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THE FAIR JOURNAL                                         December 2001
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        The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research
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   Apologetics: The branch of theology that is concerned with
   defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines. (The
   American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
   Edition, 2000.)


INSIDE THE JOURNAL
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   * FAIR APOLOGETICS INDEX. FAIR is proud to announce an apologetics
     index to help you find resources.

   * THEY LIE IN WAIT TO DECEIVE, VOLUME II. The second volume is now
     online. Last month we announced all four volumes of this classic
     series are available for sale and volume one could be downloaded
     free of charge from the Website. This month we are pleased to
     announce that Volume II is now available.

   * SCHOLARSHIP IN MORMONISM AND MORMONISM IN SCHOLARSHIP. Excerpts
     from a fascinating talk given by John Tvedtnes at the 2001 FAIR
     Conference.

   * DOCTRINAL TRENDS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND THE STRENGNTH OF THE
     MORMON POSITION. First presented as a FARMS brown-bag seminar,
     this FAIR Paper by Barry Bickmore examines the shifting nature of
     doctrines in the early Christian Church.

   * DOES THE BOOK OF MORMON TEACH MAINSTREAM TINITARIANISM OR
     MODALISM? Barry Bickmore's new FAIR Paper examines whether the
     Book of Mormon's teachings about the Godhead can be classified as
     trinitarianism or modalism.

   * A GIFT FOR APOLOGETICS. As your finish your gift giving, give a
     tax-deductible contribution to FAIR.

   * ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS. Interested in writing for FAIR? Learn how
     you can have your apologetics work published.

   * PUBLISHING NOTES. Learn how you can become more involved in FAIR
     and how you can reuse the material we publish.


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FAIR APOLOGETICS INDEX

We are proud to announce an apologetics index on the FAIR Website.
Just click on the "Apologetics Index" tab on the left side of our home
page. With this new index you no longer need to search the Internet,
wading through multiple sources that may or may not be credible. With
one click you can be in touch with the very best material on the Web.

The index is organized in a topical fashion and links you to many of
the excellent articles on various topics on Mormonism and
anti-Mormonism. The index links you to articles on the FAIR Website,
out of the Ensign magazine, and from the better Websites on the
Internet. You can click on the particular topic that interests you, or
you can type your keyword into the search box.

The index is a work in progress and we will continue to load various
links from the Internet. If you know of a particularly good article
please e-mail us at the Webmaster and send us the name of the
Website, the name of the article and it’s author, the link to the
article, and the topic or topics the article addresses.

We hope that this will greatly assist those in finding answers to
questions about anti-Mormonism no matter where they are found.


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THEY LIE IN WAIT TO DECIEVE, VOLUME II

Last month we announced that these four classic books were available
at our bookstore and that Volume I, which discusses D.J. Nelson and
the Book of Abraham, could be downloaded free from the Website.

This month we are pleased to announce that Volume II has been placed
on the Website in electronic format and is available free for
download. This book discusses the Solomon Spaulding manuscripts as a
possible source for the Book of Mormon and contains a complete copy of
that manuscript. It also exposes the background and tactics of Walter
Martin and other professional anti-Mormons as they attempt to show the
Book of Mormon to be a fraud.


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SCHOLARSHIP IN MORMONISM AND MORMONISM IN SCHOLARSHIP

Here are some selected notes from the wonderful talk John Tvedtnes
gave at our FAIR conference this past August. This is only a partial
transcript from the talk with a few selected quotes. I would certainly
recommend the full version.

