Critics Confront Jeff Lindsay at "Mormanity"

[Doctor Scratch]

The Mopologists are having a tough go of it these days. First, they failed miserably in their efforts to provide Louis Midgley with a well-copyedited festschrift at Eborn books. (Indeed, Dr. Midgley is still rather sore over it.) Then, suspicion was cast over the bizarre financing connected to Witnesses. Meanwhile, Dr. Peterson and Dr. Gee got into trouble over the JSPP criticisms that were published in the Mormon Interpreter blog. And to add insult to injury, FAIR recently announced that they would no longer be doing "un-Christlike" apologetics, and would instead be doing "mere-apologetics," as one doctorate-holding scholar recently put it.

All of that is to say: a lot has been going on. But wouldn't you know it? Something of a "quiet war" is currently being waged in a somewhat "lesser realm" of the Mopologetic universe. Like tentacles squiggling of off the head of the Mopologetic Empire, there are other Mopologetic blogs out there after "SeN" and "Interpreter," including Gee's "Forn Spoll Fira," and Robert Boylan's "Scriptural Mormonism." Yet another of these belongs to one of "Interpreter's" Editors in Chief, and it is called "Mormanity," and it's helmed by the mild-mannered Mopologist, Jeff Lindsay.

Boy, is he ever taking a beating. In his most recent posts, the critics are really making complete mincemeat out of his silly arguments. Just take a look:

Jeff, I'm sure you won't be surprised when I say I am chagrined at your chagrin at the Vogel's treatment of Champollion.

Did Joseph Smith have an understanding of Champollion's work sufficient to scare him off any bogus claim of translating the papyri? I'd say that the mere possibility of Smith having heard of that work (which is all you really offer us here) doesn't help us answer the question.

Vogel says that Joseph "does not appear to be aware of the significance of François Champollion’s contribution to Egyptology" (my emphasis). This of course is not the same as saying Joseph had never heard of Champollion at all. In terms of your criticism of Vogel, it thus doesn't matter whether Champollion was, as you put it, a "household name" and his work "common knowledge" in the U.S. What matters is Joseph's understanding of the significance of that work. You're subtly misconstruing Vogel's words and creating a straw man to argue against.

To see the importance of the distinction I'm asking you to recognize here, consider a couple of contemporary examples, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schroedinger.

Einstein is of course a household name, so widely recognized that, as you say, his last name alone suffices as a reference. But, while most Americans are familiar with the name, how many understand its significance? For most it probably means little more than "really really smart." Pressed on the matter, many would probably recall "E=mc squared," but of those I doubt very many could explain that this formula revealed the tremendous amount of energy locked up in the atom and thus pointed the way to the development of the atomic bomb. Even fewer would have any meaningful understanding of relativity theory. Some seem to think it just proves that "Everything is relative, man."

Another, perhaps better, contemporary example might be Erwin Schroedinger. His name is not quite as widely known as Einstein's, and most who do know it probably know it only in reference to his famous thought experiment, but I bring it up here because a superficial awareness of quantum physics has not prevented New Age "thinkers" like Deepak Chopra from citing it in support of their nonsense. L. Ron Hubbard knew quite a bit about science, but that didn't stop him from making incredibly unscientific claims. If anything that knowledge inspired creativity and imagination rather than caution. I see no reason whatsoever to think that a superficial knowledge of Champollion would have hindered Joseph's own speculations. If anything, that knowledge might have goaded him on.

Note that my disagreement on this point is not only with you but also with Vogel. Both you and Vogel seem to think that it was only in ignorance of the science that Smith would indulge in the "freedom to imagine whatever he wished." I think the examples of religionists like Chopra and L. Ron Hubbard suggest otherwise.

