This is your chance to share those gems you have on your bookshelves, or to see what books others have enjoyed, delighted in, and now cherish.
And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.—D&C 88:118
One idea is to route categories such as Early Christianity, LDS History, Temples, etc.
The format could be as done in grad school: a precis, a commentary or a full-fledged review. Or we could simply comment. It’s up to those who would like to participate.
Any suggestions for the first book?
Thanks!
Carolyn
I’m currently enjoying Brant Gardner’s “Second Witness” Book of Mormon commentary.
I just finished Mike Ash’s “Shaken Faith Syndrome”. It was great. I can’t believe I waited this long to read it.
I want a FAIR review of Truth and Science: An LDS Perspective. It draws several comparisons between the scientific dark ages and the apostasy, and scientific naturalistic assumptions and gospel doctrine.
One book that I think is a must own for those interested in Mormon apologetics is Opening the Heavens edited by John Welch. Kevin Barney has written a Farms Review for it and I briefly toyed with doing the same, but have instead used blogs to create essays based on the source documentation that is compiled in two of the essays: Welch’s one that compiles 203 translation accounts and Cannon’s one that compiles 70 priesthood restoration documents. Welch’s compilation has continued to inspire analysis, although is some cases, it has to be supplemented with Vogel’s Early Mormon Document series.
As an example of what can be done with the material, i helped formulate a response to a follow-up question to Brant Gardner’s FAIR conference presentation about when the breastplate might have been used.
1) No one saw Joseph Smith use the Nephite Interpreters in the translation process. Moroni forbade him to show the breastplate or spectacles to any one. With that said, the 3 Witnesses later saw uncovered objects when it was later permitted. Joseph also let family members and Martin Harris handle objects covered by some material immediately after bringing them home.
2) William Smith has an account of Joseph wearing the breastplate with the spectacles in place. The breastplate-spectacle set up was too big, so either William or his interviewer conjectured that Joseph took the spectacles apart from the breastplate before moving to Harmony. I think William is correct that Joseph soon used his hat and looked through one stone (lens) of the Nephite Interpreters at a time (the wide spacing of the lenses is well attested to). However I don’t think that Joseph wore the spectacles while placing his face in the hat and had to shut one eye. Rather, I agree with Mark Ashurst-McGee’s thesis that Joseph disassembled the Nephite Interpreters and put one of the lens (stones) in the hat. He sites an account which depicts Joseph as having lost one of the lens and using the other to locate it to support this notion. Joseph kept the Interpreters on him while working on the farm. It is easier to carry around, conceal, and use the lenses (stones) than the entire spectacles. William’s remarks are more pertinent to the short period between September to December 1827 that Joseph was in Palmyra. He was not a first hand witness of Joseph wearing the breastplate whenever on official business, so his statement is anomalous to the majority of the other accounts.
Here are a couple of versions of William’s account:
3) Joseph made no progress on actually translating before leaving for Harmony (other accounts suggest that he initially struggled to crack the code even through his initial time spent in Harmony).
4) Joseph did pack up the breastplate along with the plates and kept it in a chest under his bed in Harmony but I do not know how long. I doubt Joseph was given back the breastplate after the 116 pages were lost (or the spectacles or plates for that matter).
5) Using the hat in the translation process appears to have started at a very early stage. Emma mention Joseph used the hat while the Sarah spelling and Jerusalem walls stuff occurred. This probably occurs early in the 116 pages text and may have occurred before the Anthon incident (or perhaps while Martin was off on his trip).
6) Given point 1, I think that placing the disassembled spectacle lens in the hat was sufficient to keep Emma from looking at any part of the Nephite Interpreters. Joseph trusted Emma. The same can not be said of Martin Harris, who did not even trust himself to not to look at the Interpreters in the hat. So this is where the 14 or so accounts of Joseph using a curtain come in.
7) Another early hat reference is Martin Harris doing the stone swapping experiment in Harmony. However I think that would have occurred late in the 116 page translation. At this point Joseph would have no longer having been using the Interpreter stones to translate. I also expect the curtain came down at this point as there would no longer be a need for it to shield the Nephite Interpreters from Martin.
8) With that said, both David Whitmer and Emma use the loss of the 116 pages through Joseph’s repentance process as the time frame when Joseph switched from using the Nephite Interpreters to his brown seer stone. I suspect that they weren’t aware that Joseph briefly used his white stone; this helps explain the anomaly presented by point 7.
