In the ongoing pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding, I'll continue to occasionally review important book on LDS topics.
Royal Skousen's Part Seven is definitely an important book, partly because of the detailed, useful scholarship it contains.
But that's not all the book contains.
I'm happy for people to believe whatever they want, and I'm sure Skousen is a great guy, a careful scholar, a faithful Latter-day Saint, and that he had plenty of resources and time to produce this book.
However, another reason why this book is important is because of the way the book manipulates Church history to support Skousen's foregone conclusion that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery deliberately misled everyone about the translation of the Book of Mormon.
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Last December I posted the first half of my review at the InterpreterPeerReviews blog.https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-of-royal-skousens-part-vii-first.html
I was reminded recently that I never posted the second half, so here it is.
https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2025/03/review-of-royal-skousens-part-vii.html
Overall conclusion. I spent the time to go through Skousen’s book because of the significance of his conclusion that Joseph and Oliver intentionally misled everyone about the translation; i.e., Skousen is so convinced of SITH (the stone-in-the-hat narrative) that he claims Joseph and Oliver intentionally misled everyone when they repeatedly, publicly and consistently taught that Joseph translated the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.
I credit Skousen for finally articulating the inevitable conclusion of the SITH narrative, as discussed here:
https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2024/11/thank-you-royal-skousen.html
In Part Seven, Skousen has finally accomplished the objective that E.D. Howe set for himself in 1834 when he published Mormonism Unvailed and ridiculed the "peep-stone" narrative.
In my view, Skousen did a cursory, outcome-determined analysis of the witness statements to support his conclusion. He also omitted relevant sources that contradict his conclusion.
The FAITH model requires a careful, consistent consideration of all the Facts, distinguished from Assumptions, Inferences, and Theories that lead to the overall Hypotheses. My analysis leads me to the conclusion that Joseph and Oliver told the truth about these events, and that others who disagreed with them had various motives to do so (both apologetic and critical), relied on hearsay, mingled assumptions and inferences with facts, and for these reasons reached unreliable conclusions about SITH.
Hopefully other scholars will avoid the outcome-driven approach that Skousen used in his book and instead adopt the principles of the FAITH model of analysis--or any other legitimate academic method.
