Robert M Bowman Jr.

An annotated bibliography on the General Epistles (also known as the Catholic Epistles), from Hebrews through Jude. It lists just five works for each epistle or group of epistles. Each list of five books is meant to provide a balanced set of resources, including at least one non-evangelical work, while keeping to the limit of five so that students will be sure to consult some of the most important reference works.

This bibliography, which should be considered a work in progress, is a select list of books and articles, mostly by evangelicals, on evangelicalism and Scripture. I omit here works written from what I would describe as a neo-fundamentalist perspective, in which biblical inerrancy is interpreted in an extreme, literalist fashion such that mainstream evangelical biblical scholarship is condemned as compromising (e.g., by using literary and historical critical methods).

This select bibliography on the evangelical doctrine of salvation is a work in progress. It lists key works, mostly by evangelicals, that are generally representative of a broad cross-section of evangelicalism or traditional, conservative Protestantism. This bibliography does not give attention to issues disputed within evangelicalism, such as debates between Arminians and Calvinists over predestination and election (though a few works here do have some relevance to such debates). Rather, the purpose here is to identify key publications that represent evangelical thinking about the doctrine of salvation in contrast to views taught in non-evangelical traditions in Christianity.

A bibliography of mostly introductory works relevant to the study of the early church and especially the church fathers. The bibliography is meant as a resource especially for evangelicals but is not limited to evangelical works and should be of broader interest.

As a case study in differing views of biblical inerrancy, this paper examines the often-cited apparent discrepancy between Acts 9:7 and 22:9 as to whether Paul's companions heard the voice of Jesus Christ as he spoke to him on the Damascus road. The paper explains that while a popular resolution based on a simple grammatical difference is flawed, the way that resolution explains the meanings of the two texts is essentially correct.

Genesis has been cited in support of both traditional monogamy and nontraditional views of marriage. The creation of the first humans as a male-female pair is commonly regarded by conservative Christians as paradigmatic for marriage. On the other hand, those who question the notion of a normative definition of marriage argue that the Genesis patriarchs legitimately took multiple wives. This paper examines this objection and defends the traditional view that the norm for marriage is monogamy.

This is a highly selective bibliography listing just a few commentaries or other works of scholarship on each of the Pauline epistles. The intention here is to provide short lists for those wanting to know what the most important, current academic works are on each epistle.

This paper lists five key commentaries or other reference works for each of the four Gospels and for the Acts of the Apostles. These are the first works students, scholars, and researchers should normally consult for these books of the New Testament.

This bibliography lists books surveying multiple views or methods of Christian apologetics. It includes books in which one or two authors surveys different approaches (called surveys) as well as books with contributions from multiple authors (divided into multiple views and anthologies). In this bibliography I list only books, even though periodical articles and websites may be valuable resources. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.

This chronology lists 80 landmark writings in the history of Christian apologetics, with over 250 additional events involving other publications of importance (including anti-Christian books) and notable events in church history, general world history, and in the history of science, technology, and culture, giving some sense of the context in which these apologetic texts appeared. A few dates are approximate.

This chronology lists 80 landmark writings in the history of Christian apologetics, with over 250 additional events involving other publications of importance (including anti-Christian books) and notable events in church history, general world history, and in the history of science, technology, and culture, giving some sense of the context in which these apologetic texts appeared.

The special 2022 issue of BYU Studies Quarterly devoted to the Book of Abraham includes a short chapter arguing that the Book of Abraham contains two instances of chiasmus, the rhetorical structure that arranges a unit of speech or text in reverse parallelism. This paper critically examines these two alleged instances of chiasmus and presents one that the LDS apologists have overlooked.

This brief history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS Church, treats that history in five stages: (1) the origins of the religion founded by Joseph Smith; (2) the establishment of the LDS Church in Utah under Brigham Young; (3) a period of transition during which the LDS Church eventually abandoned its practice of polygamy; (4) a period of stabilization during which the Church developed a new theological synthesis of the teachings of their founding scriptures and prophets; and (5) an era in which legitimation became the dominant concern driven by both cultural and apologetic challenges.

An introduction to the four "standard works" of the LDS religion (KJV Bible with Joseph Smith's changes; the Book of Mormon; Doctrine and Covenants; Pearl of Great Price) and a discussion of the LDS teaching that the authority of the "living prophet" is greater than that of written scriptures.

