Maxwell Institute Podcast #137: BH Roberts, the Bible, and the Book of Mormon, with Matthew Bowman

Joseph Stuart: Welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. I'm Joseph Stuart. Have you ever had anyone ask you “What is scripture?” For such a short question, it has the possibility to open up into 1000s of answers. For Latter-day Saints, it could be defined as whatsoever God's representative shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost. This definition is somewhat broader than many other Christian definitions of scripture, incorporating both written and spoken modes of inspiration. At the end of the day, though, scripture must be interpreted by the power of the Holy Ghost for our edification. In the past several 100 years though some have looked to academic tools to prove the truth of religious texts. Professionals from fields like history, archaeology, and anthropology have sought to add detail from the empirical record to sacred texts. Those professionals are often women and men of faith. But what are the limits of using Academic tools to prove religious truth? And how did that play out in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the first decades of the 20th century? In today's podcast, Dr. Matthew Bowman of Claremont Graduate University is going to discuss that with us today, focusing on his article entitled biblical criticism, the Book of Mormon and the meanings of civilization. And the most recent issue of the journal a Book of Mormon studies will include a copy of the article in our newsletter, which you can subscribe to at mi.byu.edu/monthly-mi-news. Dr. Bowman, welcome to the Max wants to podcast.

Matthew Bowman: Delighted to be here. Thanks so much.

Stuart: All right, so you are the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University. Before we get into your article, what does the chair of Mormon studies do?

Bowman: That is a good question. And there are not many of these chairs. And I think we all probably do something slightly different. What I do here at CGU is a couple of different things. First, every semester, I teach a class that involves Mormon studies, and I'm sure we'll talk about that term in a moment in some way. Often these classes are comparative, that is, I will teach a class that compares, say, the Mormon tradition with Catholic tradition with Protestants in some way. I also direct a thing called the Center for Global Mormon studies, which tries to promote information and knowledge about members of the Mormon tradition around the world. And I teach students and advise dissertations that explore various aspects of the Mormon tradition in some way.

Stuart: So you use Mormon tradition, rather than saying Latter-day Saints where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, does Mormon and Mormonism work as sort of an umbrella term?

Bowman: That's precisely it. Yes, we actually have had several conversations about what term we will use. And we've come to the term Mormon for a couple of reasons. The first is that I have students who are interested in studying members of churches descended from the revelations of Joseph Smith, that are not of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have students who study the Community of Christ, which was the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I also have students who are interested in the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well. So we use that word Mormon as a way to encompass members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but also some of these other traditions as well. We also use the word because a lot of the work I do and a lot more than many of my students do is historic. And that is we're looking at the past. And we're looking at sources that used to work more to describe these people, and even new members of the church who used to work for me describe yourselves as well. So the term feels both all encompassing, but also adds a degree, I think, historical texture as well.

Stuart: We're going to be discussing your article in the journal a Book of Mormon studies entitled Biblical Criticism: The Book of Mormon and the Meanings of Civilization. Before we begin, what is biblical criticism? When did it begin? Where did that term come from?

