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AR 25:3 - Myths and mistakes in New Testament textual criticism?
In this issue:
CULTURE - 'the sharpest and most insightful conservative critique of America since the 1960s in years'
MORMONISM - a cozy RNS chat about LDS scripture that assumes everyone is on the same page
NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY - 'significant doubt about a couple dozen passages'?
Apologia Report 25:3 (1,460)
January 22, 2020
CULTURE
The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, by Christopher Caldwell [1] -- Simon & Schuster explains this "makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled - and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high - in wealth, freedom, and social stability - and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half century, taking readers on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycontin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules."
Publishers Weekly (Nov 18 '19) weighs in: "Civil rights law has become 'a model for overthrowing every tradition in American life' according to this stimulating and contrarian rethink of modern politics. Former Weekly Standard editor Caldwell (Reflections on the Revolution in Europe [3]) contends that the 1964 Civil Rights Act went beyond the project of ending Jim Crow to give government bureaucrats and courts vast powers to regulate business, education, and other institutions. As civil rights laws grew to address the grievances of feminists, homosexuals, and immigrants, they became a 'second constitution,' Caldwell argues, pursuing an agenda of minority preferments and social transformation while undermining democratic rule and the official Constitution's freedoms of speech and association. Caldwell charts this development through incisive accounts of legal battles including court-ordered busing, abortion rights, affirmative action, and gay marriage, as well as politically correct Twitter mobs and the right-wing backlash that now insists whites are an oppressed group. Caldwell's thesis is provocative, but not partisan - he blames the Reagan administration for entrenching both the civil rights regime and a plutocracy of financial elites - and shrewd in analyzing Americans' conflicted attitudes toward progressive initiatives. Liberals will find much to dispute, but Caldwell delivers the sharpest and most insightful conservative critique of mainstream politics in years."
Related: See "In Retrospect," Edward Short's review of Great Society: A New History, by Amity Shlaes [2] ("anyone interested in the history of progressivism in America or the history of America in the 1960s should read it"). City Journal, Jan 17 '20 <www.bit.ly/2vbU6Fm>
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MORMONISM
Something's going on with this review. Is it a bid for attention by Oxford University Press? Could it be that Religion News Service (Nov 18 '19) is simply trying for greater breadth of coverage? On the face of it, the subject is unlikely to have stirred interest ... if not for the *sit up and take notice* statements that are dropped. Read on and see what you think. At the very least, its frontal attack on the Bible cries for an evangelical response.
Jana Riess <www.bit.ly/2O81Q47> interviews Terryl Givens <www.bit.ly/2QggIfW> about his latest book, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture [4]. By way of introduction, Riess proclaims that The Pearl is "understudied, underpreached and underutilized," explaining that Givens "takes on the history and theology of this neglected volume, arguing that members of the church ignore it at their peril."
Riess opens with a challenge: "The Pearl of Great Price is like the unwanted stepchild of the LDS canon. When and why did that happen?" Givens' responses throughout are nothing if not interesting. He acknowledges "at one point in the past it was considered a key text in theology, and part of its fortunes have to do with the shifting tide of theology in Mormonism. Metaphysics or speculative theology had a higher place then than they do now.
"In the Pearl of Great Price you find all the distinctive doctrines of the LDS faith." Then Givens reviews LDS leadership strategy: "In recent years, the church has wanted to be seen as a more conventional denomination. Leaders have emphasized commonalities with other Christian churches rather than differences, and as a consequence, the Bible has taken on a greater role. Only since President (Ezra Taft) Benson has the Book of Mormon become more prominent.
"Also, in the last decade or two, the relentless assaults on the validity and historicity of the Pearl of Great Price have made the church even more reluctant to make more of it."
Riess rejoins with her own insights on LDS strategy: "I think you have to consider the sequence. Smith translates the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon is replete with claims that the Bible is bereft of clarity and a fullness of the truth. The idea that 'many plain and precious things' have been omitted is repeated some dozen times. And in a logical progression, he moves immediately after the Book of Mormon's publication to revise the Old Testament.
"And then immediately, as if he is learning right off the bat that parts of the Bible are beyond repair, he interpolates an entire book, the Book of Moses, which radically contests the canonical description of God. So it seems there that Smith has more than preached scriptural fallibility; he has enacted scriptural fallibility and supplemented scripture with a radically revisionist text. That is why the Book of Moses should have pride of place in both LDS evangelizing and doctrinal teaching."
