John Dehlin Interviews Brant Gardner

[Rivers]

http://mormonstories.org/?p=2306

Here is the epic Mormon Stories five-hour interview with Brant Gardner about the Book of Mormon. Its a great listen if you have the time.

[Duncan]

is there a place where they only have the salient points?

[blackstrap]

Your assignment,Duncan,should you accept it,will be to listen to the 5 hour interview,make copious notes,and analyze those notes to distill the dozen most salient points and report to us. This message will self destruct within 30 seconds of it being read by Ares.

[Duncan]

Your assignment,Duncan,should you accept it,will be to listen to the 5 hour interview,make copious notes,and analyze those notes to distill the dozen most salient points and report to us. This message will self destruct within 30 seconds of it being read by Ares.

I will chief! (cue inspector gadget song!)

[Rivers]

One of the more interesting parts of the interview is when Brant Gardner discusses the skin of blackness that came upon the Lamantites. He believes that the skin of blackness is allegorical for a state of righteousness and there was no difference in pigmentation between the Lamanites and the Nephites. He references the Old Testament to support this idea.

[Bill Hamblin]

What is most striking to me is how utterly uninformed Dehlin is.

[why me]

What is most striking to me is how utterly uninformed Dehlin is.

He may be uninformed about some issues. But he is also an interviewer catering to his potential audience.

[why me]

One of the more interesting parts of the interview is when Brant Gardner discusses the skin of blackness that came upon the Lamantites. He believes that the skin of blackness is allegorical for a state of righteousness and there was no difference in pigmentation between the Lamanites and the Nephites. He references the Old Testament to support this idea.

This could be true. The lamanites were not black. There is no possibility for them to be black as in subsahara africa. And if this is the case, then we need to understand what is exactly meant by blackness. For a 19th century publication, the word red or brown would be correct. Black, however, may be confused with african slaves in the USA at that time. If the lamanites had black skin, what exactly was the color of the skin of african slaves?

[Bill Hamblin]

He may be uninformed about some issues. But he is also an interviewer catering to his potential audience.

Which could only be other uninformed people?

Anyway, he thought Joseph Smith took the Anthon transcript instead of Martin Harris.

He also confused the View of the Hebrews with Spaulding.

This is really basic stuff.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Fantastic interview! Hats off to Dehlin for giving Gardner a venue. Gardner's got more class and patience in his pinky toe than I'd have if there were three of me. This is exactly what I was hoping for after Coe's interview.

Maybe it's just the history-major in me, but I remain extremely unimpressed with the arguments Dehlin espouses; they lack not only a grasp of LDS history, but historiography in general. To issue blanket condemnation of the work that FAIR and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute do while justifying it with whatever label can be used to attempt to discredit them without rigorously examining their evidence and claims is simply flawed methodology. Often during the interview, whatever straws can be grasped are used not to come to a more nuanced understanding, but rather to try to find something to justify the refusal to come to grips with the scholarly material.

Despite his constant disparagement of a monolithic "apologetic" stance (thankfully slightly qualified towards the end), as if he had examined their arguments thoroughly, Dehlin's arguments only serve to demonstrate a deep unfamiliarity with their work. Nibley alone addressed most of the concerns brought up in this interview decades ago. It has long been recognized that it is in multiple convergences of cultural complexes rather than individual cherry-picked parallels which provide the strongest support for the Book of Mormon. "Innumerable 'coincidences", as Nibley called them. So too the charges of rampant parallelomania issued against the monolithic apologists; see Nibley's essay The Grab Bag, in which he shows critics finding the "source" of the Book of Mormon in everything from atheism to Catholicism.

There is the constant implication that the Nephites are seen as the "good guys" because they were white old-worlders, while the Lamanites are the "bad guys because they were dark-skinned native americans - this is certainly not how Nibley, among many others, read the text. (See Samuel the Lamanite, etc.) As Nibley pointed out in one of his lectures, in an Arabic context, "the human race is divided into al-sūdānu and al-bayḍānu. The sūdānu are the "black ones" and the bayḍānu are the "white ones". [..] It's a cultural thing with members of the same race. So we get this idea of the contrast between the good guys and the bad guys, called black and white."

