Loan shifting the anachronisms away

[Marcus]

First, thanks for your comments about Ready Player One! I read a lot of Sci fi, as do several others here, so your review is much appreciated by many more than just me, I am sure.

... But there is something about this text which is unusual in that the text itself embraces this perspective with it strategy of likening the scriptures unto ourselves. But this idea that history is the best way in which to evaluate the truth claims of the text is an interesting proposition - especially in the absence of any discussion about what those truth claims are, and what they mean. Likewise, I think that there is a problem for believers who argue that all we need to know about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is that it was written by a real, historical Moroni...

Interesting. I think you are discussing a very different concept than the actual point of the paper quoted in the OP. First, this:
"...[this idea that] history is the best way in which to evaluate the truth claims of the text...especially in the absence of any discussion about what those truth claims are, and what they mean..."

You are correct in your second part, as I don't see in the OP's article any serious discussion or defense of 'truth claims of the text.' However, in a practical sense I can see that they may not think this is the place for that, when they are primarily arguing that what they define as the critic's position on anachronisms in the book are decreasingly defined as such. (I disagree, their evidence and logic are both faulty in the extreme, as well as their assumptions about what 'critics' think.)

I really did appreciate your discussion on loan shifting and the errors the paper is making, that was very helpful. We have beat to a pulp the bad science that is being used, but the bottom line is that the authors are trying to argue for the bistoricity of the Book of Mormon.

If your point is that that should not even be the question, I'd love to see that in a different thread.

[Kishkumen]

Several years ago, at Clairmont Graduate University, I had the pleasure of hearing a 90+ year-old Armand Mauss talk about the changes he had seen in the church in the time he was alive. By this time, many of the changes that President Nelson had made were already in effect like the two-hour block, elimination of the high priest groups, replacing home teaching and visiting with ministering and other things. When asked what he thought of these changes, he replied that he thought we were getting rid of many of the unique attributes that differentiated Mormonism from other Christian sects.

I think if Mormonism has expanded to embrace those who do not believe in a historical Book of Mormon, then this is just another step toward doing away with what made Mormonism distinct. A non-historical Book of Mormon is not the Mormon church in which I was raised. I am not saying this is good or bad but if we keep moving this way, eventually we will just be another Community of Christ.

What makes the CoC truly different from the LDS Church is not the fact that they do not see the Book of Mormon as ancient. It is the fact that they demoted it to a lower tier of scripture. In the CoC, the Bible is a first order scripture, while the Book of Mormon and other Restoration scripture is secondary. When I hear discussions from the CoC about how they reached their current position, it usually takes the form of choosing between two paths in a false dichotomy. There is the story of the Protestant theologian who visited them and asked whether they would choose Jesus or Joseph. Implicit in this was “choose Protestant Jesus or Joseph.” Once you accept someone else’s framework as your identity, you’ve lost something essential.

[huckelberry]

What is a protestant Jesus? Does it it have anything to do with what I read kin New Testament?

[drumdude]

What is a protestant Jesus? Does it it have anything to do with what I read kin New Testament?

From the context, “Protestant Jesus” is shorthand for the Protestant understanding of Jesus. Versus the Mormon or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox understanding of Jesus.

Specifically, the CoC abandoned Mormonism’s unique theological beliefs about Jesus like that he was a man, God was a man, Mary and God were married and had physical intercourse to produce him, etc.

Kish is saying that by abandoning those views, the CoC simply became another Protestant flavor of Christianity.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Interesting. I think you are discussing a very different concept than the actual point of the paper quoted in the OP. First, this:
"...[this idea that] history is the best way in which to evaluate the truth claims of the text...especially in the absence of any discussion about what those truth claims are, and what they mean..."

I am not sure what you are referring to. The essay linked int he OP (the summary of Matt Roper's material) is clearly about evidence and history. The article that I linked to (if that is what you are referring to) is about the quest for the historical Jesus - and the problems that come with the (much like Joseph Smith) accumulating versions of Jesus Christ. As Johnson goes on to write:

Not surprisingly, the quest for Jesus was driven most by those deeply dissatisfied with a Christianity that grounded its supernaturalism and sacramentalism in the figure of Jesus, and who therefore sought in a purely rational Jesus the basis for a Christianity purged of its superstitious elements.

