out of curiosity, are there any biblical scholars you find worthwhile besides Margaret Barker? Are there any books or articles by scholars not named Margaret Barker or John McDade that you would recommend on any of the topics covered in my previous post?

You say you're not troubled by critical biblical scholarship but I get the sense that you haven't read much of it.

I've read 17 books by Barker so far, and admit to find her work both exciting and persuasive.  I don't recall ever saying, "Never mind the rest."  I did, after all, close my "Prophets and Kings in Lehi's Jerusalem" essay by referring to such non-LDS luminaries as Richard Elliot Friedman, William Dever, Marvin Sweeny, and W. B. Barrick.   I've read dozens of non-LDS Biblical scholars over the years, though not hundreds, as my time, resources, aptitudes and interests are limited.  Some I like a lot, Robert Alter, Northrop Frye, and Dever and Barrick, for instance.  Some, like Friedman and Noel Freedman, Cyrus Gordon, and James Charlesworth, I find very useful, and some, I find useless.  

If I was all that concerned about conforming to popular or majority opinion, I wouldn't be LDS.  I have noticed that some LDS scholars who have read hundreds of non-LDS scholars, done serious language study and such, and and even some who have sprouted their own shiny Ph.D.s, such as David Larsen and Robert Boylan, are very fond of Barker.  Some other LDS scholars, are skeptical.  So it goes.  Some non-LDS scholars are skeptical, yet somehow she continues to publish, and gets people like the Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury and HAH Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch, to pay attention.

And whether or not Barker is a maverick and/or an oddball, and whatever the heck I am, and whatever that means for plausibility, the fact is " "There is one extra letter in 1Q Isa 52.14 giving mshty 'I have anointed' rather than msht 'disfigured'" which means that one of Isaiah's Servant songs in at least one version predating the MT did refer to an anointed one, and Jesus seemed to refer to that version, and there is evidence that Isaiah 53 was modeled on the role of the anointed high Priest during the Day of Atonement rituals in the Jerusalem temple.  And Barker's book came out in 1996 one year after de Jonge.

Regarding beliefs about the afterlife, I'd recommend Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys.  One of the things I got from Zaleski is her sense that respect for NDE accounts in various cultures comes and goes, but that the kinds of things Benjamin teaches have an experiential basis in many cultures.  Whether ancient Israel had a more diverse set of thought on the topic than survives in the canon is a matter of conjecture, though, it seems to me that the kinds of details that show up in non-canonical writings, and the kinds of reports that come about in many different cultures ought to count towards what we can imagine is possible.

I've quoted James Charlesworth's 1978 essay on other ways to account for apparent anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, as due to later editing, either by Mormon or Joseph Smith.  If you prefer, that approach is also available and compatible with faith.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Link to comment
On 8/23/2016 at 10:48 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

I've read 17 books by Barker so far, and admit to find her work both exciting and persuasive.  I don't recall ever saying, "Never mind the rest."  I did, after all, close my "Prophets and Kings in Lehi's Jerusalem" essay by referring to such non-LDS luminaries as Richard Elliot Friedman, William Dever, Marvin Sweeny, and W. B. Barrick.   I've read dozens of non-LDS Biblical scholars over the years, though not hundreds, as my time, resources, aptitudes and interests are limited.  Some I like a lot, Robert Alter, Northrop Frye, and Dever and Barrick, for instance.  Some, like Friedman and Noel Freedman, Cyrus Gordon, and James Charlesworth, I find very useful, and some, I find useless.  

If I was all that concerned about conforming to popular or majority opinion, I wouldn't be LDS.  I have noticed that some LDS scholars who have read hundreds of non-LDS scholars, done serious language study and such, and and even some who have sprouted their own shiny Ph.D.s, such as David Larsen and Robert Boylan, are very fond of Barker.  Some other LDS scholars, are skeptical.  So it goes.  Some non-LDS scholars are skeptical, yet somehow she continues to publish, and gets people like the Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury and HAH Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch, to pay attention.

And whether or not Barker is a maverick and/or an oddball, and whatever the heck I am, and whatever that means for plausibility, the fact is " "There is one extra letter in 1Q Isa 52.14 giving mshty 'I have anointed' rather than msht 'disfigured'" which means that one of Isaiah's Servant songs in at least one version predating the MT did refer to an anointed one, and Jesus seemed to refer to that version, and there is evidence that Isaiah 53 was modeled on the role of the anointed high Priest during the Day of Atonement rituals in the Jerusalem temple.  And Barker's book came out in 1996 one year after de Jonge.

Regarding beliefs about the afterlife, I'd recommend Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys.  One of the things I got from Zaleski is her sense that respect for NDE accounts in various cultures comes and goes, but that the kinds of things Benjamin teaches have an experiential basis in many cultures.  Whether ancient Israel had a more diverse set of thought on the topic than survives in the canon is a matter of conjecture, though, it seems to me that the kinds of details that show up in non-canonical writings, and the kinds of reports that come about in many different cultures ought to count towards what we can imagine is possible.

I've quoted James Charlesworth's 1978 essay on other ways to account for apparent anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, as due to later editing, either by Mormon or Joseph Smith.  If you prefer, that approach is also available and compatible with faith.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

As perhaps the biggest oddball here with the weirdest conversion story, I agree completely.  Who likes Mormonism because it works for atheists who are anti-realists?

