Sources for Laman and Lemuel?

[Hagoth]

Summmary: Lumen Walter, Joseph Smith's occult mentor sometimes went by the name Laman. He also had an uncle named Lemuel.

https://mormonzodiac.com/2018/11/21/leg ... mon-proof/

p.s. Lemuel was also an Old Testament name.

[jfro18]

I'd say it's unreal but it's wholly expected at this point.

Just toss it on the pile of places that Joseph pulled names from (cough... Anthon... cough).

The Joseph Smith mixtape continues on.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

I thought some names and stories came out of the writings of Josephus too, but maybe I'm gaslighting myself.

https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/approachin ... ph-smith-s

[Hagoth]

If anything this shows that there were multiple sources for things like this in Joseph Smith's environment, not to mention good old fashioned imagination.

[moksha]

Apologetic - The Book of Mormon prophets foresaw the coming of Laman Waters and his family of Lemuel and Sam.
Alternate Apologetic - The Walter's family were inspired to name these male children after BoM characters.
Tertiary Apologetic - It is all a coincidence. Nothing to see here. Move along. Focus on the proof of NHM instead.

[Lucidity]

Wow. I have to say that a part of me is amazed at the amount of damning evidence that is being found this late in the game. With the recent JST find and the Dartmouth connection, Netflix could make a Making a Prophet version of Making a Murderer. The evidence is really mounting and it’s facinating to watch. I wonder if we’ll ever have that smoking gun that just breaks it wide open.

[Palerider]

I wonder if we’ll ever have that smoking gun that just breaks it wide open.

I think someone has it sitting in their vault at the COB. Will we ever see it? Kind of doubt it but wouldn't that be great?!?! Then all those TBMs could get started on their exciting new lives and we could watch the circus of what happens to all the church's money .

It would be lovely to see them have to pay out a refund to every member. Kind of like tithing in reverse. The members don't need the money but the Lord needs leadership to do the right thing.....

[Emower]

Hmmm, I was reading that and thought, "sure ok, Laman, but that could be an easy typo with an A for a U." How many times was he called Laman? Was it really just an isolated typo? But the Lemuel thing is a little more damning. Sam was a pretty common name anyway.

[Hagoth]

I wonder if we’ll ever have that smoking gun that just breaks it wide open.

I sometimes think if the Book of Abraham isn't enough for people it may not matter how profusely the guns smokes. Even a document in Joseph Smith's handwriting where he's boasting about how he faked the gold plates could be written off by believers as a hoax. I sometimes think it would take an apostle in General Conference saying, "Look folks, there's nothing to this. It's just a bunch of made up stories and we've been pretending to have special powers that we don't have." But even that could be filtered through the lens of "even the very elect will be deceived."

[Palerider]

I'm surprised that not more people are very uncomfortable with the ease at which both Joseph and Sidney Rigdon borrowed from the Adam Clarke Biblical commentary to create Joseph's inspired version of the Bible.

It manifests a brazen attitude towards fakery. More so a pattern of behavior when the BoM and Book of Abraham are jointly considered along with the "Inspired version".

If you were somehow on the bubble regarding whether Joseph had it in him to fabricate the first two books, it should be decidedly clear after considering his blatant copying of Clarke's commentary. The guy was a fraud.

And Sidney would have known it. Is that conspiratorial?

[wtfluff]

I'm surprised that not more people are very uncomfortable with the ease at which both Joseph and Sidney Rigdon borrowed from the Adam Clarke Biblical commentary to create Joseph's inspired version of the Bible.

The vast majority of people who believe in Joseph's "inspired version of the bible" have absolutely no idea that it was plagiarized.

[Hagoth]

I'm surprised that not more people are very uncomfortable with the ease at which both Joseph and Sidney Rigdon borrowed from the Adam Clarke Biblical commentary to create Joseph's inspired version of the Bible.

The vast majority of people who believe in Joseph's "inspired version of the bible" have absolutely no idea that it was plagiarized.

And they wouldn't believe anyone who told them otherwise. Satan is getting trickier and trickier.

[Lucidity]

I'm surprised that not more people are very uncomfortable with the ease at which both Joseph and Sidney Rigdon borrowed from the Adam Clarke Biblical commentary to create Joseph's inspired version of the Bible.

