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This is a superb review. The range of Brother Christensen’s knowledge of Book of Mormon scholarship is truly impressive. Based on Understanding the Book of Mormon and a few other things I have read that Hardy wrote–and in truth, I would say the same if Understanding the Book of Mormon were the only thing he had written–I think Grant Hardy is the most important scholar working on the Book of Mormon today. His importance is amplified by his ability to bridge gaps between Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint readers of his work. But of course, the most any one scholar can do it a small part of all that can be done. And in this article, Kevin Christensen identifies a plethora of lacuna in Hardy’s latest magisterial work. I have only dipped in to the Annotated Book of Mormon (its next on my reading list), so I am grateful to have this preview of its strengths and limitations. Certainly, the dismissive mention of Barker and her work is a serious limitation given its powerful resonance with the Book of Mormon. This review is impressive not only for the astonishingly broad acquaintance it exhibits of various strands of Book of Mormon scholarship but also for its deep grounding in Kuhn, Norwood Russel Hanson, and the broader disciplines of epistemology and the philosophy of science. Congratulations, Brother Christensen, on having produced a tour de force on the topic at hand.
Thank you for these gracious comments. The nice thing about belonging to a community of insightful scholars, is that we can be rewarded and encouraged by one another’s insights. We all have “gifts differing,” and therefore, can enrichen one another. And in the same way, I have learned to appreciate the different gifts often demonstrated by people who have no interest in scholarship who nevertheless, through different gifts, enrich my Latter-day Saint experiences.
In addition to replying separately to the main article, let me say what a great comment this is. I fully agree that Understanding the Book of Mormon bears powerful implicit testimony that Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni were real people. The only real alternative explanation is that Joseph Smith’s literary genius was truly transcendent, in the composition context, comparable to or greater than that of the likes of Shakespeare and Homer.
Thanks again Tim, for your encouraging and insightful comments. I remain astounded by Barker’s work, and grateful and amazed to have had a part to play in spreading the word in how it converges prophetically with the Restoration. And we are all works in progress with a lot to learn from one another and from our loving God.
Here’s my take on “Nurture and Harvest.” As a disclaimer, I am currently reading Grant Hardy’s Annotated Book of Mormon in conjunction with the Come Follow Me schedule. I recently finished reading his other book, “Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide.”
In reading his books, I immediately noticed that Grant Hardy is cautious to a fault in not presenting anything which he might deem “controversial.” This probably includes most of the ideas and writings of Margaret Barker, Hugh Nibley and others from a Latter-day Saint perspective. Prior to reading Christensen’s essay, I had already determined that Hardy was attempting to balance a fine line between his targeted non-LDS audience, and those who are believers. I noticed that Brother Hardy was extremely careful to never alienate his non-LDS audience, obviously recognizing beforehand that a believer would keep reading if he did a careful balancing act, but that a non-LDS reader would probably not continue if Hardy crossed that thin indecipherable line of their “sensibilities.” So, rather than take any chances, Brother Hardy capitulated to his non-LDS audience, so that he could keep their attention. In some ways, this was next to ingenious, and it seemed to work quite well. For instance, as you read closely between the lines of Hardy’s text in “Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide,” you come to realize that in-between the lines, he is showing that Mormon is the author of the Book (and not Joseph Smith) with a few other historical authors in the mix. Between the lines, Hardy does a masterful job of bearing his testimony that the Book of Mormon could not have been written by Joseph Smith. This “virtual testimony” is much more evident in “Understanding the Book of Mormon” than it is in the “Annotated Book of Mormon,” though.
In reading this essay, I am in full agreement with the points which Brother Christensen makes. Christensen points out that Grant Hardy could have done a better job of mentioning Margaret Barker’s research. She is not LDS, after all, but she is a Biblical expert. Her research explains an awful lot about some Book of Mormon conundrums which weren’t intuitively obvious with just a “plain reading” of the text. If Brother Hardy truly wanted to educate about the Book of Mormon, Margaret Barker’s research is indispensable, especially when it is remembered that she is regarded as a “cutting-edge” expert on the time period that the Book of Mormon claims to originate, and the fact that she is a lay Methodist preacher in many ways adds credibility to her favorable Book of Mormon position.
Obviously, the danger that Brother Hardy’s methodology places us in, is that by adhering to the needs of his non-LDS audience, at times he jeopardizes the foundation upon much of what I think he wants to build regarding Mormon’s capabilities, and he potentially gives ammunition to those antagonistic to the faith. This can most easily be seen as shown by Christensen, when he makes mention of the Tanners and the Dead Sea Scroll fragment specifically announcing a “Son of the Most High,” in parallel to the pre-Christian knowledge of Jesus expressly stated in the Book of Mormon and the argument that “it’s too Christian before the time of Christ.” This and other points by Christensen are in answer to Hardy’s determination to continually bring awareness, almost as if he were raising a hand and shouting, “take note here” or “notice this.” Usually, he’s pointing out that this verse or that theme is especially relevant in the context of the 19th century –and probably unknown in purported Book of Mormon times. We get it already! Hardy does this hand-waving and choosing the side of the oppositionists too frequently to not be purposeful and incontrovertible, and after a while, it just gets very tiresome.
The somewhat tongue-in-cheek summation of Hardy’s dismissal of the Sermon at the Temple by a roundabout discussion of how Matthew must have eventually got around to collating some old sayings of Jesus was very cogent to the argument. Kevin Christensen’s logic in this section is impeccable and should make every New Testament scholar take note.