-Scott Gordon
 President, FAIR


I returned a few days ago from Jerusalem, where I presented a paper on
"Hebrew Names in the Book of Mormon" at the thirteenth annual World
Congress of Jewish Studies. It was not my first time speaking in
Jerusalem on a subject that is of specific interest to Latter-day
Saints. In the 1970s, I was invited to deliver a series of lectures on
Mormonism for the history and sociology departments of Haifa
University. It was my only opportunity to lecture in Hebrew. In 1981,
I was one of two Americans invited to speak at a scholarly conference
sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture and marking
the opening of a new museum exhibit on Coptic textiles in Jerusalem.
My paper was entitled "Baptism for the Dead: The Coptic Rationale,"
and it was very well received…

After John W. Welch organized the Foundation for Ancient Research and
Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 1979, critics of the Church began arguing
that there were no real LDS scholars or that, at best, they were
 pseudo-scholars. This tactic was designed to dissuade potential
readers from looking at FARMS materials. But things began to change
after 1997, when Evangelical scholars Carl Mosser and Paul Owen
presented their now-famous paper at a regional meeting of the
Evangelical Theological Society. Entitled "Mormon Scholarship,
Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not
Knowing It?" it was later published in Trinity Journal 19NS (1998).
The authors noted that various LDS scholars who wrote for FARMS were
also involved in serious scholarly work that has been published in a
wide range of non-LDS scholarly publications.

The Mosser/Owen paper called for a re-evaluation of the way
Evangelicals deal with Latter-day Saint scholarship. What is needed,
they contend, is to keep the mostly untrained Mormon-bashers out of
the discussion and bring Evangelical scholars in. While some
Evangelical scholars have taken up the gauntlet, the amateurs still
rule the field with their mostly unfounded anti-Mormon diatribes.
However, their argument has changed direction. Now they contend that
LDS scholars do well when writing in their chosen academic fields, but
are not objective (and therefore not scholarly) when writing about LDS
subjects.

There has been a tendency among non-LDS scholars to suggest that
unique LDS scriptures such as the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham,
and the Book of Moses are not subjects for serious scholarly study
except as literary frauds, and that Joseph Smith's claim to have
restored the ancient Church is bogus. But the past few decades have
seen some softening in this position...

In the spring of 1978, the Religious Studies Center of Brigham Young
University sponsored a symposium to which a number of non-LDS scholars
were invited to discuss topics of special interest to Latter-day
Saints. The papers presented at the symposium were assembled by Truman
G. Madsen and published in a book entitled Reflections on Mormonism:
Judaeo-Christian Parallels. Several of the papers discussed topics
drawn from the Book of Mormon and other unique LDS scriptures. David
Winston of the University of California (Berkeley) discussed
"Preexistence in Hellenic, Judaic and Mormon Sources." Krister
Stendahl of the Harvard Divinity School discussed "The Sermon on the
Mount and Third Nephi." Edmond LaB. Cherbonnier of Trinity College
(Hartford, Connecticut) spoke "In Defense of Anthropomorphism." John
Dillenberger, President of Hartford Seminary Foundation, compared
"Grace and Works in Martin Luther and Joseph Smith." Ernst W. Benz of
the University of Marburg titled his presentation "Imago Dei: Man in
the Image of God." James H. Charlesworth of Duke University presented
a paper entitled "Messianism in the Pseudepigrapha and the Book of
Mormon."

In 1981, while serving as chair of the annual Symposium on the
Archaeology of the Scriptures and Allied Fields, I invited Raphael
Patai of Princeton University to speak at the symposium on the subject
of his book The Hebrew Goddess (1968), in which he suggested that at
least some Jews in ancient times believed God was married. Patai
expressed surprise that Latter-day Saints should be interested in the
topic, and when I explained our concepts of God and eternal marriage,
he asked that I send him some materials, which I did. His presentation
at the symposium was well received, and Patai later returned to Provo
for other presentations...

