BoM

[Bloodhound98]

I never said what I was thinking and more likely feeling was sane. Again 6 weeks ago I never would've entertained these ideas

[Bloodhound98]

I have seen a documentary (very biased) that made the argument that the New Testament was propaganda and just a way to control the Jews. Very interesting stuff. Man if Jesus didn't exist who did Joseph see?????? Lol

[Spicy McHaggis]

One thing to consider is that Joseph Smith never (or very rarely) cites or quotes the BoM in any sermon, lesson or story. Its as if he knew the BoM wasn't real enough to take it seriously himself.
If all those things really happened the way he said they did, the BoM would have been the core of everything he taught after its publication. But it's not. He never quotes Alma or King Benjamin or anyone else.
Also, his theology of the godhead changed considerably from the time it was being written to the late 1830s.

[GoodBoy]

So Hoax....That's fine.
So the BoM was just a clever hoax??? Do you give it any Credence to how it was crafted??? Was he just a fabulous storyteller? That is very hard to make up a story like that in a Biblical tone that probably was hard to speak in????
Just a brilliant man with a clever hoax?
Again not judging or even disagreeing. Just wanting clarification

I think it was at least partially a hoax, because there were not golden plates and Joseph knew that. Yet he said there were and even made some sort of prop to deceive others.

However, I do give credit to Joseph Smith's amazing mind. He truly was an enigma. He was very well read on Christian theology and mysticism and obviously spent a lot of time thinking about things. He was also obviously blessed with charisma. How else do you get 32 women to marry you and hundreds of people to follow you.

However, he is not unique throughout history as many others have similarly been called as prophets and produced scriptures.
* James Strang also found buried plates that he translated into scripture (http://www.strangite.org/Law.htm).
* Ellen White received revelations and wrote them down which were used to found the creation of the Seventh Day Adventists, (which started after the LDS church and grew faster than the LDS church with 20 million current members). She is revered as a prophet.
* The guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart also claimed to be called as a prophet and was fixing broken things in the church.
* Denver Snuffer has seen Christ and is leading his followers to "the truth".

Although they are rare enough that most of us don't know one of them personally, history is just chock full of these guys.

[alas]

I don't really have time right now to read every one's answer, but here is mine. It doesn't matter. I know that God will not hold me to blame for being unable to worship Joseph Smith. So, I feel free to reject the church and not worry about all the whys and whyfores. I don't worry any more about the origin story of Mormonism than I do the origin story of Islam or Tao. False religion is false religion.

It is nice to reach the point where you no longer care.

[Palerider]

I've never really understood this "incredible piece of work" thing. Could you explain?

The timeline in the BoM is extremely confusing, and to really understand it you have to basically draw it out like a huge map.

The story-line is extremely repetitive: Take the BoM "pride cycle" story, and repeat it over, and over and over. Just change a few names here and there. That pretty much covers the entire book, minus the plagiarized sections.

There might be a few nuggets that are actually good here or there, but they are buried in mounds of pablum.

Well like I said maybe it is the benovelance that my whole life has been programed into me. It's "ancient scripture" up until 6 weeks ago of my 37 years if existence. So in my mind it's still an incredible piece of work

So what you're saying is: You think it's an incredible piece of work, because you've been told it's an incredible piece of work since you were born?

Nail on the head right here. Here's Mark Twain's take:

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."

This is much closer to the truth regarding the BoM's "incredibileness".......some find it incredible when told it is by some person they have respect for but when taken on it's own merits it comes out more as "incredulous".

[Hagoth]

Mormon scholars who grew up believing in the Book of Mormon go to great lengths to prop up the book as an amazing piece of ancient literature BECAUSE THEY ALREADY BELIEVE IT IS and they are heavily invested in trying to support their foregone conclusions.

So why is it that, if the BoM really is such an amazing work of ancient scripture, Bible scholars, archaeologists, and historians around the world generally just shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes? Most of us were raised with the conspiratorial mindset that all of these people are either numbskulls who can't see what's right in front of their faces or that they're all in league with Satan, either intentionally or unwittingly. Nope, these guys really do know their stuff.

