I was a member of RLDS and am not completely familar with LDS beliefs. Rlds preached Christ with the added belief in the BOM and the D&C.
I never thought it outlandish to believe God spoke to other people as well as the Hebrews. In fact even though I don’t believe the BOM story I still believe that.
I also found it believeable that God would continue to speak to us today, and even though I don’t believe the Doctrine and Covenants to be scripture I believe that also.
Funny how that worked out.
You were RLDS? Well, that’s DIFFERENT! How, exactly, I don’t know but I’ve been learning more and more as this thread goes on, explaining my earlier shifts between not caring and caring quite a bit. I also have no problem with accepting God speaks to folks today. No, wait. it’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Lemme see, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I’m religious; Wednesday through Friday I’m an atheist; and Saturday I don’t much care either way. Nope, can’t accept God talking to anybody, ever, because I don’t believe in Him. I mean, him. 
And jeffh3000, clair’s French. take that as you will. 
Briefly; when Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 several people stepped up to claim leadership of the church. Brigham Young was one and led a large group out west to Utah. Some believed that Joseph Smith had designated his son {Joseph Smith III} to be the next church leader. That son was only 12 when Joseph was killed and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was officially formed in 1860.
The RLDS church never practiced polygomy. IN fact J Smith III spent a lot of time rying to prove his father never practiced or promoted it. A lot of the LDS beliefs were formed after the migration to Utah. The RLDS recently changed its name to the Community of Christ. {about time} In my experience with them they taught the same basic doctrine as most Christian churches with a focus on Christ and the Trinity. They do accept the BOM as scripture and have their own Doctrine and Covenants which is also considered scripture in modern day revelations.
As a guy who was raised Jewish and still looks forward to the Seder every year at his Aunt and Uncle’s house, I’ve never questioned much the entire story. Till I read this quote above. Then I started looking around.
Kinda Disheartening, to say the least. However, it has nothing to do with faith from where I sit. The research into whether or not the BoM are exactly what Joseph Smith said they are cannot come to anything but a dead end- because there is no empirical evidence presentable proving divine intervention and divine connection.
I have sitting in front of me a copy of The Holy Scriptures. ( The Torah, or Old Testament, and concurrent commentaries and Haf’Torahs) It was first published in 1917, by the Jewish Publication Society of America. In many Reformed congregations it is considered to be the text of choice. Is this the word of God? Who can say? It was written after other texts were rejected as having been translated by or influenced too heavily by Christian scholarly effort. ( this is not a slight against Christian scholars, I am paraphrasing what is written in the dust jacket of this text ).
My Holy Bible is a King James Version, copyright 1994. -dry smile- I hardly think this was new material 11 years ago. It is a recent edition. How many different KJV’s exist? Dozens? Hundreds? When I went into the Christian Living Bookstore to buy this, there were at least two dozen Bibles for sale. It was rather overwhelming. Luckily, a saleswoman guided me towards a well annotated edition and I went with that.
My BoM that I have sitting before me says the following : (c) 1981 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All Rights Reserved. First English edition published in 1830.
My copy of The Koran was first translated in 1956. ( And yes, I truly do keep all 4 on my desk close at hand. It’s imperative to be able to reach for any one of these during a discussion or to compare or look something up. They take up roughly 8 inches of desk space and define many of the world’s religions. A reasonable investment in desk space, I’d say. 
These different translations tell me things. The words are flexible and alive. English is not the only “living breathing” language on the planet. New translations are common- my BoM plainly states that it is a modified text, bringing the BoM more in line with Joseph Smith’s original translations and away from some mistranslations in previous editions.
Having shared these thoughts, I just re-read the Op. Of the four religious texts on my desk, none of them can claim to be literary works that can stand up to rigorous academic examination. The BoM is no more or less scholarly than the Holy Scriptures ( 5,000-odd years old and counting ), the Holy Bible ( 2,000 years old and counting ) or the Koran ( Mohammed was born in 570 C.E. , so roughly 1, 435 years and counting ).
