An example of "scholarship" from an apologist

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Our culture would not exist but for Greek thought. Our science would not exist. Our world would not exist.

Now I know how Crazy Horse must have felt watching Custer and the 7th Cavalry blithely come riding into the Little Big Horn Valley.

Archea, I'm sorry to break this to you, but your friends at FARMS don't have the same high regard for the ancient Greeks as you do.

In his article "Nephi's 'Great and Abominable Church" Stephen L. Robinson (yes, the same estimable Stephen L. Robinson who had that now infamous whispered conversation with Dr. Charlesworth in which Charlesworth purportedly copped to a belief in the Book of Mormon being an ancient record) wrote as follows:

"The hellenization of Christianity is a phenomenon that scholars of Christian history have long recognized. Hellenization refers to the imposition of Greek culture and philosophy upon the cultures of the East. The result was a synthesis of East and West, a melting pot of popular culture that was virtually worldwide. In the realm of religion, however, synthesis means compromise, and when we speak in terms of the gospel, compromise with popular beliefs means apostasy from the truth.

"When Jewish Christianity and Greek culture met head-on in the Gentile mission field in the middle of the first century, a great battle of beliefs and lifestyles arose. The Greeks' worldview eventually won, and Jewish Christianity was revised to make it more attractive and appealing to a Greek audience.

"Primary prejudices of the Greek world were the absolute nature of God (i.e., he cannot be bound or limited by anything) and the impossibility of anything material or physical being eternal. In order to satisfy the Gentiles steeped in Greek philosophy, Christianity had to throw out the doctrines of an anthropomorphic God and the resurrection of the dead, or reinterpret them drastically. Denying or altering the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is precisely what some Greek Christians at Corinth had done, and Paul responded against them forcefully in 1 Corinthians 15.

* * *

"Clearly, whatever denominational name we choose to give it, the earliest apostate church and the great and abominable church that Nephi and John describe are identical. The fact is, we don't really know what name to give it. I have proposed hellenized Christianity, but that is a description rather than a name."

http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?id=168&table=jbms

So Robinson believes "the Great and Abominable Church"="Hellenization of Christianity"

You know, I think Robinson probably would be happier in a world without the Hellenization of Christianity, one that looks like Afghanistan.

No thanks, that's not my world view. Mine is that the Judeo-Greco fusion mainstream scholarship recognizes as the essence of Christianity is what saved Western Civilization from Islam's current fate, and mainstream academics see things as I do.