Mormon Heretic

It’s time to get back to Terryl Givens book, By the Hand of Mormon.  While acknowledging archaeological data isn’t as strong as other aspects of the Book of Mormon, Givens seems to feel Mormon academics have made some impressive contributions.  Givens starts with Hugh Nibley on page 118:

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I’ve been enjoying Terryl Givens book, By the Hand of Mormon.  He has a positive view of Mormon scholarship, and goes into detail of both literary and archaeological scholarship. Wikipedia has some interesting information on Givens:

His second book, By the Hand of Mormon, is seen as his most important contribution to Mormon studies to date because it is the first academic survey of the significance of the Book of Mormon to believer and skeptic alike to be published by a major academic press (Oxford University Press). In it, Givens argues that the Book of Mormon has been important primarily for its existence and extra-textual historical claims rather than for its contents. Givens also makes a case for what he calls “dialogic revelation” as a novel contribution of the Book of Mormon. In current projects, he seems to be moving in the direction of broader engagement with religious themes across time and the western religious and philosophical traditions.

Critical response

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Kathryn Daynes tells a really interesting story about an infertile couple in her book More Wives than One.  The Church Handbook of Instruction was leaked onto the internet a few years ago, and the church sued to stop it’s publication.  The only reference I could find indicates that the Church strongly discourages members from participating in surrogate motherhood.  I know someone who was considering becoming a surrogate mother prior to her marriage.  While part of me respects such a decision, I always thought that participating in surrogate parenting was a strange idea.  I remember a NJ woman refused to give up the baby she had carried for another couple about 10-20 years ago, so there can be some real challenges for people who choose to participate in parenting via this route.  You hear about weird mixups like this one, and you understand the church’s decision on why it is a bad idea.    As I read the following story, it seems Brigham Young probably didn’t have a problem with surrogate parenting.

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From time to time, I get an email from George Potter.  He has a website called the Nephi Project.  I heard him speak a few years ago on research he has done in Yemen.  His research is pretty well-respected, and it appears he has a very good candidate for Nephi’s Harbor, and he may have found the River Laman in Saudi Arabia that is mentioned by Lehi in the Book of Mormon.  (I really need to write a review of his and another researcher’s work–they are really good.)  Potter thinks that Lehi and his family followed the frankincense trail to Yemen before setting sail for the New World.

George has recently shifted his focus from the Old World to the New World.  George is a proponent that the Book of Mormon lands are in Peru.  His latest newsletter dated Oct 13, 2009, says,
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I finally got around to one of my requests!  Tara and I have been discussing several topics, such as the Priesthood Ban, Polygamy, and Abraham, and the story of Balaam always seems to come up.  She takes the position that Balaam is a fallen prophet, but I think he never was a prophet.  Here’s my case.  What do you think?

Balaam has to be one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible.  He is one of only 7 gentile prophets mentioned in the Bible.  The others are Beor (Balaam’s father), Job and his 4 friends.  My favorite part of the story of Balaam is the talking donkey–it is the only place where an animal speaks (unless you count the serpent in the Garden of Eden.)   Ascertaining Balaam’s character can be a bit of a challenge.  On the one hand, the story of Balaam in Numbers 22-24  says the he not only talked with God, but a destroying angel appears to prevent him from cursing Israel.  On the other hand, he is referred to as “the wicked one” in Revelations.  So which is he?

Let’s get some background and a brief synopsis of the story of Balaam.

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This is a post to talk about a lesser known Mormon hero.  My wife has many pioneer ancestors.  In reading The Forgotten Kingdom, by David Bigler, he makes a few references to Reddick Allred, who is a distant uncle of my wife.  I wanted to highlight a good, Mormon man, relatively unknown, who just did the best he could.

Chapter 5 deals with the Handcart disasters so many Mormons are familiar with.  The Martin and Willie Handcart companies started for Utah too late in the year, and ended up stranded in early blizzards in Wyoming.  Reddick Allred was part of the rescue team.  Here’s what the book says on page 115,

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I don’t know why, but I love to learn about archaeology, especially religious archaeology.  A few years ago, Simcha Jacobovici came out with a documentary and book called The Jesus Tomb.  In it, he makes a claim that the bones of Jesus may have been located in a tomb unearthed in Jerusalem.  Of course, the Da Vinci Code, while fiction, makes a claim that Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene were actually buried in France.  A few months ago, I watched a documentary called Bloodline, which actually goes further, and makes the case that yes, indeed, the bones of Christ and Mary are found in France.  (You can learn more at the official website.)  I just came across a third source, which claims that Christ’s bones are actually located in India.  See this website.

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I came across an article about the Apostle Paul.  After Emporer Nero burned Rome, he blamed the fire on the Christians.  Various apostles were rounded up, and tradition has it that the Apostle Paul was beheaded around 60 AD.  A basilica was built to house parts of his body in about 390 AD.  (Oddly, his complete body is not there, but spread throughout various churches.  Apparently, the Orthodox/Catholic churches felt that bones from dead saints hold some spiritual power, and have often arranged to have bones sent to various churches so that many can share a claim to have various saints bones.)

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Ok, comparing these two books might seem a bit odd, but let me explain.  First of all, I’ve already done a few posts on Abraham.  In the first, I compared the Book of Abraham to the Koran, and wondered if Joseph might have translated an Islamic text, because the story found in the Book of Abraham where Abraham destroys his father’s idols is quite similar to a Koranic tale.  Then my second post on Abraham, I learned that this story is also found in the Jewish Midrash, so there is another non-biblical source for this story.

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The History Channel has a show called “Digging for the Truth.” In season 1, they did an episode called “The Lost Tribe of Israel”, which highlighted the Lemba Tribe in South Africa, which claims to be a Hebrew people who were displaced around 700 BC, about 100 years before Lehi left Jerusalem.  I couldn’t help but notice many similarities between their story, and the story of Lehi.

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A little more than 10 years ago, I was vacationing in Hawaii with a few friends.  While there, we attended a small branch and became good friends with one of the members there.  The member invited us over for family home evening, and introduced me to the idea that the Book of Mormon happened in South America.  I had never heard of this before, and became quite intrigued.

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I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of positive responses of the Malay Theory in my previous post.  In discussing the post with Ralph Olsen, the author of this theory, he has given me permission to post his unpublished manuscript!  Ralph is looking for a sort of “peer review”, where people give honest feedback about how the article could be improved.  He would also like to further promote the theory.  So, feel free to download it here, and post your comments, questions, thoughts, or concerns here.  (Please be patient!   The document is about 300 pages long, and nearly 20 MB in size, so it will take some time.)

Check out this map, and a few other links! Read more…

So, I’ve been checking my blog stats, and with Easter upon us, it seems my post from last year about why Mormon’s don’t celebrate Easter is getting the most hits.  While last year’s post was a little negative-that I think Mormon celebrations of Easter are lacking compared to other Christians’ Easter celebrations, I hope to talk more about some scholarly insights into Jesus this year as we discuss Easter.

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