Pissed,
I've quoted them here. they don't post here. You're drawing a false conlusion based on something that made me laugh. Their book is good solid history. Why form an opinion based on something that I noted? They do note false statements, sometimes tongue in cheek, but while that may make me chuckle, it's a very small part of the story here.
I don't see the few occasions where they note the errors of others as detracting. Don't you want to know when something is wrong? I do. And they document their claims. I can think of several books that sail under the quise of an academic work that do not do that.
You've made a claim about the book without having read it. If I've given a false impression of the book, I'm sorry. It is well worth a read.
Perhaps I should give a couple examples of what they do when they meet 'error' in the work of others:
From page 208:
The claim made by James Pellechia, a Watchtower Society writer, that Russell founded the congregation at Elyria and a group in Cleveland is incorrect. The Elyria group was originally an independent Age-to-Come body turned into a Barbourite congregation and is mentioned as such in the June 15, 1878, issue of Herald of the Morning. Creta Walker tells us that the congregation was founded by her uncle Thomas Sherwood and that it originally met in a red brick school house a few miles from the Sherwood residence. The congregation styled itself The Church of Christ, a name commonly used by Age-to-Come churches:
From page 287, the first two paragraphs of the chapter:
As with much else in this era of WatchTower history, we find significant, purposefully created nonsense and bad research. For example, Graig Burns asserts that “the Bible Students had split off from a group of Second Adventists under N. H. Barbour, which later became the 7th-Day Adventist Church.” We’re fairly certain Seventh-day Adventists would be surprised to know this. We certainly were.
They were small in number. Firm figures elude us, but we can make an educated guess. They drew from Second Adventists, primarily Advent Christians and Life and Advent Union adherents. Though Second Adventists claimed a combined membership of thirty-thousand worldwide, this was a huge exaggeration and has no basis in fact. Few Adventists found the Barbourite message attractive. Adventists turned to 1877 and then 1879 as probable dates for Christ’s return. Age-to-Come/One Faith adherents numbered less than four thousand. Many Barbourites came from this group, attracted to Barbourite theology by its Age-to-Come belief. In 1885 Barbour reported that the average monthly circulation of The Herald of the Morning was one thousand copies, including missionary and give-away issues. It was probably somewhat less, and we are probably being generous if we say that in 1877 they had something less than two thousand adherents. The regularly-published money-received column suggests far fewer committed believers. This was a very small movement.
Now while you may find the claim that seventh-day adventists were connected to Barbour strange, it's made repeatedly in 'the literature.' Do you want things like that to go unchallenged? They challenge false CLAIMS. False conclusions fall when false claims do. Are you so invested in a pet theory that you don't want it challenged? If so, you will find their book disturbing. If you want good, solid historical research into sources you've never seen, this is the book for you.
Writers commongly say things about Storrs that aren't so. Storrs magazine is not hard to find. I own all of them except the irregular first issues and the first few months of it when he restarted it. Shouldn't a writer read the source material before making claims about it? Schulz and de Vienne did, taking you to the exact issue and pages in their footnotes. Name another writer on this topic that researched Russell's connections to The Restitution, the principal One Faith journal. Restituion circulated his Object and Manner. J. L. Russell wrote to its editor up to his death. Didn't know that, did you? Restitution's readers called him 'brother.' All of this is new.
If you let attachment to a theory you got from others keep you from reading this book, you will continue to parrot it while others move "into the light of truth" historically speaking.