Supporting our own

[Hagoth]

My favourite part of the discussion is actually in your introduction about putting all the pieces together.

Yup. I love the puzzle analogy too. I always add a hammer that I used to try to jam in the pieces that don't seem to fit. It's such a great analogy because, like the faith crisis it symbolizes, there is that moment when you realize the thing you've been trying to put together is not at all the same as the picture on the cover of the box. "Wait a minute.....!"

[2bizE]

I’ve watched a few TiKTok videos today with jfro18 talking about RMN lying and fabrication of stories specifically his spiraling airplane of death story and the story of the woman in the red hat. I thought they were well done.

[Just This Guy]

I finished the podcast yesterday, and ad the end Jfro18 asked if anyone had an ideal time.

I would recommend 1 to 1.5 hour. If you go longer than that, it gets hard to retain it all and you start mentally checking out. My biggest grip with Mormon Stories is their length. It can take several days to get through a podcast and by the time you finish, you start forgetting details from the start.

Don't get me wrong, they can have good content, but they can be a real slog to get through. I usually don't listen to MS for this reason.

Mormonism Live is okay since they usually have about and hour and a half of main content and then the call in portion after that you don't have to concentrate on as hard.

[moksha]

I’ve watched a few TiKTok videos today ...

Link?

[Red Ryder]

I’ve watched a few TiKTok videos today ...

Link?

TikTok.com

[jfro18]

I would recommend 1 to 1.5 hour. If you go longer than that, it gets hard to retain it all and you start mentally checking out. My biggest grip with Mormon Stories is their length. It can take several days to get through a podcast and by the time you finish, you start forgetting details from the start.

Yep -I agree 100% and my push has been to aim for that with 2 hours being a hard cap. The way I did the overview topics on the site was on the ones that were just too hard to do in one page (Book of Abraham, polygamy, and revelation) I split them up and tried to theme the splits and I want to do the same on MS once we get to those.

Should have another one next week - I had to bail this week as I got COVID last week and couldn't talk for more than 5-10 seconds without needing to cough.

I’ve watched a few TiKTok videos today ...

Link?

www.tiktok.com/@ldsdiscussions

[moksha]

Stretches of President Nelson's imagination:

https://www.tiktok.com/@ldsdiscussions/ ... _webapp=v1

https://www.tiktok.com/@ldsdiscussions/ ... _webapp=v1

https://www.tiktok.com/@ldsdiscussions/ ... _webapp=v1



These two Toks on LDS understandings of astronomy are fun:

https://www.tiktok.com/@ldsdiscussions/ ... _webapp=v1

https://www.tiktok.com/@ldsdiscussions/ ... _webapp=v1

[Culper Jr.]

Finished the third one today. Just wanted to comment on how much I'm enjoying these. The analysis is excellent and I really appreciate the care that you use to stick with credible sources. I like to make my arguments based on solid sources instead of the more sensational stuff. It may be interesting to riff on Joseph Smith's abortion doctor or whatever, but under-sourced sensational stuff cuts your credibility when discussing these topics with members. I hope you keep doing these; they build on each other really well.

[moksha]

Episode 3 of the original Mormon Stories podcast on page 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB8WE6ipM4k

[2bizE]

I’ve watched a few TiKTok videos today ...

Link?

I don’t know how to link TikToks. But if you go there look under ldsdiscussions

[moksha]

I don’t know how to link TikToks. But if you go there look under ldsdiscussions

That is okay, I already looked up a bunch and posted them up above.

[MoPag]

Oh my Gods!! I was watching those Mormon Stories and loving every minute and I had NO idea I was watching my own NOM brother Jfro18! Well done! You are amazing!!

[jfro18]

Oh my Gods!! I was watching those Mormon Stories and loving every minute and I had NO idea I was watching my own NOM brother Jfro18! Well done! You are amazing!!

That's quite the compliment - thank you! I really hope these are helpful and I hope the tone is as even as possible so that it's not as antagonistic to believers,but I think that 3rd episode had a few too many tangents that we're trying to avoid going forward and sticking to the subject best we can.

Finished the third one today. Just wanted to comment on how much I'm enjoying these. The analysis is excellent and I really appreciate the care that you use to stick with credible sources. I like to make my arguments based on solid sources instead of the more sensational stuff. It may be interesting to riff on Joseph Smith's abortion doctor or whatever, but under-sourced sensational stuff cuts your credibility when discussing these topics with members. I hope you keep doing these; they build on each other really well.

Thanks so much! I am really trying to not get into any area where I don't feel confident in the source and I hope that at least shows people that I'm trying to do this the right way even if they disagree with my conclusions.

Tuesday will have the Lost 116 Pages released and I think that one is so important even if it's a bit more in the weeds... and then a new ep every Tuesday hopefully until we get through them all. We'll see how that goes before I get completely burned out on this stuff!

[stealthbishop]

Really well done!! Excellent job!!!

[Just This Guy]

Listening to the episode on the lost 116 pages.

The idea of the start of the BOM being written last is new to me. It makes sense and the evidence is reasonable enough. It actually answers a question I had for along time: The existence of the short books like Enos, Jerom, Omni, etc.