The Book of Abraham is one of the Mormon scriptures in the Pearl of Great Price. It purports to be translated from a book that Abraham himself wrote. This paper discusses the Book of Abraham’s literary dependence on Genesis in the KJV, the Book of Abraham’s unbiblical teachings, and the superiority of the Bible to the Book of Abraham.

Doctrine and Covenants (commonly abbreviated D&C) is one of the four “Standard Works” or scriptural collections of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This paper surveys the various editions of Doctrine and Covenants and summarizes its contents in five chronological periods, offers a brief critical analysis of its claim to be scripture, and concludes with a table summarizing and commenting on some of the most notable texts.

This bibliography lists all 475 works cited in the footnotes of my book Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions: Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism (Tampa, FL: DeWard, 2020). Researchers interested in Historical Jesus or New Testament studies, Mormon origins, or both may find this bibliography useful.

Mormon scholars and apologists often respond to evangelical objections to the First Vision of Joseph Smith by arguing that similar difficulties pertaining to the apostle Paul's vision of Jesus Christ do not prevent evangelicals from accepting Paul's vision as true. This paper sets this argument in a broader context by comparing the cases for Paul's and Joseph's visions as wholes. It shows that evangelicals are being quite reasonable in accepting Paul's vision while discounting Joseph's.

This is a somewhat longer version of the paper read at the "Latter-day Saints and the Bible" session at the Society of Biblical Literature annual convention, November 22, 2014. It is adapted from a section of my Ph.D. dissertation, “The Sermon at the Temple in the Book of Mormon: A Critical Examination of Its Authenticity through a Comparison with the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.” In the paper, I critique LDS scholar John Welch's theory that the temple setting of the Sermon in the Book of Mormon provides a long-lost hermeneutical key to the Sermon on the Mount.

This paper places Joseph Smith’s polygamy in the context of his life, teachings, and activities as the founder of Mormonism and in the broader context of changing American religion, culture, and values in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Latter-day Saint theologians have taken to arguing that the Mormon view of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (their preferred term for the Holy Spirit) is a form of "Social Trinitarianism." In this paper, I argue that Mormon theology is not a type of Trinitarianism at all because it is strongly anti-Nicene, has a radically different conception of God that is incompatible with any form of Christian Trinitarianism, and clearly affirms that the three Persons are three Gods. This paper was presented (in summary form) at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio, Texas, on November 16, 2016.

The term telestial occurs in two of Joseph Smith's revelations (D&C 76 and 88) and in his revision of the Bible (1 Cor. 15:40 JST). Joseph produced all three of these texts, including his revisions of the New Testament, in 1832, with D&C 76 coming first in February 1832. No extant texts prior to 1832 use the word telestial or any cognate form of the word. The purpose of this paper is to review the various theories concerning the origin and meaning of the word telestial and to address the question of whether there is any precedent for the idea in the extant teachings of the apostle Paul.

This is the longer, unabridged version of a paper presented at the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology conference in Logan, Utah, on March 16, 2018.

Johannine scholars have long noted that several of Jesus’ “I am” (ἐγὼ εἰμι) sayings in the Gospel of John allude to Yahweh’s “I [am] he” (ʾanî hûʾ or ʾanokî hûʾ) sayings in Isaiah 41–52.  In this paper, I argue that all of the ἐγὼ εἰμι sayings of Jesus in which no predicate is expressed allude to Isaiah 43:10, specifically as expressed in the Septuagint (LXX) or Old Greek (OG) version. Some of the sayings allude to other passages as well—in some instances more prominently—but Isaiah 43:10 is the focal point of these sayings in John. This is a longer version of a paper presented to the Evangelical Theological Society on November 14, 2023, in San Antonio, Texas.

The noun θεός (theos, "God") can be used as a predicate noun preceding or following the to-be verb. It can also be used with or without the article ὁ (ho, popularly called the definite article). Occurrences with the article are called articular; occurrences without the article are called anarthrous. These two factors yield four scenarios: a preverbal articular use, a preverbal anarthrous use, a postverbal articular use, and a postverbal anarthrous use. In what way, if at all, is the meaning or sense of the noun different in these four scenarios? In what way does the predicate noun function differently in these four scenarios? As most readers will know, the issue here is most contested with regard to John 1:1. It will be useful to see how the issue plays out in other texts. Jesus' saying about God not being God of the dead is an excellent example. Let's look at how this saying is rendered in the three Synoptic Gospels, including the textual variants.