I really like Robert M. Price and I have heard him talk about the BoM a number of times. He is sort of a fan and thinks Joseph Smith did a pretty decent job of cooking up a nice little piece of pseudepigrapha, which he doesn't consider a disrespectful accusation. He used to get invited to all of the BYU events where they fly in non-Mormon scholars for a nice visit to Utah to discuss Joseph Smith and the BoM. He said it was all very enjoyable and he always made sure to say encouraging things about the man and the book to show appreciation to his kind hosts - until the time he actually said what he really thinks of the Book of Mormon, after which he was never invited again.

So yeah, we have a lot of really smart people reading a lot of depth and sophistication into the Book of Mormon that maybe just isn't really there. Alma 36 is a great example. The whole freakin' thing is a chiastic masterpiece, right? Just try for yourself to diagram out that chiasm and you'll see how sloppy and forced it really is.

Apologists are always pointing out amazing Book of Mormon parallels with the ancient world while blithely overlooking the fact that for every one of those ancient parallels (most of which are embarrassingly tenuous) there are many, many more direct parallels with 19th century Christianity, King James Bible references and good ol' frontier mythology.

Still, I do think the BoM is impressive in it's way. I think Joseph Smith was a remarkable man with a unique kind of genius. But I also think there's a naked emperor roaming the hallowed halls of BYU with a golden book under his arm.

Now, anybody want to talk about how amazing the Book of Abraham is? How about that Book of Joseph papyrus? Anybody interested in buying a nice little stretch of beachside Nile real estate that's just dripping with ancient parallels?

[Emower]

This is great stuff!!! I love it. Keep em coming! I find the hardest part is that if the BoM is fraudulent then perhaps so was my 36 years of my life. That is why it's so impossible at my current stage to 100% accept the fraudulent theory. I want to desperately believe some part of it is divine/sacred/holy/inspired.
Seeing Joey tried to sell the copyright didn't increase my testimony at all for sure!
Keep preaching Ladies and Gents

I get what you are feeling here. You are experiencing some pretty hard realizations. It's probably important to take a step back and decide what you want right now. Do you want the Book of Mormon to be more inspired than not? Would you like Joseph to be a savant or a con man? An important realization I have made with the assistance of the good people on this forum is that Mormonism and its associated trappings can really be anything you want it to be.

Maybe you just want the truth. My suspicion is that the truth is not going to be comfortable for someone who is going to be bummed out that they have been involved in a cult. It wasn't for me.

[Bloodhound98]

Hagoth that was awesome. As far as the last response goes. I do want the truth and I recognize that I just might be bargaining my grief right now. I live this forum it really helps me conceptualize my reality and how far my head was in the sand. I like what Hagoth said about Joseph being a great man in some aspect. Even if it just means that he was a crazy good Con-Man! Respect nonetheless for what he did and how far he rolled with the lies.
I realize the BoM is awesome in my head because I have treated it as sacred scripture and not a fictional novel. Again great stuff I wish more people chimed in on this. To me everything flows from this and this is the Keystone to my disbelief!

[Just This Guy]

Something else to keep in mind is that there are a number os sources that state the JSj has a reputation for being a very good story teller. His mother wrote in her biography that JSJ would entertain the fairly in the evenings by making up stores. One of the common themes is that he liked making up stories about the local Indian tribes. This was all before he supposedly found the gold plates.

Something else to consider is that his father was a school teacher. They had a fairly good home library for the day when he was growing up from his time teaching. Books like "The Late War" were known to be in the family library. JSj was not some poor dumb like like some like to portray him as. He was known to be widely read as a kid. While the family may not have had a copy of "View of the Hebrews," it was know in the area and he likely did read it.

some of the sermons in the BOM have been found to take heavy inspiration from a number of sermons that were given by others in his area.

With that, it is conceivable that he drew on several sources of inspiration. He had two years of the "translation process" to go over story ideas between the dictation sessions with the scribes where he had his head in a hat. With all that, coming up with the BoM is not unreasonable, even if we don't know all the details.

