The Book of Mormon claims to be "a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible." Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon delcare themselves to be ancient, historical, and reliable rules of faith...the Word of God.
Is there any evidence to support these claims...one way or another? Is it even possible to test a rule of faith? More to the point, is there any basis for placing one's faith in the Bible or the Book of Mormon?It's an important question. It's an eternal question. This presentation puts the Bible and the Book of Mormon to the test. History, archaeology, textual criticism, and other disciplines combine to shed light on what is true...and what is false.Faith need not--and should not--be blind. Discover which of these scriptures is worthy of your faith, and which contains the truth that will be a light to your path!
FAIR has released an special edition of it's newsletter to respond to the film.
The Illusion: The main question of the introduction echoes throughout the film: "Is the Book of Mormon comparable to the Bible?" The film carefully creates a contrast between a believable Bible and an unbelievable Book of Mormon.The Unmasking: The film clearly intends to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon and the Bible are not comparable by taking a very critical view of the Book of Mormon while presenting the Bible as though it generated no controversy at all. This approach is a fundamental misrepresentation of the scholarly climate for both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.
William G. Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona, believes that the Bible is historical. Nevertheless, he notes:
The "archaeological revolution" in biblical studies confidently predicted by [George E.] Wright and his teacher, the legendary William Foxwell Albright, had come about by the 1980s, but not entirely in the positive way that they had expected. Many of the "central events" as narrated in the Hebrew Bible turn out not to be historically verifiable (i.e., not "true") at all. 1
Despite the above quotation, the "truth" of the Bible is obtained by faith and revelation, whether it is historically verifiable or not. By ignoring the questions that are currently asked of the Bible, the film creates the illusion that the Bible is unassaulted and unassailable but that the Book of Mormon suffers from questions on every front. The reality is that the Bible must also stand before modern scholarship and answer serious questions. In that respect, the Bible and the Book of Mormon are quite comparable. Hard questions may be asked of each, and in the end, the answers, not the questions, are important. In this film, the viewer never even sees the questions directed at the Bible. For the Book of Mormon, they never see the answers.
No comments:
Post a Comment