I had hoped to provide a tiny smattering of verified facts regarding the grossly dishonest and disingenuous history of the story of the alleged gold plates, which is exactly what I did, thank you. The fact of Joseph Smith, Jr’s slaughtering of house pets and other ludicrously laughable activities in superstitious rituals along the way to “discovering” the alleged plates shows us something very significant about the probable author of that tome that allows us to deconstruct the BoM more reliably and with greater insight. The fact that the Mormons attack these confirmed facts as lies is not valid ground for your criticism of me or my purpose. Your post is presumptuous and unjustified. This is the first time my respect for you has dipped. Facts are always relevant, and your down-casting my recounting of them is poor sportsmanship. I don’t understand why you’re busying yourself with irrelevant jousting with me rather than on critiquing Mormon falsehoods.
That’s profoundly irrelevant! Every single written sentence examining the history of Christianity was written after the development of Christianity. History always looks backward! Why should the history of the Mormon Church be held to a different standard???
Yes, cheating and lying and distortion of the truth is exactly what they do to defend their faith. That can’t be helped; these usually wonderful but deeply misguided people have no choice. Those facts needed laying out and I can’t understand your zeal to attack the presentation of facts, which are all too rare. You disappoint me, truly.
A proper deconstruction of the BoM will benefit more from facts – particularly confirmed facts revealing its author (certainly the author of it’s tale) to be a superstitious snake-oil salesman and inveterate fabricator – than from your criticisms of me for recounting facts!
No. It was an attempt to keep this thread on an even keel. Had you provided more evidence published before the “discovery” of the plates, or news accounts contemporary withthe discovery of the plates, it would have had a direct bearing on the “deconstruction” issue. The problem with your information–which may be 100% accurate, and I have not challenged its quality–is that it leaves us with a 160 year old “he said/they said” dispute which will soon degenerate into claims by defenders of the BoM that your sources were simply biased liars while you assert that their sources were biased liars.
Your quotations from the Palmyra Reflector of 1831 and the Rev. Sherer from 1830 come very close to the sort of thing that I would hope to see in this thread, but it was unclear, in context, whether they actually referred to the elder or younger Smith and you then supported them with quotations that were clearly reminiscenses recorded at a later date. (And if the Josephs Smith were either charlatans or deluded but still happened to stumble on a real revelation from God, however unlikely, the reminiscences you’ve cited do not deconstruct the Book of Mormon, which was the topic of the thread.)
Note again, I am not in any way suggesting that anything you posted contained errors. I only note that since nearly all the sources that you quoted were testifying after the fact–and after they had already been in conflict with the nascent LDS church–it does nothing to move the discussion in this thread forward because it will rapidly degenerate into a volley of “is not/is so” posts.
Note the differences between your post and Abe’s, in which he deconstructs an apologia for the BoM using independent criticism.
I did not tell you not to post your information; I just questioned the wisdom of your post in this thread at this time. (And just to be clear to all: I was posting as an interested observer without any attempt to invoke my Moderator powers.)
We haven’t had several rounds of that already? Then you’ve missed most of the exchanges between emarkp and me and our rousing game of “Your cites SUCK!”
You call those things FACTS pretty easily. What evidence do you have to call them that? I have repeatedly seen people who call themselves Christians distort the truth or eagerly embrace a rumor that supports their position. I don’t know if you’re a Christian and I’m not accuseing you of anything. I am wondering if you’ve done any additional research to verify what you posted and now refer to as FACTS. Its not a fact because someone published it in a book. There’s lots of interesting info posted on websites but it’s unwise to accept it as factual until you have several independent sources.
You really ought to read the whole thread before posting. (I’ve always wanted to say that considering how often it’s said to me. ) I refer you back to Post #20 and my linkage to the court record of Joseph Smith’s 1826 trial for glass looking, which is in support of the later quotes from frial records, which seem to not currently exist in their original form, making it easier for emarkp to dismiss them all in Post #21.
No, but using the ever-popular Ockham’s Razor…nah, that’s overdone. Instead, we’ll look at it like trial lawyers: the testimony of charlatans and the deluded does not stand up well in court.
