DiscussMormonism.com

I'd like to see evidence of a copy of Oedipus Aegyptiacus existing anywhere in the United States before 1809. I haven't found any yet. Anyway, here's the full inventory of John Smith's estate at his death. Odd that there don’t appear to be any books. Am I just missing them? I see he left copyrights...

In order to be as fair as possible to Nielsen, because I really have no beef with him, I will share the following quote from How the Book of Mormon Came to Pass about the 1850 library census and its copy of Kircher as it relates to the possibility that John Smith had access to Oedipus Aegyptiacus : ...

Wonderful feedback! Thank you. I shall mull this over. I would have responded earlier but I have been working on my musical scores for my next documentary..... No worries, Philo! It is a fun documentary. I enjoy it when people raise our awareness of other charismatic religious leaders in the first ...

Would love to hear more. I was tempted to buy it, but wanted to see how candid opinions came in first. My suspicion was that a lone ranger project with such a grandiose title was very likely to be insufficiently annealed, and as a result lacking in clarity and mired in wordy self-aggrandizement. Ho...

Also, where the reference to the Egyptian appears in Acts 21 seems chronologically correct. If this is roughly in 57, then the Egyptian could have been executed before then in the 50s. But Paul has been a Christian for some time, no? How do we reconcile Paul’s timeline and the Egyptian’s in a way th...

? I think that would depend upon whether those engaging in it knew it was false. Just because one didn't invent a false etymology does not, ergo, prevent one from being deemed a charlatan if they engaged in it. So, these two statements, yours and mine, are logically compatible. I don’t see the prob...

I shouldn’t be too hard on Nielsen. But, man, this book is not serious scholarship.

Finally, on the Egyptian, what do we do with the dating of Paul, if the Egyptian, who was active in the 50s, was Jesus? According to the standard dating, Paul is already preaching Jesus in the early 50s and writing letters then too. How could that be if Jesus was the Egyptian? Couldn’t it rather be ...

Also, (sorry, I am having fun) why are we taking the nativity sections of the gospels as serious historical data? Surely not, I would think. Jesus is born in the reign of Augustus, which is symbolically important for many reasons. Augustus was put forth by many as the savior of the world, but little...

The point about the high priests just seems to me to be more hashing of history in the Gospels. The point about two high priests in the two sources does not seem very compelling evidence that the Gospel events happened later. Also, Pilate does not have to be killing Galileans in Galilee. Where are t...