Because I sometimes visit the web page of Book of Mormon Central for their archive material (as I recommend everyone should), I get the follow-on ads.
Lately, I've seen this one:
I'm all in favor of scholarship. But if you look closely, you'll notice the mark of M2C. This is the Mayan glyph, placed along side Hebrew (OT) Greek (NT) and Egyptian (Book of Abraham) that announces to the world that the Book of Mormon is a Mayan codex.
Right.
This mark of M2C lets us know this is ad comes from an M2C advocacy group, not an academic organization. Book of Mormon Central is merely a public front for BMAF, a non-profit that has been pushing M2C for a long time.
Hence, caution is advised.
Their paid employees push M2C at every opportunity. They use millions of dollars raised from faithful Church members to promote M2C. We see them on the Internet, some of them fine young scholars who have bought into the Groupthink of the M2C citation cartel that also leads them to justify outright censorship of alternative ideas. It's the opposite of scholarship and academics, but they hold themselves out as "experts" to whom we should defer.
Then we wonder, why is an M2C advocacy group focusing on "Egyptologists" to discuss the Book of Abraham?
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Apparently, this M2C advocacy group has been tasked with responding to the public criticisms of the Book of Abraham from well-known advocacy groups such as MormonStories and CES Letter. If you see one of these ads and click on it, you arrive at "Pearl of Great Price Central."
Yes, that is actually the mark of M2C again.
Immediately you know it's not a real academic institution. It's just another tendril of M2C.
As you navigate the site, eventually you discover there are three LDS scholars who have PhDs in Egyptology who are in a debate with the larger community of Egyptologists (including the professors who taught them) about the interpretation and relevance of the facsimiles and papyri involved with the Book of Abraham.
We'll discuss all of that another time. For now, when I see this advertisement, I ask myself, why are we asking intellectuals about the Book of Abraham?
Definitely, there's a place for academic inquiry, research, dialog and publication. But why these intellectuals who explicitly reject what the prophets have taught about the New York Cumorah?
We've seen what a hash the M2C advocates have made of Book of Mormon geography. It looks to me like they're fumbling the Book of Abraham, too.
Instead of hearing from a bunch of Groupthink M2C intellectuals and their employees, I would much rather hear from the prophets about the Book of Abraham.
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The other day, I quoted one of the LDS Egyptologists, who made an awesome declaration about academics in general. If you didn't see it, I recommend it.
http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2020/09/book-of-mormon-central-finally-explains.html
The statement explains why it is foolish to expect any of these intellectuals to be more wise, reliable, credible, or dependable than the prophets. The "credentialed class" are a poor substitute.
Which is why I prefer to believe what Joseph and Oliver said than what these intellectuals and their employees say.
It is sad to watch the M2C citation cartel's desperate resort to sophistry, logical fallacies, false accusations and ad hominem arguments to try to persuade members of the Church to disbelieve what the prophets have taught. But they've been doing it for a long time. They think it's a success to censor the teachings of the prophets. They understand the Academic Cycle, and they've managed to imprint M2C on the minds of most Church members.
But not on all of us.
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