I do wonder if the hue and cry made over the BoM is because it is a much more recent text than any of the other three I just peered into. I am personally extremely fond of antiquity and history. I’m also aware that just because there was oral history of Moses going up into the Mount and coming down with two tablets of stone and this particular oral history goes back quite a few thousand years, does nothing whatsoever to prove the veracity of that claim. The link I provided above has torn apart quite a bit of what I thought was truth regarding the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.
I tend to side with those in here who have expressed a belief in the ideals and concepts conveyed in the religious text to which they adhere, and are at peace with the inherent lack of ability to verity said texts.
You cannot prove an belief, you can only prove a fact.
Cartooniverse
This summer, (remember that I am in the south hemisphere), I went to Punta del Este, (Uruguay), a couple of days. For those of you that don’t know it’s the summer resort for the very rich and famous of South America.
Everyone was reading the “Da vinci Code” and most were convinced of it’s authenticity. …
Enjoyed your post. Well expressed. The value I get from any religous text has little to do with where it may or may not come from, although haveing some understanding of that is helpful. It comes from whether it helps me to understand my relationship with God and my role in this life. The term scripture has little meaning for me except to help me understand how others may view something. I do think truth matters and holding on to traditions that are less than true can impede our spiritual and social growth.
So you’re the Sunni to the LDS’s Shi’a.
Cartooniverse, speaking only historically and arcaeologically, one difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon is that, even if you cannot demonstrate the Exodus occured, there is an Egypt, there is an Israel, most of the peoples of the Bible existed, and there is record of some of the individual people. None of that can be said of the BoM and, though we have gone off on tangents, since this thread exists, in part, to discuss whether the BoM is valid on those terms, not if it is a valid source of spiritual wisdom, the evidence points to Smith creating it out of the whole cloth during a marathon story-telling session. (Though had he left out all of the “it came to pass”-es the marathon would’ve been about five miles shorter. )
The claim that Joseph Smith just made it all up (or similarly–that Oliver Cowdery made it all up) are handwaving.
The other claim about the origin of the Book of Mormon is that it was copied–IIRC first it was Solomon Spaulding’s lost manuscript (which was handy since the manuscript wasn’t available to compare to) fell through when the manuscript was found. Second was the claim that it was copied from A View of the Hebrews. I’ve not seen any reasonable argument that establishes the case.
One interesting essay is one by Orson Scott Card who is LDS and a science fiction writer. He analyzed the Book of Mormon to see if it had the typical markings of a science fiction story. You can read the essay online.
Well, we agree that there is a lot of hand waving in the discussion. We just disagree which side is doing the waving.
(Sorry, but you walked right into this one! ) Hey, I never said it was GOOD fiction.
And many people accused Smith of forgery in HIS lifetime. But in my skimming (yes, I admit I haven’t yet had time to read it in full and that opens me up to some criticism) Card remarks that the world of the BoM looks nothing at all like the US in the 1820s while “Utopia,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” and “Robinson Crusoe” all show lands that are either just like the England when they were written or lands that are different from England in specific and obvious ways. Uh, yeah, because they are satires of contemporary England. It pretty much have to be recognizable for the satire to work.
But work beckons…
There’s a good joke available from this lead in, but I’ll refrain out of respect for our LDS friends. ;}
And remarkably that had nothing to do with the point Card was making.
Look, you’ve already said you don’t care about my religion. Your actions demonstrate that you’re not interested in actually investigating and participating in debate about the Book of Mormon, so drop the thread already (or at least pay attention).
I think the claims are that these two books were the foundation of, or may have played a role in the writing of the BOM. Not that they were copied verbatim.
There are parallels in Spaulding’s book and the Book of Mormon, such as a story of finding some ancient writings hidden under a stone that contained the record of an ancient mighty race that were the ancestors of the American Indians.
Quite a coincidence wouldn’t you say?
The Author of a View of The Hebrews lived only a short way from J Smith’s birthplace and Oliver Cowdery went to the same church as the author. Another amazing coincidence? It does prove that the idea of American Indians being descendents of the Hebrews was a popular theory at the time J. Smith “found” the Book of Mormon. It may not be conclusive proof against the J.Smith story but it certainly doesn’t tip the scales in his favor.