The vast majority of people who believe in Joseph's "inspired version of the bible" have absolutely no idea that it was plagiarized.

This. I’m consistently amazed at how insulated my TBM parents and friends are. Back when the MTC president/rape scandal happened my exmo friend said it would be a deal breaker for members. I bet him they never even hear about it. So I waited 7 days then asked them if they had heard. Not one had.

Unless the church puts it in one of their main publications it never happened. And if by chance a TBM stumbles upon it from an outside source it will be dismissed as not being credible.

Just like Paul Haggis in Scientology. He spent decades moving all the way up “the bridge” without once ever googling Scientology to get an outside view.

[Corsair]

This. I’m consistently amazed at how insulated my TBM parents and friends are. Back when the MTC president/rape scandal happened my exmo friend said it would be a deal breaker for members. I bet him they never even hear about it. So I waited 7 days then asked them if they had heard. Not one had.

I have one close friend who is an amateur apologist. He has read all of Nibley and did take classes from him at BYU. He devoured the Brian Hale books on plural mariage. Plus, he tends to stay up with these things and I asked him about the Joseph Bishop issue. He quickly dismissed it as a sick old man being exploited by an apostate.

Apologist: "He's in his 80s! His memory is simply not that good and he's being led along by this woman."

Me: "The first Presidency are all in their 80s."

Apologist: "The have priesthood and a calling where God has blessed their faculties."

End of conversation.

The amazing thing is that this apologist seems to have been informed about the Adam Clarke Bible Commentary. After that Mormon Stories interview and summary publication, I mentioned "Joseph Smith's Inspired Bible Translation" to him. He quickly responded, "It's really interesting that Joseph Smith simply was drawing from commentaries of the day rather than a full translation."

No, it's not 'interesting', it's plagiarism and a complete misuse of the word "translation". Joseph Smith can not be shown to have ever translated anything at all.

Having the names of Laman and Lemuel show up in the life of the Smith family is just par for the course. Joseph could have made up all sorts of names, but using the names of nominal "bad guys" seems to have helped the narrative. Believers are rarely paying attention to the issues and simply dismiss most of them when they are found out.

[jfro18]

The amazing thing is that this apologist seems to have been informed about the Adam Clarke Bible Commentary. After that Mormon Stories interview and summary publication, I mentioned "Joseph Smith's Inspired Bible Translation" to him. He quickly responded, "It's really interesting that Joseph Smith simply was drawing from commentaries of the day rather than a full translation."

No, it's not 'interesting', it's plagiarism and a complete misuse of the word "translation". Joseph Smith can not be shown to have ever translated anything at all.

You know what the most amazing thing about that is?

Even in Saints, they talk of how Joseph Smith asked God about polygamy because of his 'translation' of the Bible.

So basically we now know that he plagiarized his translation of the Bible from available commentaries of the day, which (we are led to believe) led him to ask God about polygamy and implement it.

Now as a quick aside I don't believe for a second that Joseph Smith *ever* mentioned polygamy in any way before the early 1840s when he couldn't keep it secret from everyone, and of course I don't believe it is from God. Anyway...

Effectively Saints (The Standard of Truth) tells us that the revelation on polygamy came from Joseph translating the book by inspiration, which we now know was Joseph plagiarizing from Adam Clarke and probably others.

Doesn't that tell you *everything* you need to know about the authenticity of polygamy? The chain of custody is screwed on every level - timing, source, motivation, etc.

IT'S SO STUPID.

[IT_Veteran]

Unless the church puts it in one of their main publications it never happened. And if by chance a TBM stumbles upon it from an outside source it will be dismissed as not being credible.

I found this to be the case with my own family. When I shared a Trib article describing the Joseph Bishop case (and publicly declared my disdain for the church and refuted any further association with it), my dad texted me to ask me to stop attacking the church and to get the whole story from a source that "wasn't established solely to discredit the church." That's when I realized I was *actually* in a cult, not that just plays one on TV. He sent me a KUTV article that night that was a little softer. I sent him back their update the next day when they added all the detail that the Trib had run. We haven't discussed it since.