Each of us as "oddballs" actually represents an entire community of like-minded individuals in the overall culture.  Guys like Rorty could have been in that community- and also ours if the right words had been said to him, I think.  That may be a fantasy, but there ARE others like us- I know because I get messages from them thanking me for my point of view and saying that it has helped them.

I am out to convert as many oddballs who think as I do as I can!

 

Link to comment
On 8/20/2016 at 7:44 PM, Nevo said:

In 2014, when the new BYU Religious Ed curriculum was announced, LDS blogger and independent scholar Julie M. Smith predicted that the "findings of the academic study of the Bible" might well precipitate "the next generation's faith crisis" and yesterday Ben Spackman reported on a recent "non-public conference at BYU" that addressed the topic of critical scholarship and faith. While Smith is confident that "Mormonism is entirely capable of withstanding a close study of the Bible," I am much less optimistic. A just-published academic introduction to critical OT scholarship, for example, notes the following:

  • "An increasing number of scholars now agree that the exodus narratives in Exodus-Deuteronomy represent a carefully crafted synthesis of diverse and unrelated traditions about Egypt, harmonized in the sixth or fifth century BCE (or later) to provide a foundation myth of 'outside' origins for the biblical Israel, in response to the experience of Judah's exile" (Francesca Stavrakopoulou, "The Historical Framework: Biblical and Scholarly Portrayals of the Past," in The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion, ed. John Barton [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016], 34).
     
  • "The Torah came into being in the first half of the Persian period (between 539 and 400 BCE), when different elite factions of Judah and Samaria decided to collect their different narrative and legal traditions in order to construct one great narrative that could be accepted by all groups and serve as the foundation document of a new religion based on regular reading of the Pentateuch" (Thomas Römer, "The Narrative Books in the Hebrew Bible," 124; cf. Diana V. Edelman, Philip R. Davies, Christophe Nihan, and Thomas Römer, Opening the Books of Moses [Sheffield: Equinox, 2012]).
     
  • "The idea of a multilayered edition of the Deuteronomistic History should be preferred to Noth's, whose assumption of an individual author writing on his own initiative is quite anachronistic. 'Private writing' outside the temple, palace,or scribal schools can hardly be assumed before Hellenistic times" (Römer, "Narrative Books," 126).
     
  • "Prophets in the ancient Near East did not, so far as we know, write books" (R. G. Kratz, "The Prophetic Literature," 142).
     
  • "In its current form, Gen. 2–3 hails from the postexilic period, though a preexilic etiology may well lie at its base (2:5–9a, 18–24; 3:20–21, 23). . . . [Gen. 2–3] significantly expands the original tale of a prosperous human creation and the distribution of duties, not to mention the overt declaration of creation's fundamental goodness (Gen. 1). A product of the postexilic period, this final version undertakes the connection of good and evil, an inquiry absent from the creation narrative of Gen. 1" (Hermann Spieckermann, "Creation: God and World," 278–279).

If even half of these statements are correct, the Book of Mormon is in trouble. As "RT" notes at Faith-Promoting Rumor, "the narrative about the escape of Lehi’s family from Jerusalem is patterned after the biblical Exodus . . . a full literary patterning after the biblical narrative, so that much of the core content, plotline, structure, and characterization appear to have had their inspiration in biblical sources." Obviously, a postexilic Torah and Exodus narrative is problematic. As is a postexilic Garden of Eden story.

That's in addition to the problems I enumerated below . . .

 

None of this is even slightly relevant to the philosophical positions I hold.

I guess the oddballs are about to inherit Mormonism.  

It's evolution you know!  Out with the dinosaurs, up with mammals!   We are better adapted to the changing intellectual environment.

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...
On 7/9/2016 at 10:46 AM, Nevo said:

Then there's the interesting fact that Samuel L. Mitchill—yes, that Samuel L. Mitchill—"believed that both North and South America had been formerly populated fundamentally by two great races, not only the 'hyperborean or inhabitants of the north,' but also the 'australasian, or inhabitants of the south." The northern, more warlike, race (Mitchill believed they were Tartars) eventually destroyed the more civilized southern race, the "final battles of extermination [being] fought in upstate New York not too far south of Lake Ontario." New York Governor DeWitt Clinton was another prominent advocate of this "New York theory." This, as I'm sure you already know, is all spelled out in some detail in Richard Bennett's JBMORS article. Bennett concludes: "Thus a scientific belief in warring ancient American peoples, some from the north, others from the Polynesian islands, wherein the former exterminated the latter in a series of great battles in upstate New York, was very much in vogue among many respected observers at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon" (Richard E. Bennett, "'A Nation Now Extinct,' American Indian Origin Theories as of 1820: Samuel L. Mitchill, Martin Harris, and the New York Theory," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 2 [2011]: 42, 47).

Worth mentioning?

Wait, so Samuel Mitchell, that Samuel Mitchell, mentor to Rafinesque, believed that Native Americans were from Malaysia? In the 1820s, America's top scholar was claiming that Malaysians (believed by early Christians to be Israelites who departed Jerusalem in the 6th century BC) were fighting battles in upstate New York?

Yes, it is worth mentioning. Again and again and again 

Edited by Rajah Manchou
Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...