The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

[Guest]

Regarding Jacob 5, years ago it occurred to me that olive cultivation using grafting prior to the Greeks conquest of Persia (after when the Brass Plates would have been authored) might not be an attested technology. I asked around and never found anyone who could reference a source.

Put bluntly, Jacob 5 may be anachronistic.

OTOH, the language of Jacob 5 works very well when one replaces olives with apples which the Smiths are known to have cultivated, and borrowing the theme from Isaiah -

Isaiah 5:1, 3-5, 7

1 - Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:

3 - And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.

4 - What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?

5 - And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:

7 - For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

Jacob 5 almost seems like more of a liability to the Book of Mormon than a positive, MG.

[_Themis]

The Book of Mormon doesn't support and/or follow the theory that the lost tribes may have come to the Americas. It does support the position that a remnant of the of the House of Israel came to this hemisphere.

So the "backbone" as you describe it has scoliosis.

Regards,
MG

The theory is very related, and I was not aware that it was the only variation.

[_mentalgymnast]

Jacob 5 almost seems like more of a liability to the Book of Mormon than a positive, MG.

I don't think so. You'd have to have a little more 'proof in the pudding' to whet my taste.

It is interesting that the schema in Jacob 5 seems to parallel/dovetail pretty nicely with LDS views concerning ancient Israel, the time of Christ, the folks in the Western Hemisphere, and the latter days.

https://www.LDS.org/bc/content/shared/c ... vetree.pdf

I wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

...This passive aggressive language, where you impute your beliefs to others in some variation on "we all know that..." , is one of your most irritating disingenuous moves. It is dishonest, and it is not appropriate in a debate.

Hi Lemmie,

Again, in order to save time on this thread I'm going to cut and paste from another thread you responded to me on today:

Hi Lemmie, I'm not going to go back and forth with you and play the contextual guessing game with you this time around. I would simply invite folks to read all of my posts in context and decide for themselves whether or not I'm engaging in some sort of subterfuge and/or intellectual dishonesty.

You have this nasty habit of taking things 'off topic' in the sense that if I decided to go down your 'rabbit trails' I'd have to spend time running around trying to please you. Not going there this time.

If you or others want to take this as some kind/type of concession or waffling on my part, so be it. Like I've said before to you when you jump in and start doing this stuff that you do:

"I've said what I've said, and I stick to it." I don't have to make any excuses, etc., for your benefit.

I've also said in times past that you have very little of substance to add to conversations. I stick by that statement.

You're kind of like a broken record on steroids.

Sorry to disappoint,
MG

I will only repeat that you have very little of actual substance to add to the conversation. You are a tedious 'nit picker'.

It looks like this thread and the other may end up running their course as a result of your derailment.

We shall see.

[_Lemmie]

You missed this part.

Moving on.

Suffice it to say, that Jacob 5 and other complexities/narratives in the Book of Mormon need to somehow...from the secular arguments listed by Elder Callister...have to be explained as to how they got there.

I haven't been convinced that the five arguments we've been referring to have enough 'fire power' to explain the Book of Mormon in its entirety.

Then you will be relieved that they don't have to.

As has been pointed out, it is not the responsibility of others to disprove Callister, using his very special, illogical top 5, but rather his responsibility to prove his point. To that end, you still haven't addressed ihaq's question:

What substantial argument does Brother Callister put forward as "evidence" for concluding the Book of Mormon can only be God-Given?

Here, see if you can find it....
God-Given or Man-Made?

You're looking at this entirely backwards.
The starting point is to assess if the "God-Given" arguments hold water.
If they don't then, by default it's Man-Made.

So, the arguments for the Book of Mormon being God-Given, what are they?

He's not genuinely attempting to explore the idea that the Book of Mormon could be man-made. He's trying to make sure his audience don't explore it.

Now, back to that evidence for it being God-Given that you and Brother Callister seem so shy about....

Ihaq's question has still been carefully ignored, even though it is the topic of the OP. Why?

[_honorentheos]

Jacob 5 almost seems like more of a liability to the Book of Mormon than a positive, MG.

I don't think so. You'd have to have a little more 'proof in the pudding' to whet my taste.

It is interesting that the schema in Jacob 5 seems to parallel/dovetail pretty nicely with LDS views concerning ancient Israel, the time of Christ, the folks in the Western Hemisphere, and the latter days.

https://www.LDS.org/bc/content/shared/c ... vetree.pdf

I wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Regards,
MG

MG -

The point is that grafting olives to sweeten the fruit is likely anachronistic as the technology was present in early China but essentially first practiced by the Greeks in the old world. Prior to that the middle eastern Semitic cultures would practice olive cultivation and harvesting but having had this debate with a number of apologists over multiple years they’ve failed to come up with a credible source showing that the Nephites could have left the middle east for the Americas around 600 BCE with scriptural documentation of something that wasn’t brought to the area until after the Persians fell to the Greeks centuries later.

