Kishkumen wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 4:44 pm
I agree with almost everything you said, but I do not grant your bracketing of exclusion that leaves out Jenkins' religion, his job at a religious university, and the connection between them.
I just read Jenkins differently -- he addressed the potential conflict explicitly at the outset. Circling the evidence and claims/theories to be considered,
Jenkins said (emphasis mine):
Jenkins wrote:This story also has lessons for mainstream Christians, who to varying degrees also have to face the dilemma of how they teach or preach scriptures that are hard to support as literally historical.
and
Jenkins wrote:We might compare the world described in the New Testament. Archaeology and history cannot substantiate the details of Christ’s ministry, or the supernatural claims surrounding him. But they provide indisputable evidence that a society of that general kind existed in Palestine and the Levant around that time, speaking those languages and following those cultural and religious practices. In order to falsify that story, you would have to discard how many tens of thousands of objects, archaeological digs, inscriptions, and historical texts. You can’t dig a hole in Jerusalem without finding something to indicate that something like the world portrayed in the Bible existed there thousands of years ago.
So Jenkins seems to openly bracket away his personal spiritual views appropriately for a scholarly discussion. His motive may be broader, but what he isn't doing is drawing a line around scholarship only to trample the rules of scholarship in service of broader aims. The point he makes clear is that tools of historical analysis are equally incapable of validating the spiritual claims of Mormonism as with Christianity. These same tools do validate the proposition that the peoples and cultures described in the Bible largely did exist (he doesn't say all, but in the main, and especially so with respect to the circumstances establishing the setting in which Jesus is purported to have lived) and at the same time do not in any way validate the proposition that the Book of Mormon peoples and cultures ever existed at all. Simple point, meagre as it is. Jesus may or may not have been miraculous, but the stories about him are surely not rooted in an imaginary historical setting. The distinctions are well supported by the available evidence, examined by thousands of scholars from all walks of life.
Over and over, Jenkins asks:
Jenkins wrote:Can anyone cite any single credible fact, object, site, or inscription from the New World that supports any one story found in the Book of Mormon? One sherd of pottery? One tool of bronze or iron? One carved stone? One piece of genetic data? And by credible, I mean drawn from a reputable scholarly study, an academic book or refereed journal, not some cranky piece of pseudo-science.
He's not debating whether the Book of Mormon is inspired. He's asking for a single piece of evidence to legitimize the proposed setting.
Lastly, why would Jenkins preface his discussion of the Book of Mormon this way, if he had any intention of goading or scoring polemical points?
Jenkins wrote:I have a lot of sympathy for Mormonism and the LDS tradition, for multiple reasons. So many of their ideas and principles appeal to me, and my personal dealings with Mormons have been overwhelmingly positive. The church’s phenomenal social ministries fill me with awe. As to whether the church was founded by an authentic prophet: with all humility, I say, God knows.