9) Not very many people seem to have realized that Joseph disassembled the spectacles as argued in point 2, but were aware of Joseph using a hat. Therefore we get speculative accounts of Joseph putting the entire spectacles in the hat.
10) There are two other sources (in addition to William Smith’s) that have Joseph wearing the breastplate while translating that comes from David and John Whitmer. But I would have to see more of the context.
11 There are other sources that mention the spectacles without mentioning the hat or breastplate (Gardner showed the best such account in his presentation from Truman Coe). He is right that this method is less attested to than the stone-in-the-hat method. Here are a couple of these accounts
David Whitmer (apparently speculating about an earlier translation period than when he personally witnessed):
An extremely late, second hand account that is at odds with the other accounts that the Nephite Interpreters were given back to Moroni before Oliver worked as a scribe. Oliver’s first hand accounts are much less descriptive (he doesn’t describe the hat or where the plates where).
I don’t think we can completely rule out that Joseph ever used the breastplate and assembled spectacles (without a hat) behind the curtain in the early stages, but I don’t see much of a reason for him to do so. I agree with Brant that using his hat is what Joseph would be most comfortable with doing.
Keller,
The subject of Joseph translating the Book of Mormon word for word brings up an interesting point. I noticed many years ago that the Beatitudes in the Book of Mormon are more similar to the King James NT than the ones in the JS translation. Shouldn’t they be more similar to the JS translation since it is supposed to be more correct?
Onika,
I think it important to evaluate a piece of information given in various accounts of the translation process on the basis of how person arrived at believing that piece. For example, I consider eye witness accounts to be prefered over hearsay accounts or conjectured accounts. With those principles in mind, the idea that it was a word for word translation is one of the weakest items in the accounts. No one could see what Joseph saw and I do not think he told anyone what he was seeing while translating. In other words, I think that there is a lot of guessing going on, based on times when Joseph corrected their spelling or would dictate 15-20 words at a time.
So I think that where in conflict, analysis of the received text should take priority over conjectural accounts (which are not eye witness or even hearsay). Analysis of the received text shows that translation was not always tight (not that any translation from one language to another can be word for word).
I am seeing an incorrect assumption about the nature of the JST text behind your question. Please see the FAIR wiki article for a needed corrective: http://en.fairlatterdaysaints.org/Joseph_Smith_Translation_as_a_restoration_of_the_original_Bible_text
I read the article, and I have always had the impression that the translation was more of an explanation of the scripture. But, I think this is a different case with the Book of Mormon. Even if the JS translation was not what was literally said or written, but an explanation, that doesn’t explain why the Book of Mormon is almost word for word like the NT. That would mean the NT is correctly translated in that case, and word for word what Jesus said, so why would Joseph need to expound?
Not only that, shouldn’t the expounding have happened when the Book of Mormon was being translated?
Onika,
Glad you see JST as being an explanatory version of the Bible. Why not view the Book of Mormon use of KJV text as the same? The BoM authors “likened” the scriptures they had rather than on insisting on recovering the original intent of the scriptures. While Nephi and Jacob were skilled in reading the texts after the learning of their Jewish heritage, they did not seek to educate others on this. Therefore it is inconsistent to expect that when they relay ancient texts that they are confirming that the KJV was translated and transmitted correctly in spots.
The Book of Mormon translation was designed to work in a complementary manner as a second witness to the KJV Bible. It would hardly do to offer variant readings that could be considered superior (reflecting a more ancient text) to modern readers to the related Bible passages at every opportunity. I suggest that the received text of the Book of Mormon picks its battles carefully in the places where it uses a similar source yet differs from the KJV. In other words, there is a trade off between maintaining harmony with the KJV and maintaining harmony with the ancient source.
I’m sorry to give you the blue pill, Keller, but that would only work with OT text, not NT, since the Nephites didn’t have the NT. The Nephites wrote what they witnessed when Christ came to America, and not something they copied from an ancient text. The JS translation, or something similar should have been in the Book of Mormon, and not the NT version.