Obviously J.Smith was not a stupid man. To copy another book verbatim would be pretty stupid because you could be easily discovered. I think it’s likely that J. Smith and others borrowed ideas from a number of books including “The Wonders of Nature and providence” by Joshua Priest 1825 and these others mentioned, and wrote the BOM. Several books written during that same period that have similarities and parallels makes it hard to believe it was written 2000 years ago.
Thank you for demonstrating once again that a TBM’s mind is never open to ANY rational criticism, no matter how fair or mildly delivered. You are just like Creationists in this regard: all you do is state and restate your religious bias and call all criticisms “spurious” and, in your case, “anti-Mormon”, as if truth played favorites. I’ve had hundreds of conversations about Mormonism with hundreds of Mormons and you all insist that even the best-documented facts are spurious, “anti-Mormon” lies. It’s the only way you can defend your beliefs.
It’s almost as petty as petty gets, my friend, but I’m not surprised you’re being petty about it and refuse to acknowledge your pettiness; It’s what I’ve come to expect from TBM’s.
There’s no more clinching rebuttal of Mormonism than the distortions and untruths they use to defend their faith.
The following quotations are from: One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, by Richard Abanes…
Joseph Smith, Jr., probably gravitated toward money-digging due to his mother and father’s predilection for occult ritual, white magic, superstitions, paranormal phenomena, divination, and treasure hunting. An innate interest in such issues seemed to have been very active not only in them, but also in various members of their family lines going back as far the seventeenth century. Neighbor Fayette Lapham learned from Joseph, Sr. that he was “a firm believer in witchcraft and other supernatural things; and had brought up his family in the same belief.” Lapham further recalled: “[Smith] also believed that there was a vast amount of money buried somewhere in the country; that it would some day be found; that he himself had spent both time and money searching for it, with divining rods.”…
Joshua Stafford, for instance, said that shortly after he became acquainted with Joseph’s family around 1819/20 “they commenced digging for hidden treasures … and told marvelous stories about ghosts, hob-goblins, caverns, and various other mysterious matters.”…
Consider the text from a particularly relevant 1831 Palmyra Reflector article:
“We are not able to determine whether the elder Smith was ever concerned in money digging transactions previous to his emigration front Vermont, or not, but it is a well authenticated fact that soon after his arrival here he evinced a firm belief in the existence of hidden treasures, and that this section of country abounded in them – He also revived, or in other words propagated the vulgar, yet popular belief that these treasures were held in charge by some evil spirit, which was supposed to be either the devil himself, or some one of his most trusty favorites.”
…William Stafford, a neighbor and fellow money-digger, stated that Joseph, Jr., used a seer stone not only to “see all things within and under the earth,” but also to discover “the spirits in whose charge these treasures were, clothed in ancient dress.” According to Jesse Townsend, Joseph gazed into his stone to “see chests of money buried in the earth. He was also a fortune-teller, and he claimed to know where stolen goods went.”…
One of the earliest documents referring to Smith’s money-digging reputation is an 1830 letter from Rev. John Sherer to the American Home Missionary Society. In this communication, Sherer describes Smith as a person who pretends to look “through a glass, to see money underground.” Rev. Sherer also labeled Smith a “juggler,” a term that used to denote someone who manipulated people for fraudulent purposes-i.e., a con-man. …
On some occasions, Smith made animal sacrifices to appease whatever spirits might be guarding the buried treasure. Emily M. Austin recounted one time when Joseph told his money-digging company “there was a charm on the pots of money, and if some animal was killed and the blood sprinkled around the place, then they could get it.” Austin remembered: “So they killed a dog and tried this method of obtaining the precious metal… Alas! how vivid was the expectation when the blood of poor Tray [i.e., the dog] was used to take off the charm, and after all to find their mistake … and now they were obliged to give up in despair.”