That makes Jacob 5 a liability. It doesn’t matter how much you enjoy it. If it couldn’t have been written in the time frame it is purported to have originated then it seems you are enjoying something composed in the 19th century.

You are, of course, welcome to find a source that demonstrates the pre-exilic Israelites practiced not just olive cultivation, but grafting that was for producing sweet fruit from bitter stock.

OTOH, this was a very common practice for frontier Americans with apples. Apples grown from seed were not true to their parentage and could turn out to be bitter when they produced fruit. Grafting known sweet grafts onto the stock of non-sweet apples was something the Smiths would have been familiar with. Mother Smith describes their care of apples to enough degree in her biographical writings to make this clear.

Jacob 5 is a liability, scoring a point for 19th century authorship.

[_mentalgymnast]

You missed this part. ...Ihaq's question

page 7 in the thread, first post.

Now again, what are your thoughts in regards to the complexity we find in the Book of Mormon? Say for example...again...since I've already asked you at least once...Jacob 5?

Which of the five secular/humanistic explanations do you see Jacob 5 fitting most comfortably within...and why?

Jacob 5 is just one example that I've brought up in this thread. You could, if you want to, come up with some other examples of complexity within the narrative...chronological cohesiveness for another example...and show how you might fit it into one or more of the five categories the rest of us have been discussing either tangentially or full on.

My guess, if your track record is any indication, is that you're just going to keep on keepin' on with your BS'n. But who knows?

Regards,
MG

[_huckelberry]

Mentalgymnist, I have spent time studying and reflecting on the grafting parable in Romans. Perhaps I was disappointed not to find any of those ideas in the Jacob discussion. There are other Biblical parallels. I cannot think of any reason to think that its sources are mysterious.

On the other hand perhaps my expectations from the Bible caused me to miss depth in Jacob because that depth is in meaning different than what I expected. If that is so it still would basic principals of communication that such meaning should be found in reading Jacob not some lengthy book about it. I would have to be drawn into a deep interest by the text of Jacob before I would even consider spending many hours with a commentary.

If there is meaning in the original that I have missed that meaning could be at least be given a short explication by some other reader who actually understood it.

[Guest]

page 7 in the thread, first post.

? p. 7, first post:

Translation: Just like Z, MG is incapable of addressing the argument.

That's the post mentalgymnast says contains his answer to ihaq?

BS'n.

mentalgymnast, please see Dr. Shades' rule on profanity in the Terrestrial forum. It's very clear and I'd appreciate your following it rather than you directing your profanity toward me.

The point is that grafting olives to sweeten the fruit is likely anachronistic as the technology was present in early China but essentially first practiced by the Greeks in the old world. Prior to that the middle eastern Semitic cultures would practice olive cultivation and harvesting but having had this debate with a number of apologists over multiple years they’ve failed to come up with a credible source showing that the Nephites could have left the middle east for the Americas around 600 BCE with scriptural documentation of something that wasn’t brought to the area until after the Persians fell to the Greeks centuries later.

That makes Jacob 5 a liability. It doesn’t matter how much you enjoy it. If it couldn’t have been written in the time frame it is purported to have originated then it seems you are enjoying something composed in the 19th century.

You are, of course, welcome to find a source that demonstrates the pre-exilic Israelites practiced not just olive cultivation, but grafting that was for producing sweet fruit from bitter stock.

OTOH, this was a very common practice for frontier Americans with apples. Apples grown from seed were not true to their parentage and could turn out to be bitter when they produced fruit. Grafting known sweet grafts onto the stock of non-sweet apples was something the Smiths would have been familiar with. Mother Smith describes their care of apples to enough degree in her biographical writings to make this clear.

Jacob 5 is a liability, scoring a point for 19th century authorship.

I wasn't aware of this discussion until now, honorentheos. Thanks for the concise and incredibly persuasive argument. It's surprising an apologist would bring up Jacob 5 knowing that this information is out there.

[_honorentheos]

Jacob 5 is just one example...

...of a likely anachronism in the Book of Mormon. Without a source showing this tech actual existed in the timeframe when the Brass Plates would have been composed and not brought to the region by the Greeks you are ignoring a problem with the authorship. Authorship being primary, this suggests the author was more likely to have lived in the 19th c. Americas and was describing apple cultivation which did exist in the time and place when Smith and Cowdery wrote it.