Dehlin treats Gardners explication of a similar idea as simply overreaching apologetic nonsense, rather than a more well-informed view of the historical context of certain metaphors and idioms. (And on a personal note, my Mesoamerican ancestors were not black, and for him to imply in his flailing explosion towards the end that there is no substantive difference between black and brown in his desperate effort to justify a racist reading of the Book of Mormon is just kinda ... odd.)

The discussion on folk magic was interesting - though of course it's not a scholarly paper, Orson Scott Card's fantasy-fiction "Alvin Maker" series is a great exploration of the folk magic culture that I wish more people were familiar with.

In the end, I just wish we would all make more use of the resources we have at our fingertips these days - it's just so easy to link to free information. There is so much out there which just seems to be ignored. Gardner's work on the Mesoamerican context; Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, Kevin Christensen, Daniel Peterson, Robert F. Smith, William Hamblin, even Kerry Shirts have all dealt with these issues, and Dehlin's arguments simply do not engage them. Instead, the arguments given are scattered volleys of half-remembered disjointed objections, arguing not against the Book of Mormon, but rather about what people have said about it, usually misquoting them or relying on Wikipedia.

The critical view expressed needs affirmation from people who are seen as more respectable; i.e., the hypothetical hundred of "objective" academics which are constantly appealed to. It's a reliance on accreditation rather than evidence, with constant appeals to "likelihood", "probability", "Occam's Razor", and the "percentages" of the likelihood of certain claims. It gives a slight linguistic veneer of scientific respectability, but is clearly using the terms in a wholly superficial way, without rigor.

No evidence is given for why these events (an angelic being giving plates to Joseph, etc) are so supposedly far-fetched - the argument merely relies on cultural preconceptions and false expectations about what is or is not "more probable" a historical event. (From one perspective, the idea of the earth revolving around the sun is wildly improbably - doesn't it's not the best explanation of the evidence.)

(Of course, as evinced in the comments second, any reading of the Book of Mormon which is "nuanced" is seen as hopelessly apologetic, with the sarcastic implication that "nuance" is merely a desperate attempt at alleviating the ever-popular invocation of "cognitive dissonance" rather than the honest formulation of the best evidence.)

Numerous times, after Gardner has just explained why we shouldn't expect to find a given piece of historical evidence, Dehlin persistently comes back, arguing that no, we should expect to find something ... y'know, just because. After giving very detailed and reasonable responses to why certain answers to questions are in fact not fair to demand that archaeology and history provide, Dehlin doubles back and insists that no, they should be fair.

The main idea I drew from this is that we must, we must improve our Church education. Dehlin is angry at false things he was taught, and justifiably so. A 6,000 year old earth, dinosaur bones as Satanic forgeries, etc. The thing is, I can find talks as supportive of scientific understanding (Hugh B. Brown's "Final Testimony", etc.) as he can find memories of disparagement. What none of these tangential issues about the "false traditions of the fathers" and "mistakes of men" addresses is the text of the Book of Mormon, and we simply cannot divorce the text from the historical context.

Many of the issues here (the nonexistence of unclaimed coins, the context-dependent translation of animal names, Hill Cumorah theories, population mergers, DNA) could have been dealt with by a more thorough reading of the text. A cursory look at secondary literature also disabuses us of false perceptions such as the skin color issue. It leads to the amusing spectacle of critics arguing that believers are naive for reading their scriptures with too much nuance, while the critics' own literalistic reading is the correct way to understand it! So who's the rigid fundamentalist in this picture?

We need to emphasize wide-ranging education, emphasize that inasmuch as they erred, all our leaders will be corrected if they search out wisdom. We need to emphasize the mistakes of men, the necessity of independent confirmation, and that Priesthood cannot compel belief - the only "authority" is evidence delivered with longsuffering patience. Quote Brigham Young about his fear that "one man" may lead the Church astray if we have unquestioning obedience to anything anyone holding the Priesthood says. There is no one-size fits all answer by which we can always be safe; we can't just turn off our brains and accept everything without a thought. We must do our own thinking, and have faith that is stronger than death, meaning that we stick with our family even when they happen to be wrong about this or that issue. As Nibley said, the Prophet is a timesaver, not a replacement for individual revelation.

Edited January 1, 2012 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[Bill Hamblin]

I've only listened to the first two so far, but my reaction so far is precisely the same as Jeremy's.

Gardner was very impressive. Dehlin was very unimpressive (even if you are biased in his favor).

Edited January 1, 2012 by Bill Hamblin