Hiel Lewis, a cousin of Joseph’s wife, Emma, reported that the sacrifice of white dogs, black cats, and other animals “was an indispensable part or appendage of the art which Smith, the embryo prophet, was then practicing.” Sometimes, however, Joseph and his companions relied solely on magical rituals and occult ceremonies. Consider the following incidents, described by two different acquaintances of Joseph, Jr.:
Episode # 1:
“Joseph, Sen. first made a circle, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter. This circle, said he, contains the treasure. He then stuck in the ground a row of witch hazel sticks, around the said circle, for the purpose of keeping off the evil spirits. Within this circle he made another, of about eight or ten feet in diameter. He walked around three times on the periphery of this last circle, muttering to himself something which I could not understand. He next stuck a steel rod in the centre of the circles, and then enjoined profound silence upon us, lest we should arouse the evil spirit who had the charge of these treasures. After we had dug a trench about five feet in depth around the rod… [Joseph, Sr.] went to the house to inquire of young Joseph the cause of our disappointment. He soon returned and said, that Joseph had remained all this time in the house, looking in his stone and watching the motions of the evil spirit that he saw the spirit come up to the ring and as soon as it beheld the cone which we had formed around the rod, it caused the money to sink.”
Episode # 2:
“The sapient Joseph discovered, northwest of my house a chest of gold watches; but as they were in the possession of the evil spirit, it required skill and stratagem to obtain them, Accordingly, orders were given to stick a parcel of large stakes in the ground, several rods around, in a circular form… over the spot where the treasures were deposited… Samuel F. Lawrence, with a drawn sword in his hand, marched around to guard any assault which his Satanic majesty might be disposed to make. Meantime, the rest of the company were busily employed in digging for the watches, They worked as usual till quite exhausted, But, in spite of their defender, Lawrence, and their bulwark of stakes, the devil came off victorious, and carried away the watches.”
Both of these episodes ended unsuccessfully after the treasure was either stolen away or moved out of reach by demonic forces. Such outcomes were typical in tales circulated by nineteenth-century money-diggers. In “The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844”, history professor John L. Brooke of Tufts University observes:
“One of the central themes in the treasure-hunting sagas was the volatility of precious metal: chests of money `bloom’ to the surface of the earth only to fall away when the diggers utter a sound or violate a ritual practice.”
… [A]t some point in 1826/27, Smith began telling others, most notably his money-digging friends, about the existence of a golden book he would soon be retrieving from a secret place that had been revealed to him through his seer stone. Smith originally attached no religious significance to the mysterious volume, but instead, touted it as a book that would, according to neighbor Parley Chase (b. 1806), “tell him how to get money that was buried in the ground.” In other words, it would compliment to his money-digging activities.
Abner Cole, a former justice of the peace who became editor of the “Palmyra Reflector”, recalled a similar explanation that came directly from young Joseph’s father. His account provides invaluable information that suggests how the whole series of stories involving visions probably began:
[T]he elder Smith declared that his son Jo had seen the spirit, (which he then described as a little old man with a long heard,) and was informed that he (Jo) under certain circumstances, eventually should obtain great treasures, and that in due time he (the spirit) would furnish him (Jo) with a book, which would give an account of the Ancient inhabitants (antediluvians,) of this country, and where they had deposited their substance, consisting of costly furniture, &c… which had ever since that time remained secure in his (the spirit’s) charge, in large and spacious chambers, in sundry places in this vicinity."
Eventually, however, Joseph decided that instead of keeping the book as a means of finding more treasure, it would be far more profitable to sell the volume as a speculation about America’s ancient inhabitants and their origins. [Note the absence of any reference thus far to angels or visions!] Neighbor Joseph Capron remembered an especially enlightening conversation he had with Joseph, Sr., who never even intimated that the volume would be religious:
"[Joseph, Jr.] pretended to find the Gold Plates. This scheme, he believed, would relieve the family from all pecuniary embarrassment. His father told me, that when the book was published, they would be enabled, from the profits of the work, to carry into successful operation of the money digging business. He gave me no intimation, at that time that the book was to be of a religious character, or that it had any thing to do with revelation. He declared it to be a speculation, and said he, “when it is completed, my family will be placed on a level above the generality of mankind.”
