FairMormon just posted Neal Rappleye's excellent paper:
“Put Away Childish Things”: Learning to Read the Book of Mormon Using Mature Historical Thought (.pdf)
The paper discusses some of the Old and New World evidence and purported "problems" of the Book of Mormon. It is worth the read just for the discussion of "loan-shifting" (giving animals, crops, and other elements of material culture the name of an animal/object the speaker believes it to resemble). In spite of scholarly support for this concept (e.g., Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition), this is something that the more misinformed LDS critics are incapable of grasping.
Neal Rappleye works for Book of Mormon Central, a great resource on issues relating to historicity and exegesis of the text.
“Put Away Childish Things”: Learning to Read the Book of Mormon Using Mature Historical Thought (.pdf)
The paper discusses some of the Old and New World evidence and purported "problems" of the Book of Mormon. It is worth the read just for the discussion of "loan-shifting" (giving animals, crops, and other elements of material culture the name of an animal/object the speaker believes it to resemble). In spite of scholarly support for this concept (e.g., Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition), this is something that the more misinformed LDS critics are incapable of grasping.
Neal Rappleye works for Book of Mormon Central, a great resource on issues relating to historicity and exegesis of the text.
