Mapping the BoM Historicity Debates

[Solon]

A nice synopsis of some of the major issues and trends from both sides of the debate in Sunstone:

https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/ind...ask=view&id=44

[ERCougar]

Thanks for the link. Great summary of the arguments.

This surprised me:
"by mid-century, less than 65% of LDS Church members surveyed in San Francisco believed that Jesus was divine, less than 60% believed that Joseph Smith saw God, and a little over 50% believed that the Church president was God’s only prophet. The numbers were higher for members living in Salt Lake City (85%, 78%, and 74% respectively) but still low by late twentieth-century standards. Given these trends, it seems likely that a substantial minority of Latter-day Saints up through the mid-twentieth century were not committed to Book of Mormon historicity. Evidently their commitment to the Church had other foundations."

I wonder if this was a survey of active Mormons, but those are certainly surprising numbers.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Solon

A nice synopsis of some of the major issues and trends from both sides of the debate in Sunstone:

https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/ind...ask=view&id=44

They are being charitable, bless their wishy washy hearts. There is no debate. What's next? Mapping the creationism and science debate?

[ERCougar]

Originally Posted by ERCougar

Thanks for the link. Great summary of the arguments.

This surprised me:
"by mid-century, less than 65% of LDS Church members surveyed in San Francisco believed that Jesus was divine, less than 60% believed that Joseph Smith saw God, and a little over 50% believed that the Church president was God’s only prophet. The numbers were higher for members living in Salt Lake City (85%, 78%, and 74% respectively) but still low by late twentieth-century standards. Given these trends, it seems likely that a substantial minority of Latter-day Saints up through the mid-twentieth century were not committed to Book of Mormon historicity. Evidently their commitment to the Church had other foundations."

I wonder if this was a survey of active Mormons, but those are certainly surprising numbers.

So I reviewed the link provided on this study (gotta love Google Books). It seems that they interviewed a ward of members in the Bay Area who were itinerant and arguably less active than the average member. In that light, those numbers don't seem all that surprising. Am I missing something?

[Archaea]

Interesting summary:

Both ancient and modern. The most discussed version of “Yes and no” is Blake Ostler’s modern expansion theory (but see Rees 2002 for another version of this position). Ostler proposes (1987) that in the process of translating the plates—a process Ostler characterizes as creative, participatory revelation—Joseph Smith expanded the ancient record to include interpretations and commentary relevant to his nineteenth-century context. This approach lets Ostler account both for evidences of an ancient origin, such as Hebrew literary forms, and for anachronisms such as discussions of nineteenth-century theological questions. Ostler’s theory has been criticized on multiple fronts. Stephen Robinson (1989) and Robert Millet (1993), defenders of historicity, believe that Ostler concedes too much to skeptics. Meanwhile, revisionist Anthony Hutchinson (1993) finds it absurdly complicated to theorize that God would preserve an ancient record whose message would be rendered unrecognizable by modern expansions.

Undecided. One author who answers “I don’t know” is former Sunstone editor Dan Wotherspoon, who has made a deliberate choice to stay open on the question of historicity. He feels that he is “on a sacred journey” with the text and its characters—historical or not— and therefore “Nephi still lives for me” (2005, p. 9). Former Church historian Leonard Arrington stated that he was “prepared to accept [LDS claims] as historical or as metaphorical,” but “that they convey religious truth I have never had any doubt” (1985, p. 37). This kind of open-ended attitude is favorably viewed by Jeff Burton, author of For Those Who Wonder (1994) and the Sunstone column “Borderlands,” both guides for Mormons who experience doubt about conventional LDS teachings.

Ancient but not historical? Believing that the Book of Mormon has “historicity” in the sense that it is an ancient record is not necessarily the same as believing that it has “historicity” in the sense of reliably reporting the past. Leading twentieth-century Mormon scriptorians—Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, LeGrand Richards, Mark E. Petersen—tended to read the Book of Mormon and other LDS scriptures as if these texts were transparent to the facts of history and the will of God: if the text says X, then X is true. However, other believers in an ancient Book of Mormon have been open to the possibility that the book reflects the limited knowledge or cultural biases of its authors. For example, John Tvetdnes (2003) cautiously proposes that Nephite authors were racist in how they wrote about Lamanites. A vivid example of this approach is Orson Scott Card’s speculation (1993) that the people of Zarahemla did not, in fact, come from Jerusalem but created that story about themselves to facilitate a peaceful coexistence with the Nephites. For Tvedtnes and Card, there is a sense in which the Book of Mormon may be ancient but not fully historical.

Modern but not fraudulent? Orthodox writers commonly assert that denying Book of Mormon historicity is equivalent to accusing Joseph Smith of delusion or fraud. This same dichotomous approach is typically taken by Christian countercultists (albeit with the conclusions reversed), as well as by some secular skeptics. However, skeptics writing in a scholarly mode are rarely so baldly reductive (Duffy 2006). It is true that Fawn Brodie (1971) and Dan Vogel (2004) are frank about their views that Smith practiced deception in connection with the creation of the Book of Mormon, while William Morain (1998) and Robert Anderson (1999) attempt to diagnose Smith’s psychopathologies; but these authors still paint Smith as a figure with complex motivations who was, at some level, sincerely religious. Many writers, even when showing signs of their skepticism about historicity, nevertheless prefer to write about Smith as someone who genuinely believed himself to be a prophet. Jan Shipps (1985) exemplifies this approach with her insistence on “bracketing” the question of the Book of Mormon’s authenticity while comparing Smith’s revelatory experiences to those of biblical personages such as Paul. Revisionists who see the Book of Mormon as scripture, though not historical, likewise resist implying that Smith was a fraud.