[Bloodhound98]

Something else to keep in mind is that there are a number os sources that state the JSj has a reputation for being a very good story teller. His mother wrote in her biography that JSJ would entertain the fairly in the evenings by making up stores. One of the common themes is that he liked making up stories about the local Indian tribes. This was all before he supposedly found the gold plates.

Something else to consider is that his father was a school teacher. They had a fairly good home library for the day when he was growing up from his time teaching. Books like "The Late War" were known to be in the family library. JSj was not some poor dumb like like some like to portray him as. He was known to be widely read as a kid. While the family may not have had a copy of "View of the Hebrews," it was know in the area and he likely did read it.

Yes I read part of the Late War and wow it sounds like the bulk of Alma and all the wars.
I think overall we will never know and the fact that we never know, even if you might have 95% information proving he made it up. It's that 5% that keeps TBM clinging to faith and to not listen to the Anti Mormon blasphemy.
Also from what I read Mr. Cowdery would of been very familiar with the book "The View if the Hebrews."
Good stuff.

[Hagoth]

Note: sorry if I've said all of this before, but I think it's important that people in the Book of Mormon Belt understand this.

The Book of Mormon too conveniently answers all of the questions that were being talked about in Joseph Smith's environment. When the settlers arrived they found abandoned mound complexes and what appeared to fortifications and cities. They logically assumed that these were the remnants of a lost civilization, completely unique from the local natives, who they considered savages. Many assumed that the Indians had killed off the mound builders. Mormons seem to think that this story was a new revelation that came from the Book of Mormon, but it was the common assumption of pretty much everybody of the time. The biggest arguments were about whether the former inhabitants were Egyptians, Celts, Phoneticians, Norsemen, Romans, Atlanteans, or whoever - a lot of people even believed, and some still do today, in a mysterious race of giants, because of sloppy measuring of disarticulated skeletons. The Lost Tribes seemed to be the favored option. It wasn't until over 100 years later that the story was finally starting to be patched together. Cyrus Thomas, in the first real archaeological survey of the mounts demonstrated conclusively that the mound builders really were the ancestors of the local Native Americans.

When Hernando de Soto arrived in the Eastern US he found people still living in some of those mound communities (others were sacred and/or cemetery sites that were never really occupied). De Soto also brought European diseases that decimated those people. These complex stratified societies only emerged in the Eastern Woodlands when the population became dense enough to require agricultural intensification, which consists of a lot of people working much harder than they did in the past to produce enough food. Once most of the people were gone, thanks to the Europeans' microscopic hitchhikers, the natural resources rebounded and there was neither a good reason to continue agriculture nor a sufficient workforce to maintain it. People returned to hunting and gathering which is a much easier and more productive way to make a living. Since they didn't have a writing system they eventually lost their memory of ever having built and inhabited those places.

So, the settlers bandied around a lot of stories about which white race had actually built the mound cities and wove tales about what must have happened to them. Among those were things like View of the Hebrews, Spaulding's manuscript and the Book of Mormon. It's completely unnecessary to try to prove that the Book of Mormon is copied from one of the other sources. The reality is that each was telling the same story - the common tale that was being told around the campfires all across the region- in their own way. It didn't hurt that a lot of wanna-be archaeologists (before the advent of real archaeology) were digging randomly for evidence and misinterpreting everything they found to try to prove their various wacky hypotheses.

This line of thinking also came in very handy when the white folks wanted to take the land from the natives. After all, these were the savage usurpers who had massacred the rightful original white-skinned owners of the land.

It is also interesting that the Book of Mormon is chock full of sermons and arguments that were common in the Burned-Over District at the time of Joseph Smith, and that it answered all of the hotly debated religious topics of the day, like infant baptism.

