Ronald V. Huggins

“Critical Vision: The Research and Writings of Jerald and Sandra Tanner.”  As I reflected on what small contribution I could bring to such a distinguished panel, of all the subjects I could have spoken on I decided to speak on something that only I can speak on, namely what the Tanners have meant to me first as a Christian and then as a scholar, or more particular as a Christian scholar. I apologize in advance for speaking so much about myself in a session dedicated to the Tanners but given my subject it was unavoidable. Psalms 31:5 and 65:16 refer to God as the God of Truth.   When I first became a Christian in 1976 I expected that Christians would be honest, and be careful to try and make sure that what they said was true.   Very quickly I learned that that unfortunately wasn’t always the case. Naturally very early on I came into contact with Christian writing on Mormonism.  Some of it was quite good and accurate, as I knew even then from having lived for a time with a Mo

The Koran and the Book of Mormon share several common features.  This fact was not lost on nineteenth-century Americans who often referred to Joseph Smith Jr. as the American Mohammad.    Both books were the product of a single individual (one ostensibly translating from golden plates and the other taking down  dictation form the mouth  of the Angel Gabriel). Both ultimately stand of fall on the validity of the claims of a single prophetic author.   This is in marked contrast to the Bible, which was written over many centuries by a multiplicity of prophetic authors. Both bear the same relation to the Bible, namely they both represent themselves as the final step in the flow of biblical revelation, the third “Testament,” as it were, supplementing the Old and New Testaments and bringing divine revelation to a final, divinely authoritative culmination.     Both claim to serve as confirmation of the Bible. We see this, for example, in the Book of Mormon’s description of