Article Title

Brown Bag Lectures Continue to Inform

Authors

Keywords

Book of Mormon studies, Book of Mormon authorship, Joseph Smith, Louis C. Midgley, Brown Bag lectures

Abstract

Two outstanding Brown Bag lectures were presented in February. Louis C. Midgley, professor of Political Science at BYU, discussed "The Authorship Debate: Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?" This lecture was based on a paper Midgley has submitted for publication in a new FARMS collection of essays on the authorship issue. Midgley gave a history of attempts to dismiss Joseph Smith's explanation for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. In his paper, Midgley writes: "Those who fashion ... naturalistic explanations [of the Book of Mormon's origin] are faced with, among other challenges, the task of uncovering in Joseph Smith's immediate environment or in the workings of his psyche or both all the sources for the book's style, cast of characters, intricate narrative structure into which is woven subtle and coherent prophetic teachings, and so forth. They have essentially failed to do so." Midgley classified the arguments into categories and discussed their flaws .

Recommended Citation

(1996) "Brown Bag Lectures Continue to Inform," Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship: Vol. 16: No. 2, Article 13.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/insights/vol16/iss2/13