But what ambushed used WAS “independent criticism!” It is unfortunate that all we have for contemporary records are either from the Mormons or their detractors. It would be much easier if it were like it is for Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, where there are no independent contemporary records. Even Josephus wrote forty years after Jesus’ crucifiction, not three, like ambushed’s references. It is less relevant than you seem to think that “nearly all the sources that you quoted were testifying after the fact–and after they had already been in conflict with the nascent LDS church.” Before that there would NOT have been much record of Joseph Smith because he was a hired hand at a local farm and would only be discussed when he got arrested. In fact, we are fortunate that he WAS arrested because he would otherwise be a part of the invisible rabble before he published his book.
The problem with researching the Book of Mormon is that there does not seem to be much middle ground between the sides (except the vast numbers of people who care far too little to bother getting involved). Any citation by the holy people who accept the BoM as the Revealed Word of God is dismissed by the others as hogwash perpetrated by people who are, at best, seriously deluded, or, at worst, criminal frauds. Any counter citations by the noble folks who wish to protect others from delusion are seen as patent falsehoods and villainous lies by the others. No true debate appears possible because nobody is moving from their platforms. Finding serious research accepted by both sides appears impossible.
And this presents an objection to my observation in what way?
That would tend to reduce the “independence” of the criticism, no?
You folks can hammer this thread in any direction you choose. I’m not going to tell anyone how they must post. I simply noted that a deconstruction of the Book of Mormon might be possible outside an attack on Joseph Smith Jr. or the origins of the LDS. (For example, a comparison of purported dates written in the book against known history and archaeology would be an independent criticism, just as the lack of evidence for a Davidic “empire” is an independent criticism of the books of Samuel and Kings and Chronicles.) If you are saying that there is no way to perform such a deconstruction without attacking the persons involved, then I guess I’ll leave you to it.
I read the Book of Mormon several times between 1974 and 1984. One thing that struck me as strange was that nearly every verse of it begins with And. An inordinate number of verses begin with the phrase “And it came to pass that”. As a 9 year old boy I recognized this. I was told in Seminary class (high school religion classes) of a study carried out by linguists who found the writing style to differ from one book in the BoM to another, proving that it was written by several authors. (Now I hear that study was carried out at BYU. It doesn’t surprise me.) I stayed after class to ask my seminary teacher why almost every verse begins with the word And if the language differed so much. He told me that it was transcribed by Oliver Cowdery that way.
I find it rather convenient to blame anything slightly suspicious on an early “Apostate” involved in the founding of the LDS Church.
Any takers? Do any Mormon dopers have an answer for that, or has it been corrected in the lastest reprint of the BoM?
Well, it was transcribed that way, because that’s how it was dictated. I think perhaps your Seminary teacher was grabbing something out of the air–not exactly unusual for Seminary teachers IME.
“And it came to pass” is considered a Hebraism. It’s the translation of a Hebrew term (which is much shorter in the original) which is found about 1200 times in the Hebrew Bible, but since the KJV translators found the expression tiresome and redundant, was only translated as such about 700 times. Other times it’s “and it became,” “and it was,” “and,” or ignored. It is characteristically used in summaries and histories, not in speeches, songs, prayers, or other forms.
In Spanish, it translates as one word; English simply does not have the proper term in a shorter version. The Danish BoM frequently skips it and uses an * to show where it’s been omitted. It has not been changed in the English BoM, as it is not considered to be a mistake, but an integral part of the book’s language.
Other interesting Hebraisms (I have a long, involved list, but here are a few examples) in the BoM include more phraseology that is weird-sounding and cumbersome in English, such as
possession and construct: words of plainness and house of the king rather than plain words or the king’s house
adverbials: with patience or with much harshness, not patiently or very harshly
simile curses: the life of king Noah shall be valued even as a garment in a hot furnace (Mos. 12:3)
lots of “ands”: Biblical Hebrew uses and much more often than English, as does the BoM.
repetition of the possessive pronoun: “Turn, all ye Gentiles, from your wicked ways; and repent of your evil doings, of your lyings and deceivings, and of your whoredoms, and of your secret abominations…” (it goes on for seven more yours). (3 Ne. 30:2)
Interestingly enough, Smith actually went through the BoM manuscript, editing it for clarity, before it was sent off to the printers. He simplified a lot of expressions that were Hebraic in construction. The BoM was originally less English-y than it is now.
I found a little bit of information of “from whence no traveler can return.” Compare it with a list of ancient Middle Eastern terms for the land of the dead: “the hole, the earth, the land of no return, the path of no turning back, the road whose course never turns back, the distant land…” It’s not exactly something that a 6th century BCE Middle Eastern man would never think of saying. It’s also not an uncommon phrase in English, so I see no reason to consider it concrete evidence of plagiarism.