And I think that this is a significant observation about both Christianity more broadly and about Joseph Smith. Anyway, depending on what you meant, we can take the conversation in that direction. At the time, I wrote a blog post that I never published on a comparison between the many lives of Jesus versus the many lives of Joseph Smith - and I reflected a bit on the reality that if my comparison is at all accurate, we should stop looking at the lack of historical data about Jesus as the cause - because there is no absences of historical data about Joseph Smith. But that's a different discussion.

If your point is that that should not even be the question, I'd love to see that in a different thread.

I think that it is okay to have that discussion - but - it needs to have real context. This summary explains all of this as a dialogue - an interaction as "a review of over 1,000 critical sources printed since 1830, with the anachronisms they cite". Without getting into the merits of the argument, I just want to point out that the dialogue has become familiar enough that the summary can also mention "the 'tapir crowd'". The argument has become about the argument and not about the text. The purpose of the historicity argument is to push back against the critics. The only thing that comes out of it (at least in this summary) is a scored battleground over historicity - and this will only feel valuable to those who are vested in the debates, and those who are vested in the question of historicity as the measure of truth.

For myself, I think that there are a lot of corollaries to this. Some of this would be an appropriate re-framing of the text if we were to look at the idea that the Book of Mormon is a prediction about future discoveries about the historical peoples it represents. But, the inability to actually point to that place and time in history becomes problematic for such a claim. Some of this is about the idea that there are only two kinds of problems with Book of Mormon in the anachronisms found in the Book of Mormon: those that we can verify through appropriate application of research, and those things that we can't verify yet. I think that all of this may be helpful to some believers - but it is a set of believers that has already bought into the idea that history is the best way to validate all of the claims of the text (religious as well as historical) - and this also spreads the flawed thinking that the text was primarily written as a history - instead of as a theological text that is meant to illustrate theological principles and beliefs.

[Benjamin McGuire]

From the context, “Protestant Jesus” is shorthand for the Protestant understanding of Jesus. Versus the Mormon or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox understanding of Jesus.

I would take this a bit further. Here is a section of the unedited blog post I started producing that I mentioned in my last post - and in it, you can see the seeds of my discussion here germinating:

In November of 2005, Mark Thomas published a review of two biographies that had just been published about Joseph Smith. He observed:

Even as I write this, however, I hold it to be a scandal of Mormon scholarship and an embarrassment for historians that these two biographies describe what appears to be the life of two entirely different people.

I have been reflecting on this idea a bit over the past few days because of my exposure to both a new discussion about Joseph Smith, and the congruence of this quest for the “Historical Joseph Smith” with another much more celebrated quest for the historical Jesus. The discussion about Joseph Smith came in the form of a review of the recently published American Crucifixion by Alex Beam. At the same time, I was working my way through an essay by Luke Johnson: “The Humanity of Jesus: What’s at Stake in the Quest for the Historical Jesus?” Certainly they deal with very different things, but in many ways, Johnson’s observations on the attempts to biography the historical Jesus help, I think, to explain the growing body of literature that is the quest for a historical Joseph Smith.

Johnson provides us with two related concerns that he feels gave rise to the quest:

The historical study of Jesus began due to Enlightenment in Europe. At the time, two related convictions became popular among those considering themselves to live in an age of reason. The first was that for religion to be true it had to be reasonable; the second was that history was the most reasonable measure of truth. The claims of Christians about Jesus must therefore also meet those standards. Not surprisingly, the quest for Jesus was driven most by those deeply dissatisfied with a Chrisianity that grounded its supernaturalism and sacramentalism in the figure of Jesus, and who therefore sought in a purely rational Jesus the basis for a Christianity purged of its superstitious elements.