Bishops Lists Robert Lee Williams, Gorgias Press (2005) Discusses motivations for assembling lists of episcopal succession for 5 Patristic writers Eusebius, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Julius Africanus, and Hippolytus. Themes that Williams, a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological, who prepared his earlier dissertation for publication, addresses will particularly interest Latter-day Saint students of early Christianity. Williams writes (p. 2): “In the ancient Mediterranean world a common feature in establishing the legitimacy of a social institution was to cite its unbroken succession of leaders from its founder. Successions were common coinage in addressing issues of authority, whether in Greek philosophy, Roman government, or Jewish high priesthood, or subsequently in Christian prophecy and apostleship.” Williams sees a slight shift in how Eusebius used lists of bishops to earlier 2nd and 3rd century Christian writers. Eusebius wrote to glorify Christianity’s past above that of competing institutions (governmental or philosophical). Hugh Nibley characterized this as “the gospel of bigness and power” in Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity. Earlier writers used lists to bolster the claims of their present bishop in light of a “formative crisis.” p. 3
Williams investigates the motives and social context behind the writers that compiled these lists of bishops. It might be fun to investigate Williams’s motive for conducting the study. My impression is that Williams is supportive of an apostolic succession up to the point that biblical texts were authoritatively canonized. A key feature of philosophical schools is a founder would designate a student as his successor in a will as his heir as the head of the school (and so on). However if a successor innovated or deviated too much from the founder’s teachings it was considered heresy and the successor would be considered the founder of a schismatic school. Some of this discussion becomes rather abstract as the debate of whether so and so was a real successor or not was held quite after the fact. In the first century, philosophical schools became less of an institution headed up by a leader and more of collection of individuals or students who were doctrinely loyal to the founder (p. 25).
The three modes of succession each capture something slightly different. The high priestly mode captures the right to perform divine rituals. The Roman emperor mode refers to political or governmental rights. The philosophical mode refers to preserving a founder’s teachings. From a protestant point of view, a text like the Bible can accomplish much of the third mode, while there is a de-emphasis in the other modes. In a Mormon point of view an apostolic successor is allowed to receive revelation or innovate away from the founder’s previously recorded teachings. The founder is usually perceived to be actively supportive of such developments. However some fundamentalist Mormons might use an innovation as grounds to schism. Under the philosophical school model of succession it was the gnostics who were innovating away from Jesus and his apostles’ teachings and the Bishops that were preserving those teachings. However from my point of view both were innovating.
Bishops Lists is an fascinating study about what was historically perceived to constitute proper institutional succession and apostasy. LDS students might ask what does “Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” and recognize an improper incursion of Hellenistic concepts of succession. Saints who have read James Faulconer’s chapter in Early Christians in Disarray, “The Concept of Apostasy in the New Testament,” may also appreciate Williams’ more expansive treatment.
Onika,
No need to break out any pills. 🙂 Both the use of the NT and OT in the Book of Mormon present similar problems. For example, the Book of Mormon quotes second Isaiah, text that the Documentary Hypothesis usually dates after Lehi’s departure circa 600 AD. Jesus’ sermon at the Nephite temple follows closely with the KJV of Matthew’s sermon on the mount. That is even though Matthew was developed from a synthesis of Q, Mark, and oral traditions arising in the Antioch region if you follow a prominent strain of New Testament scholarship. My trade-off theory accounts for all this phenomena. Whenever ancient biblical writers and Book of Mormon writers were teaching similar concepts, the translation design of the Book of Mormon minimizes the differences. The two ancient groups may not have had access to source texts that share a physical provenance; yet that is irrelevant considering that God can inspire prophets and their scribal disciples/translaters to come up with similar concepts.
I have also really enjoyed Gardner’s series. I’m also slowly reading Ostler’s 3rd volume of “Exploring Mormon Thought.” It has been a very good read so far.
One book I am very glad to own is “Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon”, published by FARMS.
Another book I am equally glad to own is “Rough Stone Rolling”, the book which really introduced me to Joseph Smith in a way I had never been introduced, and which profoundly impacted my understanding and appreciation for Joseph.
There are so many more but I will leave them for others!
Keller,
So when 1 Nephi 20 says:
1 Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, or out of the waters of baptism, who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness.
when “waters of Judah” means “loins of Judah” (Avraham Gileadi translation) and not “waters of baptism”, Joseph is just likening the scriptures to our day?
The “waters of baptism” was not in the 1830 Book of Mormon, but introduced in a later edition by Joseph Smith, as you may already know. So whether or not Gileadi’s translation holds up or not academically speaking, I would not necessarily expect to find evidence that ancient people interpreted the passage in terms of baptism. I might be curious enough to check up on the possibility though. Everyone on earth presently is a descendent of Judah (if anyone is) so being born into Judah is not something that sets one apart as covenant Israel like it used to and like baptisms (and Mormon patriarchal blessings) do now. Likening indeed. A similar transition occurs in the Book of Mosiah, when the Nephites start separating church and state and tolerating multiple religions (and use baptism as an initiation ritual to accomplish this setting apart). See Daniel Peterson’s article on the subject. http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=18&num=1&id=604
Let’s not get too far off the subject of apologetic book reviews.