Bowman: Yeah, that is a good question. So the first thing to say is that biblical criticism does not simply mean criticizing the Bible, right? I think a lot of people when they hear that word, they're using it in the lay sense. For scholars, that means something slightly different. Criticism means simply to analyze a topic or a subject or an item like the Bible, using the methods of an academic. And that's something else that’s really important. One of the things that we should know about just really being human is that we have a variety of ways of knowing; ways of coming to knowledge of gaining knowledge about everything. And when we're looking at scripture, like the Bible for instance, we have a variety of ways of knowing about the Bible. Latter-day Saints, you invoke the Holy Spirit, for instance, we also just simply have reading the text. These all can give us different information about what this text is. Biblical criticism that emerged alongside the growth of the modern academy, universities. This began really in Germany in the 18th century, it reached the United states by the late 19th century. And these people use this term biblical criticism to mean that they are using specific academic methods for acquiring knowledge about the Bible. So there is not a claim that this is exhaustive, right, that this is the only way to understand the Bible. Just as we wouldn't say right that reading the Bible isn't the only way you can come to knowledge. As Latter-day Saints emphasize prayer when we spear and as well. Academics then use a couple of different methods. And there are several that we might mention. One category is sometimes called textual criticism or literary criticism, or even historically, the lower criticism, although we don't use that term anymore, kind of implies it's not as good. This method evaluates the Bible's texts a couple of different ways, it might evaluate how the text is written, right? Interested in the literary qualities. Seeing the book I can identify certain genres within the text, it also, and this is textual criticism, it also might examine manuscripts of the Bible that are modern translations, or are derived from trying to identify any changes or discrepancies over a long period of time. You know, it's important to recognize right that our manuscripts of the Bible are pretty fragmented, the earliest full manuscript of the Bible, we have dates to several 100 years, 300 years after the life and death of Jesus Christ. The earliest fragment of a Bible manuscripts that we have is from the gospel, I'm sorry, one of the epistles of John, it is from about 300 years after Jesus died. So what these textual critics will do is try to line up all these manuscripts and see if they're the same. See how these texts might have evolved and changed over time. Now, there's also another version of criticism of the Bible. And that's what I think we'll be talking most about today. That is called the higher criticism, or more recently, historical criticism. That is interested in using the methods of academic history to study the Bible. That is it asks, what are the methods of history, this specific way of knowing that is history that is involving research, examination of available evidence and sources that we footnote, that we can cite, right, and that you can go look at. What can that way of gathering knowledge reveal about the background and history of the Bible? So for instance, on one of the earliest forms of this kind of criticism was practiced, as I said, in Germany, in the late 18th, early 19th century by most famously by a man named David Strauss, who wrote a book about Jesus. And he tried very hard to explain what we can know about Jesus using historical evidence, right, using evidence that is verifiable, that is notable. And he wrote a book called The Life of Jesus to make the argument that Jesus wasn't a Jewish prophet. Now, he bracketed miraculous spiritual claims about Jesus because he said, I cannot footnote that Jesus might have been the Son of God, but I cannot give you a footnote that it documents that and proves that thoroughly. And so this is why higher criticism sometimes comes up for critique, because of claims like that.

Stuart: Yeah, I can only imagine a footnote that says, “Correspondence with God 1876 February one,” right. But I think with what you've said, I can understand why it's a sensitive topic for those who believe in the Bible to be the word of God and for Protestants, especially, who believe that the Bible is the end all be all for religious authority.

Bowman: Yes, so this was one of the reasons why, especially this historical criticism more so than textual criticism or form, criticism was so controversial in the 19th century. Many American Christians in particular found this kind of criticism threatening because it upset traditional beliefs about the Bible that they had about the Bible. And it might be useful here to separate the Bible itself from beliefs we have out there, right. There is the text itself, but then there are presumptions about the texts or faith claims about text. Some of the scholars argued that these forms of criticism actually help us understand the Bible better than they help us understand what its initial writers intended when they wrote the Bible. And hence, some of these critics would say, this sort of work is actually faith promoting. It helps us understand who Jesus was, what the gospel writers wanted us to understand about Jesus, that it might actually deepen our faith to properly understand, for instance, that there is a creation story in Genesis one and a creation story in Genesis two. And those creation stories are somewhat different. And some form critics might say, we have these two creation stories, because they're designed to teach us different things about, and our relationship with God is and that's why we have to for the same reason there are four gospels. There are certainly, there were, some of these academic scholars like David Strauss, who I mentioned a bit earlier, who believed that higher criticism and historical criticism debunked traditional beliefs of Christianity. Many higher critics argued, because the methods of history do not include miracles, we have to understand Jesus as your friend and by his historical time, rather than as a divine exception. And that was very, very hard for many American churches in the 19th century to accept, particularly many American evangelists. Indeed, the theology of what is sometimes called biblical inerrancy, emerges a reaction to the sorts of criticism.

Stuart: So what does that mean biblical inerrancy?

Bowman: Biblical inerrancy was not really a well defined theological belief before the 19th century. It came to be defined by scholars, especially at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century, as a way to debunk historical criticism. Biblical inerrancy is the notion that the Bible is inerrant in all that it claims. Now people often use the word biblical literalism, right to kind of mean something like that. But that's not quite the same thing. Biblical inerrancy will acknowledge that the Bible indeed does contain metaphor and analogy. But their point is, when it intends to be metaphorical, he does metaphor, what is claiming -issues of historical facts- it is inerrant. And these theologians develop that claim, wrote articles and books defending it, because they saw what this criticism to be doing to be detrimental. And it's still an issue, of course, there are many, many arguments, even up to today about how we should think about these issues. And I think in many ways, it's it's a tension, right? It's a tension that may not be resolved. But hopefully both scholars and believers, it's a tension that may prove productive, because it makes us think about scripture more.

