Kishkumen wrote:As some of you may know, I consider David Bokovoy a personal friend, even though we undoubtedly do not see eye to eye on everything. This is another instance in which I either do not understand what David is saying or perhaps I do not agree.
I think he is basically saying that Mormonism has historically had almost no place for the serious study of scripture in an academic context. The closest thing it has ever had for this is FARMS. It wasn't much, but it was something.
Further, faithful Mormon trained in biblical studies is practically an oxymoron. The closest thing that Mormons have are scholars trained in ancillary fields, such as DCP's training as an Islamicist. Clearly not ideal for studying ancient scripture, but better than being a P.E. teacher. So again, the situation for people who want to look at ancient scripture from a scholarly viewpoint, while being faithful Mormons, hasn't been great, but there's at least a little bit there.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, Mormons who wanted some modicum of insight into their scriptures have had a place to go. It wasn't a great place, but it was something. Now that has been reduced to zilch. Since a little bit of insight from marginally trained scholars is better than no insight from anyone, I think David B. is saying the current situation is now worse than before. I have to agree with him on this one.
The new MSR is most likely going to completely ignore ancient scripture, at least in its own context. There might be articles on the reception history of the Dutch translation of the Book of Mormon, or on the history of translating D&C 132 into foreign languages, but nothing putting them into their purported context. I'll even go one further, the new MSR crew is probably not going to give a crap about any truth claims made by LDS scriptures, preferring instead to put forward some mild version of postmodernism to avoid the issue entirely. They won't have the training to tackle the issues and they most likely won't care about them anyway.