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Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique
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Response to Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique
| A FAIR Analysis of: Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique, a work by author: Dan Vogel
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Response to claims made in "Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique" by Dan Vogel
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- Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Book of Abraham Polemics: Dan Vogel’s Broad Critique of the Defense of the Book of Abraham"
- Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Framing the Book of Abraham: Presumptions and Paradigms"
Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Book of Abraham Polemics: Dan Vogel’s Broad Critique of the Defense of the Book of Abraham"
Jeff Lindsay, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (September 10, 2021)Dan Vogel’s latest book claims to offer clear-cut evidence showing what, when, and how Joseph Smith fraudulently translated the Book of Abraham. While he claims to use an objective approach, he instead weaves a polemical agenda that ignores some of the most important scholarship in favor of the Book of Abraham. He ignores crucial evidence and relies on assumptions and hypotheses as if they were established facts. The arguments of apologists, which he claims to be reviewing and critiquing, are often overlooked or, when treated, attacked without letting readers know the substance of the apologetic argument. He neglects key arguments, and important documents that don’t fit his theory. The work is a valuable tool to explore Book of Abraham polemics, but it is not even-handed scholarship by any means. Vogel’s latest contribution does not overturn the evidence against his paradigm nor overthrow the growing body of insights into the antiquity of the Book of Abraham.
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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Framing the Book of Abraham: Presumptions and Paradigms"
Stephen O. Smoot, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (September 24, 2021)The Book of Abraham continues to undergo scrutiny in both academic and polemical publications. The latest offering of substance in the latter category, Dan Vogel’s Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique, criticizes the work of those who argue for the antiquity and inspiration of the Book of Abraham and makes a sustained argument that the book is, instead, modern pseudepigrapha written by a pious fraud (Joseph Smith) in the nineteenth century. Book of Abraham Apologetics lays out a particular naturalistic approach to this text that works best only when certain metaphysical and methodological assumptions are taken for granted. This approach, however, as well as most of his arguments against the Book of Abraham’s historicity, are severely undermined both by Vogel’s inability to properly assess the evidence and his metaphysical or ideological commitments. This review critiques Vogel’s critique of Book of Abraham apologetics and offers an alternative to his questionable framing of the text and its interpretation.