Stuart: Certainly. So we are speaking with Dr. Matthew Bowman about his article “Biblical Criticism: The Book of Mormon and the Meanings of Civilization.” Matt, how did Latter-day Saints first encounter biblical criticism? I believe that George Reynolds factors in, could you tell us about him and his experience?

Bowman: Yeah, absolutely. So the earliest Latter-day Saints responses to the higher criticism, particularly you start to see emerging at about the same time that many other Protestants began engaging with scientists in the 1870s. And as with many other American Christians, Latter-day Saints help with these forms of criticism, particularly higher racism, and dangerous and destructive effects. They adopted in many ways, arguments to other Protestants that linked to higher criticism and biblical criticism to the theory of evolution, to geology that was making the case that the earth was far older than scripture seemed to imply. And thus, they saw all of these things going hand in hand, bringing unbelief and lack of faith and the destruction of Christianity, the error. And this is of course, something that many, many Protestant denominations are fighting over. Some Protestant denominations, like Presbyterians and Baptists even fracture over many of these issues.

Stuart: So I think that's really interesting for a few reasons. One, Reynolds is not a trained academic. He's not someone who is entering into these conversations, looking for the same sorts of solutions that Strauss is in Germany, or that others are at Harvard, or Princeton, or Yale, or other places of higher learning. Do you think that that's a fair statement?

Bowman: Now, the Latter Day Saints believed that they had another tool in this argument, and that tool was the Book of Mormon. Interestingly enough, they were willing, because of the eight article thing, right, which claims that we read in the Bible, so far, as it is translated correctly. And because of the Joseph Smith translation, as well of the Bible, right, that the Bible might be corrupted in some way, that there might be textual criticism that would be useful for untangling right what the Bible really meant to say, but they believed because they had the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon was immune to all of it. So we'll see early Latter-day Saints like George Reynolds, right, who was president of what was then the Deseret Sunday School Union, making the case that, and I’ll quote them here, “The Book of Mormon confirms Bible history, demonstrates Bible truth, sustains Bible doctrines, and fulfills Bible prompts.” Right, so his argument was, the Book of Mormon could defend and save the Bible from this sort of criticism. For instance, because the Book of Mormon makes reference to the five books of Moses, Reynolds believed then that higher critics and textual critics who are making the argument that there was first five books of the Hebrew Bible, beginning with Genesis ending with Deuteronomy, were actually the product of several different authors whose work was gradually fused together over time. And that was untrue for George Reynolds, because the Book of Mormon said, these are the books of Moses. Similarly, for instance, Reynolds argued, the Book of Mormon did, indeed, in some ways parallel, the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew in a similar speech that Jesus gives in the Gospel of Luke, but Reynolds said, The Book of Mormon gives us the pure version of that. And so we can turn to the Book of Mormon and see that the higher criticism.

Stuart: Another autodidact, another early leader of the church, who is a great intellectual is BH Roberts, and he undertakes a study of the Book of Mormon where he tries to involve biblical criticism. Could you tell us about Elder Robert’s intellectual journey?

Bowman: Yeah, Elder Roberts is fascinating, right? There are those who will say the B.H. Roberts is still the best mind the church has ever produced. He certainly, he was an autodidact, you read widely, you read deeply, a very, very penetrating and powerful mind. And initially, you follow as many of these other lines of essays and rejecting the hierarchy, and saying that it is destructive of faith. Fortunately, we have the Mormon, which will disprove it. But gradually, actually, he starts to shift his position. And that I think, does demonstrate a lot of intellectual honesty on his part. And I think he begins to see that a lot of the work of the higher criticism just mounts and mounts and mounts, and it becomes, I think, harder and harder, harder simply to dismiss out of bed. By the early 20th century then he has done much more reading. And he and a few other members of the Church begin to take a more measured approach, they begin to concede that, in fact, the higher criticism can and does provide useful information. There's something here worth looking at, and indeed, perhaps even a method worth studying. But ultimately, Roberts believed these tools, and this approach can be used to validate and explore scripture, to understand it better, he eventually comes to argue that the fake claims that the higher criticism might damage are themselves flimsy, and improper. He says, the higher criticism is destroying weak Christianity, weak Christian beliefs about the Bible, but ultimately, he thinks it will validate the inspired nature of real pure scripture.

