In his first
blog post on the Book of Mormon, Philip Jenkins declared without hesitancy,
“If I look at the Book of Mormon as a historical text, as opposed to a
spiritual document, it is simply not factually correct in any particular.” He
goes on:
“In some controversial exchanges, I have been surprised to
find how many clearly educated and literate Mormons think that the work can be
defended as a work of history and archaeology. It can’t. The reason mainstream
historians and scholars do not point out that fact more often is either that
they are unaware of the book’s claims, or that they simply see no need to waste
time on something so blatantly fictitious. This really is not debatable.”
In contrast, in a recent
interview Brant Gardner remarked, “This is a very interesting time for Book
of Mormon studies. … We are seeing more and better correlations between the
text and the ever-increasing amount of information coming from archaeology and
history, both in the Old and New Worlds. The fu…
A Blog on Latter-day Saint Apologetics, Scholarship, and Commentary