{"id":72,"date":"2009-01-24T00:47:33","date_gmt":"2009-01-24T00:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html"},"modified":"2009-01-24T00:47:33","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T00:47:33","slug":"translation-and-apologetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html","title":{"rendered":"Translation and Apologetics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a lot of Mormon apologetics out there, perhaps because there is a lot of Mormon criticism. It has gotten better over the years, but one still sees both good apologetics and bad apologetics. A post from a few weeks ago at Faith-Promoting Rumor that points up one difference between the good and bad sort is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/faithpromotingrumor.wordpress.com\/2008\/11\/10\/translation-styles-and-book-of-mormon-apologetics-and-exegesis\/\">Translation Styles and Book of Mormon Apologetics and Exegesis<\/a>.&#8221; The observation made in the post is that an author cannot shift between tight and loose translation styles to enhance her arguments as she moves from chapter to chapter or point to point.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What, for you, makes the difference between good and bad apologetics? For me, an author&#8217;s willingness to acknowledge and cite contrary arguments and scholars is important. I read apologetic footnotes and endnotes as carefully as I read the main text. I think the footnotes say more about an apologist&#8217;s (or a critic&#8217;s) credibility than does the evidence or the argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a lot of Mormon apologetics out there, perhaps because there is a lot of Mormon criticism. It has gotten better over the years, but one still sees both good apologetics and bad apologetics. A post from a few weeks ago at Faith-Promoting Rumor that points up one difference between the good and bad&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Translation and Apologetics - Mormon Inquiry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Translation and Apologetics - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is a lot of Mormon apologetics out there, perhaps because there is a lot of Mormon criticism. It has gotten better over the years, but one still sees both good apologetics and bad apologetics. A post from a few weeks ago at Faith-Promoting Rumor that points up one difference between the good and bad&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-24T00:47:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Translation and Apologetics - Mormon Inquiry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Translation and Apologetics - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"There is a lot of Mormon apologetics out there, perhaps because there is a lot of Mormon criticism. 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A post from a few weeks ago at Faith-Promoting Rumor that points up one difference between the good and bad&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html","og_site_name":"Mormon Inquiry","article_published_time":"2009-01-24T00:47:33+00:00","author":"Dave Banack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html","name":"Translation and Apologetics - Mormon Inquiry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-24T00:47:33+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-24T00:47:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/01\/translation-and-apologetics.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Translation and Apologetics"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/","name":"Mormon Inquiry","description":"Mormon News and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f","name":"Dave Banack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","caption":"Dave Banack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/author\/dbanack"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}