Disavowing the Book of Mormon as history

[SeattleUte]

Disavowing the Book of Mormon as history is monstrously self-delusional or disingenuous. I'll try not to repeat the excellent things that have been said on this forum about how the LDS Church has for 99% of its history represented the Book of Mormon to be a history in the same sense the Bible is history, only more so, and indeed still does in the introductory pages to the Book of Mormon.

Is the Bible history? In his supurb single volume history of the world, J.M. Roberts writes:

"For many people during many centuries, mankind’s history before the coming of Christianity was the history of the Jews and what they recounted of the history of others. Both were written down in the books called the Old Testament [the Torah], the sacred writings of the Jewish people... They were the first to arrive at an abstract notion of God and to forbid his representation by images. No other people has produced a greater historical impact from such comparatively insignificant origins and resources..." J.M. Roberts, History Of The World

Roberts goes on to say (and I wish I could find this part of it quoted on the Internet so I could copy and paste it like the above but I can't so I must paraphrase) that while the Bible is not a history book per se, it is the best history--indeed the only history really--that we have of this critically important aspect of the world's history (it must necessarily be of critical importance to any atheist, Buddhist, Islamist, Mormonist, whatever, whether he or she knows it or not). Roberts notes that while there is much in the Bible that objectively cannot be swallowed, that is no reason to reject it wholesale as history. In fact, scholars regularly accept as the only available evidence of events chronicles that are as fraught as the Bible with credibility problems. There is much linguistic and archeological and DNA evidence (if you will) to corroborate the Bible as history in terms of the kingdoms and peoples and their rulers and conflicts that set the stage for the world as we know it. There are many things I love and admire deeply about the Bible. I love it as literature, to the extent it is history, to the extent it is mythology, and most of all that it is a genuine historical artifact--for better or worse, these are representations of words spoken by my authentic cultural forebears.

The Book of Mormon is manifestly fashioned on the biblical model. If it fails wholly as history--if whoever brought it forth didn't give us something that discloses information and abstract truths about real flesh and blooded people--indeed cultural forebears of real modern peoples--corroborated somewhere in the physical evidence, well . . . I rest my case. And I'll add that dismissing all history as "fiction" is lame; lame, lame, lame.

Really, the LDS Church needs to belly up and emphatically defend the Book of Mormon as history, or go into receivership. FARMS engages in a form of science fiction (in my opinion), even showing impressive originality inventing an entire lexicon to support its alleged reasoning and conclusions. This is quite reprehensible in a sense. But I'll give them credit for one thing--they understand the importance of maintaining and defending the representation of the Book of Mormon as history.