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152 of 180 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Genuinely Significant Book, July 12, 2002
By the Hand of Mormon makes a fine contribution to Book of Mormon studies; Terryl Givens deftly surveys the twists and turns of the debate over the truth of the book. Givens, a Latter-day Saint scholar, has now made two extraordinary contributions to Mormon studies. If one wishes to understand the complex of interests and motivations-pecuniary, personal, and ideological-that fuel both sectarian and secular anti-Mormonism, Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, published in 1997, is the book to consult. In By the Hand of Mormon, Givens examines the roles the Book of Mormon has played for both believers and detractors. He describes its coming forth, and the debate over its historical authenticity. This book is an extraordinary accomplishment. With subtle understatement and exceptional skill in analysis and argumentation, Givens examines how the Book of Mormon has served for some as a kind of barometer of gullibility and for others as solid evidence of blasphemy, while for the faithful it has served primarily as a sacred sign that the heavens are once again open, that Joseph Smith is God's prophet, that the end time is approaching, and that the world is again pulsing with divine powers. The most original chapter describes "dialogic revelation"-the special divine revelations in the Book of Mormon that result from a kind of dialogue with God and that are radically different from traditional concepts of revelation. This revelatory process was exemplified by the way in which the Book of Mormon was recovered, and the Joseph Smith story. And the Book of Mormon its readers to experience it for themselves. Givens shows why it has been impossible to understand Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon by finding some "new middle ground" between or beyond the polarities of authentic ancient history or fraudulent composition-and hence between Joseph Smith as seer or charlatan, prophet or blasphemer, kingdom builder or disturber of the peace. He shows that both the book and the story of its recovery work together to force those who receive it to choose between these different alternatives. Those who encounter the book are also invited to enter into a world not unlike that described within its pages, a world in which the heavens are open and God communicates in ways entirely unlike the vagaries and obfuscation found in mystical intuition or in subtle theological speculation. Givens explains why such controversial book has been such a successful conversion tool even though its contents have been virtually ignored for long periods. He explains how this "most religiously influential, hotly contested, and, in the secular press at least, intellectually underinvestigated book in America" has been variously "understood, positioned, packaged, utilized, exploited, presented and represented by its detractors and by its proponents" (p. 6). This effort is necessary because, "in spite of the book's unparalleled position in American religion and its changing meaning for apologists, critics, and theologians, no full-length study has attempted to present to the wider public a study of this book and its changing role in Mormonism and in American religion generally" (p. 6).
Givens shows that the story of the Book of Mormon's recovery and the fact of the book's existence fixed for the Latter-day Saints the prophetic authority of Joseph Smith and his successors. It is the book's role as a sacred sign-more than its teachings-that fuels the hostility of its critics as it continues to shape the identity of the Latter-day Saints and distinguish them from their sectarian neighbors. He shows why and how the Book of Mormon has been read as a factual account of some pre-Columbian peoples, and why its detractors see it as a product of the 19th-century and not as an authentic ancient text and divine revelation. Givens draws attention to the "artifactual reality" surrounding the Book of Mormon-to the gold plates and the relics found with them. LDS belief on this point diverges from the interiority and subjectivity of much religious discourse and hence away from the nebulous stuff of myth, magic, and mysticism. But having faith grounded on a historical record is a double-edged sword because it subjects the founding text to the scrutiny of scholarship, which has both advantages and disadvantages. These Givens examines in detail. Givens shows that competent Saints are not trying to discover some dramatic archaeological evidence, as sectarian critics demand, that would "prove" the Book of Mormon. Instead, the increasingly sophisticated efforts of the book's defenders to draw upon literary, historical, and anthropological support for the ancient origin of the Book of Mormon has forced its more honest, better-informed detractors to abandon earlier explanations and to search for explanations of its authorship. The driving force behind much sectarian theological discourse has been to emphasize the otherness of God and to stress the inability of language to describe divine things with any concreteness or in any detail. Those steeped in traditional theological perspectives are offended because the text Joseph Smith gave us, the story of its recovery, and the relics are difficult to explain away as allegorical, mythical, or merely highly symbolic ways of talking about what is ultimately ineffable and entirely mysterious. Among such hostile professors of religion, either sectarian or secular, is the dogma that angels simply do not bring books of new scripture. Givens describes in some detail the Cold War taking place along the Wasatch Front over the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon. He argues that the claims made by the Book of Mormon are, as others have already shown, open to critical inspection by scholars using whatever means they have at their disposal. The Book of Mormon does not ask to be shielded from such inspection. Of course, the faith of the Saints does not depend on the apparent results of such debate. This frustrates those who want a final proof one way or another right now.
