Quote:
Originally Posted by Chapel-Hill-Coug
Exactly. I knew I was being captain obvious here, but apologists at FARMS *have* indeed used Stendahl as some kind of validation of the BOM antiquity, which has always boggled my mind. Stendahl is nothing if not generous, tolerant of others' beliefs, and dipolomatic. His talk is a great example of these qualities, but even the excerpts quoted by ChinoCoug make it clear (to me at least) what he is really saying. If Stendahl had not made it clear in the book chapter I referred to (at least I'm almost positive that's where the quote comes from), then the only other possibility would be that Mormon as editor is doing the biblical expansion. I read a FARMS article one time that asserted that this could have been what Stendahl meant. But it simply wasn't, since he said elsewhere what he meant. As Stendahl himself wisely said, if you want to know what someone thinks or believes, go to the source itself/himself.
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FARMS will grasp any morsel of vacuous graciousness from a scholar toward Mormonism and try to turn it into full-blown apologetics from a secular scholar. The clearest example may be how often they quote that dust jacket blurb Bloom gave to Givens about the Book of Mormon's "enigmatic splendors." (See Chino's signature.) But if your read what Bloom really thinks about the Book of Mormon in his writings, he presumes it is Joseph's own work, does not even really go any further than that presumption, and as a work of art (Bloom is a literary critic) he believes it is not very good, in fact not worth reading any more closely than skimming. Bloom loves Joseph in a way but not because of the Book of Mormon. Adam culled his key quotes in a nice post. Frankly, this is a prime example of FARMS's deliberate fraudulence.