Stuart: I think that's an interesting tact to take. Because as a modern Latter-day Saint, I know, people in my ward or in my stake, who still aren't comfortable with this sort of thing, and I would say that they have a deep and abiding faith in scripture, they are just not interested in scripture for the same reasons.

Bowman: Yeah, certainly, you know, Roberts, does, I think, come to take higher criticism, extremely serious, he does not subscribe to all of his claims, right to some of the things that, that academics he disagreed with, were saying, but he does think that the method is interesting and important. And particularly really, when it comes to the Book of Mormon, because, of course, Roberts does, eventually begin applying some of these methods to the Book of Mormon, that is exploring archaeological work in Central and South America, looking at the history of indigenous peoples in the Americas, and expecting then that this sort of work will reveal more truth about the book and more. There are some Latter-day Saint leaders like John Wick Snow who thinks this is wonderful, and wants to pursue this and are very confident in this kind of thing will validate The Book of Mormon. There are others though, like James Talmage, who don't seem to see much point to it. James Talmage attends a meeting at Roberts convenience of in 1921 or 1922, one of those two, and, and Roberts present some of the these evidences and also some of the troubles that he is finding as he's doing some of this work. And Tallmadge famously goes home and writes in his journal, and I'm paraphrasing him here. He says, essentially, the Book of Mormon says there were horses and the Americans when we hiding them, we arrived here, therefore, they must have been, even if archaeologists are finding otherwise.

Stuart: That's fascinating because I think about Talmage is being involved in writing Jesus, the Christ in being involved in Protestant and some Catholic scholarship to better help Latter-day Saints understand their faith, and yet he's disagreeing with Roberts. I think, in some ways that this shows that we can't paint anyone into a corner. No one is 100% ideological on any issue much less of a range of issues as complicated as as faith and belief.

Bowman: Precisely, you know, that there was a spectrum. And I think it's interesting to think about, right, this sort of academic study that Robert is doing is a way that he approaches his faith. And it's extremely important to Roberts to the point, right, where he calls it all the general authorities and says we need to talk about this. And that's a very, very key and central for him, it doesn't bother Talmadge. Talmadge goes on his own path. Right. And I don't think you know, used to say like, who's right, who's wrong, I don't know that right or wrong, is a real right way to think about this. Rather languages, I think languages of faith, languages of intellect. That's the right way to conceive of what's real. Some people speak in a different language. So there are right a kind of range of responses to this. There are some church leaders like Talmage, who are comfortable simply, simply resting in their faith. There are others like Witsel, who believe that this sort of exploration can deepen and expand their knowledge of the Book of Mormon and hence their faith.

Stuart: Okay, so something that Roberts gets into, as you say, he's investigating the history and the anthropology of America's indigenous peoples. And he's also adopting ideas around civilization that are popular in intellectual currents at the time. How did ideas about civilization factor into the search for tangible or historical proof of the Book of Mormons truth as scripture?

