No, I’m talking about things like the Pentateuch, Isaiah, and the New Testament. Most biblical scholars would agree that large swathes of these texts were not in fact written by their putative authors. Mormons are curiously incurious about Biblical authorship questions and pretty much accept authorship at face value. My guess is that the belief in the Bible “as far as it is translated correctly” means they can hand-wave away any problems as mere later corruptions.
They have painted themselves into a corner with Isaiah, though. The Book of Mormon quotes extensively from Isaiah, including portions written after the supposed emigration to the New World.
Well, this puts them in the same boat as most conservative Christians that I know. Seriously, the next time you’re speaking with a member of an Evangelical Free congregation, ask how Moses could have written Deuteronomy when that book includes Moses’ death and burial. Better yet, point out the final section of Mark and note that all extant pre-400 CE manuscripts omit it. I doubt you’ll receive much discussion or defense.
Not surprisingly, a quick search with Google will produce a link or two that explains all these topics in depth. However, the Church leaders hope that most of the rank-and-file members will never encounter these sources. I’ve heard that one of the promises missionaries must make is to not read or view any material that doesn’t come from an official LDS source while on their mission (If any of the ex-mos here could confirm or deny this, I’d be grateful.) Those not participating in a mission are not required to do the same, but there’s strong pressure to not look at too much challenging material written from a non-Mormon viewpoint.
That always confused me. How can you claim divine inspiration (so much so that you have very detailed rules about a lot of things) and then backtrack on things like polygamy and the position on blacks?
I agree with you. I was defending Mormons from the charge that they worship a completely different Jesus than New Testament Jesus. Their biblical interpretation is in line with more conservative Christians, with the huge caveat that with Mormons, biblical errancy is the article of faith, not inerrancy.
Yes, there are strict rules about what media you can consume while you are a missionary. Only church literature, and even that was restricted. There was a list of 5 books we were allowed to read besides the scriptures, and they were obviously of a devotional Mormon nature. And yes, members are also strongly discouraged from reading anything critical of or independent from the church. “Garbage in, garbage out,” as a leader once told me.
Anyway, when I was a missionary, I read some distressing claims about Mormonism in a pamphlet a Jehovah’s Witness gave me. I was so disturbed, I consulted with another missionary I trusted and he wrote to his dad to ask if it was true. We eventually ended up at an Internet cafe (this was the late 90s) and looked up a bunch of anti-Mormon websites. Unfortunately for me, nothing I read there particularly impressed me and I continued being a Mormon for a while after that.
There are a million ways to rationalize uncomfortable religious changes. God changed his mind, we’re not ready for it, we misunderstood God. Polygamy is usually explained away as “needed at the time, not needed now.” Racism is always rationalized as “it was wrong at the time, but the Mormon prophet never thought to ask, and God didn’t bother correcting him. Plus, the country wasn’t ready for it.” And so on. When you are a true believer, anything can be rationalized.
Apropos of nothing but I had a very pleasant conversation with a pair of missionaries on my walk home the other day. We chatted for a little bit about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. (I mentioned peepstones and got a Huh? in response so either one of us had a one-sided education or they were faking ignorance in order to avoid discussing Smith’s occult bent.) At any rate, their comments seemed sincere enough to me; I detected no falsity in their responses, which is not to say that I’m a human lie detector but that I know a little bit more about their theology than I think the average person does. I didn’t ask any uncomfortable questions like the one about special undies because really the only reason I would have for asking them is to make them uncomfortable and did I really want to be that guy?
Although it strains credulity, it is a fact that most Mormons don’t realize Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with a peepstone in a hat. (Or, at least they didn’t pre-South Park.) I didn’t know this fact until long after my mission and I was in my late 20s.
If you polled 100 Mormons, Family Feud style, I’d bet 90 to 95% would say he translated with the Urim and Thummin, which were supposedly ancient Israelite artifacts, kind of like magical spectacles.
Anything to do with early Mormon history is a foreign country to modern Mormons.
I was raised a Jew. Had Waffle House for dinner last night, just exactly 24 hours ago. Mmmmm.. scattered covered and smothered. Man, that’s some eatin’.
