Studies of The Book of Mormon - Controversy Within The LDS Church After The 1985 Publication

Controversy Within The LDS Church After The 1985 Publication

The publication of Roberts's study "caused much protest in some circles in Utah." Sterling McMurrin, a University of Utah philosophy professor, even "charged that there was an unsuccessful effort to have the University of Illinois suppress publication of the study." According to writer Robert Lindsay, "Church leaders struggled to hold back the tide of research and regain control over the past." In the summer of 1985, future President Gordon B. Hinckley rebuked scholars who were "poking into all the crevices of our history, ferreting out little things of small import and magnifying them into great issues of public discussion." In August of the same year, Apostle Dallin H. Oaks told an assembly of religious instructors at Brigham Young University that "the fact that something is true is not always a justification for communicating it. By the same token, some things that are true are not edifying or appropriate to communicate."

In 1996, many years after Roberts' study had been available through Jerald and Sandra Tanner, prominent critics of the Church, and more than a decade after the University of Illinois had published Roberts' Study, BYU republished View of the Hebrews.