Bowman: This notion of civilization, right, that's a thing that I think a lot of modern people have thought, you know, that's a concept of pad forever, but actually, our ideas about civilization and what it is have really changed over time. And in the late 19th century, that notion, the idea of civilization was really central to what a lot of academics and intellectuals were doing in a wide variety of fields. And many of them had incorporated some ideas from Darwinism, from the notion of progression of survival of the fittest, right. And they said, Well, if this is true for individual species, it might be true for groups of people, even perhaps civilizations progress, perhaps for more advanced civilizations. For civilizations to fail, civilizations to rise, this way of thinking was really, really central to Roberts. As it was for many people who were doing work on the Bible, in this period, as well. They tended to think of ancient peoples evolving over time. And they said, what we see in the Bible is the evolution of the family of Abraham, from these very early, you know, word they use was “primitive” ways of understanding God and being religious, to the purity of Christianity. And that idea is still implicit. I think one of the ways a lot of Christians talk about their relationship with Judaism, and the relationship of the New Testament to the Hebrew Bible, right, that there's a lower law, higher law, right, that is the civilizational language. And Roberts believed it. He uses this idea, then to look at the Book of Mormon. And it's actually one of the issues that causes him some difficulty. One of the things that Roberts and other Americans in the 19th century believed about civilization was that aspects of civilization moved in tandem. So as a civilization progressed in their religion, away from what all of these people said it was like early ritualism, towards higher purity, and ethical behavior, their economics, their form of government, their family life, their technology, all of these things should progress intended. So civilizations who are really advanced in their form of government, for instance, Roberts and other Americans expected would also be more advanced in their religion and their technology. And so lower civilizations were, like in the stone age, they would also be described, higher civilizations would have democracy and science at the same time. So for Roberts, and other readers of The Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon civilizations, which reportedly had steal, had Christianity, the Nephites eventually adopt a system of judges and move away from kingship. Roberts thought then, the Nephi civilization was a higher civilization. And he expected then, that in the archaeological and cultural and historical remnants, you would see evidence of that.

Stuart: And there were Latter-day Saints who went to Central and South America looking for that archaeological evidence. Is that right?

Bowman: There were, yes. They were really drawing on the ideas of mostly British, but also American School of archaeology that historians sometimes called the “biblical archaeologists” or the “school of biblical archaeology.” These were people who thought that the German method of studying the Bible that is, which developed textual criticism and higher criticism was paying far too much attention to the text itself. And what we really needed to do, what we wanted to understand from the Bible was actually start to date, and do archaeology, and find the actual physical remnants. There were a lot of biblical archaeologist, people like William Albright, who did a lot of work in Israel, trying to under, uncover the evidence of the Israeli invasion of Canaan that happens in the book of Joshua. I mean, one of his students uncovered several cities, was famously Shechem, which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, right? These people thought that the archaeological evidence and the stories in the text were just put together, right and be mutually reinforcing. The Bible would explain the sites, the sites would justify the Bible. That was their strategy. And there were a Latter-day Saints who were involved in this most famously, in this period was the expedition mountain by Benjamin Plath, who was the president of BYU. In 1900 he let a lot of students and some other faculty of BYU down through Mexico, and they went, they went to Central America, looking for archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon. Now, they didn't find it, in part because they didn't really know what they were doing. Benjamin was a was a mathematician, not an archaeologist, right? They were, they had more enthusiasm in training, we might say, but their hope, really indicates how members of the church are engaging with a lot of these ways of studying the Bible popular in America.

Stuart: So what sort of evidence are they looking for? You said that they have more enthusiasm than training. But are they looking for horse skeletons? Or examples of steel? What kinds of things are they even looking for to prove that civilization had progressed to use their terminology?

Bowman: Yeah, yeah, no, that's a good way to ask it, right? Because, because the real goal here is to find cities. Cities are proof of civilization, and highly advanced cities, cities that show evidence of class stratification of workers and rich people, and clergy, and all this other stuff. These are described in the Book of Mormon, the ultimate goal for so many of these people is Zarahemla. If you can find the city of Zarahemla, right, then you will demonstrate the truth of the Book of Mormon. They did not, unfortunately.

Stuart: So Roberts knows that Plath wasn't able to find Zarahemla, and that no one else has been able to find these ancient cities described in the Book of Mormon. How does he work through this because it seems that as a general authority as a man of faith, he has a testimony of the Book of Mormon in the same way that many Latter-day Saints gain it. Through Moroni’s promise, asking and faith and then receiving an answer. But so what is this do? Does this bother him at all?