My view is such: You establish that the 600 year time from Lehi to the birth of Christ is a later addition to the narrative that was not there when parts of Mosiah and Alma were being written. So they then later circle back to redo the start of the BOM and then create the books of 1st and 2nd Nephi. After spending all the time on them, you now have written yourself into a corner. As a writer, you basically cover all the big events and sermons you want to do in the Nephi book, and you need to connect it to the stuff you have already written with starting in Mosiah. But you created this 600 year timeline, this leaves you with a gap of a couple hundred years between the two.

As a writer, you look at this gap, and are likely just tired of the whole thing. You have been writing this book for a couple years off and on. You see the end in sight and just want to be done with this so you can move on with life. How do you solve this corner that you wrote yourself into? Write a few short books that do little more than fill in the timeline. When you need filler to close a timeline hole, here is how you do with with the minimum effort needed. These super short books that exist purely so you can provide narrative link between what you wrote earlier on and what you circled back to write after the fact.

[Just This Guy]

I am listening to the Anachronism in the BoM episode.

You talk about how Christ is used incorrectly in the BOM. Very valid observations. However, there is another issue with the name of Jesus Christ in the BoM and that is the name of "Jesus" itself.

"Jesus" mean Messiah in Greek. That comes from the Hebrew "Joshua", which means the same thing. Since Lehi and his family are Jewish and take their religion and language with them to the new world, they would be speaking Hebrew and the name of the redeemer would be revealed as "Joshua." Everyone would use that name. No one would use "Jesus", because that language isn't the language they spoke.

[jfro18]

I am listening to the Anachronism in the BoM episode.

You talk about how Christ is used incorrectly in the BOM. Very valid observations. However, there is another issue with the name of Jesus Christ in the BoM and that is the name of "Jesus" itself.

"Jesus" mean Messiah in Greek. That comes from the Hebrew "Joshua", which means the same thing. Since Lehi and his family are Jewish and take their religion and language with them to the new world, they would be speaking Hebrew and the name of the redeemer would be revealed as "Joshua." Everyone would use that name. No one would use "Jesus", because that language isn't the language they spoke.

This is a great point. I suppose the argument from apologists would be that the Book of Mormon was translated to be best understood by those in Joseph Smith's time so God changed Joshua to Jesus in order to speak in familiar terms.

Of course this is a bigger problem since Joseph Smith proclaimed that there was no Greek on the plates... and yet...

[Just This Guy]

Yeah, any way you look at it, it brings you back to tight vs. loose translation argument.

[Just This Guy]

So today I was listening to the KJV in the BoM episode, and something occurred to me during the talk about italics.

Please feel free to correct me if anything is wrong.

So italics were used to to add words to clarify meaning during translation when there are limits with direct translation. They are necessary when you do a tight translation.

Since the claim is that the writers of the BoM spoke Hebrew, the same language as Isiah was written in. Since they both came from the same language, they would be translated in the same method. So why do you have Italics in Isiah, but not the rest of the BoM? If they both originated in Hebrew, the BoM would constantly need to use Italics to get the language to work throughout the text if they use a tight translation.

What I remember from the BoM, there is no use of Italics outside of the Isiah chapters and the stuff lifted from the NT. So why do you have a tight translation for those, but a loose translation for the rest of the BoM? If everything was a tight translation, then the BoM could not have originated in Hebrew because it would require italics regularly to make the translation work and there is no evidence of that and all the evidence that we have, is that the BoM was a super tight translation. The source text for the BoM would have to be much closer to English than Hebrew.

[jfro18]

Since the claim is that the writers of the BoM spoke Hebrew, the same language as Isiah was written in. Since they both came from the same language, they would be translated in the same method. So why do you have Italics in Isiah, but not the rest of the BoM? If they both originated in Hebrew, the BoM would constantly need to use Italics to get the language to work throughout the text if they use a tight translation.

What I remember from the BoM, there is no use of Italics outside of the Isiah chapters and the stuff lifted from the NT. So why do you have a tight translation for those, but a loose translation for the rest of the BoM? If everything was a tight translation, then the BoM could not have originated in Hebrew because it would require italics regularly to make the translation work and there is no evidence of that and all the evidence that we have, is that the BoM was a super tight translation. The source text for the BoM would have to be much closer to English than Hebrew.

This is a great point and one I wish I had brought up because even though I know the apologetic is that Joseph Smith saw a part of Isaiah and just brought it in because it was more convenient, the fact is that the italics being there in Isaiah and not elsewhere further show how reliant he was on the KJV and the how disjointed the language is between the KJV lifted material vs the Joseph Smith produced content.

There was a guy arguing with a bunch of people recently about the idea of translation and it's truly amazing to watch the church back away so strongly from the idea that the Book of Mormon is an exact translation. They say that it's impossible to have an "exact translation" from Reformed Egyptian to English for the reasons you mentioned, but by doing that show just how powerless God really is because they're then saying that not even God can give an exact translation between languages. That seems problematic to me, but maybe I'm missing something!