-- OK

Wow! Incredibly devastating. There is a critique of Vogel here, sure; but the slam-dunks raining down on Lindsay are embarrassing indeed. So embarrassing, it would seem, that Lindsay is not above sending emails to people--a gesture that wasn't taken kindly:

OK's back at it again slinging common sense in the face of Jeff's wall of words.
And Jeff, you know full well why some of us choose to remain anonymous: several of us are in the laborious and painful process of extricating ourselves from the church you espouse. It's not easy, and the social and familiar ramifications are often awkward. So I'd rather not see my name on your blog. Add to the fact that you have a habit of directly emailing people to confront them in private about comments here (which I myself experienced from you a few years back) and the cloak of anonymity is fine and dandy. If you don't like it, why not change the settings on your blog? You run the place, after all.

Whoa! You'd think that the Mopologists would have learned their lesson after the escapades of SHIELDS. Or the email exchanges involving Ritner. Or the leaded emails following the ejection of "classic-FARMS" from the Maxwell Institute. And yet here we have Lindsay continuing to do this--i.e., sending unwelcome emails to people in an effort to, what, "confront" people in private? Why not just continue the debate out on the open? You're left with the unpleasant options of (a) Lindsey thinks that continuing to discuss in public will be embarrassing, or (b) Lindsey thinks that confronting the poster via email will create...shall we say "a strong impression" on the person. I recall that many people back on RfM used to complain about getting emails from Mopologists. In fact, I believe the Hon. Rev. Kishkumen was once sent an extremely unpleasant and aggressive email by one of the Mopologists.

Would it be too much to say that it comes across as unseemly that the Co-Editor in Chief of Interpreter would be doing things like this? Of course, I have no idea what was in the emails. That said, given this comment, you sort of have to assume that the person felt that Lindsay might use the pretext of a private email as a means of threatening and/or "outing" this person to their family and/or employers.

In any case, the battle wage on in separate blog entry:

What a terrible disservice was done by all those who pompously declared the manuscript to be a forgery without giving it a chance. Some of the weaknesses they pointed to actually have become strengths based on further analysis and new discoveries....

So, Jeff, what you're saying is there's still hope for the Kinderhook Plates and the Salamander Letter?

-- OK

Lindsay practically hisses in response:

Cute, OK. In cases where all the evidence, including the forger's open confession, leave no room for further inquiry into the status of a clear forgery, the case is closed. With the Shapira manuscript, there were multiple strands of evidence for authenticity, including the information we obtained with the related discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so for those examining the case, there was a tension between various strands of evidence that was not resolved, and upon further scholarship, new information emerged that moved objective judgement toward authenticity, not forgery. This is relevant to the Book of Mormon, where many intelligent voices dismiss it as an obvious forgery, but a closer look at the evidence shows that some of the key arguments against it have turned from weakness into strength, and there are increasing grounds for giving it a second chance I hope you'll be one of those objective people who one day will give the book a chance and test it with a more open mind. But I can understand not doing so -- scholars have over the decades declared things like Bountiful in Arabia to be ridiculous, ancient writing on gold plates to be unlikely, reformed Egyptian to be a silly notion, and the ancient Mesoamericans to be gentle, peaceful folk unlike the warlike peoples described in the Book of Mormon.

And:

An interesting case study, OK, is the Bar Kochba Letters. There are precious ancient documents now widely known to be authentic, but in 1953 Solomon Zeitlin used linguistic grounds to make a "slam dunk" argument that at least one letter in the collect was a forgery. The letter begins with the letter mem followed by the name Simon, indicating "from Simon." But using mem in this way was "known" to be a developed from the Middle Ages, unattested in Hebrew around 150 AD near the time of the Bar Kochba rebellion. Dershowitz says "Zeitlin may well have been correct that prefixed mems were unattested in the relevant period, but the conclusion he drew from this fact was dramatically wrong, as we now know. Given the severe paucity of data regarding early Hebrew, countless features that were alive and well at the time – many of which are attested in later Hebrew chronolects – are unknown to us due to accidents of history. Occasionally, we are lucky enough to make discoveries that, if not incautiously disregarded, fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge" (Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses, p. 130). Many of the anachronisms and blunders of the Book of Mormon have turned out to be like this as gaps have become filled in.