Bowman: Somewhat some ways, yes. Some ways now. Um, he is not comfortable trying to pinpoint geographical locations of the Book of Mormon. Roberts points to the evidence in the text of great upheavals in the land, earthquakes, cities falling, that sort of thing and says, locating Zarahemla may be hard. So he doesn't think that's necessarily the way to go. He's looking for other things. Well, he spends a lot of time for instance, on the story of ketchup bottle, which has become, which really became popular among binary saints in the 20th century, the notion that ketchup bottle was a kind of cultural memory of Jesus Christ, for instance, and that's more the kind of thing I think he is emphasizing. He is, though a little bit thrown by a letter that actually James Talmage receives and passes off to him that he receives from a young Latter-day Saint saint named William Writer who's living in Washington, DC, and in 1921. And Writer asks Roberts a bunch of questions about seeming anachronisms in the Book of Mormon; the presence of steel, for instance, which is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but for which there's no archaeological evidence of steel existing in the Americas, before Columbus. The mention of horses, which is the same problem, the mention of silk, same problem. Roberts grapples with most of these, and he engages pretty well, right. He says that there is some evidence for something like horses something like steel, and we see enough evidence that he is comfortable. Other Latter-day Saints saints have said, well, these things might simply be translation. More than actual references to steel, right. But the real thing that pulls Roberts up is language. One of the questions that he’s asked in this letter is how is it that only 1000 years after the collapse of the Nephite civilization there are so many different Native American languages. And they seem to have no relationship with each other. And that does throw Roberts a little bit because remember, he's expecting the Nephites to be an advanced civilization, one with writing, right, a civilization that has a kind of fixed, firm language, it's maintained through text, not simply oral developments. And he thinks about a number of different possibilities. He actually refers to one that later became embraced by many members of the church. And that's what is often called today, the limited geography is the idea that the Book of Mormon happens in a relatively small area of land. And that there are other groups of people not mentioned in the Book of Mormon living all over the Americas at the same time this has happened. Now Roberts has a very, very kind of a rigorous mind. And he says, he cannot fully accept this, because there's other people's are not mentioned in the Book of Mormon is very faithful to the text in that way. But there are other leaders in the church and other thinkers in the church who find this option more convenient.

Stuart: That’s interesting, because this echoes, so much of many conversations that I hear as a Latter-day Saint today. Debates over what sort of evidences we should rely upon to prove to ourselves or prove to others that scripture is true. I personally sort of savor and love that elder Roberts said, I'm not fully satisfied with this. But I know what I've received as a spiritual answer and continuing to participate in the church and find his way the best that he could. I know, speaking for myself, there are things in the church that I'm hoping to receive answers to things in my life that I'm hoping for additional light to be shed on. But it's about having the hope that all will be revealed later. Is that a little bit about how Elder Roberts felt, or do we get a sense for how it factored into his spiritual life in that way?

 Bowman: Sure. You know, we do know that Roberts was troubled by this. And I don't know that we can easily equate to him being troubled by it with the sense that oh, well, he doesn't believe in the Book of Mormon anymore. That isn't bridged further, I think he himself would have gone on certainly right, he was comfortable engaging with other leaders in the church, and saying, “Well, here are some problems. Here are some questions that I have, what do you think?” You know, and he has exchanges with a lot of members of the church who all seem to have different answers.

Stuart: Another Latter-day Saints scholar who has had a long term effect on the trajectory of Latter-day Saints, understanding the Book of Mormon is Sidney Sperry, could you tell us more about him?

Bowman: Yeah! Sperry is interesting. You know, he is a generation younger than Roberts. He is actually the first of a small cohort of educators in the church educational system, who go to the University of Chicago and receive advanced degrees in their in various aspects of religion. Sperry actually studied linguistics, and got his PhD in 1931. And he takes a really different tack than Roberts does, or then Benjamin does. He is more interested in that earlier first type of criticism that I mentioned, that category that includes textual criticism, literary criticism, linguistic form, criticism, looking at the text itself, he uses a language and really believes that language can bypass archaeology, to get at what the text is all about. So Sperry is interested in looking at the Book of Mormon and reading it very close. And he unearth's, what he argues, is a number of different forms. In the Book of Mormon, that is different types of writing, he dubs 3 Nephi, the “American Gospel” or the “Nephi Gospel” and says it has all the forms, that a “gospel” as a form of writing that we know from the Bible would have. He calls not Passagen, 2 Nephi, for the psalm of Nephi. Because he says, if you compare it to the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, you will see similar patterns, similar forms, right, similar use of language. He argues overall, and the Book of Mormon has the markers of being what he calls translation literature. That it reads like a text that has been translated from one language into another, not as the path down which he takes study of the Book of Mormon. And it's interesting to see, I think that we can see the legacies of some of these different schools of how to properly study the Book of Mormon, still at work and alive today.

