Some additional things he talked about
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After he wrote his book "By the Hand of Mormon", when he visited BYU he said there was one question BYU professors had for him: "How did you get away with it?" Get away with what? "Writing a faith-promoting book and having it published by Oxford." I don't think Givens necessarily agrees that he wrote a faith-promoting book, but he said that Mormon scholars have often sold themselves short by holding back and not addressing things.
He mentioned, in context of openness, that it is not often talked about or well known, that the church published Hoffman's salamander letters for public consumption before they were known to be forgeries. In other words, they were not hidden. "We have this stuff, we don't know what to make of it, here it is."
He also referred to the recent news reports of the metal plates/books supposedly found in a cave in Syria. He did state a caveat about "if authenticated." He appeared to not know that the latest scuttlebutt is that they are forgeries.
He talked about the reception of his book by the popular press. He had seen that the reviewer of his book had also reviewed a new Joseph Smith biography and absolutely torn it apart (I think by a non-LDS author). Given that, he thought his treatment was going to be much worse. He was surprised at how positive the
reception was.
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All in all, this is a closely written, thoughtful (if polemical) book by a devoted scholar. It is certainly provocative reading, whether you happen to be a Mormon or not.
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