[asa]

I recognize that I am pissing into the wind and my comments will be quickly disregarded but since I am a bit of a marplot I will add my dissenting voice. By way of background let me explain that since the 1960s I have read every piece of anti Mormon literature that came my way . I knew Sandra and Jerald Tanner and read all their stuff. I have read Spauldings Manuscript Lost , Ethan Smiths View of The Hebrews , the Late War .and the Second Book of Napolean ,. All 4 of them are sitting a few feet from me as I write this. I have also read Grant Palmer etc ,etc. I also on the other hand knew Hugh Nibley and took classes from him and read BH Roberts various works on the B of M including the Way ,the Truth and the Light wherein he raises B of M issues. I have also read Daymon Smith sublime and rediculous 6 volume work The Cultural History of the B of M .It seems to me that the bulk of the comments that arise here always fall into one of several categories. The first and most popular is it can't be true because to borrow a phrase from a famous UofU professor we all know angels don't appear to boys. The Second category is Joseph was a really bad guy and this fact necessarily taints anything he did .The third category is a subset of the first two which is we know it can't be true and so we will grasp any explanation no matter strange. The fourth category is that things people say about the Book are so stupid that the Book itself much be false. If you start with any of these premises you will never get to what the text itself says. Metatexual analysis may be of benefit sometimes but it should not be a substitute for really grappling with the text and the evidence if any that supports it . None of you guys ever deals with the testimony of 15 individuals that the plates existed. Nobody deals with the text itself saying that the Brass Plates were in Egyptian and then notes the fact the Nephis name is probably a slight variation on the Egyptian word for good " NPR"; If we are going to be attack the Book ,which you have every right to do, you should acknowledge your premises and deal directly with the text and not miscellaneous human frailties

,

[wtfluff]

None of you guys ever deals with the testimony of 15 individuals that the plates existed.

Can you answer this question Asa? Why does it matter that 15 individuals saw "the plates" when "the plates" were never used for the "translation" of the Book of Mormon that we have today? I reiterated: They are witnesses of source material that was never used.

...not miscellaneous human frailties

And another question: Is Joseph's attempt to sell the copyright for the BoM a "human frailty?"

[Palerider]

I recognize that I am pissing into the wind and my comments will be quickly disregarded but since I am a bit of a marplot I will add my dissenting voice. By way of background let me explain that since the 1960s I have read every piece of anti Mormon literature that came my way . I knew Sandra and Jerald Tanner and read all their stuff. I have read Spauldings Manuscript Lost , Ethan Smiths View of The Hebrews , the Late War .and the Second Book of Napolean ,. All 4 of them are sitting a few feet from me as I write this. I have also read Grant Palmer etc ,etc. I also on the other hand knew Hugh Nibley and took classes from him and read BH Roberts various works on the B of M including the Way ,the Truth and the Light wherein he raises B of M issues. I have also read Daymon Smith sublime and rediculous 6 volume work The Cultural History of the B of M .It seems to me that the bulk of the comments that arise here always fall into one of several categories. The first and most popular is it can't be true because to borrow a phrase from a famous UofU professor we all know angels don't appear to boys. The Second category is Joseph was a really bad guy and this fact necessarily taints anything he did .The third category is a subset of the first two which is we know it can't be true and so we will grasp any explanation no matter strange. The fourth category is that things people say about the Book are so stupid that the Book itself much be false. If you start with any of these premises you will never get to what the text itself says. Metatexual analysis may be of benefit sometimes but it should not be a substitute for really grappling with the text and the evidence if any that supports it . None of you guys ever deals with the testimony of 15 individuals that the plates existed. Nobody deals with the text itself saying that the Brass Plates were in Egyptian and then notes the fact the Nephis name is probably a slight variation on the Egyptian word for good " NPR"; If we are going to be attack the Book ,which you have every right to do, you should acknowledge your premises and deal directly with the text and not miscellaneous human frailties

,

The testimony of the "withesses" is probably even weaker than the text of the BoM itself. Numerous early Mormons have given statements that contradict the written testimony in the forward of the BoM, including Joseph Smith's own brother. Below see a sample:

