Talk:1 Ne 2:1-5

On Szink's review

I'm not entirely comfortable with just appending Szink's review to the Barker article. I respect Szink's work generally, but I think that this one review is rather protracted and hastily argued. While pointing out a number of difficulties, he does not point out the strengths or alternate ways of understanding the issue. Are the extra links meant to supply a sort of contextualization for Barker's reception among Latter-day Saints, or are they there for some other purpose? It seems to me that they do not address very well the connection between the question raised in the passage here and Barker's article. That there are other groups under discussion seems to be the most important point. I wonder if we should drop the extra links or provide at least a little more explanation in the link concerning them. --Joe Spencer 15:27, 12 Jul 2006 (UTC)

I only skimmed the Barker article and wasn't entirely clear on the connection to the question raised. I was curious about other LDS views on the subject since my guess was that it was a controversial opinion (esp. the seeming aspersion cast on the book of Deutoronomy which Christ quotes during his 3 temptations, as well as other Deutoronomistic edits). I would suggest explaining/summarizing the argument a bit—the part that's relevant—and at least mention that this view is not undisputed (if not retain some links to other views; surely a better counter-view has been written than Szink's, no?). --RobertC 16:21, 12 Jul 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of other reviews, to be honest. While I recognize that a full excision of Dtr. is not generally accepted, even among the more liberal LDS scholars, the question of the deuteronomic writers is hardly the thrust of the article. I don't think that Szink ultimately deals with Barker's article at all in his review. She is trying to think through the apparent shift in temple practices that occurred during Josiah's reforms (she has written some five or six books on the subject), and a major presupposition she brings to her studies is that the deuteronimists altered things greatly (not that the book of Dtr. is wholly a late fabrication). I think Latter-day Saint scholars are generally thrilled by Margaret Barker's scholarship, which, although coming with some presuppositions we tend not to have, goes a long ways towards grounding the Book of Mormon. See her response to Terryl Givens' paper at the "Worlds of Joseph Smith" conference last year, for example, where she specifically takes up the themes of the Book of Mormon from the point of view of her own scholarship. Szink, it seems to me, only responds to her work there by making sure that Latter-day Saints are well aware of every conclusion she has that might not float for Latter-day Saints, but her discoveries are not thereby discounted. Frank Moore Cross seems to me a great deal further from Latter-day Saint beliefs than Barker, and yet we even put him in our videos! Barker at least believes that most of the Bible is true, while Frank Moore Cross claims that none of it was written until at least the controversies of the divided kingdom. Perhaps all that needs to be said in the link is that, though Barker has some presuppositions foreign to Latter-day Saint studies of the Bible, her findings on groups that left Jerusalem about 600 BC are certainly interesting. --Joe Spencer 23:32, 12 Jul 2006 (UTC)