The Interpreter and the Baker Street Journal

Welcome to those who are coming here for the first time, thanks to the latest Interpreter article.

I started this blog several months ago because of my interest in Book of Mormon geography, but I haven't posted much lately because so many people--including subscribers--told me they stopped reading the Interpreter because they found the articles increasingly dogmatic and unbelievable. Although sometimes there is some good non-Mesoamerican material in it, the Interpreter is basically a continuation of the worst of FARMS, as I've pointed out previously here.

The Interpreter is a vehicle for the citation cartel to convey an illusion of credibility; i.e., so long as you reinforce the Groupthink, you can publish your article in the Interpreter, then cite the Interpreter when you're really just citing yourself (or your like-minded collaborators) in an article on FairMormon or any of the other outlets for the cartel.

If you have the time, it's a lot of fun to read, once you realize the Interpreter is kind of like a Star Trek fan club. Or the Baker Street Journal.

Back in 1934, Christopher Morley created an organization of Sherlock Holmes fans titled the Baker Street Irregulars to debate  the Holmes canon among themselves. They generated enough material by 1946 that they started a magazine titled The Baker Street Journal. It's circulation never exceeded 2,000, which led Morley to paraphrase Winston Churchill with this:

"Never has so much been written by so many for so few."

Of course, the problem is that the few are the citation cartel; i.e., the LDS intellectuals who use the Interpreter to confirm their Groupthink in an Orwellian way. IMO, the worst aspect of the whole enterprise is the way it is indoctrinating bright LDS students at BYU into thinking this is the way to become a scholar.

Life is short, and in my opinion, unless you're fascinated by the intellectual history and development of LDS scholarship at BYU/CES or you're obsessed with confirming your bias for the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon, reading the Interpreter is a waste of time. Consequently, I only do peer reviews now when enough people ask me to do so.  

If the day ever comes that the Interpreter changes to become an academic journal, you'll know it because of the diversity of views it publishes and a change toward academic rigor. But don't hold your breath.

Not that it matters, anyway. The Mesoamerican fan club won't be around much longer, anyway, now that people can see the theory originated from a historical mistake and is perpetuated only by Orwellian tactics that won't survive the Internet.