But the pounding of Lindsay continues:

Jeff, the fact remains that if one takes the usual secular/scholarly standards -- the very same standards used to evaluate the authenticity of the Valediction of Moses -- and apply them to the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham, those texts fail miserably. It's impossible, e.g., to believe that ancient texts discuss 19th-century Protestant theological concepts and disputes without also believing in some sort of miraculous prescience on the part of the author. It is only through recourse to the supernatural that such problems can be explained away and one can continue to believe these texts to be ancient. It doesn't really matter whether the text also displays features that were once dismissed as impossible but that new discoveries indicate might be ancient. So many elements of the Book of Mormon are, by the widely accepted standards of scholarship, so indisputably modern that, for all but the believer, the book's modernity becomes the context for understanding such features.

None of this is changed by the new secular scholarship on the Valediction of Moses. What you need is not a demonstration that a text once rejected by secular scholars is now accepted by them. What you need is for secular scholarship to explain how a 5th-century text can include discussions of 19th-century theology (and, of course, several other blatant anachronisms). Secular scholarship cannot do that, and the recent news about the Valediction offers us no reason to think otherwise.

-- OK

Devastating! And were you hoping this gets better? Oh, it does! Check out this criticism:

Loving the boldness of anonymous responses.
You have zero credibility until you put your names on it.
(Your real names).

And once again, the valiant OK responds:

Not so, Stewart. The soundness of an argument has nothing to do with the identity of the person making it. Also, of course, pseudonymous writing has a long and honorable tradition that includes The Federalist Papers, the Epistle to the Ephesians, Ecclesiastes, etc.

--OK

And would you know who decided to show up? None other than Blake Ostler, unless I'm mistaken! It sure sounds like him:

Anonymous you haven;t made any arguments at all. You have made assertions as if they were established without evidence or argumentation. So hiding behind your pseudonym isn't a form of presenting convincing material behind a nom de plume, but a cowardly act o hiding your blustering incompetence. Let us know who you are so that we can assess if there is something more than mere assertion and bluster.

Didn't he do this same sort of thing over at "Faith Promoting Rumor?"

In fact I am willing to bet that anonymous is in fact Vogel himself.

LOL!

And then there is this:

The problem cowardly anonyomuse is that exactly the work explaining how, where and why anachronistic material appears in the Book of Mormon. You are just too lazy and pompous to deal with the actual evidence of genuinely ancient literary prophetic call forms, prophetic lawsuit forms, covenant renewal (Suzerain Treaty forms occurring at least 5 times in the text), ancient political ideas, genuinely ancient understanding of robber bands complete with Hebraic word-play on the notion of robbers and stones, resemblances between Israelite law, international treaties, and laws governing war and oath forms (Rasmussen 1982; R. Johnson 1982; Morise1982).2. Hebrew, Egyptian, and classical names which appear in the Book of Mormon but not in the Bible (Nibley 1973, 192-96; Nibley 1957, 242-54;Nibley 1948, 85-90; Carlton and Welch 1981; Tvedtnes 1977). Though many of these names could be biblical variants, others are difficult to explainas Joseph Smith's inventions. Paanchi, Pahoran, and Pacumeni, for example,are Egyptian names which are sometimes transliterated exactly as they stand in the Book of Mormon, while Korihor is a close variant of Herihor, predecessor to 'Amon-Pi'ankhy in about 734 B.C. (Baer 1973).3. Description of military, social, and political institutions of sixth-century Israel corroborated by the Lachish letter and other recently discovered sources (Nibley 1982b; Nibley 1952, 4-12, 20-26, 107-18; Nibley 1957, 47-111;R. Smith 1984).4. Accurate and consistent geographical detail (England 1982; Nibley1952,123-28).5. Ancient forms of government (Bushman 1976; Nibley 1973, 281-82;Nibley 1952, 20-26; Nibley 1957, 82-86).6. Evidence that the Book of Mormon assigned value to the cardinal directions with south representing the sacred and north the profane (Alma 22;46:17; Eth. 7:6). It also presents a social organization revolving around a ritual center from which government, territorial order, and communal sanctity flowed. The moral order of life and understanding of the covenant were also linked to territoriality (Olsen 1983). These symbolic aspects of territoriality are common in ancient societies.Some studies also conclude that the Book of Mormon's literary structure is uniform, not one that reveals expansions. For example, many of the book's messages are, like Hebrew scripture generally, imbedded in its structure rathert han in its discursive doctrines, as impressive as they may be. Some studies have demonstrated an ingenious structure characterized by literary typologies,or exposition of symbolic similarities between peoples, places and events (Tate,Rust, and Jorpensen, all 1981). Other unifying structures are the various forms of parallelism (synthetic,antithetic and synonomic) that are the basis of Hebrew poetry (Welch 1969and 1981). Steven Sondrup (1981) has demonstrated that the poetic paral1lelism of 2 Nephi 4 resembles poetic structure in the Psalms. Noel Reynolds(1982) has argued that chiasmus (inverted parallelism) is the organizing principle for the entire book of 1 Nephi.