My own fascination this past week has centered on the outcomes of these issues applied first to the historical person of Jesus Christ, and then subsequently how apparently the same kinds of issues are applied to the more recent historical person of Joseph Smith. In a statement that reminds us of Thomas cited above, Johnson writes:

This brings us to the question why so many scholars using the same methods on the same materials have ended with such wildly divergent portraits of Jesus. To list only a few that have emerged: Jesus as romantic visionary (Renan), as eschatological prophet (Schweitzer, Wright), as wicked priest from Qumran (Thiering), as husband of Mary Magdalen (Spong), as revolutionary zealot (S.F.G. Brandon), as agrarian reformer (Yoder), as revitalization movement founder and charismatic (Borg), as gay magician (Smith), as cynic sage (Downing), as peasant thaumaturge (Crossan), as peasant poet (Bailey), and as guru of oceanic bliss (Mitchell). The common element seems still to be the ideal self-image of the researcher. It is this tendency that led T.W. Manson to note sardonically, “By their lives of Jesus ye shall know them.”

This is not so different from the broad range of portraits of Joseph Smith – and while labeling them in this way doesn’t necessarily do justice to the theories, it does illustrate the variety: Joseph the prophet, the con man, the founder of a religious movement, the pious fraud, the egoist, the seer, the illiterate farm boy, the treasure hunter, the politician, and so on. So why do so many scholars find such divergence in their understandings of Joseph Smith?

It cannot be related to the lack of data that exists for Jesus. About Jesus, Johnson notes that “we have only enough to support the historicity of his place and time, mode of death, and movement.” About Joseph, we have by comparison, an incredible wealth of historical data, establishing with a great deal of certainty many of the facts surrounding the events of his life. Nor can we simply write it off to a problem of disentangling reliable facts from the biased accounts of his friends and foes. While we may have disagreements over details, these disagreements don’t seem capable of creating this wide range of views on their own. What is left? Johnson describes one facet of the quest that has interesting implications:

It is surely not entirely a coincidence that the liberally inclined academics of the late twentieth century have found a Jesus who is not embarrassingly eschatological, not especially Jewish, not offensively religious, a canny crafter of countercultural aphorisms who is multicultural, egalitarian, an advocate of open commensality, and a reformer who is against the exclusive politics of holiness and for the inclusive politics of compassion. And best of all, he is all this as a charismatic peasant whose wisdom is not spoiled by literacy. What more perfect mirror of late-twentieth-century academic social values and professional self-despising could be imaged? Nor is it surprising that at the opposite end of the cultural and religious spectrum, more evangelically oriented Christians are finding a Jesus who is precisely eschatological, devoted to purity and holiness, and a champion of the politics of restoration within Judaism. Clearly, scholars’ pre-understanding of Jesus deeply affects their way of assessing the data.

I suspect that this is more likely the driving consideration for the wide range of portraits of Joseph Smith. Our search for the historical Joseph ends up giving us a mirror in which we don’t see the real historical Joseph. In his recent blog post, Steven Russel wrote:

Rooted in historic concerns over scarcity, our questions about the truthfulness of a story about a young boy in Palmyra really don’t matter that much to us, at least not as much as whether the story affirms or denies a sense of who we imagine ourselves to be. In our search for the Historical Joseph, probably the last thing on our minds is the truth.

I think that perhaps we confuse the search for the historical Joseph with the search for truth. Instead, often all we achieve is discovering that version that most closely represents what we already believe, and having found it, we decide that it must be the correct version. In doing so, we reaffirm that what we suspected all along is true because we can now ground that belief in what we perceive to be a reasonable interpretation of history.

This is a tangent of sorts to the question of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but I think that it applies. I think, given the circumstances, that there are a lot of ways to read the text. In some of them, we get a work of fiction (and we can talk about what this means for the readers of the text). In some of them we get this inspired fiction (however we want to define it). In some we get the idea that the Book of Mormon is a God-made communication to Joseph Smith that is in fact the most perfect translation that could ever be made. There is this same sort of thing going on. I am certainly a part of this discussion at some point - but my views on what the text is remain unsettled. What I do believe is that it cannot represent the polar scenarios (escapist fiction/historical romance or perfect history). And to view it through those lenses will always be problematic.

[Philo Sofee]

From the context, “Protestant Jesus” is shorthand for the Protestant understanding of Jesus. Versus the Mormon or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox understanding of Jesus.

