Kishkumen wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:05 pm
The trouble begins with calling the work pseudo-history. The trouble begins with singling out Mormon scripture as a special example of this obviously derogatory label.
This is what I mean about the importance of rhetoric....
How about this? Phil Jenkins writes a series of pieces on the difference between history and scripture. This applies to the Book of Mormon as it does other texts. The Book of Mormon, alongside texts from his own tradition as well as others, is set out as an example of the difference between history and scripture. We can set aside the problem with the entire category of scripture, which is implicitly Christian, for the sake of this exercise.
I don't need to ask you whether you think this would be different and perhaps a wiser way to go. Because you and I both know that it is.
Surely you are joking, Kishkumen. On the off chance you are not, may I point out that that is
exactly what he did.
Maybe its time for a little review. From his first blog entry in the set, he started by discussing this book:
Last year, Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson published an impressively dreadful book called The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’s Marriage to Mary the Magdalene....
He then segued into his topic:
I have no wish to waste any more time on the book itself, but the whole phenomenon does raise some important points about the nature of fringe and controversial scholarship, and its relationship to the mainstream, or the scholarly consensus.... In my next few columns, I want to suggest just why that scholarly consensus matters, whether we are dealing with alternative scriptures, bizarre historical claims, or pseudo-archaeology. I’ll also try to explain how we can tell the difference between real scholarship and fringe speculations.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... o-believe/
His second entry was about insupportable beliefs of Christian origins:
Just Google “Christos Ptolemy Serapis” and see how many rabbit holes you vanish into. In some manifestations, not all, it gets into weird Afrocentric and anti-Jewish mythologies....
And emphasized this oft-quoted phrase:
His third entry on the running topic begins with a discussion of 'Ancient American' magazine and its 'alternative' theories:
I have been discussing fringe or marginal theories that run contrary to the scholarly consensus in a given field... I will describe how orthodoxies are challenged over time, and how they change to accommodate new insights.
I enjoy the magazine Ancient American, although I do not necessarily agree with a word printed in any given copy. The magazine is dedicated to presenting “alternative” theories of pre-Columbian history, often emphasizing supposed evidence of early American settlement by Celts, Vikings, Hebrews, and many other peoples (“Phoenicians Sailed Lake Michigan,” “Egyptians in the Grand Canyon”). Few of those claims would stand for a moment in an academic journal.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... s-changes/
Not until his FOURTH entry was the Book of Mormon mentioned, and it was around there that Hamblin became involved.
kishkumen wrote:....So whose interests does it really serve for Jenkins to treat the Book of Mormon in this way? Why is someone motivated to do what he did? If you say "the love of truth," I think you are being naïve.
Hoping he doesn't mind an answer to the question from someone else, Jenkins was clear about why his comments about the apologetic work surrounding ancient Book of Mormon theories (NOT "the Book of Mormon") continued:
Jenkins wrote:
My last few columns on this issue have been in direct response to writings by Dr. Bill Hamblin, a prominent Mormon apologist, who has gone out of his way to engage me and my ideas. (Neal Rappleye has also been writing on his blog, hence the present post). If Hamblin had not initiated and encouraged a debate, I would no longer be addressing the topic.
In that fourth entry Jenkins not only emphasized it was not the book as the church's scripture but rather the non-scholarly work done to support insupportable ideas that he was discussing, but he also situated it within a larger pattern he observed:
Let me draw an important distinction here. The LDS church obviously believes in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but today, that does not feature prominently in their public statements or materials. To find the aggressive and really outlandish defenses of the Book and its literal historicity, you have to go to one of the several free-standing apologist groups, which have a very strong Internet presence, and produce a quite astonishing body of convincing-looking materials.
The story closely reflects trends in other areas of American religion. Although many Mormons had long hoped to find support for “scriptural archaeology,” a new trend began in 1979-1980, at exactly the same time that conservatives were on the upswing in other denominations, including the Southern Baptists....
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... d-history/
I was quite impressed with the Jenkins series of posts overall, and to think, they may not even exist, except for an apologist taking exception to Jenkins including ancient Book of Mormon theories in his overall discussion of 'scholars doing scholarship.'
Maksutov mentioned Warren Aston a couple of times on the old board, and If I recall correctly referred to him as a UFOlogist, based on his several published books on the topic, so I'll defer to our friend Maks on this.