Patai credited Lundquist for breaking the "writer's block" that
enabled him to complete his book The Children of Noah: Jewish
Seafaring in Ancient Times, published by Princeton University in 1998.
In the Preface, Patai wrote:

   Then, in the late 1980s, I was asked by my friend Dr. John M.
   Lundquist, head of the Oriental Division of the New York Public
   Library, to contribute a paper to the Festschrift he, together with
   Dr. Stephen D. Ricks of Brigham Young University, planned to
   publish in honor of the eightieth birthday of Hugh W. Nibley.
   Thinking about what would be most suitable for a collection of
   essays in honor of an outstanding Mormon scholar, and knowing that
   according to the traditions of the Mormons their ancestors [sic]
   sailed to America from the Land of Israel about the time of the
   destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, I felt that a paper
   discussing some aspect of Jewish seafaring in ancient times would
   be most appropriate. So I went back to the seafaring typescript,
   and reworked the chapter that dealt with Rabbinic legal provisions
   related to seafaring. It was published in volume one of the Nibley
   Festschrift in 1990, and is reprinted here in a slightly changed
   format as Chapter 10.

Referring to the first sailors to leave the Mediterranean Sea and
enter the Atlantic Ocean, Patai wrote:

   This daring feat of striking out into unknown waters is dwarfed by
   what the Mormon tradition attributes to a group of Jews who lived
   in the days of King Zedekiah in Jerusalem, that is, in the early
   sixth century BCE (the same time in which the Phocaean skippers
   were supposed to have sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar).
   According to Mormon tradition, their venture into unknown waters
   took place in the year 589 BCE, that is, three years before the
   destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and it was thanks to
   this extraordinary feat that the American continent was populated
   by a remnant of biblical Israel...

Another Jewish scholar who has dealt with LDS topics is Jacob Neusner,
who has been an occasional speaker at BYU. His article, "Conversations
in Nauvoo on the Corporeality of God," appeared in BYU Studies 36/1
(l996-97)...

In recent years, Book of Mormon topics have been discussed in regional
and national meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). At
the 1997 national meeting, Eric G. Hansen gave a paper on "The
Egyptian 'Opening of the Mouth' Ritual in the Book of Mormon." Angela
Crowell has presented three papers at meetings of the Central States
regional meetings of SBL.[8] In the Spring of 1988, she presented a
paper entitled "Biblical Hebrew Poetry in the Book of Mormon." A year
later, she read a paper based on her MA thesis topic, "A Comparative
Study of Biblical Hebrew Sentence Structure in the Old Testament and
in the Book of Mormon." After the session, she was approached by a
professor/rabbi who told her that he had taught a class at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City on the Book of Mormon. In April
1992, Crowell presented a paper entitled, "A Comparative Reading of
Homiletic and Narrative Midrash in the Bible and in the Book of
Mormon."

Terryl Givens, an LDS professor at the University of Richmond, made
history in 1997 when his history of anti-Mormonism, The Viper on the
Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, was published
by Oxford University Press. Oxford will also publish his Out of the
Dust: Saints, Scholars, Skeptics, and the Book of Mormon, which is a
serious look at the Book of Mormon and its skeptics, along with a
survey of the scholarly work being done in regard to it...

This brings me back to my recent trip to Israel. It was not the first
time the Book of Mormon has been discussed in a prestigious scholarly
forum and I sincerely hope that it will not be the last. Some of those
who heard my presentation gave me additional suggestions for Hebrew
etymologies for Book of Mormon names. One of the speakers drew our
attention to another attestation of the Hebrew name Sariah (the name
of Lehi's wife) in a Jewish text of the fourth century B.C. found in
the Bosphorus region and mentioned only in a Russian publication.

So where do we go from here? I have other topics in mind that I
believe will interest at least some non-LDS scholars, and I suspect
that I am not alone in this. I plan, for example, to revisit my "King
Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles" and update it for a Festschrift
to be published in Israel next year in honor of a professor whose
studies have specialized in Jewish festivals.

It is my earnest hope that we can convince our LDS colleagues that
there are open-minded non-LDS scholars out there who would be willing
to include scholarly studies on LDS scriptures and beliefs in their
journals and books. In this, I have to concur with Gordon C.
Thomasson, who once said that we believers should approach studies of
the Book of Mormon with the a priori assumption that it is an
authentic ancient text and that, moreover, the Book of Mormon can
sometimes help elucidate the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern
texts and archaeological finds. As we shall learn in some of the
presentations being made at this conference, the volume of evidence
for the Book of Mormon continues to increase. To be sure, we need to
share that information with Latter-day Saints, but I believe the time
is ripe to take this research to the world of non-LDS scholarship.

