Scholarship Versus Apologetics

[mathonihah]

The Church still asserts, quoting JS, that the BoM is the Keystone of our religion.

Agreed, and so it is.

Taken that way, it looks back at the Bible and proves that it is true, along with the history that Nephi knew to be true literally.

It only does that for those who come to a realization that the Book of Mormon is true, which can only be done by a spiritual witness, not a scholarly one.

When all of that gets recast as altered history and not in any way literal, the world view of religious "history" gets unmade and for some/many it cannot be remade....

That is your imagination getting carried away. There is no altered history, at least as far as the witness of the Book of Mormon is conderned. Whatever biblical history the Book of Mormon testifies of, is true history.

[Kevin Christensen]

On the issue of Scholarship versus Apologetic writing, as though anyone can define the two in a way that does not serve political and valuing functions, more food for thought here, from Richard Bushman:

The Social Dimension of Rationality

Every form of scholarship is rooted in a society, an imagined community of scholars in which the teachers or writers live and move and have their being. We cannot take a position on a scholarly issue without implicitly forming or breaking a social relationship. Everything we write and say links us to other people, with all the tangled consequences for our self-esteem, our personal identities, our hopes and aspirations. There is a social and personal dimension to every form of rational discourse, which means that all beliefs, not merely religious beliefs, are both rational and irrational. We may indeed become persuaded rationally that the Book of Mormon is a nineteenth-century production. There may be hundreds of facts we can invoke to sustain this position. But in making that assertion we are forming and breaking human relationships that unavoidably influence our thinking, just as the memories of a religious upbringing (or of a transforming conversion) coil around the work of the Mormon apologists.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=107&chapid=1202

David B. Honey and Daniel Peterson, on Advocacy and Inquiry in the Writing of Latter-day Saint History.

rather are essential concomitants in understanding the significance of life and living it fully. Recent debate in Latter-day Saint circles, however, seems most often to stress the incompatibility of spiritual faith and historical knowledge, whether the emphasis be on the supposed lack of faith in Latter-day Saint historiography or on the purported lack of history in Latter-day Saint apologetics. However, the debaters often seem to rely on different underlying assumptions, to utilize different historical forms, to address different audiences, and to argue along intellectual lines which lie in different dimensions. In short, each faction seems to defend a different definition of history and of its function. The situation is manifestly unproductive, and more than a few onlookers have expressed impatience with it. Thomas G. Alexander, a leading practitioner of the so-called New Mormon History and one of the central figures in the ongoing debate between professional historians and apologists, has recently declared it to be “imperative that we begin building bridges” between spiritual faith and historical knowledge. The present article attempts to assist in the work of construction.

https://byustudies.byu.edu/showTitle.aspx?title=6043

Still timely.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Atomic Punk]

Or, since I see Robert Smith on this thread, and I know he, Dan, and Bill have all read my article on the original length of the scroll of Hor, would you characterize the article as scholarship or apologetics?

If you're Andrew Cook or Chris Smith and you publish in Dialogue or Sunstone it's scholarship. If your William Schryver and you publish anywhere it's apologetics. Go figure.

[William Schryver]

If you're Andrew Cook or Chris Smith and you publish in Dialogue or Sunstone it's scholarship. If your William Schryver and you publish anywhere it's apologetics. Go figure.

The ironic thing is that there is not a single apologetic statement in the entire article. And yet Bradford opposed it on ideological grounds, at least in part, because he believed it was an apologetic piece that was arguing for the so-called "missing scroll theory," which he holds in contempt. The paper does not argue for the "missing scroll theory," but just like with the Dubious Mormon Stories article, Bradford couldn't be troubled with reading a paper he was certain to be worthy of censorship.

[Senator]

And yet Bradford opposed it on ideological grounds, at least in part, because he believed it was an apologetic piece that was arguing for the so-called "missing scroll theory," which he holds in contempt. Bradford couldn't be troubled with reading a paper he was certain to be worthy of censorship.

Are these comments/ideas of Bradfords documented somewhere that can be looked at?

[William Schryver]

Are these comments/ideas of Bradfords documented somewhere that can be looked at?

A friend of a friend of the grandniece of Doctor Scratch's secret informant's recently deceased mother-in-law's masseuse planted a surplus Cold War KGB bug that encodes English conversations into an ancient hybrid of Hebrew written in hieratic Egyptian script on Chaldean sheep foreskins, which was then translated by the ghost of Hugh Nibley, dressed in an Anubis mask made in China using an underage "lost boys" labor force from Colorado City, AZ, conjured in a seance conducted by Dan Peterson's secret love child's personal medium, which was then re-encoded into Morse Code using the GAEL and sent in an email to me (and 18 carbon-copied friends) from the friend of a friend of General David Petraeus's transgendered Afghan mistress's former astrologer.

[Senator]

A friend of a friend of the grandniece of Doctor Scratch's secret informant's recently deceased mother-in-law's masseuse planted a surplus Cold War KGB bug that encodes English conversations into an ancient hybrid of Hebrew written in hieratic Egyptian script on Chaldean sheep foreskins, which was then translated by the ghost of Hugh Nibley, dressed in an Anubis mask made in China using an underage "lost boys" labor force from Colorado City, AZ, conjured in a seance conducted by Dan Peterson's secret love child's personal medium, which was then re-encoded into Morse Code using the GAEL and sent in an email to me (and 18 carbon-copied friends) from the friend of a friend of General David Petraeus's transgendered Afghan mistress's former astrologer.

As I thought.

[Questing Beast]

That was lovely....

[Kerry A. Shirts]

A friend of a friend of the grandniece of Doctor Scratch's secret informant's recently deceased mother-in-law's masseuse planted a surplus Cold War KGB bug that encodes English conversations into an ancient hybrid of Hebrew written in hieratic Egyptian script on Chaldean sheep foreskins, which was then translated by the ghost of Hugh Nibley, dressed in an Anubis mask made in China using an underage "lost boys" labor force from Colorado City, AZ, conjured in a seance conducted by Dan Peterson's secret love child's personal medium, which was then re-encoded into Morse Code using the GAEL and sent in an email to me (and 18 carbon-copied friends) from the friend of a friend of General David Petraeus's transgendered Afghan mistress's former astrologer.

Is this now the new standard for apologetics?

[volgadon]

Is this now the new standard for apologetics?

Ok, who forgot to tell Kerry all these years.

[wenglund]

Is this now the new standard for apologetics?

It is somewhat reminiscent of your old jovial apologetic style. I mis it.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Kerry A. Shirts]

Yeah I'm makin a comeback......LOL!

[Tacenda]

Yeah I'm makin a comeback......LOL!

You should.

[wenglund]

Yeah I'm makin a comeback......LOL!

If so, we'll all be the better for it!!

Thanks, -Wade Englund-