{"id":88117,"date":"2020-09-15T23:22:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T05:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=88117"},"modified":"2020-09-16T11:55:28","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T17:55:28","slug":"taking-a-leap-of-faith-in-the-late-senator-bob-bennetts-book-on-the-origins-of-the-book-of-mormon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/09\/taking-a-leap-of-faith-in-the-late-senator-bob-bennetts-book-on-the-origins-of-the-book-of-mormon.html","title":{"rendered":"“Taking a ‘Leap of Faith’ in [the late Senator Bob] Bennett’s book on the origins of the Book of Mormon”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>
An official portrait of then-Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT)
\u201cNot Just a Pretty Face,\u201d said the billboard slogan during his first senatorial campaign. He was, however, a remarkable man.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I published this column in the Deseret News<\/em> on 28 April 2016.\u00a0 Its publication had been unaccountably delayed for a long time and, when I discovered that delay \u2014 I had been out of the country for a prolonged period and had lost track \u2014 I pushed it forward as fast as I could.\u00a0 It was urgent to me because I knew that Senator Bennett was seriously ill.\u00a0 I was, accordingly, relieved and happy that, as a member of his family told me, it was read to him before his death on 4 May 2016.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some, hearing that\u00a0then-Utah Sen. Bob Bennett<\/a>\u00a0had written a book on the Book of Mormon, suspected that it was a politically motivated attempt to curry favor with Utah\u2019s Mormon voters just prior to a hotly contested nominating process that \u2014 to the shock of many across the country \u2014 he eventually lost. (It was, perhaps, an early foreshadowing of the anti-incumbency mood that has defined this year\u2019s presidential campaign in both major American political parties.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Having read the manuscript well before it was published, however, and long before the senator\u2019s renomination seemed in jeopardy, I knew that it wasn\u2019t. It was plainly the product of sustained, careful reflection, not a hasty political ploy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my own turn, to be perfectly candid, when I first heard that Bennett had written such a manuscript, I doubted that it would be of much value. He was, after all, not a specialist, and I was certain that a busy senator had little time to keep up with the explosion of scholarship on the Book of Mormon that has occurred over the past several decades. What, beyond a shallow rehash, could it possibly offer?<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer, I quickly found out, was plenty. \u201cLeap of Faith<\/a>: Confronting the Origins of the Book of Mormon\u201d (Deseret Book<\/a>), which eventually appeared in 2009, is a surprisingly good book. In it, an obviously very intelligent mind considers whether the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century forgery \u2014 and shares those reflections clearly, in a highly readable, conversational style.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book\u2019s approach is original. Knowing that he isn\u2019t a scholar of ancient languages, Bennett doesn\u2019t pretend to be one and doesn\u2019t offer us a second-rate derivative pastiche of the opinions of such scholars. Instead, he draws on his own unique background and strengths. He reads the Book of Mormon acutely as someone who, having formerly been an executive with the Howard Hughes organization, has given a great deal of thought to the common characteristics of forgeries \u2014 first because of Clifford Irving\u2019s fraudulent biography of the reclusive billionaire, and then on account of the apparently spurious so-called \u201cMormon will\u201d attributed to Hughes. (He also\u00a0draws lessons\u00a0<\/a>from Mark Hoffman\u2019s infamous document frauds.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Temporarily dividing the narrative framework of the Book of Mormon from its doctrinal content (the \u201cplot\u201d from the \u201cmusic,\u201d in his words) for purposes of analysis, he first examines what he calls the three \u201cstories\u201d presented by the book \u2014 essentially the first-person \u201csmall plates\u201d of Nephi, Mormon\u2019s abridgement of most of Nephite history, and Moroni\u2019s concluding chapters (including the book of Ether\u2019s tale of the Jaredites). He scrutinizes each with insightful care, sometimes concentrating on what he calls \u201ccore samples,\u201d and is willing to say forthrightly when something points toward forgery rather than to authenticity.<\/span><\/p>\n

On balance, he judges, the Book of Mormon is \u201cmuch more complex than its casual readers, believers and critics alike, think it is.\u201d He cites the 1839 comments of a hostile newspaper editor who described it as \u201cevidently the production of a cultivated mind, yet found in the hands of an exceedingly ignorant illiterate person,\u201d and declares that \u201cI believe we can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Joseph Smith did not produce the Book of Mormon without outside help.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

He then examines representative doctrines of the Book of Mormon (e.g., agency, faith, the fall, atonement, sin and the messianic identity of Jesus), evaluating their coherency and, finally, their relevance. His verdict is positive, and I strongly agree with his assertion that the Book of Mormon\u2019s testimony that God lives and acts, and that Jesus is God\u2019s divine son, is even more pertinent today than it was in 1830, when the book first appeared.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both belief in the Book of Mormon and rejection of it require a leap of faith, he says. Hence his book\u2019s title. \u201cI believe it,\u201d he announces in his closing words. \u201cI have made the leap of faith.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This very helpful book is \u201caddressed to an audience who knows little or nothing about either the Book of Mormon or the church that is commonly called by its name. It is a sincere effort to be fair to all sides of the controversies.\u201d And, in fact, it\u2019s a book that I would happily present to many investigators and to curious nonmembers. But Bennett was, perhaps, being a bit too modest. This is a book from which believing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, too, can significantly benefit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I published this column in the Deseret News on 28 April 2016.\u00a0 Its publication had been unaccountably delayed for a long time and, when I discovered that delay \u2014 I had been out of the country for a prolonged period and had lost track \u2014 I pushed it forward as fast as I 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