Rico, in your staff report here, you refer to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I’m here to tell you that many Mormons will see that capitalized D in Latter-Day and immediately conclude that you are completely ignorant about the religion for not spelling it “Latter-day Saints” with a lowercase d. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I’ve seen it happen plenty of times in arguments when I’ve referred to sources that capitalize the D.
Also, wasn’t Ethan Smith’s book just called View of the Hebrews, without the “The” on the front? I’m actually not sure about this one, but my copy does not say “The” before “View of the Hebrews.” Boy, I’m full of nitpicks today.
Meanwhile, congrats, rico, on a brilliantly done Staff Report.
Since the Report doesn’t “officially” appear on the site until next Tuesday, and since it’s only online (not in print), if rico wants to accept your edits/revisions/nit-picks, he can do that and we’ll change the Report. Rewriting history is nothing compared to power of the internet, young jedi.
Another nitpick-
"lost in the destruction of the first temple, around 700 BC. "
“around”, meaning about a century later, around 600 BC. The Assyrians took over the ten-tribed Northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 BC, the Babylonians took the Southern Kingdom of Judah in a conquest taking 606-586 BC to complete.
Hmm…Latter-day Saints? That is an interesting nitpick.
I was born and raised in the Mormon church. The official font is all caps.
However, in going to www.lds.org, I notice in the title bar that you are correct. That, however, is the only place on the whole page it is capitalized that way.
I think the confusion comes with the LDS abbreviation, Mormons are not referred to in print as LdS.
Valid nitpick, but not one that I believe would make someone refer to me as “clueless” about the church.
FriarTed, thanks for the information. And thanks for weighing in on the fight against ignorance.
Since I’m being nitpicked, let me do it on myself – two things I found in late editing that didn’t make it to the page:
Moroni is pronounced more-OH-nigh.
The sentence that says “First, there are three distinct and separate versions of Smith’s “first vision.” The one cited above was written by Smith in 1832 after the founding of the church.” The date should be 1838. Probably a typo on my point, and it slipped through the final edit.
Thanks, Dex. You’ll be hearing more from me.
I’m in pretty much the same situation as you, and I never realized it was “Latter-day Saints” until I read an apologetic review of some article that criticized it for capitalizing the d, and said something like “If he can’t even get that right, how can we trust the rest of his information to be right?” As I said, a ridiculous argument, but some people will seize on things like that. I’ve seen the same thing several times since then.
Also, I was wondering if it might be worthwhile to mention something about the Book of Abraham and the rediscovery of the papyri, but that might expand the Staff Report beyond acceptable lengths. It is an excellent article, which I should have mentioned before. Nice job.
It’s a bit of an issue for some, perhaps even many, people since there’s another outfit with the spelling you used. It’s one of the Strangite churches.
It’s not that much of an issue for me; my real objection is to those who persist in spelling Mormon as Morman.
There isn’t any official font. On the other hand, the Church has provided a Writer’s Style Guide with the official spelling, said spelling used througout the Church’s website and print media. That guide used to be much easier to find on the website; now it’s practically buried on the quick facts section of the newsroom page, so don’t sweat not finding it.
As with so many other abbreviations, this one apparently follows its own logic. After all, it could be “LS” for “Latter-day Saints” (two words) or even “CJCLS” (for the whole title leaving out “the” and “of”).
I don’t think anyone should have called you clueless about the Church. As you know, you and I have widely diverging opinions about it, but you’re certainly not clueless.
The Pronouncing Guide provided at the end of my print Book of Mormon (page 534, top of 2nd column) has it as:
The second syllabe is stressed (indicated by the apostrophe) and all the vowels in that word’s pronouncing guide have the macron. If anyone remembers how to post those special characters on the SDMB, go for it.
If you want to hear the word used, you can go to the Book of Moroni audio version provided by the Church.
Attending Sunday School back in the US, it amused me some to hear so many different pronunciations for the same word from the members there. Here in Korea, Moroni is pronounced like Moe-Roe-Nah-Ee, at least according to the transliteration guide on page 656 of the Korean edition of the Book of Mormon.
FWIW: C K Dexter Haven asked me to review your report before it was posted. I concur that you did a good job, although I think you were a bit, shall we say judicious in your use of quotation marks. Of course, that could just be your writing style. I also think you might’ve mentioned that a couple of the folks who were excommunicated from “the new religion” joined “other religions” that just happen to also trace their lineage back to Joseph Smith, Jr. You can check www.restoration.org for a number of websites relating to some of those other religions.