To which somebody responds:

Blake your keyboard should have a spacebar and an enter key to help break up your sentences and thoughts. Regardless of their validity, you owe your readers this very small favor. No one's reading your literal wall of text. It's stressing just to glance at, friend.

Maybe it was Ostler who did the edits for Midgley's Eborn festschrift? And the criticisms just keep coming:

Blake and the others who call for names only do so they can extend their ad hominems further just goes to further demonstrate the fruits of the theology - raw hate.

For those who are not lazy and pompous, explanations to Blake's 6:47 are easily found with the simplest internet searches. The mythology in the 6:47 is easily applied to any fan fiction.

As a young adult Smith was a fan of the Apocrypha. Later, Smith agreed with scholars and did not accept it as canon. The mere mention of the name of Jesus as the Messiah in the Apocrypha before Jesus is enough for scholars to consider it anachronistic. The methodology of 6:47 essentially asserts nothing can be an anachronism, for any pet theory can be found to exist with creative eisegesis.

Finding tidbits here and there to declare some idea pre-existing is as silly as saying sea shells on mountains is evidence of a global flood or the small amount of dust on the moon proves it is only 7000 years old.

I wonder if there will be any response to this? You wonder what the next move is here for the Mopologists. Will Lindsay go through and delete the comments--particular the one in which he's accused of sending emails as a form of alleged intimidation? Will he be told that he needs to clean up his act lest he get booted from his position as Co-Editor as "Interpreter"? (Sort of like how Allen Wyatt was "demoted" due to coming across like an oaf on the Interpreter Radio show?)

Regardless, things have certainly been heating up on Bro. Lindsay's blog. By comparison, "SeN" is nothing but chirping crickets these days.

[Dr Moore]

Geez, Blake is a piece of work. Did any of you catch his interview with Hannah S? Quite serious about his seriousness. I’ll take Parallelomania for $1,000, Alex.

[Symmachus]

An interesting case study, OK, is the Bar Kochba Letters. There are precious ancient documents now widely known to be authentic, but in 1953 Solomon Zeitlin used linguistic grounds to make a "slam dunk" argument that at least one letter in the collect was a forgery. The letter begins with the letter mem followed by the name Simon, indicating "from Simon." But using mem in this way was "known" to be a developed from the Middle Ages, unattested in Hebrew around 150 AD near the time of the Bar Kochba rebellion. Dershowitz says "Zeitlin may well have been correct that prefixed mems were unattested in the relevant period, but the conclusion he drew from this fact was dramatically wrong, as we now know. Given the severe paucity of data regarding early Hebrew, countless features that were alive and well at the time – many of which are attested in later Hebrew chronolects – are unknown to us due to accidents of history. Occasionally, we are lucky enough to make discoveries that, if not incautiously disregarded, fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge" (Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses, p. 130). Many of the anachronisms and blunders of the Book of Mormon have turned out to be like this as gaps have become filled in.

