Robert M. Bowman Jr. is the director of research at the evangelical Institute for Religious Research.

Quotes

• On Jonah’s message to Nineveh. “Jonah’s message to Nineveh was not a predictive prophecy, but a judgment warning. Jonah was not predicting that Nineveh would be overthrown or destroyed in 40 days. He was warning Nineveh that it was subject to judgment. As a warning, the threatened consequence was conditional. It is like a parent telling a child, ‘I’m going to count to three and then you’re getting spanked!’ The whole point of the counting to three is to give the child an opportunity to repent. Likewise, the whole point of the 40-day warning was to give Nineveh an opportunity to repent. Jonah himself understood this, because after Nineveh repented and was spared, he went off to sulk and complained that he knew God was planning on being merciful to Nineveh (Jonah 4:1-2). You say that Jonah tried to avoid going to Nineveh because he was certain they would not repent, but the narrative tells us otherwise: Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he realized God was intent on sparing Nineveh and Jonah didn’t want to be a party to their salvation. The bottom line is that the book of Jonah does not give us an example of a ‘prophecy’ that did not come true. One cannot cite Jonah as precedent for a divinely inspired prediction failing to come to pass, because Jonah’s message to Nineveh was not a prediction.” (MDDB, 2/12/2011)
• “There’s an interesting tension in Mormonism. On the one hand, the Book of Mormon was and still is touted as clarifying all sorts of theological and practical issues about which orthodox Christians had differing views. Infant baptism? The Book of Mormon says no. That sort of thing. On the other hand, Mormons today cannot agree on all sorts of theological questions, such as whether God was ever not God, and the difficulty in correlating later LDS doctrine with the Book of Mormon has made the Book of Mormon appear to be less clear than we were told–at least, less clear in teaching current LDS doctrine. Many Mormons do as you suggest and conclude that some of these theological questions should be left suspended because the standard works just aren’t clear enough. This makes those of us on the outside wonder why the current Prophet doesn’t just provide explicit answers to those questions and relieve the tension.” (FB, 2/15/2012)

Online writings

Exchanges

2012

• Evidence that the Book of Mormon Was Written By Joseph Smith or Some Other 19th Century Person

2011

• Five differences between LDS theology and social Trinitarianism
• Cfr For Ldsfaq: Joseph’S Translation Of The Gold Plates
• Orthodox Christians Are Atheists – A standard Mormon criticism
• Holy Ghost: “One Of The Sons Of Our Father And Our God”
• Spirit Bodies – Intriguing description in Gospel Principles
• Trinitarians Do Not View God As An Abstraction!
• Is The Spirit In 1 Kings 22:19-23 Embodied Or Incorporeal?
• “Praise To The Man” – A biblical analysis
• Are The Gods Of The Hebrew Bible Real?
• Isaiah 43:10
• It’s Too Sacred – Is this explanation overused – “Is it possible that Mormons too easily appeal to sacredness to rationalize lack of information on a wide variety of issues?”
• Adding “not” in Hebrews 6:1 – Example of Joseph Smith’s uninspired translation
• 1 Nephi 10:7-10 and John the Baptist – The dependence of the Book of Mormon on the NT Gospels
• The Bible Vs. The Book Of Mormon – Discussion of Brant Gardner’s review of the DVD
• Isaiah 53 and the dependence of the Book of Mormon on the KJV – Mosiah 14 is 99.5% identical to Isaiah 53 in the KJV
• Offenders for a Word – What this expression in Isaish 29:21 really means
• Of earrings and obeying the prophet Serious questions
• Textual Divisions in Isaiah

2010

• New Testament apostles DID need to have seen the risen Christ – Specifically, apostles in the NT Christian church
• Does Ephesians teach that the church always needs living apostles on the earth? An exegetical study of Ephesians 2:20; 3:5; 4:11
• Did Cornelius receive the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized? – Luke says yes; Joseph Smith and the LDS Church say no
• Gifts of the Holy Ghost – For LDS only?
• Is the LDS Church really led by prophets?
• LDS apostles do not need to have seen the risen Christ
• Has Jesus always been a God?
• What Gospel Principles teaches about salvation
• Once again, 2 Nephi 25:23
• Earning Salvation – What LDS Church General Authorities Have Really Said
• In what sense is Jesus the Son of God? 10 points in response to Lehi’s questions
• Are you presently active in a temple?
• No “paradise” in the Greek text of Luke 23:43?
• On Deuteronomy 32:8-9
• Gospel Principles and Job 38:7
• JST: Restoring the original text, inspired commentary, or what?
• Lost books of the Bible? Jasher and Jehu and Nathan and Gad….
• Multiple attestation lacking for the core LDS events — See follow-up here
• Alleged early references to the First Vision
• Dan McClellan on reading the Bible univocally
• Do Bible authors “add to” or “take away from” biblical texts?
• Consistent Methodology – Does Rob Bowman use it?
• Pagan influence on biblical texts – Correcting a misperception
• On Gehenna and Eternal Fire in Matthew

2009

• Holy Spirit’s teaching in John 14-16 “He will guide you into all the truth”: Clearing up a misunderstanding
• Standard evangelical argument for the inerrancy of Scripture
• Does the Holy Ghost dwell in human beings or not?

See Also

• Wikipedia entry