Stuart: Could you say more about that? How do Latter-day Saint leaders think today or at least teach today about archaeological evidence and the Book of Mormon?

Bowman: Well, you know, I think leaders and Latter-day Saints are two different categories there. But overall, right Latter-day Saints leaders have been pretty rigorously neutral about it. They will say things like, you know, we don't know where exactly the Book of Mormon happened. That matters less than what The Book of Mormons message is, but there are certainly many groups in the church who are following still these various paths, right, there is still a number of thinkers and writers in the church who do what Sidney Sperry has done, right, and who look really closely at the text and who wonder, I think, some really fascinating and valuable insights into the Book of Mormon, from that kind of close to rigorous analysis of the text. There have also been many camps within the church who have done, pursued further archaeological work, trying to find evidence and an understanding of the Book of Mormon in those ways as well. And there have been many historians or students of history in the church who have compared what we know about what the Mormon civilizations to the civilizations of the ancient Near Eastern or Ancient Americans. All of these are ways I think, of finding your way into the text, understanding the texts better, and trying to develop a deeper relationship with them. If one is reading the text, in pursuit of greater understanding.

Stuart: What are some of the big ideas about history and religion that you take away from researching this period, these sorts of stories in church history? What are say two or three things that we should take away?

Bowman: Sure, I think the first thing we can learn from this story is that, despite what we all may say, no one is simply reading the text, you cannot simply point to the passage in the Bible or the Book of Mormon, and say its meaning is self evident, and clear, and an obviously says this, or it says that. Because all of us are bringing certain assumptions and expectations, things that we might even not be aware of, as we approach these texts. And I think one of the really valuable ways to come to a better relationship with a sacred text is to come to understand yourself, and what you're assuming, when you read it, what you're expecting, when you read it. What the text … I used to teach actually an undergraduate course, in the Hebrew Bible and what Christians call the Old Testament. And one of the exercises I did, at the very beginning of the class was I told my students, the story of Noah. As we all have come to assume, we know that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and Noah brought a pair of male and female of every animal species onto the arc and the arc rode the waves for 40 days and 40 Nights, and so on. But when I say that, nearly everything I've said, just now and recounting that story is not actually in the Bible. It sets out the assumptions we bring to the buyer, and our belief that we know the text perhaps better than we actually do. So that's maybe a good second lesson here is, I think, returning to the text itself, and trying to read it carefully -to strip away our assumptions about what we know is in it- actually makes for a much richer and better informed and hopefully more fruitful encounter.

Stuart: And I have one final question for you that we like to ask of all our guests on the Maxwell Institute Podcast. In section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants we read about learning from the best books, what are three of your best books that you would recommend to Maxwell Institute Podcast listeners?

Bowman: Oh, well, I'll speak especially I think, to this question, right of scripture and reading scripture, and learning from scripture. The first, I think, for anyone who wants to know more about the Book of Mormon and understand that more and better, wouldn't be Grant Hardy. Hardy is very much working in the tradition of Sidney Sperry, which is to say, a close and detailed reading of the text itself, of its forms of its patterns of its repetitions, and he entered citing things in it that would, I think, be really happy surprises to many listeners. Another would be James Kugel’s book. James Kugel is a professor of Hebrew Bible, he is actually Jewish himself. But his book “How to Read the Bible” is intended for lay readers. It is, I think, a very, very valuable and educational examination of some of these same patterns, right? He moves through the Bible, and tells us what these various forms of criticism have revealed, or what we might learn about these various stories in the Bible. One thing he does that I think is very valuable, is it doesn't say this reading is the correct. Rather, I think he tells us that all of these different ways to read out have opened multiple readings of all of these stories. And again, these make scripture seem much more relevant, I think, and fresh. And then finally, I would recommend, really any of the works of Raymond Brown. Raymond Brown, I think he is recently deceased. He was a preeminent scholar of the New Testament. He's also practicing Roman and his work on the New Testament and carries with it a lot of these same ideas and the same kind of ability, I think, to look at as BH Roberts was really trying to do to use his academic tools in such a way to deepen and make more meaningful things.

Stuart: Thank you, Matt, for coming by the Maxwell Institute podcast.

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