Wrong to report preliminary
finds?
In reaction to my most recent book review published at Interpreter, some are suggesting that Dr. Wade Miller should have gotten the
work he is doing with horse bone specimen published in professional journals
before he published his book. The insinuation being that it is somehow wrong to
report his preliminary finds.
That is, of course, nonsense. Scholars report on their finds
in popular outlets all the time before they get peer-reviewed and published. I
just recently finished two books by an Egyptologist, published by Oxford
University Press, that were highly praised because they frequently and
repeatedly draw on yet unfinished, unreported, and un-peer-reviewed
archaeological findings. It did so cautiously and with lots of caveats
regarding the preliminary nature of the material, just as Dr. Miller was in his
book. And, because of doing this, these books were praised for drawing on the
most up-to-date data (then) presently available. Every news report on an
archaeological dig is also popularizing yet unpublished, unfinished, and
un-peer-reviewed findings. And this is not a phenomena limited to archaeology.
It happens in science too.
While we certainly must not let ourselves get carried away
by preliminary findings, there is also no harm in reporting such findings and
being optimistic about the future possibilities, as Dr. Miller was in his book.
Are all prophets the
same?
I was recently reading in Kenneth Kitchen’s On the Reliability of the Old Testament.
In chapter 8 he talks about prophets. The first few pages of that chapter (pp.
373–376) break the references to prophets down in different periods and
describes the attributes of prophets in each era. While there are certain
continuities, obviously, it does become clear that Israelites from different
periods of time had different conceptions of what a prophet was. The thrust of
Kitchen’s book is that these match the broader ancient Near Eastern trends on
what traits prophets did and did not have.
So, what is my point? Well, some people fault the Church
because the prophet (and apostles) today do not seem to have all the same
attributes that prophets had in biblical times, or Book of Mormon times, or
even in the early years of the Church. But what Kitchen’s brief discussion would
seem to indicate is that prophets do not
always have the same attributes. They receive messages from God in ways that
are viewed as acceptable within the broader society. Could it be, then, that
revelation has not ceased, the heavens are not closed, but that God is just
working through his prophets today in ways that are deemed more acceptable to
broader society, and therefore more likely to be well received, and influence
the world for good? This also seems consistent with the Lord’s promise in
D&C 1:24, which has been interpreted to not just refer to verbal or written
language, but also culture, as a vehicle of language and meaning.
Pagan Burial
Practices
A few months ago, a friend and I published a paper engaging
a critic’s arguments against correlating the south Arabian tribal territory Nehem/Nihm
(NHM) with the Book of Mormon Nahom (NHM). One of his objections was that Jews
like Lehi and Ishmael would not allow themselves to be buried in a pagan cemetery.
Well, thanks again to Kenneth Kitchen’s book, it was pointed out to me that
Joseph—Lehi and Ishamel’s ancestor—was buried in Egypt (instead of his
ancestral burial grounds), and was even mummified, and that archaeological
evidence confirms that some Semites (there would not have been “Israelites” as
an exclusive group yet) in Egypt and abroad did indeed follow Egyptian burial
practices in the early second millennium BC (see pp. 351–352 in Kitchen’s book).
Granted this was pre-Israelite, pre-law of Moses, but as we pointed out in our
response, the law of Moses does not actually forbid this practice. Given that
Joseph was their most prominent ancestor, it does not seem outrageous to think
that Lehi and Ishmael would have been OK with following his example, given
their circumstances.
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