I would take this a bit further. Here is a section of the unedited blog post I started producing that I mentioned in my last post - and in it, you can see the seeds of my discussion here germinating:

In November of 2005, Mark Thomas published a review of two biographies that had just been published about Joseph Smith. He observed:

I have been reflecting on this idea a bit over the past few days because of my exposure to both a new discussion about Joseph Smith, and the congruence of this quest for the “Historical Joseph Smith” with another much more celebrated quest for the historical Jesus. The discussion about Joseph Smith came in the form of a review of the recently published American Crucifixion by Alex Beam. At the same time, I was working my way through an essay by Luke Johnson: “The Humanity of Jesus: What’s at Stake in the Quest for the Historical Jesus?” Certainly they deal with very different things, but in many ways, Johnson’s observations on the attempts to biography the historical Jesus help, I think, to explain the growing body of literature that is the quest for a historical Joseph Smith.

Johnson provides us with two related concerns that he feels gave rise to the quest:

My own fascination this past week has centered on the outcomes of these issues applied first to the historical person of Jesus Christ, and then subsequently how apparently the same kinds of issues are applied to the more recent historical person of Joseph Smith. In a statement that reminds us of Thomas cited above, Johnson writes:

This is not so different from the broad range of portraits of Joseph Smith – and while labeling them in this way doesn’t necessarily do justice to the theories, it does illustrate the variety: Joseph the prophet, the con man, the founder of a religious movement, the pious fraud, the egoist, the seer, the illiterate farm boy, the treasure hunter, the politician, and so on. So why do so many scholars find such divergence in their understandings of Joseph Smith?

It cannot be related to the lack of data that exists for Jesus. About Jesus, Johnson notes that “we have only enough to support the historicity of his place and time, mode of death, and movement.” About Joseph, we have by comparison, an incredible wealth of historical data, establishing with a great deal of certainty many of the facts surrounding the events of his life. Nor can we simply write it off to a problem of disentangling reliable facts from the biased accounts of his friends and foes. While we may have disagreements over details, these disagreements don’t seem capable of creating this wide range of views on their own. What is left? Johnson describes one facet of the quest that has interesting implications:

I suspect that this is more likely the driving consideration for the wide range of portraits of Joseph Smith. Our search for the historical Joseph ends up giving us a mirror in which we don’t see the real historical Joseph. In his recent blog post, Steven Russel wrote:

I think that perhaps we confuse the search for the historical Joseph with the search for truth. Instead, often all we achieve is discovering that version that most closely represents what we already believe, and having found it, we decide that it must be the correct version. In doing so, we reaffirm that what we suspected all along is true because we can now ground that belief in what we perceive to be a reasonable interpretation of history.

This is a tangent of sorts to the question of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but I think that it applies. I think, given the circumstances, that there are a lot of ways to read the text. In some of them, we get a work of fiction (and we can talk about what this means for the readers of the text). In some of them we get this inspired fiction (however we want to define it). In some we get the idea that the Book of Mormon is a God-made communication to Joseph Smith that is in fact the most perfect translation that could ever be made. There is this same sort of thing going on. I am certainly a part of this discussion at some point - but my views on what the text is remain unsettled. What I do believe is that it cannot represent the polar scenarios (escapist fiction/historical romance or perfect history). And to view it through those lenses will always be problematic.

I enjoy the depth and interest you bring to this discussion Ben. Hope all is well with you and the fam....

[Kishkumen]

From the context, “Protestant Jesus” is shorthand for the Protestant understanding of Jesus. Versus the Mormon or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox understanding of Jesus.

Specifically, the CoC abandoned Mormonism’s unique theological beliefs about Jesus like that he was a man, God was a man, Mary and God were married and had physical intercourse to produce him, etc.

Kish is saying that by abandoning those views, the CoC simply became another Protestant flavor of Christianity.

You are somewhere in the neighborhood but not exactly right. I don't think Brigham Young's version of Joseph Smith's theology is the only possibility for a Mormon theology. A Mormon theology should, however, be built from Restoration materials. It does not have to be adopted from John Wesley's views or other Protestant theologians' views. I am not saying it could not be influenced by other theological perspectives, but it should constantly be informed by the translations and revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Christian theology is not a closed book, and no one's theology should be taken as the final word. I understand that there will always be doctrines or creeds that define belonging to an organization, but I do not agree that any of these ideas are sufficient and final. For one group to say to another--even with the best of intentions--"are you ready to join me and leave your way behind" is, in my view, arrogant. The Community of Christ, for whatever reason, embraced the offer to depart from the Restoration in certain ways, and I think that is understandable, but the consequences are no less real.

