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http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/ ... f16b#Hardy

Grant Hardy is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He has a B.A. in Ancient Greek from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature from Yale. He has authored Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History; The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China; and Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide. He has also edited The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition; Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships; and the Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 1. Hardy’s “Sacred Texts of the World,” a 36-lecture course for the Teaching Company, was released last year, and follows his earlier course “Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition.” Grant and his wife Heather have two children.

Presentation: More Effective Apologetics

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"More" effective or more "effective"?

I plan to attend the Friday session, and this is the one I'm most looking forward to.

This might be a clue as to what his presentation will be about. From his book talking about the Deutero Isaiah problem...

Latter-Day Saints sometimes brush the criticism aside, asserting that such interpretations are simply the work of academics who do not believe in prophecy, but this is clearly an inadequate (and inaccurate) response to a significant body of detailed historical and literary analysis. William Hamblin has suggested that the problem might be alleviated if we regard Second Isaiah as a prophet contemporary with Nephi, but even this is not an entirely satisfactory solution. Recent Isaiah scholarship has moved away from the strict differentiation of the work of First and Second Isaiah (though still holding to the idea of multiple authorship) in favor of seeing the book of Isaiah as the product of several centuries of intensive redaction and accretion. In other words, even Isaiah 2-14 would have looked very different in Nephi’s time than it did four hundred years later at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when it was quite similar to what we have today. A more promising avenue for the faithful, it seems, is to acknowledge that we probably know less about what constitutes an “inspired translation” than we do about ancient Israel. Once one accepts the possibility of divine intervention, the theology can accommodate the (always tentative) results of scholarship.

Also, from one my blog posts http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/book-o ... y-midrash/

(In a podcast interview)

Hardy also used an interesting example to explain how he views Book of Mormon historicity. He used the example of the Broadway musical 1776. The play is a modern, artistic adaption of a prior literary work, which was a non-historian’s view of a historical event. Comparing this kind of view to the Book of Mormon, we should not be surprised to see anachronisms in such a work like Joseph’s expansions on Christian principles or historical issues like horses and chariots in America or the back story of the Jaredites including the Noah’s flood and Tower of Babel myths, but we still understand there to be an actual history behind it.

churchistrue wrote:Also, from one my blog posts http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/book-o ... y-midrash/

(In a podcast interview)

Hardy also used an interesting example to explain how he views Book of Mormon historicity. He used the example of the Broadway musical 1776. The play is a modern, artistic adaption of a prior literary work, which was a non-historian’s view of a historical event. Comparing this kind of view to the Book of Mormon, we should not be surprised to see anachronisms in such a work like Joseph’s expansions on Christian principles or historical issues like horses and chariots in America or the back story of the Jaredites including the Noah’s flood and Tower of Babel myths, but we still understand there to be an actual history behind it.

Welp. It looks like inspired fiction is the position the Church is carving out. Was there any other choice, really?

- Doc

This is quite fascinating. I wonder if Hardy will clarify which "history" he's referring to? For the old-school Mopologists, that "history" is the LGT history--real Nephites in an actual Zarahemla in Latin America. Here, though, it sounds almost as if Hardy is suggesting that the Book of Mormon is an "artistic" reconfiguration of biblical history for which there is actual archaeological evidence. Does he dare make that clarification at the FAIR Conference? I hope, churchistrue, that you're able to "return and report" for us--I'd be interested to see what he says.

We are, as Dean Robbers said elsewhere, now living in the age of post-Mopologetics, but it's worth remembering that, not all that long ago, allegiance to Book of Mormon as "real history" was one of the main litmus tests that the apologists were administering to the new crop of "Mormon Studies" scholars. Failure to insist up and down that you believed the Book of Mormon was a history of ancient Meso-America meant that you would be targeted for attacks from the classic-FARMS people.

Of course, FAIR began something of a divergence from classic-FARMS right around the time that Gerald Bradford initiated the "re-org," so that may be a factor in this as well. The key question, in any case, is what "history" Hardy has in mind....

Oh, Lawdy!

I think it is fair to say that the implicit surrender to reality is still looking for a way not to look like a surrender.

They are in a real pickle, and I would like to feel more sympathetic. I really would.

churchistrue wrote:I plan to attend the Friday session, and this is the one I'm most looking forward to.

This might be a clue as to what his presentation will be about. From his book talking about the Deutero Isaiah problem...

Latter-Day Saints sometimes brush the criticism aside, asserting that such interpretations are simply the work of academics who do not believe in prophecy, but this is clearly an inadequate (and inaccurate) response to a significant body of detailed historical and literary analysis. William Hamblin has suggested that the problem might be alleviated if we regard Second Isaiah as a prophet contemporary with Nephi, but even this is not an entirely satisfactory solution. Recent Isaiah scholarship has moved away from the strict differentiation of the work of First and Second Isaiah (though still holding to the idea of multiple authorship) in favor of seeing the book of Isaiah as the product of several centuries of intensive redaction and accretion. In other words, even Isaiah 2-14 would have looked very different in Nephi’s time than it did four hundred years later at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when it was quite similar to what we have today. A more promising avenue for the faithful, it seems, is to acknowledge that we probably know less about what constitutes an “inspired translation” than we do about ancient Israel. Once one accepts the possibility of divine intervention, the theology can accommodate the (always tentative) results of scholarship.

Also, from one my blog posts http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/book-o ... y-midrash/

(In a podcast interview)

Hardy also used an interesting example to explain how he views Book of Mormon historicity. He used the example of the Broadway musical 1776. The play is a modern, artistic adaption of a prior literary work, which was a non-historian’s view of a historical event. Comparing this kind of view to the Book of Mormon, we should not be surprised to see anachronisms in such a work like Joseph’s expansions on Christian principles or historical issues like horses and chariots in America or the back story of the Jaredites including the Noah’s flood and Tower of Babel myths, but we still understand there to be an actual history behind it.

Very interesting. Some very good substantial discussion on your site. Enjoyed your thoughtful consideration of work of Taves and others.

Maksutov wrote:
Very interesting. Some very good substantial discussion on your site. Enjoyed your thoughtful consideration of work of Taves and others.

Thanks! I'm no means a scholar and don't have enough time to treat any of this stuff as thoroughly as I'd like. But I am enjoying it.

Speaking of more effective apologetics, I have a curious recollection of Dr. Peterson delivering a paper a few years ago bearing a similar title (déjà vu?). (I believe he was speaking at an apologetics conference held at the Provo-area Frontier Pies.) If I recall correctly, he issued a call for an phalanx of Mormon apologists to overrun a new discussion board called The Training Table and transmogrify the state of online discourse. I don't hear much about The Training Table these days.

Tom wrote:Speaking of more effective apologetics, I have a curious recollection of Dr. Peterson delivering a paper a few years ago bearing a similar title (déjà vu?). (I believe he was speaking at an apologetics conference held at the Provo-area Frontier Pies.) If I recall correctly, he issued a call for an phalanx of Mormon apologists to overrun a new discussion board called The Training Table and transmogrify the state of online discourse. I don't hear much about The Training Table these days.

The World Table?

Calling Markk ...

Grant Hardy wrote:William Hamblin has suggested that the problem might be alleviated if we regard Second Isaiah as a prophet contemporary with Nephi, but even this is not an entirely satisfactory solution.

This official discarding of one of the most important Mopologetics and dismissal of the old guard proves that Doctor Scratch called the time of death right on.