In intend to comment on some of the individual articles in more detail later on, but for now I wanted to offer some preliminary thoughts. First of all, the FARMS Review is actually now called the Mormon Studies Review. As Dr. Peterson says in his Editor's Introduction:
Now, though, we come to yet another name change. The FARMS Review becomes the Mormon Studies Review. The change, which I sincerely hope really will be the last one, signals the breadth of the subject matter that the Review has treated over the past several years. It relieves us of the obligation (which we once tried to meet but have long since abandoned) of trying to review every single item published on the Book of Mormon, however trivial, obscure, and/or insignificant. It was, however, largely compelled by the fact that, with the rise of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, the name FARMS is receding rapidly into the background and we didn't want the name The FARMS Review to survive merely as a fossil reminder of that earlier stage of the history of the organization (particularly since the name FARMS has always been a bit awkward, drawing calls to our receptionists from members of 4-H clubs seeking counsel about raising pigs for competitions at the state fair).
What this means, of course, is that I will continue to call it the FARMS Review. I cannot help but wonder if this name change was also an effort to possibly confuse the Mormon Studies Review with the similarly named Mormon Review, since this latter effort is headed up by the respectable Richard Bushman and Terryl Givens. It wouldn't surprise me if this similarity came up during one of the MI's planning sessions.
Also of interest was this:
DCP wrote:Professor Robinson's insightful response to a collection of mostly sectarian criticisms of the Book of Mormon resulted in the publisher and owner of Signature Books, George D. Smith, instructing his attorney to threaten legal action. By so doing, Smith was seeking to use the courts to silence responses to criticisms of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon rather than employing the traditional tools of scholarship, argument, and the analysis of evidence. I was determined not to be intimidated by this gambit, and I responded to this legal mischief in the next editor's introduction to the Review.
Note Prof. Peterson's "bravery" here, and compare it with his cowardice in the face of similar "threats" from Robert Ritner. You cannot help but wonder why the one was worth fighting and the other wasn't. Perhaps DCP feels that it would be too much of a challenge to paint Ritner and Yale as anti-Mormon, whereas it was possible with Signature?
Also intriguing was this:
I wanted the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon to be something that would have value in itself, that would be worth buying and reading in its own right.
Fortunately, that goal was achieved right from the start.
DCP appears to be saying here that there was something of a financial motivation behind the launch of the review. (There is a humorous tidbit above this quote, where Prof. P. reveals his insecurities about his own sense of taste, but I'll save commentary on that for later.)
Perhaps most interesting of all is the epigraph, which supplies the title, and which was lifted out of Emerson's great essay, "The American Scholar":
The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. . . . He is the world's eye. —Emerson
It seems that this "rebranded" Review is yet another desperate attempt to convince people that the work therein is, indeed, scholarly. (It's not, though.) You can imagine my amusement as I opened up Greg Smith's spittle-flecked attack on the gay-friendly Web site M4M, only to see that Smith (now an associate editor--something that I announced much earlier this year, thanks to a "tip" from one of my "informants") thought it would be a good idea to include an abstract for his smear piece! This may very well be the ultimate in faux-scholarly window-dressing. My sense is that the "hatchet" has been handed over so Smith, and that he--the "Jeff Goldblum of FAIR"--was hand-picked to carry on FARMS's legacy of character assassination and warfare-tinged polemics. The Old Guard--DCP, Hamblin, Welch, Mitton--are going to sit back and watch the spectacle. (Midgley is still as angry and vicious as ever.)
In any event, I look forward to perusing the rest of this "steaming" pile in the coming days--preferably as I sip my post-prandial snifter of warm milk.