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Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity
This book meticulously examines the earliest teachings of Christianity and how some of those teachings were modified, abandoned, or forgotten in the centuries following the death of the Apostles. By exploring the writings of early Christian leaders, Dr. Bickmore is able to recover those early teachings while illustrating the significance they played in the theology and Christology of the pristine Christian Church. Most importantly for Latter-day Saints, Dr. Bickmore demonstrates that many of forgotten early Christian teachings were restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. This 2nd edition is enlarged and revised.
386 pages, Paperback
First published July 9, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 28, 2022
Barry Bickmore's "Restoring the Ancient Church" is a well-researched and well-document work. Bickmore spends a lot of time and energy showing how aspects of contemporary Latter-day Saint theology compare with what seem to be similar teachings in the early Christian Church. Bickmore compares around 400 years of early Christian theology to contemporary Latter-day Saint theology, accomplishing the task quite succinctly, finishing up right around 280 pages.
Nobody can accuse Bickmore of skimping on his research. This book contains well over 1,000 footnotes, the majority of which are to English translations of various ante-Nicene and apocryphal texts. Bickmore also quotes extensively from these texts, and clearly makes an attempt to keep quotations in their proper context. Rather than a word or sentence here and there, most quotations come in a block format that the ardent amateur researcher will be thankful for.
I agree with Bickmore's conclusions. However, I have a lot of problems with this work.
First of all, it is not clear who the intended audience is. Did Bickmore intend to write for moderately educated Latter-day Saints? If so, he certainly does a poor job of introducing key early Christian authors – their biographies are given a few throwaway sentences in an appendix, and nothing is said of their works, their lives, or how to take their thoughts into context.
Is the intended audience Christian scholars? If so, Bickmore is even more guilty of negligence. Rather than considering each of the early texts in its own context, Bickmore jumps from one text to another, looking for bread crumbs and clues as if he were a detective trying to solve a crime. There is no true scholarly rigor here – no hint at an evidentiary apparatus, no careful consideration of the good and bad elements of the quoted texts, not anything more than an occasional allusion to the fact that the texts being quoted are not necessarily slam-dunks in favor of the Bickmore's thesis. The parallels are interesting, but they are hardly convincing to those who do not have testimonies of the restored gospel.
Because it's not clear who the intended audience is, Bickmore's approach is extremely disjointed. Rather than choosing either a thematic or chronological approach, Bickmore decides to go for both. Latter-day Saint doctrine is presented thematically, after which Bickmore engages in speculation based on scant early Christian textual sources to show how this doctrine likely changed in early times. The trouble, of course, is that the earliest Christian practices and doctrines aren't explicitly spelled out in any of the texts Bickmore is forced to use, which forces him into extensive speculation not really supported by the passages he cites.
And the passages he cites are often presented without any explanation at all. I feel like Bickmore saw himself as less of an author than an arranger of passages. Bickmore cites many difficult passages without so much as an explanatory comment. This is compounded by Bickmore's unfortunate insistence upon using extant translations, many of which date to the early 19th century and suffer from extremely poor grammar and phrasing. The whole package feels like a mess of quotations and "proofs" without any real prose or insight.
As if this were not bad enough, this book clearly never went through the hands of a competent copy editor. Several sentences are incomplete. An entire chapter, Chapter 7, is a poorly written rehash of the entire book given in the format of a speech at a FAIR Mormon conference. I have a hard time picturing Bickmore giving this speech as written, considering how stilted and stiff the language is. What makes this chapter particularly bad, however, is the fact that an entire paragraph is incorrectly formatted, with end note numbers invading the text like some kind of poorly formatted computer code. Even Bickmore's bibliography is not free from basic formatting errors, such as book titles that begin in italics and end with underlining, and multi-volume works cited as single volumes. FAIR Mormon sorely needs a competent copy editor.
I like this work and support its thesis. However, this is an embarrassment overall. The organization is crude at best, the book is a slog to read through, and the formatting errors are an abomination. The intellectual Latter-day Saint community deserves better.
Nobody can accuse Bickmore of skimping on his research. This book contains well over 1,000 footnotes, the majority of which are to English translations of various ante-Nicene and apocryphal texts. Bickmore also quotes extensively from these texts, and clearly makes an attempt to keep quotations in their proper context. Rather than a word or sentence here and there, most quotations come in a block format that the ardent amateur researcher will be thankful for.
I agree with Bickmore's conclusions. However, I have a lot of problems with this work.
First of all, it is not clear who the intended audience is. Did Bickmore intend to write for moderately educated Latter-day Saints? If so, he certainly does a poor job of introducing key early Christian authors – their biographies are given a few throwaway sentences in an appendix, and nothing is said of their works, their lives, or how to take their thoughts into context.
