DonBradley wrote:Brant Gardner and Ben McQuire both take the view that the Book of Mormon is ancient but, to a substantial degree, nonhistorical. They argue, accurately, that genuine ancient "histories" tend to be largely mythical. I think to a certain extent it works to apply this perspective to the Book of Mormon, but it is not withiout its problems. First, the division of the nonhistorical ancient text from the historical can function as a facile apologetic device--the nonhistorical--but still ancient--parts have a strong tendency to overlap with the parts that make the book look like pure fiction (e.g., oversized populations, ommitted native peoples, ...). Second, the book's self-reported manner of composition does not always dovetail with the view that it is ancient but inaccurate. Unlike ancient "histories" generally, the Book of Mormon is comprised of a series of interlocking, mutually supporting records, some of which are first person records, and the remainder of which are generally based on contemporaneous chronicles. Indeed, the book claims to be largely a mere abridgment of these chronicles.
In any case, Brant and Ben see an ancient but significantly nonhistorical text as a completely different kind of thing from a modern nonhistorical text; but what makes it so different? If the Book of Mormon doesn't tell us the origin of the Native Americans, doesn't tell us that they are descendants of Israel in any greater (or even equivalent) sense than that in which the European peoples are, doesn't give us a narrative that can be regarded as "historical" in our sense of the term, then why on earth would it need to be ancient in order to fill its reported divinely appointed function? If what matters isn't its historical accuracy or its identification of the Indians as Israelites, but rather its teachings, then why wouldn't a modern Book of Mormon with equally true and inspired teachings achieve its ordained purpose just as well?
Don
That's pretty much how I see it. Whether it's a modern or ancient "expansion," the end result is to detach the text from any claim to represent reality. When you do that, you have effectively removed the text from the knowable to the realm of what charity describes as "religious truth."
It just seems to me that the approach is one of convenience: if there are place and person names, Hebraisms, and parallels to the ancient world, it's evidence of the book's truth; if there are anachronisms or problematic areas of the text, they are expansions, whether modern or ancient.