Producing Ancient Scripture

Download or read book Producing Ancient Scripture written by Michael Hubbard MacKay and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1830, Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon, a foundational work in the history of American religion that has remained an object of controversy and debate for nearly two centuries. For much of that time, scholars and members of various religious organizations have either defended Smith's writing as the divinely-inspired word of God, or, to varying degrees, called into question its religious authority. That debate, according to the editors of "Producing ancient scripture," is a tired one. What's needed today is a modern scholarly approach to the Book of Mormon and the rest of Smith's writings. To that end, the essays in this volume, as the editors note, analyze "the texts that Smith produced in terms of his personal practices and experiences, his immediate environment and circumstances, his biographical background and cultural context, and the broader contours of early American history." Different methodological approaches and an adherence to, for example, modern theories in sociology, feminism, and comparative religion, are used by contributors to argue points that , in most cases, neither prove or disprove the divine origins of Smith's texts"--