But Joseph kept changing his mind again and again, not only about the hidden book’s contents, but also about how he discovered its existence, and how he retrieved it. He could not keep his story straight, nor could his siblings, or parents. Parley Chase recalled that when it came to explaining exactly how the plates were found, the Smiths “scarcely ever told two stories alike.” In hindsight, some of these accounts sound like a cross between Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819-20) and assorted pirate tales featuring the likes of Captain Kidd (1645-1701), whom Joseph, interestingly enough, claimed to have seen “sailing on the Susquehanna River” one day while gazing into his peepstone. (He also said he saw where Kidd had buried “two pots of gold and silver.”)
Long before area residents heard any of the “first” or “second” vision accounts thus far discussed, a number of radically different explanations about the golden plates had been circulated by the Smiths. On one occasion, Joseph, Jr. told his wife’s cousin, Hiel Lewis, that he learned about the golden plates in a dream, and that on his first attempt to get them in 1823, he was “knocked down” several times by a mysterious power. Joseph then claimed to have seen the ghost of a man “standing over the spot, who, to him appeared like a Spaniard, having a long beard coming down over his breast to about here, (Smith putting his hand to the pit of his stomach) WITH HIS (the ghost’s) THROAT CUT FROM EAR TO EAR, AND THE BLOOD STREAMING DOWN, who told him that he could not get it [the plates] alone; that another person whom he, Smith, would know at first sight, must come with him, and then he could get it” (emphases in original).
Fayette Lapham heard the same scenario from Joseph, Sr. – i.e., that the golden plates had been revealed to young Joseph via a dream. And that during this dream “a very large and tall man appeared to him, dressed in an ancient suit of clothes, and the clothes were bloody.” The gruesome apparition told Joseph “there was a valuable treasure, buried many years since, and not far from that place … [and] he would direct him to the place where it was deposited, in such a manner that he could obtain it.”
Lapham was then told the rest of the story just as it had been related to Emma’s cousin, including the part about Joseph, Jr. being struck down and seeing the Spaniard appear at the location. According to Joseph, Sr., the macabre ghost had been “sworn to take charge of and protect that property, until the time should arrive for it to be exhibited to the world of mankind; and, in order to prevent his making a improper disclosure, he was murdered or slain on the spot, and the treasure had been under his charge ever since. He said to him [Joseph] that … if he would come again one year from that time, he could have them.”
The Smiths eventually changed Joseph’s “dream” of a ghost to a “vision” of a spirit (but not yet an angel). This version was told to Willard Chase. He recalled that in June of 1827 Joseph Smith, Sr. related an astonishing story that allegedly had been unfolding since 1823 (the same year now accepted by Mormons as the time of Joseph’s second vision). According to the elder Smith, a “spirit” had appeared in a vision and communicated to his son that “in a certain place there was a record on plates of gold, and that he was the person that must obtain them.” The spirit then instructed young Joseph to go to this location on September 22, 1823, but to do so "dressed in black clothes, and riding a black horse with a switch tail. Joseph was then supposed to demand the book, using a special secret word, and after obtaining plates, “go directly away, and neither lay it down nor look behind him.”
Joseph, Sr. informed Chase that his son did in fact dress himself in a suit of black clothes and borrowed a black horse. He journeyed to the hill and briefly retrieved the plates (in 1823) until they supernaturally flew back to where they had been. Apparently, Joseph had placed them down to adjust the positioning of supplies on his horse, which disobeyed the spirit’s command to “go directly away.” Consequently, the plates slipped back into the hill. One fascinating addition to this particular story involved an as yet unheard of toad-like creature that appeared when Joseph tried to re-obtain the plates after they had deposited themselves back into the hill. This entity “assumed the appearance of a man” and struck Joseph on the side of his head, telling Joseph that it was not yet time to retrieve the plates and that he would have to return in one year.
A subsequent version of Smith’s ever-changing tale, one sounding a bit more Christian, was related to Martin Harris, who in turn told it to the “Rochester Gem”, which published a synopsis of it:
“In the autumn of 1827 a man named Joseph Smith of Manchester, in Ontario County, said that he had been visited by the spirit of the Almighty in a dream, and informed that in a certain hill in that town, was deposited a Golden Bible, containing an ancient record of a divine origin. He states that after a third visit from the same spirit in a dream, he proceeded to the spot, removed earth, and there found the bible, together with a huge pair of spectacles.”
