“I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon”

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“I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon”

Post by Shulem »

2 Nephi 5 wrote:
16 And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine.

Here we have Nephi and his followers living in survival mode when their main and only concern should be keeping themselves alive. Food, shelter, clothing, medicine! The idea of building a temple after the manner of Solomon is entirely Joseph Smith’s fictionalized idea that he invented and incorporated into his story to appear romantic and authentic. Blood, sweat, and tears, into a building made with hands just so one can worship God when their very lives should be spent in building homesteads and producing farms and crops -- here we are concerned with a temple after the manner of Solomon's which was built under the auspices of a vast work force and with the aid and wealth of a nation state. Nothing could be further from a historical truth in claiming a Nephite band living out of the jungles and wilderness built a temple after the manner of Solomon’s.
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“I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon”

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2 Nephi 5 wrote:
16 And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine.

Image

This multistory specially constructed thick stone building is a major feat and an accomplishment for any work force having all of the necessary workmen, supplies, tools, pack animals, and equipment to build such a marvelous edifice designed to surely please any nation state king. The enormous weight of each stone, cut to precision, transported from the rock quarry to the site, and raised and set in place would require a construction crew working full time for many years.

Does this sound like a job for Nephi, Sam, Jacob, & Joseph, and Zoram? Does this sound like something they can undertake in-between their regular workload of building homesteads, raising crops, tending animals, and performing any and every duty while raising families in an uncivilized world that requires their every attention?

Or is it that Joseph Smith bit off more than he could chew when he wrote his novel?
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More Mormon Parallels -- see there it is!

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Here is an example of a Mormon Defender, Stephen Smoot demonstrating how he views the Nephi temple as legitimate but I'm afraid that Stephen is chasing shadows and playing a game which he has already lost. Can Stephen actually imagine Nephi and his little clan constructing a building after the manner of the temple of Solomon?

It’s Smoot’s presentation coupled with the headlines that are what’s so deceptive. It’s designed to make one feel that such a temple like that could just as easily be found in the New World, built by Nephi’s family, as any other place in Israel, even outside Jerusalem. A picture tells a thousand words and the headline wants to marry it to the Book of Mormon.

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Daniel C. Peterson

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Sic et Non

“Another Temple in Judah!” and another victory for the Book of Mormon

DCP wrote:One of the criticisms often leveled against the Book of Mormon is that no Jew would have built a temple outside of Jerusalem. Yet Nephi does just that, sometime in the early sixth century before Christ:

I could care less how many Jews build temples outside of Jerusalem! What concerns me is that Peterson is telling the world that Nephi, Sam, Zoram, Jacob, Joseph, and their children built a temple on par with the workmanship of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, although not built of so many precious ornaments or precious elements in which to enrich it. It was nonetheless claimed to be built and constructed after the manner of Solomon’s temple -- exceedingly fine.

DCP wrote: But, say the critics, Nephi’s supposed construction of a New World temple proves the Book of Mormon to be fictional.

I don't have a problem with an ancient work crew that is organized and equipped in building a New World temple in the Americas. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Nephi, Sam, Zoram, and their children did not raise such a building in their frail lifetimes while struggling to live and survive in the wild.

DCP wrote: Although, zombie-like, that criticism still appears from time to time, it is, or should be, dead.

Imagine how Nephi would look after cutting a thousand large stones to exact shape down in the quarry. Imagine how Sam would look after dragging those stones on sleds across hills and valleys to a construction site on a hill. Imagine how Zoram would look after having to raise heavy stones and set them in place -- with a little help from the kids.

Book of Mormon Defenders love to find parallels and examples to support Book of Mormon claims but they will never be able to describe or explain how Nephi, Sam, Jacob & Joseph, and Zoram, pulled off a superhuman feat of biblical proportion!
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Nephi’s Temple

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Let’s suppose this is Nephi’s temple.

This is an enormous undertaking requiring the services of a fulltime crew possessing many skills having to do with construction, stone cutting, material handling, mathematics, and so forth. It is an enormous undertaking that will require countless hours of manual labor as well as the precise calculations of skilled technicians.

The amount of work and labor to level the field and clear it in order to lay the required foundation to support the main structure would require countless hours of extreme hard labor while toiling in the dirt and soil. Leveling the earth requires careful and coordinated measurement as well as removing tons of earth and rock.

Is this a job for Nephi and Sam? What about Zoram, what if he’s not feeling well and has been sick or injured? And the children are always hungry!

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One stone at a time

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Questions:

1) How are thousands of stones cut and transported to the temple site?
2) How are thousands of stones lifted and set in place?

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A building constructed after the manner of Solomon’s temple could not be constructed by a small group of people consisting of several families such as the Nephite clan. It’s impossible. It would require a highly organized and disciplined work force to erect such a structure. This kind of project is on a scale undertaken by the civilized world while existing in a city state.