"Stephen Burnett's Reporting of Martin Harris
In an April 1838 letter to Lyman E. Johnson, a former member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles living in Far West, Missouri, Stephen Burnett explained the cause of his recent disillusionment with Mormonism. According to Burnett, Martin Harris declared at a public meeting in Kirtland, Ohio, that he “never saw the plates with his natural eyes,” and that “the eight witnesses [also] never saw them [with their natural eyes] & hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it.” Upon hearing Harris's statement, Burnett said “the last pedestal gave way” and concluded: “if the witnesses whose names are attached to the Book of Mormon never saw the plates as Martin [Harris] admits, [then] there can be nothing brought to prove that any such thing ever existed.”38

Three weeks later at another public meeting, according to Burnett, Harris said he was “sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true, he said he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box with only a tablecloth or a handkerchief over them, but he never saw them only as he saw a city through a mountain.” He also expressed regret about revealing the true nature of the experience of the eight witnesses, stating that “he never should have told that the testimony of the eight [witnesses] was false, if it had not been picked out of [h]im but should have let it passed as it was.”39

Burnett's account is supported by Warren Parrish, a fellow dissenter who was also present and heard Harris's statements. Parrish reported in August 1838 that “Harris, one of the subscribing witnesses, has come out at last, and says he never saw the plates, from which the book [of Mormon] purports to have been translated, except in vision, and he further says that any man who says he has seen them in any other way is a liar, Joseph [Smith] not excepted.”

http://www.mormonthink.com/vogelwitnesses.htm

Personally I have no problem with angels appearing to anyone in this day and age. But religious experiences that purport to have bearing on all of mankind should also have what I would term "Empirical adequacy". That doesn't mean I have to be able to "see" the angel for myself before I will believe but it does mean that if the angel tells about an entire civilization that originally spoke Hebrew, Egyptian or "reformed Egyptian" (whatever that is), it better have a high frequency of those languages still in use today. One of the express purposes of the BoM was to "preserve the language" of the fathers for their children. So where is all the evidence of that language today? There should be buckets more than "probably a slight variation on the Egyptian word for good " NPR";"

Really? That's all you've got?

The church also claimed in my youth that the Native Americans were the direct descendants of the Israelites, therefore DNA studies should be able to easily verify that fact, yet the only indication of ANY European genetic influence is established at being introduced 15000 years ago. Well before the "Nephites" were supposed to have arrived. No wonder the church has had to "revise" their statements on who the Lamanites are. No current general authority would have the courage to stand up in general conference today and declare who is and who isn't a Lamanite. Why? because they haven't got a clue.

Have you heard of the Lemba tribe in Africa? They have long claimed that they were of Jewish descent. Many people said, "Yeah, right..." until the dna studies proved their traditions to be true. No problem finding Jewish markers for these people even though it had been a thousand years ago. And they look "African" in all ways.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/09/us/dn ... -jews.html

So empirically speaking, I will issue the same challenge and promise to you that I do to all TBMs regarding the BoM. You show me Zarahemla and I'll pay for your airfare to Jerusalem (a scriptural city that really does exist).

I think it's you who are working from the construct that the BoM is true and trying to find ways to save it. Good luck with that.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

None of you guys ever deals with the testimony of 15 individuals that the plates existed.

Can you answer this question Asa? Why does it matter that 15 individuals saw "the plates" when "the plates" were never used for the "translation" of the Book of Mormon that we have today? I reiterated: They are witnesses of source material that was never used.

...not miscellaneous human frailties

And another question: Is Joseph's attempt to sell the copyright for the BoM a "human frailty?"

And while we're dealing with the witnesses, what about the ones who witnessed the voree plates of James Strang? Are they not just as credible as the BOM witnesses? In fact did not Martin Harris go on to do missionary work for them in England?

[Hagoth]

Hi Asa, great to hear from you!