:smack:
should be spelled
Since I’m on a jag of correcting errors in my posting above, here are two more (the rest, if there are any, can stay in error):
should be
&
should be
[quote]
I don’t think anyone should call you clueless about the Church.
All right - what did you do with our Monty? Bring him back right now! 
Seriously, thank you. High praise from one of my toughest critics. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you around here, and I have to admit, I’ve missed your wit and wisdom. Kathy says hello, and she has missed you as well. We thought you had abandoned the SDMB.
And when did you join the SDSAB? That’s good news right there!
You’re in Korea now? Dang! We’re going to have to catch up on each other, last I knew you were in Northern California. Drop us an e-mail and bring us up to date.
Good to see you, Monty! Please don’t be a stranger!
I lived in Utah for 25 years (give or take 1 or 2 yrs) and I NEVER heard anyone comment on lower or upper case d/D.
Having put my 2 cents in, what I really wanted to say is this:
-
Congratulate my hubby on such a well written report. I am amazed he was able to find documentation to support both sides so equally.
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Monty, it’s so good to see/read you!!! Like Rico said, we have missed you. Congrats on your new position and please drop either one of us a note and fill us in on how your schooling is going, or perhaps you have graduated which has taken you to another part of the world. If that’s not it, then what has drawn you so far from NorCal. I admit to being disappointed with you so far away now, it seems like the opportunity to meet you in person at a Dopefest sounds unlikely. I have hoped for some time to meet you at an All CA Fest or something like that.
Kathy
Monty’s membership in the SDSAB ain’t new, he was one of the original gang.
On http://www.mormon.org, I find the claim, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mormon are trademarks of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.”
I believe Intellectual Reserve is the company the CoJCoLDS uses to publish all of their books and movies and whatnot.
From whence the upper case"D"in *your * abbreviation? Since we’re a pickin’ at the nits and all. 
LOL. Good point. As Rico said, even though the church’s name uses a lowercase d, the usual abbreviation is LDS … but I may actually start abbreviating the whole church name it CoJCoLdS just to differentiate it from the Strangite group that Monty linked to, though … and hey, that produces a nice roller-coaster look.
Great report Rico. My only comment is that I’m surprised that there was no mention of Utah at all. Now, I know absolutely nothing about Mormonism at all, save for (1) the dubious, satirical info I got from an episode of South Park (which it turns out was fairly accurate apparently), and (2) that currently the primary concentration of Mormonism is in Utah.
Is that even true? If so, how did it get there?
Thank you, Moe. A thorough write-up of the church and their beliefs and history would not be possible in the limited space I had. I limited my response to the question “Who wrote the Book of Mormon?”
However, my wife started a thread a while back that got pretty comprehensive. If you want to know more, you can always look there - or search the boards on the words Mormon or Latter-day Saint.
Rico
I’m a bit surprised about a few things. Why was the supposed 1826 trial mentioned? It’s not exactly undisputed, which was addressed in a recent thread.
Second, why are the Tanners used as a reference? They are second only to Ed Decker in notoriety as anti-Mormons. It’s been proven that they mislead with elision and selective quoting, even on this message board.
Why was this written by a disaffected Mormon? Will the error of the name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints be corrected?
Why is the Tanners’ book listed with a 1987 date? There have been several editions, the latest is 1992. I have a copy of the 1972 printing.
The statement
is factually incorrect. While that may have been true for part of the time, it wasn’t true for at least some of the time.
Also, note that Whitmer’s account of how the translation happened is many years after the fact, is contradicted by other accounts, and believers (well at least one) who have analyzed the text conclude that there is evidence from the manuscript that this isn’t correct (at least some of the time).
Great report.
I only comment
doesn’t hold true in my view. At least historians agree the civilizations in those teachings existed. Although archaeologists and historians may not agree that the Jews were ever slaves of Egyptians, or that Mohammed was divinely a guided evangelist instead of a self-righteous pirate, or what have you, the basic civilizations and groups of people existed.
That’s alread a huge difference, IMO.
Further, the technological state of the civilizations isn’t out of sway with what historians say. Specifically, the Book of Mormon would have the believer believe the Americas had metallurgy and written language, and then lost those technologies entirely. I don’t know of any similar cognitive dissonance required by other major religions.