Over the years these yarns gradually were revised and expanded, eventually becoming today’s official account of the 1823 “second” vision featuring the angel Moroni. One element of the earlier stories, however, did not easily give way. Until well into the late 1800s it was widely understood that Smith found the golden plates not by a dream, or a ghost, or a vision – but by looking into his peep-stone and seeing where they had been deposited. Orasmus Turner recalled one day when Joseph was away from home, and his family inadvertently revealed how he actually had found the plates, if indeed, there ever were any:
“*n his absence, the rest of the family made a new version of it to one of their neighbors. They spewed him such a pebble as may any day be picked up on the shore of Lake Ontario … They said it was by looking at this stone, in a hat, the light excluded, that Joseph discovered the plates… It was the same stone the Smith’s had used in money digging, and in some pretended discoveries of stolen property.”
This may have been the most prevalent Mormon understanding of the events leading to the retrieval of Smith’s golden plates. Even Brigham Young, Smith’s successor to the LDS presidency, knew that Smith used his peep-stone to find the golden plates. In 1856, Mormon pioneer Hosea Stout recorded in his diary that Young actually “exhibited the Seer’s stone with which the Prophet Joseph discovered the plates of the Book of Mormon.” Martin Harris, one of Smith’s closest allies and a crucial figure in the creation of the Book of Mormon, also testified to the peep-stone’s use:
“Joseph had a stone which was dug from the well of Mason Chase… It was by means of this stone that he first discovered these plates… [Joseph) had before described the manner of his finding the plates. He found them by looking in the stone… The family had likewise told me the same thing.”
No one will probably ever know exactly how these earliest stories developed and merged. But one thing is certain – all of the religious aspects of Smith’s adventures came much later. Orasmus Turner wrote: “The primitive designs of Mrs. Smith, her husband, Jo, and Cowdery, was money-making; blended with which perhaps, was a desire for notoriety, to be obtained by cheat and fraud. The idea of being the founders of a new sect, was an after thought, in which they were aided by others.” In agreement with Turner, Joseph Smith’s cousin-in-law, Hiel Lewis, summarized:
“In all this narrative, there was not one word about ‘visions of God,’ or of angels or heavenly revelations. All his information was by that dream, and that bleeding ghost. The heavenly visions and messages of angels, etc., contained in Mormon books were after-thoughts, revised to order.”
Many of Joseph’s doctrines would end up fitting into this category of “afterthoughts” – e.g., his revelations concerning God’s nature, inhabitants on the moon, Caucasians advancing to godhood, and the notion that Blacks, Indians, and other people of color are cursed spirits… Smith’s most significant “afterthought,” however, would be his role as a latter-day prophet commissioned to lead humanity into the glorious millennial kingdom of God.
Ambushed, I’m not sure what you had hoped to provide with that last post. All of the quotations are attributed to a work created after Smith oranized his church. At this point, you will hold that you have provided clear evidence of the avarice and bunkum of Smith and your opponentswill point to the same work as a collection of lies and distortions, gathered after the fact, to libel the church.
The OP of this thread had asked for a deconstruction of the Book of Mormon. While you have not violated any rules and I am not suggesting that you are wrong to provide this information, I suspect that this will not further the discussion so much as hijack it into a debate over the personailty of Smith.
I think this thread would be better served by taking the actual BoM and challenging its words based on historical information rather than making one more general assult on the origins and (purported) truths of the CoJCoLDS.
ambushed, did you simply cut and paste that lengthy screed from here? You appear to have even included the ellipsis, though you dropped most of the boldfacing.
Debate does not consist of parroting a long excerpt from the latest criticism of the subject.
Your source has the same problem as most polemical works–it abuses quotes with abandon. Here’s an excellent of that particular book doing precisely that.
More examples abound.