The Bar Kochba letters are not friendly to the apologetic position, particularly with regard to the name Alma (see here). They'd more wisely avoid that text.

The problem cowardly anonyomuse is that exactly the work explaining how, where and why anachronistic material appears in the Book of Mormon. You are just too lazy and pompous to deal with the actual evidence of genuinely ancient literary prophetic call forms, prophetic lawsuit forms, covenant renewal (Suzerain Treaty forms occurring at least 5 times in the text), ancient political ideas, genuinely ancient understanding of robber bands complete with Hebraic word-play on the notion of robbers and stones, resemblances between Israelite law, international treaties, and laws governing war and oath forms (Rasmussen 1982; R. Johnson 1982; Morise1982).2. Hebrew, Egyptian, and classical names which appear in the Book of Mormon but not in the Bible (Nibley 1973, 192-96; Nibley 1957, 242-54;Nibley 1948, 85-90; Carlton and Welch 1981; Tvedtnes 1977). Though many of these names could be biblical variants, others are difficult to explainas Joseph Smith's inventions. Paanchi, Pahoran, and Pacumeni, for example,are Egyptian names which are sometimes transliterated exactly as they stand in the Book of Mormon, while Korihor is a close variant of Herihor, predecessor to 'Amon-Pi'ankhy in about 734 B.C. (Baer 1973).3. Description of military, social, and political institutions of sixth-century Israel corroborated by the Lachish letter and other recently discovered sources (Nibley 1982b; Nibley 1952, 4-12, 20-26, 107-18; Nibley 1957, 47-111;R. Smith 1984).4. Accurate and consistent geographical detail (England 1982; Nibley1952,123-28).5. Ancient forms of government (Bushman 1976; Nibley 1973, 281-82;Nibley 1952, 20-26; Nibley 1957, 82-86).6. Evidence that the Book of Mormon assigned value to the cardinal directions with south representing the sacred and north the profane (Alma 22;46:17; Eth. 7:6). It also presents a social organization revolving around a ritual center from which government, territorial order, and communal sanctity flowed. The moral order of life and understanding of the covenant were also linked to territoriality (Olsen 1983). These symbolic aspects of territoriality are common in ancient societies.Some studies also conclude that the Book of Mormon's literary structure is uniform, not one that reveals expansions. For example, many of the book's messages are, like Hebrew scripture generally, imbedded in its structure rathert han in its discursive doctrines, as impressive as they may be. Some studies have demonstrated an ingenious structure characterized by literary typologies,or exposition of symbolic similarities between peoples, places and events (Tate,Rust, and Jorpensen, all 1981). Other unifying structures are the various forms of parallelism (synthetic,antithetic and synonomic) that are the basis of Hebrew poetry (Welch 1969and 1981). Steven Sondrup (1981) has demonstrated that the poetic paral1lelism of 2 Nephi 4 resembles poetic structure in the Psalms. Noel Reynolds(1982) has argued that chiasmus (inverted parallelism) is the organizing principle for the entire book of 1 Nephi.

All of this has been torn to shreds many times, except that I have not seen anyone, beyond yours truly, point out the flaw in the oft-repeated appeal to Paanchi as evidence for the Book of Mormon, which is based on a misreading:

One reference on the complications of the name "Piankhi" vs. Piye on the so-called "Victory Stele of Piye" is a 2006 article by Karola Zibelius-Chen ("Zur Problematik der Lesung des Königsnamens Pi(anch)i") in Der Antike Sudan 17:127-33.

As I understand it, other epigraphic evidence give his name is Piye but on the "Victory Stele" it had been read as Piankhi. If it occurs elsewhere, I invite the Egyptologists here to correct me. You can see documents from Piye's reign in Ritner's anthology The Libyan Anarchy (a preview available here), which even provides a transliteration so you can see the name for yourself.