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42 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First-rate, August 16, 2005
This review is from: By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Paperback)
In spite of the absurd things said in some of the reviews here, e.g. that the Bible boasts characters of Proustian complexity while the Book of Mormon is content with stock figures, that Givens somehow cleverly duped his Oxford editors, that Joseph Smith's claims are disproved by the oh-so-simple measuring rod of "common sense" (as if famous biblical stories, such as Moses turning a river to blood or Jesus rising from the dead, can be authenticated by everyday experience), that Givens's status as a believer disqualifies him somehow from writing a scholarly book (F.F. Bruce, anyone? C.S. Lewis?), etc. etc. etc., Prof. Givens's work is a model of precise, enjoyable, well-organized writing and thinking and is an ideal introduction to one of the seminal holy texts of the modern age.
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38 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good book-- the side of the story that needs to be told, April 6, 2004
This review is from: By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Paperback)
For a long time, people who desire careful analysis of the Book of Mormon have had nowhere to turn. They were required to choose between three types of sources: 1) abrasively anti-mormon polemics; 2) "objective" accounts; and 3) official church accounts. There is no shortage of studies that fall into categorey 1. You can buy many or most of them here on Amazon. They are worse than useless, though, because they are designed to use as much evidence as possible to put Mormonism in a bad light. They are not very choosy about their sources, they ignore positive evidence and stories, and they follow what might be called Ed Decker's razor-- of competing interpretations of disputed historical fact, the one that make Mormons and Mormonism seem most outlandish must be true. Category 2 studies are more helpful. These studies are more (sometimes) selective in their choice of sources. The problem with them is their "interpretative" element. They apply a version of Occam's razor to interpreting facts. However, while this sounds good and scientific, it leads inevitably to one conclusion-- Joseph Smith was not a prophet, the Book of Mormon is not true, etc. To see why this is so, consider that Occam's razor provides no real guidance as to how one goes about deciding which of the competing explanations of a phenomenon is "simpler." These books use a "secular" version of Occam's razor, where non-religious explanations are always more likely to be true, because they are "simpler" in some sense. This is fine as far as it goes, but it perpetuates a lie, in some sense-- the lie is that the secular interpretation is the only plausible one, or worse yet, that the facts as seen through this secular mindset are simply "the facts," with no real interpretation being done at all. Category 3 books are not all that useful for analysis because analysis is not their point-- they are designed to present the SPIRITUALLY RELEVANT portions of a story that is already assumed to be true. That is, they are answering different questions-- not questions about WHAT happened, or WHETHER something happened, but questions about what we should DO in light of what happened. Givens gives us a category 4-- this book is like the books in category two, but its Occam's razor does not discount the possibility of religious explanations in advance. Instead, it priviledges the possibility of religious explanations-- where a plausible one is available, it is assumed to be true. This is no better or worse than category 2. It is only the "other side" of the category 2 story. And it needs to be told, because otherwise the assumption among many in the world will be that believers simply don't know their own history, rather than the truth, which is that they don't see the evidence in the same light as their critics. It is well-told here. Most of the complaints against the book are that it doesn't fit into one of the other three categories mentioned. But it doesn't pretend to. And that shouldn't bother you unless you happen to have already made up your mind that one of the other three categories is the best one. That will be the case if (numbers correspond to the categories): 1) You believe that Mormonism is an evil that must be fought at all costs (usually because it is not in agreement with your own faith); 2) You believe that secular explanations of phenomena are usually or always more reliable than religious/revelatory explanations of those same phenomena; 3) You believe that Mormonism is true and the only remaining question is what to do now. If you are interested in how a believer makes sense of the historical/textual, and other evidence regarding the Book of Mormon, this book is for you. If you really want to get crazy, actually get a copy of the BofM and read it for yourself, trying to evaluate whether this thing is or is not for real, based not just on the history, but on the actual text. Forming an intelligent opinion without reading it all the way through carefully is hard to do, because all of the stuff out there "about" it, has either agenda 1,2, or 3 in mind.
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