Is the intended audience Christian scholars? If so, Bickmore is even more guilty of negligence. Rather than considering each of the early texts in its own context, Bickmore jumps from one text to another, looking for bread crumbs and clues as if he were a detective trying to solve a crime. There is no true scholarly rigor here – no hint at an evidentiary apparatus, no careful consideration of the good and bad elements of the quoted texts, not anything more than an occasional allusion to the fact that the texts being quoted are not necessarily slam-dunks in favor of the Bickmore's thesis. The parallels are interesting, but they are hardly convincing to those who do not have testimonies of the restored gospel.
Because it's not clear who the intended audience is, Bickmore's approach is extremely disjointed. Rather than choosing either a thematic or chronological approach, Bickmore decides to go for both. Latter-day Saint doctrine is presented thematically, after which Bickmore engages in speculation based on scant early Christian textual sources to show how this doctrine likely changed in early times. The trouble, of course, is that the earliest Christian practices and doctrines aren't explicitly spelled out in any of the texts Bickmore is forced to use, which forces him into extensive speculation not really supported by the passages he cites.
And the passages he cites are often presented without any explanation at all. I feel like Bickmore saw himself as less of an author than an arranger of passages. Bickmore cites many difficult passages without so much as an explanatory comment. This is compounded by Bickmore's unfortunate insistence upon using extant translations, many of which date to the early 19th century and suffer from extremely poor grammar and phrasing. The whole package feels like a mess of quotations and "proofs" without any real prose or insight.
As if this were not bad enough, this book clearly never went through the hands of a competent copy editor. Several sentences are incomplete. An entire chapter, Chapter 7, is a poorly written rehash of the entire book given in the format of a speech at a FAIR Mormon conference. I have a hard time picturing Bickmore giving this speech as written, considering how stilted and stiff the language is. What makes this chapter particularly bad, however, is the fact that an entire paragraph is incorrectly formatted, with end note numbers invading the text like some kind of poorly formatted computer code. Even Bickmore's bibliography is not free from basic formatting errors, such as book titles that begin in italics and end with underlining, and multi-volume works cited as single volumes. FAIR Mormon sorely needs a competent copy editor.
I like this work and support its thesis. However, this is an embarrassment overall. The organization is crude at best, the book is a slog to read through, and the formatting errors are an abomination. The intellectual Latter-day Saint community deserves better.
September 3, 2014
Barry Bickmore's book 'Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity' is a fascinating comparative study between early Christianity and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or Mormon church). Essentially, if Joseph Smith's (and the church's) claim that the church was a restoration of the organization Jesus Christ established in the meridian of time, one would expect some similarities between the doctrines taught by early Christian fathers and Joseph Smith. The similarities vary in strength, but many are astounding.
The author makes the topic very approachable without watering it down. He also provides extensive end notes (though I wish they were foot notes) for the reader who would like to dive deeper into early Christianity studies. I think it is important to note that the bulk of the author's sources are either early Christian writings or studies done by scholars of early Christianity who do not have a vested interest in the Mormon church, which I believe provides additional strength to the author's arguments.
Does the book *prove* that the Mormon church is a restoration of early church established by Jesus Christ? No. Does the book provide some fascinating parallels as well as historical evidence that many of the doctrines taught but Joseph Smith were also present in early Christianity? Yes. In the words of the author, "If Joseph Smith taught a number of esoteric doctrines that were unknown to have existed in the early church during his time but which research and uncovered documents now show were part of early Christianity, one has to conclude that he was either inspired or impossibly lucky."
I highly recommend the book to any who are interested in the Mormon church's claims to 'restoration' of Christ's ancient church. You won't be disappointed.
The author makes the topic very approachable without watering it down. He also provides extensive end notes (though I wish they were foot notes) for the reader who would like to dive deeper into early Christianity studies. I think it is important to note that the bulk of the author's sources are either early Christian writings or studies done by scholars of early Christianity who do not have a vested interest in the Mormon church, which I believe provides additional strength to the author's arguments.
Does the book *prove* that the Mormon church is a restoration of early church established by Jesus Christ? No. Does the book provide some fascinating parallels as well as historical evidence that many of the doctrines taught but Joseph Smith were also present in early Christianity? Yes. In the words of the author, "If Joseph Smith taught a number of esoteric doctrines that were unknown to have existed in the early church during his time but which research and uncovered documents now show were part of early Christianity, one has to conclude that he was either inspired or impossibly lucky."
I highly recommend the book to any who are interested in the Mormon church's claims to 'restoration' of Christ's ancient church. You won't be disappointed.
February 9, 2015
Thought provoking and thorough.
Read
February 14, 2019I can't get my hands on enough early christianity works. Only a few have been written about in mormonism
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews