Scholarly Authority

When we use a word like archaeology or archaeologist, most people automatically think, “Oh, these are authorities, they know what they are talking about”–not necessarily the case at all. They fail in many ways to be any more critical than you and I. They are trapped, in a way, with their opinions. They have their interpretations, which they learn from each other. There are many things which they refuse to acknowledge. As a matter of fact, in the realm of Bible studies, most of the archaeologists simply do not believe in the Bible as an inspired text. They see it as one historical document of considerable interest, but they do not take the religious sense of the Bible. Archaeologists can be wrong linguists can be wrong, historians can be wrong, all of those who study the ancient world can be wrong in detail. Nevertheless, they control a large body of information that potentially can shed light.

John Sorenson, “The Book of Mormon in Ancient America,” (1994), 7-8.