Onika,
I am relatively uneducated at Biblical history, but have read some books about it; likewise some books about Dead Sea Scrolls. The summary judgment that comes to mind is this:
The Documentary Hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis. Even the oldest DSS Isaiah manuscripts date quite a long time after the fact. One issue is naturally the word “baptism” being completely MIA in OT, although several people have noted the connection between the Ritual Bath (mikveh/mikvah) and baptism/sacrament ordinances (my conjecture is, that in order to “pre-empt” a need to baptize hosts of people each weak, the Sacrament of The Lord’s Supper was instituted – and the original Apostles not being familiar with mikveh were not making that connection, or then the NT editors who didn’t know Jewish culture/religion much nor want to appear “too Jewish” just decided that a Greek word for “immersion/submersion” would do). My point being, that there is no Biblical sanction for mikveh, either. But why did the Pharisees not question John’s baptism on grounds of Authority, or Nonscripturality?
Many linguistic analysts speculate that most of the OT was never put into writing until it began during the Babylonian captivity, when it became more difficult to preserve oral tradition.
Thus, from this point of view it is unclear if Isaiah ever wrote anything or if his poetic form was just a vehicle for easier memorization by people, who spoke the Hebrew. In these circumstances who knows how much “editing” the original Isaiah went through?
I know a lot of the above is probably hogwash, but no less plausible than what Keller is saying. We have to remember that the JST text came a fair bit later than BoM text (later revelation…).
I would advise people check out some great little books from Oxford University Press; the “Short Introduction” series. So far I have only been able to grab 3 of them, but all 3 were fantastic. These little books take a topic and give a general overview with recommendations for further inquiry.
Check out
History, by John H. Arnold
Theology, by David F. Ford
Literary Theory, by Jonathan Culler.
All 3 would be welcome for an introduction to these issues for apologists and anyone else interested. I have heard the one on the Bible is excellent. There is also one on Mormonism by Richard Bushman and one on the Book of Mormon by Terryl Givens.
>I know a lot of the above is probably hogwash
Actually I think that you are on the right track, but one should cast a broad net when looking for precursors to Christian baptism. I am confident that ritual washings were fairly persistent in the Israelite religion. What is important to look at is what forms they took, how were they adapted over time, and what role did they have relative to other identity forming rituals. I think a good paper could be published by surveying ancient Judeo-Christian texts whether they be Dead Sea scrlls, Rabbinical midrash, or ECF commentary on baptism.
One mode we see ritual washings in is in consecrating priests. So some early Christian writers drew parallels and discussed how rituals previously reserved for priests were now more accessible for all Christians (yet moved out of a temple context). For example, they metaphorically equated anointing with oil with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. See Dan Becerras’ Sane Conference address. I only give this as one example for which your comments about mikveh could be synthesized with to paint the bigger picture.
Velska,
What country are you from?
Anyway, I have no problem with baptism. It is associated with the Day of Atonement, and converts to Judaism are baptized as well as circumcised. I speculated that is why John was baptizing–to prepare the people for the Day of Atonement.
My point was that the phrase “waters of Judah” makes a lot more sense in the context of that particular scripture if translated as “loins of Judah” because God is talking to the Jews.
Isaiah 48:
1 Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness.
2 For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; The Lord of hosts is his name.
3 I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.
4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;
5 I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.
Keller,
Where do you get that we are all Jews?? I thought you might have used the apology:
“Jesus was a Jew, so waters of Judah (loins of Judah) means means seed of Christ.” But really, maybe Joseph thought waters of Judah referred to the rivers where one was baptized.
For starters try: http://www.slate.com/id/2138060/
History, by John H. Arnold
Theology, by David F. Ford
Literary Theory, by Jonathan Culler.
All 3 would be welcome for an introduction to these issues for apologists and anyone else interested. I have heard the one on the Bible is excellent. There is also one on Mormonism by Richard Bushman and one on the Book of Mormon by Terryl Givens.
————–
Bushman’s introduction to Mormonism is very good.
Keller, I don’t agree with everything in the article. It would be true if everyone were from the same area, all intermingled and mixing, but I believe people were much more segregationist back then than they are now!! Even the twelve tribes mostly married within their tribes. And it’s ridiculous to say we’re all descendants of any particular person when that person may not have had posterity (Jesus) or even if that person had a child or children that doesn’t mean they have grandchildren or great grandchildren. Some lines do die out/become extinct.