Riess: "What would Mormon theology have looked like without the Pearl of Great Price?"
Givens: "It'd just be warmed-over Protestantism. Mormonism radically reconstitutes covenant theology, the entire cosmic framework upon which Mormonism rests. And it does this thoroughly and completely through the Pearl of Great Price. It is through both Abraham and Moses that we get the doctrine of premortal existence, the original instantiation of God's covenant with the human race, which takes place in premortality in the Book of Abraham and again in the garden [of Eden] in the Book of Moses."
Prior to the mass migration to Utah, during "the church's time of persecution," Givens notes that "Smith is effectively just a restorationist in the mold of Alexander Campbell. But once the [Pearl's] Book of Moses comes out, he immediately shifts his focus to the project of building a Zion community in a way without any significant precedent in Christian history. So none of those dimensions which are actually vital to the theology and practice of Mormonism are found in the Book of Mormon itself."
The discussion moves on to the "nonevent" of the 1880 canonization of the Pearl of Great Price, followed by LDS embarrassment over The Pearl's Book of Abraham, of which Givens remarks that "We have heard occasional voices from General Conference in recent years that we need to detach ourselves from the fallacy of prophetic infallibility.
"But this calls upon the membership of the church to embrace a reversal of the function that the Book of Abraham serves in their paradigms. ...
"[W]e may never know — what if any actual correlation exists between the [Egyptian] papyrus from which Smith was working and the temple theology...."
Givens' final statement: the Book of the Egyptian Dead and related documents "are centrally preoccupied with questions pertaining to the human ascent from mortality. So there's certainly a fittedness and congruence in relation to the [LDS] temple." Any questions? <www.bit.ly/2FciE2L>
For a solid collection of evangelical resources on the Book of Abraham, start at <www.bit.ly/2sIdKrw>.
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NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY
Richard Ostling burns the first half of his review to tease interest in the Myths and Mistakes in New Textament Textual Criticism anthology [5] from co-editors Elijah Hixson <www.bit.ly/35by4Pf> of Tyndale House, "an evangelical Bible research institute near Cambridge University," and Peter Gurry <www.bit.ly/2MLUGzn> of Phoenix Seminary. Ostling says the 14 contributors "represent a rising generation of conservative, well-trained experts in these matters who defend the New Testament's trustworthiness while honestly admitting problem areas, and write with clarity so we non-specialists can follow the action."
Nevertheless, the work "is a courageous step for InterVarsity Press, an evangelical publisher. Sure, the authors poke holes in fashionable skepticism from Ehrman and others. But simultaneously they criticize fellow evangelicals for distorting the realities and skirting the problems, and say such defenses have a boomerang effect that can make knowledgeable readers question Scripture's credibility.
"The introduction by Gurry and Hixson says 'misinformation abounds.' The book does not argue whether the New Testament claims about Jesus are true but treats the preliminary question of 'whether we can know what those claims are.' Leaving aside spelling variations, we learn, there are roughly half a million total differences among all the Greek manuscripts that specialists sift, or perhaps 1 percent of the New Testament. The authors say well-established techniques can securely trace the history of the texts.
"In summary, the book contends that 'the textual evidence we have is sufficient to reconstruct, in most cases, what the authors of the New Testament' wrote and 'convey the central truths of the Christian faith with clarity and power' as the basis for 'robust' Christian faith. The vast majority of differences are said to be trivial and do not touch central beliefs but the book honestly admits 'doubt remains significant' with a couple dozen passages." Ostling includes "two important examples" with Mark 1:1 and John 1:18. <www.bit.ly/2Fc5GSM>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, by Christopher Caldwell (Simon & Schuster, 2020, hardcover, 352 pages) <www.amzn.to/2FaNsRl>
2 - Great Society: A New History, by Amity Shlaes (Harper, 2019, hardcover, 528 pages) <www.amzn.to/2NOOcQX>
3 - Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, by Christopher Caldwell (Anchor, 2010, paperback, 384 pages) <www.amzn.to/2TMQR1w>
4 - The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture, by Terryl Givens and Brian Hauglid (Oxford Univ Prs, 2019, hardcover: 296 pages) <www.amzn.to/2ZHYqXV>
5 - Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, Elijah Hixson and Peter J. Gurry, eds. (IVP, 2019, paperback, 400 pages) <www.amzn.to/2QcNFK9>
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