If you've read all of that stuff then you know that the witnesses have been addressed pretty thoroughly. You know that Martin Harris saw the plates "not the way you see that pencil case, but mere the way you see a city through a mountain," and that he also gave even stronger testimony of the angel that presented the Shaker book and roll, and that he claimed that Anthon claimed they were real characters, but a mixture of just about everything ancient EXCEPT Egyptian, including some languages that didn't even exist yet in Lehi's time. You know that David Whitmer claimed the same supernatural voice that declared to him that the plates are real also declared to him that Joseph was a fallen prophet, and that David's own testimony of the event was pretty bizarre and included a table that held not only the plates but also the Gadianton secret book and all kinds of other goodies. You know that the descriptions of the plates, goggles and breastplate vary dramatically from account to account; when Mother Lucy saw the Urim and Thummim/Breastplates they were small enough to be wrapped in a handkerchief, but William Smith claimed the spectacles were so huge (the Nephites-were-giants mythology) that Joseph could only look through one stone or the other at a time. You know that we have no first-hand document where any of the eight witnesses claim to have actually seen gold plates, only a statement that was written and signed for them by Joseph and/or Oliver, and that George A. Smith bemoaned the fact that most of eight the witnesses did not even heft the plates let alone see them and that they were reluctant to sign anything that claimed otherwise. Those who did talk about it merely said they lifted a heavy weight that was either wrapped in a cloth or sealed in a box. If they saw the characters from the plates at all they probably weren't actually ON the plates, but possibly copied onto paper.

These are the kinds of things that give me pause about the witnesses. Add to that the fact that all of the other books coming out of the other upstart religions also had witnesses claiming that they saw angels or heard the voice of God or whatever. It was just the thing you did in those days to validate your book. The Shakers' book also had a testimony of eight witnesses, who wrote their own testimony, and all of whom signed their own names, along with an additional 100 pages of other witnesses who had similar experiences. Why are their testimonies less valid than those for Joseph's book, many of which soon after left and joined other churches and, in some cases, had other supernatural manifestations? Did everyone lie except Mormons?

So, let's talk about the Brass Plates. How is it that Laban had the Old Testament compiled as a book before any such book had yet been compiled? And Egyptian? The Book of Mormon tells us they used Egyptian characters, even though it was difficult to write, to save space. Translating Hebrew to Egyptian is batshit crazy. Hebrew is a very concise language, what with dropping the vowels and all. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is just the opposite. The absolute worst thing you could do to save space is to translate to Egyptian. So why did the Nephites do this? The KEP clarifies. it was because JOSEPH SMITH mistakenly believed that Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was some kind of magical information packing code that allowed you to fold entire sentences into single characters. Dead wrong.

The apologist parallellism and cherry picking is probably what finally made me throw up my arms in despair. A seal found in Jerusalem that says “Malchiah son of Hammelech.” proves that Mulek was a real person who sailed to America in 600 BC. Nephi's name looks like NPR/good. OK. Well, Kolob in Hebrew would be KLB, which means dog. Why? because that was the word for the star Sirius, the Dog Star, which is the brightest star and which people in Joseph's time thought surely must be more important than the others because it's so bright, so Joseph, with a little help from Thomas Dick, concluded that it was probably at the center of the universe with everything else rotating around it. Wrong.

There seems to be a pattern here, both in the origin of the scripture and in its overscruitiny (made that word up) by apologists.

Personally, I now feel like most of the "amazing" things in the Book of Mormon that I built my testimony on for all those years are like J. Devn Cornish's conference talk where he found a quarter in the gutter because he prayed for it. If you look hard enough you'll find something that you can make fit into the hole you're trying to fill. Is that a giraffe in the sky or just a cloud that I think looks like a girraffe? I used to read everything that came out of FARMS but I got really tired of stuff like claims that Elkenah is right at home in an Egyptian book of breathings because Elkenah really was, it turns out, an ancient god. Well, sort of, I mean there wasn't really a god named Elkenah, but there is the Semitic word El that could be applied to a number of Mesopotamian gods. None of them are Egyptian god, mind you, but... let's just call that a bullseye and move on. Hey, everybody, look, there's a block of stone with NHM carved on it!