Since when is a multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winner “mediocre”?
I have not “automatically rejected criticisms”. I’ve evaluated them and rejected them for reasons I’ve listed.
Regarding the EITHER/OR, you’ve failed to separate the either/or from the evidence Card claims supports the conclusion. The dichotomy Card proposes is: [ol][li]If the account he gave us is true, then the Book of Mormon must be what it purports to be, which is the record of an ancient people written by an ancient author, and Joseph Smith’s role in providing us with the Book of Mormon was solely as translator.[]Or he did not get the Book of Mormon the way he said, in which case somebody in the 1820s in the United States made it up, and in that case it is fiction[/ol] The corresponding “therefores” are: [ol][] Therefore, we should find his influence in the book, or the influence of any other 1820s American, only where we would expect to find a translator’s influence: that is, in matters of word choice, consciously or unconsciously linking Book of Mormon events to experiences that he and his American readers could understand, choosing the clearest language he had available to him, fitting ideas he found in the book into existing American concepts as best he could.[*] we should find Joseph Smith’s or someone else’s influence there as author. In that case all of the ideas and events in the book should come out of the mind of an 1820s American, and it should reflect faithfully the kind of thing an 1820s American would do in trying to create a record which he was going to pass off as an ancient document.[/ol] Your objection:[/li]
Doesn’t make sense. Card isn’t attempting to do that. He’s evaluating the text for evidence of when it was written and by whom based on the text itself. You’ve done some handwaving and complained about other evidence. To wit:
So here you’re dismissing the textual analysis because it isn’t supported by archaelogical evidence. Which isn’t criticizing Card’s essay at all.
As an aside, why would you expect “Reformed Egyption” to appear anywhere outside of the Book of Mormon? The phrase is coined in the book itself, and there is no indication in the record that it is used on anything except the sacred records on plates (see Moroni 9:32-33).
Right. Then if no archaelogical evidence is found for the Book of Mormon, what does that prove?
You seem to have missed one of the closing paragraphs:
Card is not trying to prove the Book of Mormon. Claiming that he doesn’t succeed in proving it is a strawman.
False. He points out that given the either/or premise, we would expect to see certain things. Then he looks at whether those things are present or not. You’ve not addressed his points at all.
You keep asking “what does this prove” yet Card isn’t trying to prove anything. He’s evaluating the evidence to see which direction it points.
A seriously complex work suggests something more than a 24-year old farmer who was barely literate.
I think you’ve misunderstood what this comment means–at least I read it as a time “fundamentally ignorant” of ancient Celtic poetry. Ignorant is not a bad word. It just means that the people at the time didn’t know what ancient Celtic poetery looked like.
Enumerate these “numerous errors” please. And keep in mind, bad grammar in the text supports the idea that Joseph Smith as translator was a relatively uneducated farmer. It does not support the theory of someone capable of producing a work like the Book of Mormon by himself.
In order to secure a copyright on the book, that was the necessary verbiage. As B. H. Roberts wrote:
(Emphasis mine.)
An analysis which is riddled with errors and contradictions. On the issue of what Americans thought about the origins of the Native Americans in the 1820s, the author lists a number of assertions about what they believed. So we have duelling assertions between this essay and Card’s. Notably, Packham elides over the differences in his claims. For instance the idea that the American Indians were descended from the Hebrews is a tricky way to assert similarity instead of the actual difference. Card explicitly mentions that contemporary theories all pointed to the Lost Ten Tribes, not simply the Hebrews, whereas the Book of Mormon account occurs before the captivity.
An outright falsehood is Packham’s claim that Joseph Smith presented anything as a translation of the Kinderhook Plates (which he misspells as “Kinderhood”):
A brief history of the Kinderhook Plates can be found [here](The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints august 1981.htm/kinderhook plates brought to joseph smith appear to be a nineteenthcentury hoax.htm). I find that whole issue of the hoax to be fascinating, but nowhere does Joseph Smith claim to have translated them. That unfortunately puts a big hole in critics’ claims that he was taken in on the hoax.
More falsehood:
I’m unable to find Card saying that Whitmer left “not over anything having to do with the Book of Mormon” or anything which could be so construed.
Indeed it was your post and the webpage you linked to that was sloppy and contrived. You didn’t address Card’s actual claims.
I referred you back to essays which you could have easily found using a popular search engine that show the fallacies of the link you provided.
