Boylan hits a new low

[Tapir Rodeo]

Excuse my asking - but does Boylan claim to be able to read the Greek and Latin texts in this collection?

If so, he deserves some respect for his learning. But if not, why is he asking for funds to purchase these series?

I have no idea what Boylan's knowledge of Greek and Latin is, but being perfectly honest, a good working knowledge of classical languages isn't quite as important as it used to be. There are several free online translators that will at least give you the basics of what a text says. Patrologia Graeca / Patrologia Latina have been public domain for a while, but some scans are not high-quality, and deciphering the text so that you can plug it into a translator can be a pain. Translating large blocks of texts takes time, and there are a lot of works in the PG / PL that lack an English translation (or a German / French / Italian translation, for that matter...).

What Logos is doing, digitizing and indexing the entirety of PG / PL, will make the entire text searchable and copy-and-paste-able. It's already searchable, to some extent, through Thesaurus Linguae Latinae and Thesaurus Linguae Gracae, but these are subscription-based services that can be a pain for non-students / non-affiliated scholars to access. TLL, for example, costs $119 / year, and my seminary only gives me access to TLG, not TLL. Even the local Catholic seminary doesn't offer its students access to TLL (!), so I'm stuck paying for TLL out of pocket if I want it, and scholars not affiliated with a research library can be stuck paying for one or both.

It will also mean that you own these PG / PL databases having paid for them once rather than having to pay a monthly subscription fee.

With the Logos edition of PG / PL, anyone (Boylan or otherwise) could look up a word or phrase in Greek or Latin (for example, οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν), plug sections of texts into translators, then find out which church fathers said what about that verse. And at least some of the material that will come up has probably never been discussed in modern academia.

It will be interesting to see what they discover.

[Tapir Rodeo]

If he can read Greek and Latin, then his skills are completely wasted on his disorganized blog. He would be better served developing some thesis based on his "research" and presenting it. Instead of just curating a random collection of thousands of disjoint paragraphs.

What do you mean? His blog has 2.1 million hits lol.

[drumdude]

If he can read Greek and Latin, then his skills are completely wasted on his disorganized blog. He would be better served developing some thesis based on his "research" and presenting it. Instead of just curating a random collection of thousands of disjoint paragraphs.

What do you mean? His blog has 2.1 million hits lol.

Mormon apologetics, the clown show you just can’t stop watching.

[Tapir Rodeo]

What do you mean? His blog has 2.1 million hits lol.

Mormon apologetics, the clown show you just can’t stop watching.

It's hard to look away from a train wreck. The "books" Boylan writes suffer from the same disjointed approach you see in his blog. They are just page after page of context free quotations that he struggles to tie together into a coherent argument.

He seems like someone who wants to be respected as a once in a generation scholar but he is too lazy or incapable of actually doing the work. He is also too much of a "Brigham did nothing wrong" deznat type to be taken seriously by most.

[Chap]

Thanks for these responses to my query.

It is possible that Boylan's plans are as suggested by MsJack:

With the Logos edition of PG / PL, anyone (Boylan or otherwise) could look up a word or phrase in Greek or Latin (for example, οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν), plug sections of texts into translators, then find out which church fathers said what about that verse. And at least some of the material that will come up has probably never been discussed in modern academia.

I suppose this will be a case of "by their fruits ye shall know them".

Locating bits of text in isolation from knowledge of the context of their production and of their authors' intentions is not enough in itself to count as scholarship (and I am sure that MsJack is well aware of that) - but maybe Boylan will show himself capable of doing the whole job.

[MsJack]

Locating bits of text in isolation from knowledge of the context of their production and of their authors' intentions is not enough in itself to count as scholarship (and I am sure that MsJack is well aware of that) - but maybe Boylan will show himself capable of doing the whole job.

It's probably sufficient for mining church fathers for Nibley-esque "see how much they agreed with Mormonism!" style apologetics / arguments, but peer-reviewed content still requires knowledge of the languages and careful attention to the texts.

(Or at least, it should. The article that I am prepping on Junia right now shows where a number of scholars were extremely sloppy with a certain source, but I digress...)

As for Boylan, I haven't seen where he's put out serious scholarship on anything. Last I checked he had a single FARMS book review and a small article at the Interpreter. He doesn't seem to have an Academia page and his master's thesis (if he wrote one) didn't come up in any of the standard databases. (That doesn't mean he didn't write one, it just means you'd probably have to contact his school library to get a copy.)

So maybe he has a serious scholarly project in mind, but I imagine he just wants PG / PL for more of what we've already seen from him: self-published books and vague copy-paste blog posts.

[MsJack]

It will be interesting to see what they discover.

Meh. I'm not expecting anything earth-shaking in terms of agreement between the church fathers and Mormonism.

[Tapir Rodeo]

It will be interesting to see what they discover.

Meh. I'm not expecting anything earth-shaking in terms of agreement between the church fathers and Mormonism.

I'm sure mopologists will find what they are looking for, whether it comports with reality or not. But maybe more honest scholars will find some interesting things.

[Kishkumen]

On the one hand, I agree that the Early Church Fathers don't prove Mormonism true. On the other hand, I think Joseph Smith deliberately re-incorporated some ideas from the ECFs, and I don't see why that should be a bad thing. To say that the ECFs don't prove Mormonism true represents a partial understanding and yet another tool to marginalize or "tame" Mormonism.

All of this is to say that were it not for the fact that Boylan behaves like such a tool, the basic underlying principle of his apologetic strategy is not a bad one. Current Protestantism is no more inherently right than Mormonism, even as an option within the Christian tradition. It certainly is the dominant view in this country, but that isn't saying much as far as proving which Christianity is right.

Spoiler alert: there is no obviously right version of Christianity.

Where I part ways with him is in being pigheaded and divisive in his treatment of Protestantism. Respect the traditions. Respect your peers. You can say why you prefer the group you are in, but being an ass to other good people who have a different faith is a losing strategy.

[drumdude]

On the one hand, I agree that the Early Church Fathers don't prove Mormonism true. On the other hand, I think Joseph Smith deliberately re-incorporated some ideas from the ECFs, and I don't see why that should be a bad thing. To say that the ECFs don't prove Mormonism true represents a partial understanding and yet another tool to marginalize or "tame" Mormonism.

All of this is to say that were it not for the fact that Boylan behaves like such a tool, the basic underlying principle of his apologetic strategy is not a bad one. Current Protestantism is no more inherently right than Mormonism, even as an option within the Christian tradition. It certainly is the dominant view in this country, but that isn't saying much as far as proving which Christianity is right.

Spoiler alert: there is no obviously right version of Christianity.

Where I part ways with him is in being pigheaded and divisive in his treatment of Protestantism. Respect the traditions. Respect your peers. You can say why you prefer the group you are in, but being an ass to other good people who have a different faith is a losing strategy.

He writes as if he has discovered the truth that Mormonism all fits together and the evidence supports it.

But he can't put all these fragments into a cohesive whole. Because as you said, there is no obviously right version of Christianity. One man's truth is another man's falsehood. There is no objective way to weight all of the evidence in support of one objectively correct interpretation. It's all ultimately subjective, and should be understood likewise.