The apologists still have the name Piankh (or Payankh), a high priest from the 21st dynasty (so, 11th century BC; a document related to him is also in that Ritner volume). He was the son of Herihor (that sounds just like Korihor!). How could Joseph Smith have known this name? It's a good question, but another good question is: how could an Israelite merchant/prophet from the sixth century BC have known so much about the politics of the Third Intermediate period in Egypt five centuries before his own time and then somehow passed the name to his family where it does not appear until a further five hundred years? It makes no sense.

Piye (Paanchi) was a Libyan in any case, not an Egyptian. And Korihor is not a "close variant" of Herihor. It is no kind of variant. The name Herihor actually means something in Egyptian, but Korihor doesn't.

This place goes after Daniel Peterson (too much in my view) for being an academic fake, but at least he is an actual professor who has done professor things and has a field that he actually does know, even if he hasn't published in it. Blake Ostler is the real poser of Mormon apologetics. He lists facts without understanding them because he lacks the skills to interpret them. The man demonstrates every time he comments on things of this nature that he knows nothing of such matters at any depth.

[Kishkumen]

Moreover, he is an incredibly unpleasant poser.

[Gadianton]

Doctor Scratch, you've unearthed a devastating case study of the imploding nature of Mopologetics.

"Anonymous" hit the nail on the head given the recent Netflix documentary.

For those who are not lazy and pompous, explanations to Blake's 6:47 are easily found with the simplest internet searches. The mythology in the 6:47 is easily applied to any fan fiction.

Indeed! Which is why it took a matter of days for the Mopologists to prove the authenticity of the Salamander letter through the same kinds of vague linguistic parallels.

He lists facts without understanding them because he lacks the skills to interpret them. The man demonstrates every time he comments on things of this nature that he knows nothing of such matters at any depth.

I'd love to see you lock horns. I think we all know that he's too chicken to register here and bring his game, though. Talk about an ass-kicking waiting to happen, the likes the world of Mopologetics has never seen!

You realize I'm speaking the truth, don't you Dan? If Blake or any of your guys registered here to debate the Book of Mormon as ancient based on philology, they're toast, immediately, because, well, Symmachus.

In a way, that's a sad situation. For decades you had it easy because here you have a church with millions of members, from those millions, a handful will have the aptitude and will to pursue ancient languages, and from those, a handful will have whatever it is that keeps a person still faithful, and use their knowledge to defend or attack critics. Out of the much smaller pool of apostates will be a small number who have pursued ancient languages, and a small number of those will choose not to let apologist arguments go unchallenged. So in a pure numbers game, it's easy for the apologists to sit back and demand critics to produce the degrees. (even though in many or even most cases, critics without specialized training can see through the BS)

In fact, here is the simplest proof that I can think of that the Book of Mormon isn't ancient:

BYU has no Book of Mormon archeology department.

If there were even the vaguest hope that the Book of Mormon could be proven ancient, the Church would be pouring money into it, and students would be heavily encouraged to pursue training to take up the cause.

[Shulem]

In fact, here is the simplest proof that I can think of that the Book of Mormon isn't ancient:

BYU has no Book of Mormon archeology department.

If there were even the vaguest hope that the Book of Mormon could be proven ancient, the Church would be pouring money into it, and students would be heavily encouraged to pursue training to take up the cause.

Oh no doubt about that. The Church could pull billions out of stock and purchase large tracks of land down south for building museums and all manner of resorts to attend them. It would be a worldwide operation on a grand scale. Mormonism and its museums would be a force that would punctate that land in defining its history with its history book.

But, that will never happen. I've had enough of the Book of Mormon and I'm taking it to task in another thread. I will nail the Book of Mormon up against the wall and beat its brains out. It will get ugly. But the job needs to be done and I figure I'm as good as anyone to get the job done. I don't think inside the box as most Mormons do and so it's time to take it to a whole new level. You people can kiss the Book of Mormon's ass goodbye by the time I'm done with it. It's going to be a dead carcass covered in flies.