Christensen makes insightful commentary regarding the fact that Hardy strains so hard to make sure that the potential influence of 19th century Protestantism is so well represented in his Annotated text, then why does he not do the same for modern-day LDS apologetics, including Barker and others? Specifically, Christensen gives an example of Robert Price who might not have considered Josiah’s reforms and Book of Mormon historicity as being complementary, simply because Grant Hardy neglected to mention the potential congruence. This seems to me to be a huge fault in an annotation purporting to educate all who read it regarding a wide range of what should be both positive and negative differing possibilities and opinions. This is but one…
Thank for your interesting comments. I had also been impressed and enlightened by Understanding the Book of Mormon, found it notable that the authors of the recent Book of Mormon Studies: An Introduction and Guide noted that “Hardy modeled an approach to allow believers and non-believers to engage productively with the text,” (page 143) and they clearly like things like Terryl Givens’s excellent and important By the Hand of Mormon, for similar reasons, reception history being a way to deal with the Book of Mormon in an academic setting that allows those inclined to bracket the questions that its existences raises. Though I have to admit that my own paradigm was established when I read Hugh Nibley’s An Approach to the Book of Mormon in 1975, and I have no personal inclination to bracket historicity in my work, but rather to explore and test the notion, to experiment upon the word, and share my excitement about what grows. I buried in footnote 54 my observation that “Hardy (pp. 782–84) warmly mentions Nibley’s historical importance for Book of Mormon study but does not annotate any of his notable insights.”
I agree with Margaret Barker’s work as also providing a relatively new and obviously fruitful paradigm for approaching the Book of Mormon, and admit to being stirred to action by those who neglect or dismiss her importance. But the problem with her work for Hardy and Eliason/Crawford in BYU Studies is that rather than bracketing historicity and the implications for faith, she intensifies the issue. That discomfits those who think they have reigned in and resigned from the potential discomfort that questions about the binding reality about books and angels and a resurrected Jesus and invitations to repent and be baptized can raise in academic settings. That sort of thing violates accepted protocols. I understand the reasons for the protocols, but they exist to help us get along, not to bracket what is real.
I would not connect Hardy to Robert Price’s approach in his essay on the Book of Mormon in American Apocrypha. Rather that Price viewed the Book of the Law/Deuteronomy in as a pious fraud–the class of documents titled psueodigrapha meaning falsely attributed–providing a model for his approach to Joseph Smith. Of Deuteronomy Price writes that “the book was not discovered and dusted off but actually created by Hilkiah, Huldah, Jeremiah and others of the ‘Deuteronomistic School” who thus sought to win the impressionable young king to their religious agenda.” (Price, 323). Price offers no evidence for the conspiratorial involvement of his list of suspects other than his own confidence and supposition of what seems to him must be so. Though Price is aware of Barker’s approach, having published her The Secret Tradition essay in The Journal of Higher Criticism, and favorably reviewing The Great Angel as paradigm shifting event in Biblical studies, it simply did not occur to him to make a connection to her work, any more than he connects the opening versus of the Book of Mormon to the time of Josiah and the Deuteronomists. In an essay called “Notice and Value” in the Midgley Festschrift, I show that that particular essay and books by Barker contain all a person needs to know to show that the diverse New Testament elements Price claimed that Joseph Smith shredded and reassembled in 3 Nephi all belong together in the First Temple tradition.
Hey Kevin,
Keep up the good work. I love the research you’ve done. I wish that I had some academic experience regarding the First Temple epoch, but gratefully, I’ve been able depend upon you, Val Larson and several others for doing the heavy lifting for me. I’ve read your Paradigm and Paradigm revisited articles several times now and find them very enlightening. I do believe that I have to credit you for introducing me originally to Margaret Barker for which I’m very grateful! Her ideas as expressed through your Paradigm articles have given us a lot to think about.
By the way, I’m sorry I slightly misinterpreted Robert Price’s potential involvement with Joseph Smith and Margaret Barker, but I do believe the point is still valid: If Grant Hardy had only made a better case for the Deuteronimist interpretation as introduced by Margaret Barker, along with what you, Daniel Peterson, Val Larson, and a few others have postulated, perhaps he might have introduced someone to a theory which might have helped them better understand this time period. I believe both sides of Josiah’s reforms deserve a better accounting than what he provided. Wouldn’t that have been the better course of action to take with regards to an annotated book which claims to present evidence either way? Also, if he had done this, maybe he could have saved someone from the embarrassment of not knowing or hearing about these potential breakthroughs. In a way, this was Grant Hardy’s job, to introduce potentialities, and he certainly skipped town on anything to do with Josiah, Huldah, Hilkiah and the others responsible for an action which potentially changed the course of a lot of human history. I find it arrogant that something so major could be so easily disenfranchised by Grant Hardy, and others who feel threatened by a paradigm shift.
Now I must admit that I do like a lot of what Grant has done, and I believe that I understand why he has done it. Regardless, I still believe that he could have, –no, not could have– he should have done better.
Thanks again for your response. I truly believe that there’s still more yet to discover on these issues. Eye-opening articles like yours, which probe beyond not only what is found in a book, but also, what is missing, –ideas like this are very valuable!
Nate, thank you for your comment. I’m glad you found the footnotes worth exploring. The LDS scholarly community has certainly managed to magnify their talents by many orders of magnitude in my lifetime thus far, and I think the results are mind expanding and soul enlarging with respect to the Book of Mormon and the Restoration.
I am not privy to any plans for an Interpreter Annotated Book of Mormon, though, personally, I think of the ongoing explorations of the Book of Mormon by a wide range of scholars as a community annotation project, spread across a wide range of books, websites, journals, videos, and posts.
Thanks,
Kevin Christensen
Canonsburg, PA
I have Hardy’s annotated Book of Mormon. I enjoy it, but I also share almost the same exact perspective as you, Kevin. Thank you for this careful and meticulous review! I have found hours of delight reading, pondering, and running down the endnotes in this scholarly treatise!
Does the Interpreter plan on publishing their own annotated Book of Mormon? I would love to purchase one!