An excellent response to Jonathan Neville’s YouTube interview
Jonathan Neville was recently interviewed for the YouTube channel “Book of Mormon Reviews” (part 1 | part 2) by a non-Latter-day-Saint who is interested in the Book of Mormon. The interviewer certainly meant well, but he unwittingly gave Neville a platform from which he could promulgate his unorthodox views.Spencer Kraus, with whom I’ve recently become acquainted, has written an invaluable response to the second video, in which Neville discussed his views on how Joseph Smith supposedly translated the Book of Mormon. Kraus rightly points out that Neville’s theories that Joseph was influenced by contemporary authors and memorized long passages of scripture that he repeated back to his scribes is a troubling repackaging of common anti-Mormon explanations of how the Book of Mormon came to be.
You can read Kraus’s post here; I enthusiastically recommend it: —Peter Pan
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"I think, this whole idea that if you pray about the Book of Mormon, and you get a strong feeling that it’s true, you have to join the Church. I don’t think that was ever the intent. In fact, even in the Title Page it doesn’t say that. It says nothing about joining any church, it says to bring people to Christ."
ReplyDeleteSo . . . is this a tacit admission that Neville doesn't believe that anyone should join the Church?