[Symmachus]

Geez, Blake is a piece of work. Did any of you catch his interview with Hannah S? Quite serious about his seriousness. I’ll take Parallelomania for $1,000, Alex.

I have not heard that interview, but I did catch one he gave a couple of years ago on an LDS podcast. It is clear that he views himself quite highly, and he wasted no effort in explaining how Neal A. Maxwell felt similarly. Apparently, Mr. Ostler had written some theological insight while he was a law student at BYU, and this somehow got back to Maxwell and solved some problem that had been in his mind, or something like that. It wasn't clear what the problem was, only that Ostler had solved it—at such a young age! Later in the interview, when he started doing some bargain-basement philology to make a theological point, I quit listening.

I'd love to see you lock horns. I think we all know that he's too chicken to register here and bring his game, though. Talk about an ass-kicking waiting to happen, the likes the world of Mopologetics has never seen!

I would enjoy any philological discussion—and I would see it as a discussion—with anyone who wants to take it up with me. Ostler would probably accuse me of hiding behind a pseudonym and refuse any discussion—he would see it as a debate—without knowing my credentials and my medical history. That is for him always a convenient out because then he doesn't have to engage with the argument, which is actually the point I think. Of course, what if "Symmachus" isn't instead just a mere synonym or antonym rather than a pseudonym? It could very well be my real name. Who is to say that my name isn't Rowena Symmachus? Unfortunately, my only credential is the B+ I got in Spanish at Parowan High School. How could I possibly prove this to him?

In fact, here is the simplest proof that I can think of that the Book of Mormon isn't ancient:

BYU has no Book of Mormon archeology department.

If there were even the vaguest hope that the Book of Mormon could be proven ancient, the Church would be pouring money into it, and students would be heavily encouraged to pursue training to take up the cause.

Quite right. But let me ask this: why aren't any Mormons even writing about the Book of Mormon as a genuine historical document? Everything is either apologetic or theological or devotional. Judged by what faithful Mormon scholars publish, even they don't really take it seriously as history. I would really love, for example, to see a book like "Men are That They Might Have Employ: Nephite Bureaucracy and Society, 91 BC-31 AD." Go ahead and just assume it's like Herodotus and go ahead use everything you can from the Old and New Worlds—use the Florentine Codex if you want, or the scholarship on Sumerian scribal culture from 3,000 years earlier—but for once say something about the damn book that isn't ultimately about the Church. Historicity is a talisman.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

I’m baffled by Blake’s behavior. Does he really think he’s helping the cause with his bizarre postings?

If I recall correctly, there was a thread not too long ago where Blake jumped on a Mormon related thread and had an epic meltdown. Blake became increasingly angry and finally called everyone cowards and told them to “kiss his white ass.”

This is not the behavior of a mentally balanced individual. I wonder if medication (Ambien, Xanax or pain medication) is partially to blame? I would like to think so because the alternative is that Blake is crazy.

Regardless, Blake should probably stay away from the internet until he is well enough to post.

[DrStakhanovite]

I have not heard that interview, but I did catch one he gave a couple of years ago on an LDS podcast. It is clear that he views himself quite highly, and he wasted no effort in explaining how Neal A. Maxwell felt similarly.

lol I think that was the same podcast where he claimed to have read the entirety of Aquinas' Summa Theologica in Latin. That is over 3,000 double columned pages of scholastic learning written for an audience that no longer exists. So unless you are a scholar dedicated to thomism like Étienne Gilson or an actual Dominican Monk, odds are you are not reading the entire Summa in English, much less scholastic Latin.

Edit To Add: Also I think there was a story he told that during his undergrad years he and Stephen Gould came to the same conclusion about some aspect of paleontology, but Stephen beat him to the punch and got published first.

[DrStakhanovite]

I’m baffled by Blake’s behavior. Does he really think he’s helping the cause with his bizarre postings?

Yes. Blake has no self-awareness when it comes to either the creative lies about his abilities or what his online behavior looks like to anyone else but himself. Blake Ostler very much believes he is a gifted polymath who is capable of anything.