By Stephen Carter Eight years ago, while working on my third issue of Sunstone, I edited an article by John-Charles Duffy titled, “Mapping Mormon Historicity Debates—Part II: Perspectives from the Sociology of Knowledge.”1 Not the most exciting of titles, but the article itself upended my worldview and sent me on an eight-year journey that …
Tag: historicity
Does the Historicity of the First Vision Matter?
Does it matter if Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision (canonized by the LDS in 1880) is not historically reliable, as some Mormon historians have argued in recent decades? In reaction to apologists who insist on the First Vision’s historicity as a litmus test for the faith, some Latter Day Saints of a …
Mapping Book of Mormon Historicity Debates: A Guide for the Overwhelmed–Part II
Continued from Part I III. Mapping the Positions Thus far this article has summarized the historicity question as if it were a two-party debate: arguments for versus arguments against. But in fact, writers have adopted a wide array of positions around this issue. William Hamblin (1994) organizes views on historicity into five categories: evangelical, …
Mapping Book of Mormon Historicity Debates: A Guide for the Overwhelmed–Part I
By John-Charles Duffy Art by Jeanette Atwood Book of Mormon “historicity” refers to the claim that the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation of an ancient volume of scripture. Whether or not one believes the Book of Mormon to be historical in this sense is maybe the most fundamental question affecting one’s relationship to …
SW09009: Dual Session Paper 1: A Marginal Moses: A Case Study in Canonicity, Historicity, and Revelation. Paper 2: The Myth of the Missing Book of Abraham Papyrus
Paper 1: “A Marginal Moses: A Case Study in Canonicity, Historicity, and Revelation.” Since its canonization in 1880, most LDS members have viewed the Book of Moses as a restoration of lost truth grounded in historical events. However, converging lines of evidence from Mormon history, the reevaluation of the Joseph smith Translation, and textual criticism …
Dealing With dissonance: Myths Documents and Faith – & – Historicity and Faith: A Personal View of the Meaning of Scripture
Dealing With dissonance: Myths Documents and Faith – & – Historicity and Faith: A Personal View of the Meaning of Scripture