If you would like to order this talk on an audio CD, visit this page:

     http://www.fairlds.org/pubs/

The presentation will be available on video and through printed
transcripts in the near future.


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DOCTRINAL TRENDS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND THE STRENGNTH OF THE MORMON
POSITION

Barry Bickmore, author of Restoring the Ancient Church, outlines the
historical argument for the proposition that Latter-day Saints
represent a restoration of primitive Christianity. He shows that some
of the most important areas of theology, early trends in Christian
doctrines point from something very like LDS doctrine and toward the
doctrines of later Christianity. He then examines how different
Christian traditions try to deal with these facts. He shows that the
meaning that LDS attach to early Christian doctrinal development
follows quite naturally, while other interpretations are usually very
forced.

You can download this paper for free at the FAIR Web site:

     http://www.fairlds.org/pubs/DocTrends.pdf


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DOES THE BOOK OF MORMON TEACH MAINSTREAM TINITARIANISM OR MODALISM?

In this FAIR Paper, Barry Bickmore takes on the critics in examining
the doctrines of the Godhead as expressed in the Book of Mormon. Since
this topic seems to come up frequently when conversing with our
non-member friends, this article would be an important must-read.

You can download this paper for free at the FAIR Web site:

     http://www.fairlds.org/pubs/BoMTrin.pdf


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GIVE A GIFT TO FAIR

FAIR is a non-profit (501c3) organization and relies on the donations
of others to stay in business. If you feel we are doing a valuable
work, please make a donation. Any contributions to FAIR only pay the
operating expenses and do not pay for any salaries. We only use
volunteers. Additionally, many of the volunteers who work for FAIR
make significant monetary contributions as well. Any donations that
you give would be much appreciated. 

You can learn more information about making your gift to FAIR at
the following location:

     http://www.fairlds.org/Join_FAIR/


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ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS

We welcome article submissions for the FAIR Web site. If you would
like to submit an article, please review the editing guidelines at:

     http://www.fairlds.org/EdStyle.pdf

Submit your article to the FAIR Journal Editor. An appropriate
article would be one that affirms the truthfulness of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

While LDS apologetics (in the broadest sense) deals with refuting
critics of the Church, articles don't necessarily have to deal with
anti-Mormonism, but may deal with some new evidence of the Book of
Mormon, some interesting scripture interpretation, a viewpoint or
quote from the early Christian Fathers or other historical figure,
an interesting lesson idea, an inspiring missionary story, Church
history, or your view on a current event related to the Church or a
piece from a historical journal.

We may also accept articles from people who are not members of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that may not necessarily
meet the guidelines of supporting the church if it is a topic of
general interest to people involved in apologetics.

A submission may range in length from several pages to a single
paragraph. 


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PUBLISHING NOTES

FAIR is not owned, controlled by or affiliated with the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All research and opinions provided
in the FAIR Journal and on the FAIR Web site (http://www.fairlds.org)
are the sole responsibility of FAIR, and should not be interpreted as
official statements of LDS doctrine, belief or practice.

If someone has forwarded this e-journal to you and you would like to
join you should go to www.fairlds.org and click on the Membership
link.

If you are very interested in apologetics and would like to actively
participate in FAIR you should consider joining our apologetics e-mail
list. Visit www.fairlds.org and click on the Membership link to join
this list as well.

If you manage your own e-mail list, and wish to include some of these
thoughts or articles on your list, contact us through our Web site, at
this page: www.fairlds.org/contact.psp. We have a fairly liberal policy of using our
material so long as you contact us first to gain permission and
clearly identify that your source was FAIR.

If you would like to sign up to receive the FAIR Journal automatically, click here.

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FAIR is not owned, controlled by or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All research and opinions provided on this site are the sole responsibility of FAIR, and should not be interpreted as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief or practice.

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