Furthremore, I now refer you to a thread from a few years ago in which I showed how the Tanners (the authors of the text you linked to) were utter frauds.
It was an amateurish hack that he cut/pasted (and I’ll note he neglected to mention where he got those particular clips from). I posted a link which shows how erroneous the work was, by showing full quotes in context.
That is true. The only groups who are willing to spend the effort researching the topic are the anti-Mormons who have an agenda of attacking the church, and the apologists who defend it against the accusations.
dangermom posted (on the first page) the name of the one of the few works that does try to address the issue from an objective standpoint. I may even get around to reading it someday.
Ah, an authority in Objectivity has spoken, but he has failed to point out how I am not being objective. I’ll have a go at your response when time permits, but I wanted to address the above quoted extract, since, as it happens, I do know a few things about Sci-fi – rather more than I know about BoM.
Orson Scott Card is a mediocre sci-fi writer. His highest accomplishment is often considered Ender’s Game, which is Diet Sci-fi at best, is stylistically unremarkable, and offers little or nothing new. Winning a Nebula or a Hugo is possible if you are a mediocre writer pumping out mediocre books. Notice I am not saying Card is “bad”, merely that he is not as distinguished as his inflated reputation suggests.
If you don’t agree with the Card example, consider The Forever War, which collected awards and praise too, but which was little more than a treatment of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. The reason it won those awards is that it was taken in context of the Vietnam war and resonated accordingly (Haldeman later pointed out it was NOT about Vietnam). It’s an OK war book, and not very good sci-fi.
It is possible for mediocre writers (and even bad ones) to win awards, just as it is possible for good writers not to win any at all.
Card’s essay, which you defend with a seeming indignation, was rather worse than his fiction. His fiction is OK summer fare, while that essay was cagal for the reasons already stated and cited.
I was not convinced by your arguments, which appear more like “They’re Mormon-haters who can’t punctuate,” but I haven’t read the full four-page thread yet.
I’ll agree, but the quotes still stand. You have not convinced me otherwise.
That seems true, for the most part. It is sad that there is not more objective and professional work out there. The work that is there, from both sides, is mostly appallingly unobjective, amateurish, and with logical and technical holes you could drive a truck through. In my next post I will attempt to use only those references I have found that are of a higher standard. However, some work by or quoted by the Tanners can qualify. They are not as bad as they could be. I know–I’ve been to some pro-Mormon sites and the Tanners come off cooly objective by comparison with some authors (like Nibley and Card).
And protest as you might, you will not improve my opinion of Card’s SF, an opinion I formed long before learning he was Mormon.
Let me take a stab at this, but beware I have little understanding of this, other than what I’ve read here. Feel free (as if I need to extend the invitation!) to correct me where I’m wrong.
From what I’ve gleaned from this thread (and a few others), the plates were written in this “Reformed Egyption” - is that correct? Presumably, they were written by someone. It’s my understanding that apparently these plates were created by people descending from the lost tribes of Israel, the implication being that native Americans, while not necessarily the authors of these plates, were descended from the same people that created these plates.
So here’s the crux: If native Americans were descended from the same people who conversed in Reformed Egyption, why isn’t there any evidence of that language outside of the BoM? There’s a number of native American tribes, all of them with their own language. If any were descended from the Reformed Egyption speakers, I’d expect their languages to be derivatives thereof. I’d also expect to see native American writing everywhere, writing that would be a derivative of the Reformed Egyption itself. Lots of ancient peoples wrote things everywhere - Mayans, Toltecs, Olmecs, and Aztecs on their walls, Egyptians in their temples, Romans on their tablets. Writing everywhere. Yet, as far as I know, no native Americans tribe wrote things down. Lots of pictures, yeah, but no written language. The written word for American Indians simply didn’t exist until a coupla Europeans sat down with a coupla Indian scholars and hammered out a system. Which, then, only worked for one tribe - the system had to be adapted for others.
This, then, is the problem: If any native American tribes were descended from the Reformed Egyption speakers, why isn’t there any evidence of that knowledge outside the BoM? I think you’d expect there to be lots - it’s easy to trace English back to its origins. Even if that knowledge was lost, I think you’d still expect to see something where it was preserved - we’ve got temples in Central and South America that go back thousands of years that display ancient writing. There’s even artifacts from early north American settlers that are equally as old. Yet of this Reformed Egyption, nothing. As an outside observer, it’s highly suspect that the only artifacts that show it conveniently aren’t available anywhere for comparison. It’s a circular argument: we know the plates were in Reformed Egyption because the BoM tells us so, and we know the BoM is true because the plates were written in Reformed Egyption. Yet these plates aren’t available for examination.
