For whatever it may be worth, today is the fifty-first anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. And of the death of Aldous Huxley. And of the passing of C. S. Lewis. My life has been affected by all three of these men. Peter Kreeft wrote a book inspired by the coincidence of their deaths within hours of each other:
Two new book reviews appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. They are:
“Through a Glass Darkly: Restoring Translation to the Restoration?” written by
Review of James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2023). 288 pages. $19.95.
Abstract: In By Means of the Urim & Thummim, James Lucas and Jonathan Neville valiantly seek to defend Joseph Smith’s role as the divinely inspired translator, a role that they argue is incompatible with using any tool other than the Nephite “intepreters,” later called the Urim and Thummim. They offer a unique theory to account for the statements of witnesses about Joseph using a seer stone in a hat, arguing that it was a fake demonstration using memorized passages to satisfy onlooker curiosity about the translation process. They propose a translation model in which Joseph did more than just get impressions, but saw an incomplete or literal translation in the Urim and Thummim that left plenty of room for heavy mental effort to turn what he saw into acceptable English. While the authors seek to defend Joseph from what they view as the questionable theories of modern Church scholars, their misunderstanding and misinterpretation of both the historical record and scripture result in some errant assumptions and logical gaps that undermine their well-intentioned work.
“Trust Us, We’re Lawyers: Lucas and Neville on the Translation of the Book of Mormon,” written by Brant A. Gardner
Review of James W. Lucas and Jonathan E. Neville, By Means of the Urim & Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration (Cottonwood Heights, UT: Digital Legend Press & Publishing, 2023). 288 pages. $19.95.
Abstract: In their book, James Lucas and Jonathan Neville present two major theses relative to translation of the Book of Mormon. The first is that the translation was always done by means of the interpreters that were delivered with the plates. The second is that Joseph Smith was an active participant in the translation process. A theory is laid out for how that might happen. Although this reviewer can agree that Joseph was an active participant in the translation, neither the first thesis nor their explanation of the second thesis can be accepted by those familiar with the historical record.
Wikimedia Commons public domain image
Lately, it seems that the busy little beavers over at the Peterson Obsession Board have been rolling out at least one new falsehood every single day about me and my comically evil works. (Perhaps, heading into the holiday season, they’ve set new production goals, new quotas, for themselves.) If I were to choose to respond to even a substantial portion of those falsehoods, I could pretty well devote myself to the task twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
One of the more amusing of the recent claims involves my friend Jack Welch. According to the good folks on the Obsession Board, Jack holds me in disdain and has been distancing himself from me for well over a decade. I confess that this comes as complete news to me. Jack and I are both busy, but we run into each other fairly frequently and, when we do, we always have a nice visit. (He attended the premiere for Six Days in August, and we often chat during intermissions at the Hale Center Theater in Orem.) There may even be a collaborative project in the future.
But there is a larger claim in this connection over at the Obsession Board. Jack and Scripture Central have long been Interpreter’s rivals, so the line on the Obsession Board goes, and they’ve now absolutely defeated us. But we at Interpreter were too stupid — in particular, I was too stupid — to recognize that they were leaving us in the dust, so we spent our time foolishly combating Rod Meldrum and Jonathan Neville and the “Heartlanders” while Scripture Central was rising to insuperable dominance. And that is why we’ve lost.
Their weird notion — it’s always essentially impossible to tell whether they’re sincere about these things or are merely engaged in disingenuous gaslighting and provocation — appears to be that we were quarreling with the Heartlanders over “market share.” But that was never a principal concern of ours, nor even a secondary or tertiary one. The folks at the Obsession Board overstate our focus on Heartlander claims, which has been at most sporadic, although obviously — as with today’s two Interpreter book reviews — we have indeed paid attention to them. Why? Not as part of a campaign to maximize “market share” but because we think they’re mistaken. (The two reviews that have just appeared provide reasoned argument for their disagreement, as everything that we’ve ever published about “Heartlander” claims has always done.)
And we were, I confess, not altogether happy with the tendency of certain writers in the “Heartlander” community to question the faith and loyalty of scholars who don’t share their views on the geography of the Book of Mormon, and to attack those scholars. (That was, as I understand it, the principal motivation of the Neville-Neville Land blog, which was an entirely private undertaking that was never affiliated with Interpreter nor, so far as I know, with any other organization; it was only late in its history that I even learned the identity of its proprietor,)
We at the Interpreter Foundation don’t view Scripture Central as a “rival.” We collaborate with each other. Their people — e.g., in just the Interpreter journal alone, to say nothing of our books, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, Matt Roper, Jared Riddick, and Jack Welch himself — publish with us and speak at our conferences. They draw on our publications for their publications. We participate in their projects and attend their events. We regularly meet, each and every month, to share calendars, exchange news, and coordinate projects. We all participate together in yet another monthly meeting. We aren’t competing with each other. We’re on the same side. We get along just fine. We’re friends.
This post was originally published on here