To be fair, however, in theory the CoC is very open to its members thinking and believing a variety of things. Much more open than the LDS Church is, in fact. Also, it would be inaccurate to say that the CoC as a whole is not profoundly shaped by the Restoration, and, in some ways, I like their understanding of the tradition better than the LDS one. The CoC was more focused on Zion, whereas the LDS Church became fixed on the Kingdom. I know that it is more complicated than this, but I do think that this roughly accounts for some important differences.

[Kishkumen]

I suspect that this is more likely the driving consideration for the wide range of portraits of Joseph Smith. Our search for the historical Joseph ends up giving us a mirror in which we don’t see the real historical Joseph. In his recent blog post, Steven Russel wrote:

I think that perhaps we confuse the search for the historical Joseph with the search for truth. Instead, often all we achieve is discovering that version that most closely represents what we already believe, and having found it, we decide that it must be the correct version. In doing so, we reaffirm that what we suspected all along is true because we can now ground that belief in what we perceive to be a reasonable interpretation of history.

This is a tangent of sorts to the question of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but I think that it applies. I think, given the circumstances, that there are a lot of ways to read the text. In some of them, we get a work of fiction (and we can talk about what this means for the readers of the text). In some of them we get this inspired fiction (however we want to define it). In some we get the idea that the Book of Mormon is a God-made communication to Joseph Smith that is in fact the most perfect translation that could ever be made. There is this same sort of thing going on. I am certainly a part of this discussion at some point - but my views on what the text is remain unsettled. What I do believe is that it cannot represent the polar scenarios (escapist fiction/historical romance or perfect history). And to view it through those lenses will always be problematic.

Thanks for posting this thought-provoking material. Maybe it's the old Comp. Lit. student in me who still lies buried somewhere in my interpretive toolkit, but I really love your take on these topics. I should be reading your blog.

[drumdude]

From the context, “Protestant Jesus” is shorthand for the Protestant understanding of Jesus. Versus the Mormon or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox understanding of Jesus.

Specifically, the CoC abandoned Mormonism’s unique theological beliefs about Jesus like that he was a man, God was a man, Mary and God were married and had physical intercourse to produce him, etc.

Kish is saying that by abandoning those views, the CoC simply became another Protestant flavor of Christianity.

You are somewhere in the neighborhood but not exactly right. I don't think Brigham Young's version of Joseph Smith's theology is the only possibility for a Mormon theology. A Mormon theology should, however, be built from Restoration materials. It does not have to be adopted from John Wesley's views or other Protestant theologians' views. I am not saying it could not be influenced by other theological perspectives, but it should constantly be informed by the translations and revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Christian theology is not a closed book, and no one's theology should be taken as the final word. I understand that there will always be doctrines or creeds that define belonging to an organization, but I do not agree that any of these ideas are sufficient and final. For one group to say to another--even with the best of intentions--"are you ready to join me and leave your way behind" is, in my view, arrogant. The Community of Christ, for whatever reason, embraced the offer to depart from the Restoration in certain ways, and I think that is understandable, but the consequences are no less real.

To be fair, however, in theory the CoC is very open to its members thinking and believing a variety of things. Much more open than the LDS Church is, in fact. Also, it would be inaccurate to say that the CoC as a whole is not profoundly shaped by the Restoration, and, in some ways, I like their understanding of the tradition better than the LDS one. The CoC was more focused on Zion, whereas the LDS Church became fixed on the Kingdom. I know that it is more complicated than this, but I do think that this roughly accounts for some important differences.

I think an interesting question is why changing those specific theological beliefs had such a negative impact on the CoC. The Brighamite branch has had its own massive theological changes over the years and hasn’t suffered similarly. If we could roll the clock back, was there a change that the CoC could have made to increase their share of the restorationist movement, or was the Brighamite branch always bound to dominate?

Lots of tangents here but I’m happy to have so many interesting discussions and welcome them. Thanks especially to Ben for so many thought producing ideas.