Reading "Second Witness" by Brant Gardner
 

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Witness...6&sr=8-1-spell

Was a gift to me. Goes in depth into the text. I'll say more when I'm further into it.

please share.

I would like to buy more than the first volume, but they are $40 a pop, which is ridiculous. They offer them as e-books by cutting each volume into 2, and charging $10 for each half-volume.

Sure they need to get paid, but I can just do my lessons from the free church manual and say "screw it.".

As to a review....I didn't get to read the entire 1st Nephi volume. Due to lack of time. Read a lot of it.

You could view this book as one that draws on a lot of other prior research (most of it apologetic) into this one book. So while there might be an expert on the printer's manuscript, and there might be another expert on Mesoamerican culture and another on Joseph Smith, all these things are brought in together. With commentary and opinion from Gardner himself.

This is definitely apologia. In the sense that there is really not a single thing in the entire book that would challenge the credibility of the Book of Mormon as being what it says it is. On the other hand, it's not written as primarily apologia. It's trying to make sense of the Book of Mormon from a stance that the book is what it says it is, and not a made up fraud. And it's certainly not written as a response to anti-Mormon sources/persons/publications, although it may touch on some of the controversies (like anachronisms). And I wouldn't describe this as having a kind of Peter Priesthood orthodoxy either. Gardner is not adverse to accepting a human element to the Book of Mormon and its production.

This is not an academic book. This is not really research. It's a compiled reference manual and commentary from a believing standpoint.

I read the essays on geography and archaeology in his book last night. He says that we shouldn't probably ever expect that there will be a single archaeological find in the Americas that links back to Lehi et al. That this group was likely just too small to have any impact on culture. They were completely subsumed and likely adopted the language, tools, pottery, food of the people they combined with.

I think the only possible game-changer would be finding another set of gold plates somewhere. Chances of this? Infinitesimally small.

These guys are going on an excursion to Oman. Chances they will find anything that directly links to Lehi, even if Lehi existed and they are in the right spot? Essentially zero. They may find evidence of Hebrew influence or settlement, but that's about it.

http://ldsmag.com/major-announcement...his-bountiful/

Thanks for the review. I seldom read apologetic material anymore, and I'm not gonna get that book now.

It has its place. Like helping gospel doctrine teachers add some insight. Gospel Doctrine class isn't an academic/historical setting either.

The best of FAIR certainly has its place and value.

Like I said, this isn't apologia in the sense that it's trying to prove the BoM to be true or historical. It's trying to understand the BoM on its own terms from a believing standpoint.