As for View of the Hebrews, I find the parallels limited. The text is online. Read it yourself in context and let me know how similar you find them. It’s on the list of books I plan to read, but I’m planning on plowing through Knuth’s Art of Computer Programming first.
emarkp, you cited a mediocre but commercially successful sci-fi author clumsily propagandizing about his church and scripture, yet throughout this thread you have automatically rejected criticisms of the veracity of BoM by claiming that they arise from “anti-Mormons”.
This is not a fair approach because it seems too much like a game of “my cites are the only cites”. You welcome apologetics and sympathetic writings, but seem to reject any critical scholarly work that reaches conclusions you do not agree with.
Although I respect Card for clearly pointing out his bias right at the start of the piece (mind you, it seems a lot of Mormon writers begin by declaring their love for BoM and their church, so this could well be something other than a declaration of bias), let me note that this essay by Card is even worse than his fiction, which can at least be taken as entertainment.
I am ignoring the bulk of false dilemmas Card throws up in the interest of keeping this more or less straightforward. The case begins thus:
EITHER
Well, that is a possibility, but still far from the magic bullet required to establish historical credibility for the claims in BoM, which is why much linguistic analysis on this subject strikes me as a diversion (particularly when it is not a linguist doing it). What should be more important is the search for items of solid, corroborating evidence: for example, the existence of such a language as “Reformed Egyptian” or any mention of it (no luck there); any evidence whatsoever that a substantial number of Israelite descendents existed and had a culture in pre-Colombian Americas (zero); the recovery of any source material for the BoM other than the Bible (none I am aware of); scientific support for the existence of the mysterious materials used to translate the alleged scriptural plates (uh-uh), and so forth.
OR
Shaky final conclusion. If no influence is identified, what does that prove? Nothing at all, except that A) we can’t for whatever reason (including bias and desire to believe) identify the influence, and/or B) that the author was pretty good at producing pastiches, myths, frauds, etc. Card sets it up right from the beginning so that the reader is asked to believe that either BoM is “in” by default, or it’s “out” for reasons that should be fairly evident to readers of his piece. In fact, from a scientific or at least scholastic point of view, BoM is “out” until proven otherwise, and it won’t be a mediocre writer’s exercise in persuasive writing to change the mind of skeptics.
Even assuming that, because BoM has multiple characters and voices, stories, a built-in background, etc., this is indeed a “seriously complex” work, what does that prove? Fiction can be complex. Untruth can be complex. Art can be especially complex. Complexity is no guarantee that something is genuine.
Well, I wonder if anything has changed, since “fundamentally ignorant” perfectly describes a planet on which The Da Vinci Code is taken as informative. Consider for a moment Card’s words above as applied to BoM. Keep in mind that we have no corroborating evidence for BoM’s veracity and authenticity, only the assertions in BoM and the belief of LDS or RLDS adherents, boosted by the highly dubious body of work published by the likes of FARMS (which selects work on the basis of positive conclusions, not scholarly value), and supported or rejected by third party inquiries not always without acrimony.
To many people, BoM IS an obvious hoax because of numerous problems with the text – historical issues and inconsistencies but also linguistic ones, such as the numerous errors that appear in the original text, errors that cannot be all accounted on the basis of differing spelling practices, since in many cases they do not even adhere to recognized forms of English.
The important distinction here is between a work of poetry and the scriptural basis for a religion. McPherson produced the works of Ossian and more or less left it at that. Joseph Smith produced a work and slapped his name on the front page of the first edition (1830), stating: “Joseph Smith, Jr. The author and proprietor of this work”. All later editions (1837 on) quickly changed that to read, simply, “translator”. Was there really such a difference in American English ‘twixt the meaning of the words “author and proprietor” and “translator” from 1830 to 1837? It’s difficult to fathom and impossible to believe without better documentation.
But back to Ossian and McPherson: let’s leave the harmless poets aside, for they seek only to entertain us. Let’s look at other attempts to set up a religion in more modern times, not in a time that was, according to Card, “fundamentally ignorant”.