The New Testament makes three assertions about Jesus. First, he is the Messiah, foretold in the Old Testament. This means that he is a descendant of King David who will restore David’s empire. Second, he is the Son of God. This does not necessarily imply Divinity, because Greek legend has a number of heroes who were descendants of gods or goddesses, but they were mortal. Third, Jesus is God.
The first two assertions are found throughout the New Testament. They do not impose logical difficulties. The third assertion is implied in Philippians, 2:5,6 “Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal to God.”
It is stated more explicitly in the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus is still considered to be subordinate to God the Father.
This does create problems, because Jesus agrees with the Shema expressed in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD,” when he says in Mark 12:29, “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord.”
Also, Jesus seems to deny his divinity when he says in Mark 10:18, "And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
And in Luke 18:19 “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good ? none is good, save one, that is, God.”
Hey man, I read Revenge of the Wizard’s Ghost, I know what they are.
Either way, I figured it was best to move onto other topics because accusing one’s conversational partners’ religious founder of con artistry often offends.
Christianity began as a sect within Judaism. From there it spread to Greeks. Finally it spread to Romans. The doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah was meaningful to Jews. The doctrine that Jesus was the Son of God was meaningful to Greeks. The doctrine that Jesus was Divine was meaningful to Romans, because Roman Emperors were sometimes deified after death.
One curious thing in hindsight about that episode is that it mentions nothing at all about Mormon doctrine or cosmology; Stan just gets hung up on the implausibility of the founding-historical narrative. They covered the Scientologists’ doctrine and cosmology, why not the Mormons’?
Parker & Stone have a fondness for Mormons that they don’t have for Scientologists. I think they grew up with Mormons they loved & respected, no matter how they disagreed.
There’s a limit to how much they can cram into 20 minutes.
Also, Mormon cosmology isn’t as per se ridiculous as that of Scientology, IMHO. It seems pretty much at the same level as the various mainstream religions.
You have made so many errors in your pontifications that it is difficult to address only one. So, re., “gospels that Biblical scholars now regard as pseudoepigraphic)…”. First, the word is ‘Pseudepigrapha’. The actual books are not “the Pentateuch, Isaiah, and the New Testament”, but are 20-28 odd books that can be found here. And the LDS do NOT believe the pseudepigrapha to be canonical.
JS did use peep stones prior to receiving the Urim and Thummim, but not while in the service of translating the BofM.
Both of these statements are strange to me. I am a convert to the Church (and still a believer). I received literally hundreds and thousands of anti-mormon literature as a new convert. I went through all of them and none of it swayed my testimony.
As a missionary (2 yrs, south africa cape town mission late 80s) and later as a returned missionary I received 1000s more anti-mormon documentation. It strains credulity to me hearing the sudden revelations regarding issues in Church history. All Church’s and religions have darkness in their history. The Buddha thought tigers were evil and should all be killed (in conflict with all animals are sacred), Mohammed has his issues, all protestants (including first southern baptists, lutherans, methodists, Episcopalians, etc…) all had SERIOUS racial problems, far worse than LDS.
Does that make any of these belief systems inherently evil? NO. It means they have humans in their midst. Every single faith has a history of bad decisions made by people with failings. Yes, that besmirches a faith.
Regarding teaching these controversial issues in Church history and doctrine, I was taught as a missionary at the MTC in Provo to follow the guidance of Hebrews 5:12, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.” For about a year I worked with the Indian communities of Phoenix and Chatsworth (suburbs of Durban), most of whom were either Hindu or Muslim with at best a poor understanding of even non-LDS Christian concepts. Surely even the most obtuse will see the point of trying to first teach basics (like a mortal man, claiming to be not only the Only Begotten Son of God, but to be God, and that he as man/God could die, did die and then resurrected himself, oh, and along the way, this man/God propitiated all the sins for all of mankind and promised that all mankind would also be resurrected. Teaching any of these concepts to someone is very difficult. Now throw into the mix teaching what the nay-sayers will throw at the investigator. Seriously? We were taught to tell the investigator to write down any questions as they arise. Very rarely did I not have an investigator get inundated with anti-morman literature.
I’m pretty sure that Erdosain is referring to the various canonical books like the Gospels and several of the Pauline epistles that no serious biblical scholar now believes were written by their supposed authors.
Well, the matters you’re talking about are not exactly secrets, are they?