http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=1&id=817
From the pages of the ("Mormon Studies") Review, John Clark writes,
Clark wrote:This essay abridges my critical evaluation published twenty-two years ago of two Book of Mormon geographies by F. Richard Hauck and John L. Sorenson. I recognized at the time that proposals for real-world (external) settings for Book of Mormon lands and cities come and go with the regularity of LDS general conferences or market forces
Whoah! Holy Cow! I had to read this several times before I caught on to what he's saying here. This statement needs some unpacking. Over twenty years ago, Clark reviewed fellow BYU professor and MI associate John Sorenson rather favorably and criticized U of U professor and FARMS outsider, Richard Hauck, rather harshly. But, here we are twenty-two years later, and he's forced to admit that Book of Mormon geographies come and go, two prime examples being Sorenson's and Hauck's! Further, it's twenty-two years later, little is happening, and so what now? All Clark can do is provide a list of facts that any proposed future geography must conform to, since there is presently no paradigm.
Take a look at this:
Clark wrote:I was exposed to M. Wells Jakeman's Book of Mormon geography in three classes while an undergraduate at Brigham Young University in the 1970s,
Indeed. And in how many classes would one be exposed to any Book of Mormon geography today? I'll tell you: Zero. BYU has become a respectable academic institution in many ways, though they require institute classes, they make no pretenses of scholarship. BYU wouldn't dare teach a course on Book of Mormon geography.
The MI has a vast lay following, but they have not created an institution to teach Mopologetic courses at BYU, their prime recruiting ground for professional apologists. Their new editor, Greg Smith, may be a "prodigy", a fine medical doctor, and a reasonable debater, but he's not an antiquarian. And what put the MI into the solid position -- solid in one sense -- that they have been, isn't necessarily the specific output, but that the output has been produced by Phds in related fields.
And I think we've seen this coming. The Phds in fields intersecting with Book of Mormon "scholarship" are all aging. They come from a time when the Lord's university believed in both the gospel and the achievements of men. Today, there just aren't any young graduate students or professors studying Book of Mormon Geography, because no one will teach them anything about it formally. So there you have it, the torch can only be carried forward by laymen, and that's a battle already lost.
It's appropriate that this same edition that marks the name change to jettison the "ancient research" and emphasize the "Mormon studies" of the MI's Review also rather brashly admit that the LGT theory as particularly shaped by Soresnson marking a limited geography in mesoamerica, is a relic of intellectual history. As such, CU will now consider the matter of Book of Mormon geography closed from the Apologists.
Well, from the last I checked, Rodney Meldrum is doing just fine. Perhaps the Church has settled the matter. The apologists are in a tough position when it comes to geography.