Nephi’s temple in the Book of Mormon is fiction.
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Work from sunup to sundown on the temple

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What might construction at a massive stone building look like in Nephi’s day?

With Nephi, Sam, Zoram, Jacob & Joseph, and the kids working on the temple every day, year after year, that leaves little time for anything else such as hunting food, raising crops, building homes, and attending to all their other needs.

There is no way a temple built after the manner of Solomon’s was erected by the struggling Nephites who would have of necessity spent all their energy building habitations and keeping themselves alive as they battle the forces around them and strive to survive. A massive building such as this could have only been built by highly trained organized labor already existing or living off of civilized city accommodations. But the Book of Mormon claims that Nephi built it himself with a little help from his ragtag family and friends.

Go figure.

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Over there, Sam!

Image


Please note that the oldest man in the photo could well be bald Sam, because he was the eldest. Suppose that’s Nephi on top of the block with him to the left and standing alongside them is their younger brothers, Jacob & Joseph and shirtless Zoram bowed down with a hurt knee. So, who are the men down on the lower level sending up the stone?

When Nephi and his brother Sam left Jerusalem they were young men. Jacob & Joseph were born in the wilderness during the 8 year sojourn prior to Nephi building his ship and sailing the ocean blue. Also, consider the story about how the Ishmael family partied hard on the ship while coming across the ocean and that both of Ishmael’s sons were rebellious against Nephi, it stands to reason they went with Laman & Lemuel.

So, by the time Nephi got to the Americas he was probably in his mid-20’s or thereabouts. The next marker in the Book of Mormon is 2 Nephi 5:28, wherein Nephi notes 30 years had passed since having left Jerusalem which accounts for little more than 20 years in the New World. At that point, Nephi had already appointed his younger brethren to be priests, mentions how the Lamanite skins had turn dark with blackness, and Nephites were industrious and in constant labor, more especially in completing their most important project, the temple.

How is it that these young families accomplished so much when they were so few in number? The Book of Mormon reads more like a fairy tale! Smith should have allowed several generations to grow and build a civilization before introducing the Solomon temple story. It simply came too early. The characters in the story were not ready to cut, transport, and lay stone on that kind of scale.
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Nephi vs. Solomon

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Fun fact-based tidbits from the Web:
  • Experts believe stones as long as 24 feet were extracted from the quarry and then dragged by oxen to building sites in Jerusalem for major projects such as Solomon's temple.
  • Solomon had seventy thousand laborers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the hill country.
  • Extrapolating from the number, the cost of building an economized version of Solomon’s temple (for Nephi) using cheaper materials including the labor costs would have been over hundreds of millions of dollars. Building this temple will take years.

(Please allow a building allowance for Nephi's more cheaply made building which was “not built of so many precious things”, such as walls being lined with cedar, prized palm trees, and elaborate furnishings abundantly overlaid in gold, etc.)


Solomon's Temple, Wikipedia
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“after the manner of”

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huckelberry wrote: In the manner of could be meaning purpose and function. It could have been much smaller made of wood and adobe.

But that’s not what the record claims and Smith made no allusion to such things. The after the manner is clearly a pattern in showing what kind of “construction” they undertook in duplicating the temple of Jerusalem – it’s shell, size, height, and fortitude. Smith knew well enough to leave the precious materials out of the story for obvious reasons.

Brick or mud are inferior material for the LORD’S house which is built of stone. Nephi constructed it after the manner of Solomon's house -- “construction was like unto the temple of Solomon.” Thus, it was constructed of stone just like Solomon’s temple.

2 Nephi 5 wrote:
16 And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine.

Moments earlier, Nephi gave the pattern by which one may clearly discern what he means when he says, “after the manner of”:

“And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords”
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“after the manner of”

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“And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon”

Later in the Book of Mormon, Smith yet again, brings up the concept of “after the manner” to prove his claim that construction of a particular item, whether a temple or a sword, is being duplicated and fashioned after the master or original.

Ether 2 wrote:
16 And the Lord said: Go to work and build, after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did go to work, and also his brethren, and built barges after the manner which they had built, according to the instructions of the Lord.

As you can see above, barges were built after the manner prescribed by the Lord and other barges were built after the manner of the first barges. It was a duplication process just like duplicating one sword from another.

Case in point:

Alma 16 wrote:
13 And Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance to the people in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews.

Notice that Smith claimed the Nephites were actually building Jewish sanctuaries that were after the manner of the Jews. This is one instance when Smith refers to temples in the plural, “temples”, as if there were more than one, in which there were: City of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Bountiful; (plural also in Alma 23:2, 26:29).
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