So here's my thing. I'm perfectly ok with people believing in the Book of Mormon, and loving it, and finding it inspiring, and building their lives around it. More power to 'em I say. I feel the same way about people whose lives are made better by Dr. Who. The difference is that those people don't keep demanding that I believe in Dr. Who and go around wearing a long scarf and living in a phonebooth. I'm just a little tired of scholars wringing the Book of Mormon for every drop of sort-of-maybe-but-not-really evidence they can scratch out of it and acting like anyone who isn't impressed is an idiot, even though it's unimpressive to non-believing experts in archaeology, scripture scholarship, history, etc. I'm tired of the kind of scholarship that works the opposite of science, that starts with a conclusion and builds a case around it from any scraps they can find, that believes piles and piles of weak parallels are more significant than actual evidence. Yet they would die to have even one piece of physical, unequivocal evidence to wave around. They want to talk like scientists, but they're really just trying to sway the jury with a lot almost-facts.

Whew.

[Bloodhound98]

[quote= I think it's you who are working from the construct that the BoM is true and trying to find ways to save it. Good luck with that.
[/quote]

Obviously that is what they are doing and that's exactly what I am doing. And I very well might need a lot of luck to do it.

I am bewildered by how much evidence stacks up against it but I love reading people's thoughts about what they might still hold on to.
Does anyone wonder why Joey won the Survivor game??? I mentioned Quakers died out and those other weird sects didn't survive. But Ole Joe did. I guess 7th Dayers survived too. But he created something in the Burnt Over Belt and somehow it survived. Is that larger due to Brigham????
Where is John Hamer when I need him????

[John Hamer]

I am bewildered by how much evidence stacks up against it but I love reading people's thoughts about what they might still hold on to.
Does anyone wonder why Joey won the Survivor game??? I mentioned Quakers died out and those other weird sects didn't survive. But Ole Joe did. I guess 7th Dayers survived too. But he created something in the Burnt Over Belt and somehow it survived. Is that larger due to Brigham????
Where is John Hamer when I need him????

I'm not sure what you want me to say, Bloodhound98? This is all very new for you. There's plenty more to read and explore about the Book of Mormon. If you are connected to the text, then that by itself is reason for you to continue your research, thought, and exploration about it. If you haven't read Metcalfe & Vogel's "New Approaches to the Book of Mormon," that's a wonderful collection of articles that put study of the text on an important path.

This thread is all over the place, so I'm not sure how to respond. The Book of Mormon is not an ancient text, we can be confident that it comes from Joseph Smith during the time period described (late 1820s). Its ancient antecedent is the Bible as rendered in King James English. Beyond that foundation, there's more in there than Mark Twain was willing to mine out. Alexander Campbell took it more seriously, even if he also dismissed it for different reasons.

You listed off a bunch of possibilities at the outset; the reality is that we can't make definitive statements about lots of it. I agree with my friend Brent Metcalfe about a lot of this, but he chimed in on Facebook Friday to disagree with my take on what Joseph Smith might have meant by "translation" in recently posted episode of Mormon Stories. We can both respect each other and disagree.

I agree with Hagoth that the book is over-extolled by LDS apologists, but I also think it's over ignored by regular students of American literature. It should be studied more and more seriously as the 19th century American text that it is.

[Hagoth]

I guess 7th Dayers survived too.

Great observation, Bloodhound. It's interesting when members use the mere fact that the LDS church still exists as evidence of its divine origins. The 7th Day Adventist church parallels the Mormon church in that it originated in upstate New York in the mid 19th century, was instigated by a prophet(ess) who wrote divinely inspired books, and requires its members to live a dietary code.

The differences? It is significantly bigger than the LDS church (and not just because it keeps inactive members on its books until age 110) and is currently growing faster without an army of 80,000 full-time salesmen. Adventists are healthier than Mormons and Adventist communities are recognized by the medical community as some of the healthiest in the world. They give significantly more to charitable causes and, to top it off, they are fully transparent with their finances.

If you're supposed know them by their fruits, it looks like the Adventists have a significant leg up. Therefore, shouldn't we assume that they are the one true church?

And let's not forget that the Community of Christ is still with us, Brigham Young be damned. They're not huge but they are heavy with fruit.

BTW, the Quakers are still around. I think the last Shaker has shucked off the mortal coil, but you can't really expect a church that demands celibacy to hang on for ever. Pretty surprising it made it that long. It's kind of a heartbreaker too, they were fascinating people who did some wonderful things, not the least of which was the invention of the clothespin.