Think of it - as someone said earlier, it’d be a significant archeaological find. Even without the connotation to the LDS, finding ancient native American writings by whatever settlers inhabited the region at that time would be sensational. Yet we have nothing.
Okay, so I’ve read through a few of the cites thrown around in the beginning of the thread. The plates authors apparently resemble native Americans not at all, but may closely match up with ancient Mesoamericans, such as the Olmecs, Toltecs, Incas, and so on, as the depictions of life closely resemble those that those nation-states established, with well-defined rituals, levels of society, and complex infrastructures. Okay then.
Why, then, does ancient Mesoamerican writing differ so markedly from Egyptian writing? About the only similarity is that both are a form of heiroglyphs. If the Nephites, Lamanites, and Jaredites wrote in this, why don’t we find it on Mesoamerican temples? Well, perhaps we do, but we don’t know because of course the plates aren’t available for comparison. Or they only used Reformed Egyptian to write on sacred plates, no where else, which of course makes sense - why not write stuff on plates that no one else around you can read? It’s not like you want to pass it on or anything. But even if any Reformed Egyptian is found, that’s probably not it either because we changed it (like we changed the Hebrew). And Egyptian’s much more flexible and developed, allowing us much more power in communication, which is good because no one around us speaks it anyway. And how did plates describing Mesoamerican life get to New England?
Too much of this doesn’t make sense. And some of the Mormon defenses are weak (admittedly, some of the ideas brought up by Jeff Lindsay are quite interesting, and the rebuttals from non-Mormons for these ideas may be equally as weak - I haven’t looked deeply into them). It’s really interesting stuff, however.
Good question. Many people are under the mistaken impression that the BoM essentially claims that Nephi & co. landed in an empty land and became the sole ancestors of the Native Americans. However, this is not really so. The BoM is annoyingly silent on most historical points; it is not a history, but primarily a religious text, and only gives events when they’re relevant to the religious history of the people involved. So it’s very hard to tell where it took place, and what other peoples were around. However scholars who study this kind of thing carefully have thought for many years that the BoM people probably intermarried with other groups already living there and became a smallish subculture within a much larger network. So Mesoamerican culture and so on would not have felt a whole lot of influence from this small group, and would not have adopted its writing system that was specialized for one purpose; to write a sacred history (I suppose rather like people in India use Sanskrit as a sacred language).
I don’t think the exact term “Reformed Egyptian” appears in the BoM. It’s what Smith and others used to describe it. The general idea is that they wanted to write in Hebrew, but it wasn’t compact enough, so they used the Egyptian writing for Hebrew words–kind of like transcribing Japanese into Roman letters. Hugh Nibley thought it was probably a lot like Meroitic, but I don’t know much about that. Archaeological findings since Joseph Smith’s day have confirmed that ancient people did write on metal plates, especially for histories and religious writings, and that it was very hard work; it seems the text was written in ink and then scratched into the metal. At least one text survives in which the writer gave up the scratching and left the ink to tell the story.
Also a good question. Moroni writes at the end of the BoM that he has been wandering around for 20 years or so; all his family and tribe have been either killed or assimilated into an enemy culture. I guess you can get a long way in that amount of time.
I hope that helps you figure out some of what we’re thinking.
:o You know what, I missed the first Snickers post and only read the second one. Anyway,
Well, not quite. We know the plates were written in reformed Egyptian because the BoM tells us so, and we believe the BoM is true because of a spiritual witness on the matter. As I said a couple of pages back, the important thing about the BoM is the religious truths contained therein, not where or when events happened. Most Mormons have no expectation whatever that the BoM will be empirically proved anytime soon; it would in fact be contrary to our thinking about how faith is supposed to work.
Hey, thanks for that - yes, it is helpful. However, another question:
Okay, now we’re cookin’! Archeological findings where? And from what period of time?
And incidentally, it seems the Mormons really are ahead of the game - that it’s the teachings and truths that matter. Wish more of the Christian faiths would see the wisdom in this as well.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read the BOM but I thought the stroy was that the Nephites and the LAmanites became great cultures themselves, not that they were absorbed into other cultures? Is there any indication of this in the BOM or is it a more recent theory?
) I refer you back to Post