Commenting on Moroni's appearance to Joseph in his bedroom, Rob Bowman repeated a favourite objection of his:
The fact that Joseph
shared his room and bed with some of his brothers renders the scene described by
Joseph fifteen years later highly implausible, since he claimed that the angel’s
presence made the room as bright as midday and that the two of them engaged in
conversation three separate times throughout the night. (Robert M. Bowman Jr., Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions:
Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism [Tampa, Fla.:
DeWard Publishing Company, 2020], 196)
This is an example of using an argument that blows up in the face of
anyone who, as Bowman does, the Bible. Commenting on Peter’s imprisonment and
escape therefrom, we read the following in the Acts of the Apostles:
And when he saw that
this was pleasing to the Jews he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (It was [the]
feast of Unleavened Bread.) He had him taken into custody and put in prison
under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each. He intended to bring him
before the people after Passover. Peter thus was being kept in prison, but
prayer by the church was fervently being made to God on his behalf. On the very
night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter, secured by double chains,
was sleeping between two soldiers, while outside the door guards kept watch on
the prison. Suddenly the angel of the Lord stood by him and a light shone in
the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and awakened him, saying, "Get up
quickly." The chains fell from his wrists. The angel said to him,
"Put on your belt and your sandals." He did so. Then he said to him,
"Put on your cloak and follow me." So he followed him out, not
realizing that what was happening through the angel was real; he thought he was
seeing a vision. They passed the first guard, then the second, and came to the
iron gate leading out to the city, which opened for them by itself. They
emerged and made their way down an alley, and suddenly the angel left him. Then
Peter recovered his senses and said, "Now I know for certain that [the]
Lord sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the
Jewish people had been expecting." When he realized this, he went to the
house of Mary, the mother of John who is called Mark, where there were many people
gathered in prayer. (Acts 12:3-12 | 1995 NASB)
In this text, we learn that Peter was surrounded by four groups of four
soldiers (16 soldiers in total) and was bound with chains between two soldiers.
And yet, notwithstanding Peter's chains falling to the floor and the door being opened, the guards
attached were not awakened by such. Further, none of the guards were awakened by the
shining glory or the voice of the angel. Joseph Smith's experience with Moroni
and his brothers not being awakened thereby pales in comparison to this text. Do note the following comments from Bowman elsewhere:
In LDS theology, angels are not incorporeal
beings that appear to people in temporary visible manifestations. They are
understood to be resurrected human beings possessing immortal, glorified
physical bodies. Moroni, specifically, is said to have been a resurrected
Nephite prophet and the son of the Nephite prophet Mormon. Moroni is identified
as the man who finished his father’s book and eventually deposited the gold plates
in the hill near Joseph Smith’s home. Thus, a visitation by such a physical being (as distinguished from a vision
of such a being) would be presumed to be visible and audible to anyone in a
physical location to see and hear unless the account stated otherwise.
(Bowman, 198, emphasis added)
Firstly, not all angels in LDS theology are resurrected beings. One category of "angel" is that of "the spirits of just men made perfect, they who are not resurrected" (D&C 129:3; cf. Ancient Texts Supporting D&C 130:5). Secondly, aside from
the fact that the Bible does not teach angels are incorporeal beings that
appear in bodily form as a temporary manifestation (a belief the author holds
to, notwithstanding his commitment to the
formal sufficiency of the Bible), if Bowman were consistent, Acts 12 is to be relegated as historical fiction (it
would be special pleading to claim that Acts 12 is exempted as the angel in
that chapter only took on a temporary body to their usual incorporeal nature).
There are other instances in the Bible mirroring Acts 12:
God's anger was kindled because he was going,
and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary. Now he
was riding the donkey, and his two servants were with him, The donkey saw the
angel of the Lord standing in the road, with a drawn sword in his hand; so the
donkey turned off the road, and went into the field; and Balaam struck the
donkey, to turn it back onto the road . . . The angel of the Lord said to him,
"Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an
adversary, because your way is perverse before me." (Num 22:22-23, 32
NRSV)
In this
incident, the angel of the Lord appears, but is not seen by Balaam but his
donkey. Arguing like a certain anti-Mormon who finds it difficult to believe
that Joseph Smith’s brothers could remain asleep while the angel Moroni
appeared to Joseph in their shared room, one could (heaven forbid, if Bowman and other critics were to be consistent) argue that this makes the above
incident impossible—I mean, how could a glorious angel not be seen by Balaam
but by a mere ass?
One final example is that of 2 Kgs 6:17
Then Elisha prayed: "O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see." So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (NRSV)
And yet, only Elisha saw this army of angelic beings; the two opposing armies in this narrative did not.
As with his spurious "Temple of Solomon" argument, this argument by Bowman is bogus.
My friend Andrew Sargent interacted with Bowman on this issue previously. See:
Angels, Ad Hocs & Assumptions
As Bowman's claims about angels mirror a common "counter" to examples of God being portrayed as having a body in appearances, see the following article about "divine embodiment" in the Bible:
Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment
