http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/varian ... stle-paul/
And what to make of his article? He starts off without seeming to realize that most articles begin with an actual introduction. Instead, he sounds as if he's picking up some conversation that he began two or three years ago:
Some critics have suggested that Joseph Smith contradicted himself in different accounts of his first vision. In one, for example, he says that the Lord told him that all the churches were wrong, while in another he says that he had already come to this conclusion before going out in the woods to pray. I see no real contradiction between Joseph Smith believing, when he went to pray, that he should join none of the churches, and the Lord confirming that thought by revelation. After all, he went into the woods to get an answer.
Well, okay: that's all fine and dandy. What's bizarre about the article is two-fold: for one thing, the things has hardly been "written" at all. Instead, the vast bulk of the text is given over to side-by-side comparisons of the "First vision" of the Apostle Paul. And that brings me to the second odd element: Tvedtnes is defending Joseph Smith by vigorously attack Paul the Apostle.
Boy, this really takes me back, to really, really Old-School Mopologetics that went about defending the Church by attacking more traditional elements of Christianity. It's the kind of tactic that says, "See? Look how messed-up and unreliable the Bible is! If you accept the Bible, then you have to accept the Book of Mormon, too!" Indeed, Tvedtnes seems to be living in the Dark Ages, where the top Mopologists are still duking it out with Evangelical ministers, rather than secular critics.
Besides, I rather suspect (and again I'll happily defer to people who are better trained in scriptural exegesis) that one can account for the discrepancies in the Paul texts at least in part due to the work of scribes. In other words, I rather think that Tvedtnes's comparison doesn't really hold up.
In any case, the MI keeps huffing along....
