“Creating a cumulative case for the Book of Mormon”

My Thursday Deseret News column for this week is now up, and it’s already being met by some commenters’ discouraging inability to read:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865622217/Creating-a-cumulative-case-for-the-Book-of-Mormon.html

Incidentally, one of the commenters mentions “BYU’s Prof Thomas Stuart Ferguson, a great man and archaeologist, [who] after having spent a lifetime trying to establish the historicity (truth claims) of the B of M, fell short of his efforts, and ended up losing his faith.”

It’s true that Thomas Stuart Ferguson seems to have had a crisis of faith, though members of his family have told me — and I have no way of judging this, one way or the other — that he died a believer.

However . . .  He was a lawyer, not an archaeologist.  He never taught at BYU.  (He lived in California.)  And he wasn’t a professor.

And, I might add, his arguments — pro, and then con — weren’t very good.  The study of the Book of Mormon has come a very long way since his time.  He did some quite good things, but he shouldn’t be misrepresented.