Perhaps the most charged and interesting moment in the broadcast comes at the 26:00 mark. Here, the Mopologists are discussing the new Saints book, specifically it's handling of the Book of Abraham issue:
John Gee wrote:You're not going to find a lot in there, but they avoided some pitfalls. And... although I kind of hate to mention this, the treatment of the Book of Abraham in, say, Rough Stone Rolling, is very disappointing. It's hard to find anything that Richard Bushman got right on the topic. And his short introduction, or very short Introduction to Mormonism is much worse on the Book of Abraham. It's...you should sort of black out anything that he says, because it's all wrong. Saints doesn't have that problem. I didn't find any false statements or problematic statements on the Book of Abraham.
Whoa! Quite a slap in the face to the eminent Richard Bushman! In the past, it has been fairly easy to sense some tension between the Mopologists and Bushman, who they likely see as too strong of a supporter of the "Mormon Studies" crew. Gee's condemnation here, though, is remarkable in its complete dismissiveness. Bushman would be well within his rights to take umbrage.
Later in the program--roughly the 44 minute mark--the conversation shifts to a discussion about LDS biblical commentary. DCP tells a story about "getting into trouble" for describing Kent Brown's volumes on Luke as a "landmark in LDS scholarship." "We've never had a real commentary on Luke or any other of the Gospels." He continues:
DCP wrote:Frankly, uh, this is a minor consideration, but I used to be involved in putting on displays--designing displays that were held at the American Academy of Religion / Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, and people would come by and they'd look at all this Mormon stuff, which is what we were putting out--[dismissively] or LDS stuff or whatever it is now--and, um, they'd say, "Well, don't you do the Bible?" Well, now, that's the kind of reaction I had not anticipated. We'd sort of had turned that over to everybody else. If Evangelicals, and the Jews, or whoever--whatever group wants to do a commentary on a Biblical book, we'll use that, for our particular purposes, but we weren't doing our own Biblical commentaries. And that led to a perception that sort of reinforced the perception in some circles that we're not really Christian.
Yes: this is really an old criticism, isn't it? I.e., that the Bible plays second fiddle to other texts in the LDS canon. What's interesting is to hear DCP openly admit to having inadvertently contributed to the problem. And he's remarkably blasé in his comments: he doesn't really seem to care.
Shortly after this, somebody--Tanner, perhaps--says, "Gee, there's a pretty good Bible commentary called The Interpreter Bible Commentary"--which elicits a laugh from the crew. This then leads into a conversation about the name Mormon Interpreter, which represents the ever-shifting explanations for the name:
DCP wrote:Yeah, you know, one of the reasons... "Mormon Interpreter" is not actually the name of the organization, or, you know, but it's used sometimes because the word "Interpreter" is so generic, that if you just Google "Interpreter," you get, you know, language journals, things for professional...simultaneous translators and so on. So, so--online, the thing is called "Mormon Interpreter," and some people refer to it that way in order to distinguish it from all the other conceivable and real interpreters that are out there.
They boys all then share a chuckle over a joke about how Peterson decided against calling it "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Interpreter." In any case, you have it from the mouth of the CEO himself: it's perfectly acceptable to call the organization (and the blog) "Mormon Interpreter."
At around 49:30, Dr. Peterson plugs an event featuring Royal Skousen and Stan Carmack. DCP says "this one's going to be kind of controversial" because they're going to cover their bizarre research on "archaic syntax" in the Book of Mormon. He goes on to say, "There are a lot of people mocking them so far, you know. But it's typically because they actually haven't read what Skousen and Carmack... It's easier that way; they haven't read what they've written, and so make fun of them. But it's serious stuff with serious evidence."
"If someone's criticizing them before it actually comes out, that's the 'shoot the messenger before you even have a chance to look at the message'," somebody adds (Tanner?).
DCP replies, "Well, these are meticulous linguists. And, uh, you know, you ask, 'What is your theory to explain what you're finding?' And they'll tell you, 'Our job is to lay out what we've found. Y'know, how to explain it, we don't necessarily know, but it's there and you can't deny it.'"
Somebody quips, "So it's not in the Late Great War of 1812 or whatever that thing is?"
DCP: "No, it's not. That won't explain it or account for it."
Interesting. You have to wonder where the Mopologists think this is going to lead. You get the sense that they think that this is going to wind up bolstering the Book of Mormon's status as an authentic prophetic document, but what does this do to their notions of the book as a legitimate history of Latin America? And I don't think that the "You haven't read it!" retort is very effective. Unless the books say something radically different from the basic claim--i.e., that Elizabethan language is present in the BoM--then the critics are right on the money with their mockery. That said, my understanding is that critics were laughing more at the explanation (and here DCP's above explanation isn't accurate vis-a-vis Skousen / Carmack's willingness to offer an explanation) that the material found its way into the Book of Mormon thanks to a "ghost committee" that worked to dictate the text to Joseph Smith.
Really, this was quite a mediocre entry into the annals of Mopologetic productions, but some interesting nuggets here and there.