Secondly, do any of the BYU religious profs admit glosses in the BoM as what I see discussed here in the thread? I am just getting started in my Isaiah studies.

I’d love to see a poll or discussion here sometime of Nibley and his influence on the current generation of young scholars.

It’s Approaching Zion, CWHN 9:75.

I think you may have interpreted my vagueness incorrectly; I share your pain. I skipped Sunday school more than I usually do last year because our teacher spent all of the Isaiah lessons pointing us to various prooftexts and asking which ‘latter-day’ events they ‘prophesied’ – ‘voice from the dust,’ ‘desert as a rose,’ ‘top of the mountains,’ etc. Now, this sort of thing in my experience tends to be due to simple ignorance rather than willful hostility. Generally people at least try to assimilate, like Thomas Aquinas – “Well, the child in 7:14 could be referencing both maybe Hezekiah and Christ, right?” Probably less than half of the time I get hit with outright hostility.

I agree that the best solution to all of this is to force people to read the Bible in context. Isaiah wasn’t a Mormon.

My comment was meant descriptively rather than prescriptively. In other words, I don’t think such a dichotomy actually exists–what is helpful is breaking down such a notion (i.e., demonstrating that an “academic” hermeneutic is actually faith creating). My point was rather that we need to be sensitive to the fact that much of this discussion is still taking place where the dichotomous paradigm is assumed to be the norm.