Ten theses on issues pertaining to the study of the origins and relations of the Synoptic Gospels with reference to concerns in evangelical Christian apologetics. Questions considered include why evangelicals differ on solutions to the Synoptic problem, the dates and authors of the Synoptics, whether the Gospels report Jesus' exact words (ipsissima verba), and the significance of Synoptic criticism for evaluating noncanonical "gospels".

One of the most famous sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels is commonly known as the Golden Rule, best known in its Matthean form: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12; see also Luke 6:31). Some biblical scholars, however, have questioned whether Jesus ever said it. The Catholic scholar John P. Meier has presented the most thorough case against the saying’s authenticity in volume IV of his magnum opus A Marginal Jew. This paper offers an assessment of the arguments against the authenticity of the Golden Rule logion as articulated by Meier.

This paper (presented at the Evangelical Theological Society annual convention, November 2022) responds to several critical objections from within the field of historical Jesus studies to the Gospels’ presentations of Jesus as the sinless Holy One. The absolute holiness or sinlessness of Jesus Christ is an integral aspect of the historic Christian confession that Jesus was the incarnation of the divine Son of God who came to die as a holy sacrifice for our sins. This belief in Christ’s sinlessness was the focus of criticism in two books published in 2015 that have not received much attention from Christian scholars: Bad Jesus, by the recently deceased secular humanist religious studies professor Hector Avalos, and Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity, by New Testament scholar and progressive Christian theologian Jeffrey S. Siker of Loyola Marymount University. Despite their different perspectives, both Avalos and Siker argued that the belief in Christ’s sinlessness was incompatible with an historical understanding of Jesus. This paper engages the main objections that Avalos and Siker presented. (1) The idea of Jesus’ sinlessness makes him less than a fully human, historical figure. (2) The early church attributed sinlessness to Jesus as a metaphor expressing their belief that God had vindicated Jesus through his resurrection (which is itself understood, however, as a nonhistorical legend or metaphor). (3) The story of Jesus’ virgin birth originated as a way of countering the embarrassment of Jesus being an illegitimate child. (4) Early Christians were also embarrassed by John’s baptism of Jesus, which implied Jesus was aware of being a sinner, and so shaped their accounts of this event so as to defend Jesus’ sinlessness. (5) Jesus’ response to the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30; Matt. 15:21-28) showed him to be both “ethnocentric and misogynistic.” (6) Jesus taught his disciples that they should literally hate their family members (Luke 14:26). Finally, we consider whether (7) Jesus’ statement, “No one is good except one, God” (Mark 10:17-18; Luke 18:18-19; cf. Matt. 19:16-17), indicated that Jesus did not view himself as good.

This is Part One of a lengthy debate on the translation and exegesis of John 8:58 between Jason BeDuhn and Robert M. Bowman Jr., both of whom had published on the subject. The debate took place in writing online in the Evangelical and JW Theologies Yahoo Group in 2004 and 2005. The total debate ran about 245,000 words and fills over 500 pages.

This is Part Two of a lengthy debate on the translation and exegesis of John 8:58 between Jason BeDuhn and Robert M. Bowman Jr., both of whom had published on the subject. The debate took place in writing online in the Evangelical and JW Theologies Yahoo Group in 2004 and 2005. The total debate ran about 245,000 words and fills over 500 pages.

This paper reviews and evaluates four non-Trinitarian views of the Holy Spirit, comparing them with the Trinitarian view that the Holy Spirit is the third divine person in one God. Oneness Pentecostals affirm that the Holy Spirit is God in one of his roles, modes, or manifestations. Biblical Unitarians, also known as Socinians, generally regard the Holy Spirit as an abstraction equivalent to God’s power. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that “holy spirit” is an impersonal divine force that emanates from Jehovah God. Mormonism views the “Holy Ghost” (their usual preferred title) as a third God alongside Jesus Christ, who is the God Jehovah, and believe that Christ, the Holy Ghost, and Heavenly Father are just three of an unknown number of Gods in existence. In response to these non-Trinitarian doctrines, it is shown from Scripture that the Holy Spirit is a divine person, someone personally distinct from the Father and the Son, yet not a different or separate God. Finally, some lessons are drawn from this study of relevance to defending a Trinitarian view of the person of Jesus Christ.