Today is the official publication date of Richard Bushman’s awesome new book on the gold plates that we’ll discuss next week.
He did an interview with Oxford Academic that’s on YouTube, here:
8:35 There’s a lot of scholarship on where the plot of the Book of Mormon went on. Was it in North America, in upstate New York? Is that where all the events recorded there went on?8:44Or was it in Central America? So there are some people who think there were two Cumorahs, one in Central America where Moroni buried the plates, another in New York. And so the speculation, you know, just goes on endlessly.
Book of Mormon Central (Scripture Central), FAIRLDS and the Interpreter could be awesome if they followed his example. Latter-day Saints want to make informed decisions. They deserve more of this type of even-handedness.
We love everyone in these organizations and respect their scholarship and objectives. We see things differently, but that’s not a problem for us. We value intellectual diversity. Think how much healthier it would be for them to embrace all their fellow Latter-day Saints and acknowledge multiple faithful interpretations.
Instead, Jack Welch, Scott Gordon and Dan Peterson, along with their employees and followers (and donors) set themselves up as the de facto “interpreters” who expect everyone else to follow their M2C/SITH agenda because of their credentials.
Nevertheless, we continue to hope they will someday embrace the principles of no more contention and unity in diversity.
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In a related topic, I posted Joseph Smith’s comments about Friendship here:
https://nomorecontention.blogspot.com/2023/09/friendship-by-joseph-smith-jr.html
Source: About Central America