And we end up with Dianetics/Scientology, which officially became a religious philosophy in 1953 (originally it was secular). Scientology is a very easy target and has been done to death, let’s instead take a look at some of the items that Hubbard recycled and added to, including the work of Alistair Crowley. Crowley, who thought himself the greatest living poet, remains influential to this day, yet his Occult Sciences and other works were little more than plagiarisms, adaptations, syntheses, or semi-digestions of Eastern works not yet popular in the West. He claimed to be “translating” these works, yet to my knowledge he did not speak any Eastern languages. On such weak bases and his own personality, Crowley built the Ordo Templi Orientis, led the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, created Thelema (which Hubbard later used as inspiration for Scientology), and literally wrote the modern book on “magick”, to put it mildly. He also became divinely inspired and put to paper words that were supposedly dictated to him by higher beings.
The similarities between Crowley and Smith, who at first glance are so different, are then quite a few. Who would have thought that one of the foremost names in Satanism and the occult would share so much with the founder of a branch of Christianity often considered heretical?
Was Crowley’s work complex? Certainly. Influential? Highly, even if you consider only what Scientology ripped off. Respected? Yes, to this day those fascinated with the occult must be familiar with Crowley’s work. Much like Mormons with BoM, there is no shortage of persons, including educated persons, who do not doubt Crowley’s work, but are unable to corroborate it. So what is the difference between Crowley’s legacy and Smith’s, besides the nature of the content?
I wandered on the subject and ran out of time, but fortunately I just found a link that gives Card’s feeble essay the treatment it deserves. It shows how silly and reaching Card’s example of McPherson/Ossian is. I rearranged the contents to do a blow-by-blow analysis:
Further, from the same source:
And, specifically on language:
Perhaps most interestingly:
I would not describe myself as an expert on BoM by any means, but Card’s essay was sloppy and contrived even to my unitiated eyes, and it doesn’t take a genius to identify the immediate problems with BoM. The fact remains that no corroboration exists for BoM or the claims of Joseph Smith and his circle, making this subject – as with practically all religions – an issue of faith and not, as various Mormon scholars try to insist, knowledge.
As a former believer in the J. Smith story I found the proposed Hebrew ancestry of the American Indians a pretty significant parallel.The fact that it was a much discussed theory of that era came as a surprise to me. Then read the section in that book about the prophesies of Isaiah eluding to the Americas includeing Isaiah 18:1 “Ho, land shadowing with wings which is beyond the rivers of Etheopia.” Every member of LDS and RLDS has heard that verse a thousand times. Would you call that a significant parallel? Add that to the ancient writings parallel from Spauldings story that I listed above. It begins to seem a little less than a startling NEW revelation.
In the decades since my introduction to the BOM I’ve become aware of a couple of religous construtions. Paul Twitchell, the founder of Eckankar borrowed his beliefs from a little known form of Yoga in India. Then there’s the example of Dianetics already mentioned. Add it all up. Then add up the evidence supporting the BOM and see which way the scales tip.
Perhaps we should have a thread on archeological evidence.
I was moved by several passages in the Book of Mormon when I read them years ago. I still value them. Some of the spiritual principles I learned while I was a member I still hold as true, however, since a comittment to God is a comittment to the truth, there are some things I’ve had to discard as the teachings of men. Those are the things Jesus told us not to follow.
I did say that but have since explained that my attitude has changed to “I don’t care for your religion.” It doesn’t stand out in that regard; I don’t care for most religions.
But I also said that I have been investigatiting more, on both sides of the issue. It hasn’t changed my opinion, though.
I’d love to see it. Is there any?
And Abe, comparing Smith with Hubbard, while it smacks of grabbing low-hanging fruit, was naughty but comparing him with Crowley was positively wicked!
Many years ago remember seeing a couple of books on the archeological evidence that supported the BOM. I lapped it up at the time. Now I’d be interested in seeing a more scientific approach. As far as I can tell science has dismissed the concept of the American Indians being the descendents of the Hebrews. Maybe I’m wrong. There are some other issues. Surely we could expect some positive evidence since 1830. I see we’ve had no LDS posts today and theres a new LDS thread in GD. Hmmmmmm perhaps I’ll go there.