DiscussMormonism.com

I noticed a series of recent posts over at SeN (including at least one that sounded rather panicked) promoting a talk by Royal Skousen on his non-Brethren-approved Book of Mormon project. I would need to defer to Tom on the specifics here, but how much money, exactly, has Skousen been paid for this? Isn’t it approaching half a million dollars at this point? Dan Peterson is fond of making cracks about how little *he* makes from apologetics, but what about Skousen? The Interpreter Foundation has been extremely aggressive in promoting Skousen’s project, which makes sense when you think about how much money they’ve sunk into this. But isn’t this a case of massive hypocrisy, given what Midgley and others have said about anti-Mormon ministries being “in it for the money”? What about Skousen, concocting these goofball, ridiculous theories while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars?

The panicked postings on “SeN” become much easier to understand in that context.

All that money and they can’t seem to figure out how to work a camera to record it.

Both events DCP promoted mysteriously failed to be preserved for posterity (or criticism)….

The Early Modern English scam lives on. There's an ethos of denial when faced with a fraud. No one wants to admit to making questionable investments or donations to an obviously wrongheaded theory and that is why some frauds get perpetuated. Carmack's dad wasn't the most enthusiastic supporter of the nonsense and DCP should have taken heed.

Even LDS apologists have their flat-earth moments. I suspect the Interpreter donors were happy that this project steered clear of volcanos with unexploded atom bombs left by Xenu.

Does Skousen pay Peterson a sort of agents commission (kick-back) on the money he receives from Interpreter?
Have the promised transparent financials from Witnesses been published yet?

I must be missing something here. How is creating a critical text of the Book of Mormon Mopologetics exactly?

Kishkumen wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:56 pm

I must be missing something here. How is creating a critical text of the Book of Mormon Mopologetics exactly?

I would argue that there are two main reasons why this is fundamentally a Mopologetic project. The first is that it has always been firmly supported by that camp. Skousen has been a regular attendee/presenter at the FAIR conferences, and DCP has been plugging this thing since the beginning.

But arguably the more important factor also goes back to the project’s inception. You may remember a rather old thread started by Dean Robbers—it was titled something along the lines of “Are the apologists creating their own Book of Mormon?” or something like that. Skousen’s project was strongly opposed by certain conservative factions amongst the Brethren and he actually defied them to carry out this work. Their position appeared to be that Skousen’s Book of Mormon is a problem since it claims to be the “most authoritative” version—more so, even, then the one produced by Joseph Smith himself. Dr. Peterson himself confirmed all of this on the old FAIR/MAD board. And since one of the defining features of Mopologetics is a kind of “usurping” of doctrinal control, then this would pretty clearly fit in that category. This is Mopologetics in that sense in much the same way that the LGT is, or Stubbs’s language research, or John Gee’s Book of Abraham arguments.

I remember a few years ago the Interpreter Foundation had allocated around $300,000 that year alone for Skousen and his project. I’m sure Skousen has probably pulled in around a million dollars so far.

That’s a lot of widow’s mites.

Skousen's work on the Book of Mormon language is, perhaps, the most useless scholarship on anything Mormon-related in the entire history of the religion. And that is saying something.

All that money spent to support Skousen's research, and the conclusion is that a ghostly committee of King James-era Englishmen translated the plates and then projected their work onto Joseph seer stone?!?

Fool me once...

Yesterday, Dr. Peterson called the presence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon a divine joke or prank of some sort:

Here are a couple of other cases . . . where I think that an impish divine sense of humor may actually play a role. Both are instances where, if my hypotheses are on target, the prank was set in place long before it was noticed:

....

2) The appearance of Early Modern English . . . in the original English dictation of the Book of Mormon. Once again, though, neither the early Latter-day Saints nor anybody else noticed for several decades. And, also once again, it becomes difficult to explain away. It’s very strange for believers, but, for those who seek a naturalistic explanation for the appearance of the Book of Mormon in the late 1820s, it’s virtually impossible.

(emphasis in the original)

(Incidentally, I noticed that the board automatically changes "E Mod E" (without the spaces) to read "Early Modern English.")