Lemmie wrote: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.
The apologists that I've seen discuss this usually point to texts that describe olive cultivation and a form of branch splicing but it wasn't to produce sweet fruit on bitter stock. It was for oil production. The description in Jacob 5 fits much more closely with something frontier Americans would have known quite well. The book, The Botony of Desire has a great section on the evolution of the apple that goes into this in some detail. Lucy Mack Smith describes their having cultivated and harvested apples which makes the concepts described in Jacob 5 which align very well with apple grafting and it's rational.
Not to mention finding an apologist who can explain why the audience for the Book of Mormon would have been familiar with olives anyway.
Mentalgymnist, I see you did post a link to a summary of meaning seen in the Jacob story. I admit I generally saw a pattern in all the fussing back and forth with the vines that could fit a restorationist reading of history . I am unsure why such a pattern should be thought of as beyond the construction ability of Joseph Smith. Restorationist ideas appear in Protestant thinking prior to the Book of Mormon. They are not unknown in the time and area of Joseph Smith in fact they were a bit of a topic.
I think that it could be seen as one of many examples indicating that the author committed extended thought to the book and what it represented. It was not a spur of the moment thing done on a dare.
honorentheos wrote: 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.
On the other hand, 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.
OK. That's interesting as far as it goes. Meaning, your words on a page without substantiation/verification.
What do Stephen D. Ricks and John W. Welch have to say in regards to anachronistic issues with Jacob 5? In your reading, have you read, The Allegory of the Olive Tree: The Olive, the Bible, and Jacob 5 ?
Also here are some interesting quotes:
Insight into the life and message of Zenos has been discussed very nicely in a F.A.R.M.S. publication entitled The Allegory of the Olive Tree. According to a well-documented article in that book by David Seely and John Welch, although the evidence does not allow a firm conclusion about the dating of the prophet Zenos, we do find that the writers of several Old Testament texts seem to assume that their audiences were familiar with an extended allegory containing both the positive and negative images of olive symbolism. Because of this it seems reasonable to conclude that the full development of this complex plant symbolism for Israel emerged about the time of the unification of Israel under Saul and David (about 1000 B.C.). From that time forth, Israel was settled and planted in one place to "move no more" (2 Samuel 7:10). Thus, the prophet Zenos might have written his allegory during these times. [David Rolph Seely and John W. Welch, "Zenos and the Texts of the Old Testament," in The Allegory of the Olive Tree, p. 327] An additional viewpoint on the dating of Zenos comes from a well-documented article by Noel Reynolds. According to gospel writings in the Book of Mormon itself it seems that while Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob rely directly on Zenos for support and illumination of their own revelations; they only seem to bring in Isaiah as an additional witness, but not for primary explanation. Therefore, we might reasonably conclude that Zenos preceded and influenced Isaiah, and that the Nephite prophets saw it that way. [Noel B. Reynolds, "Nephite Uses and Interpretations of Zenos," in The Allegory of the Olive Tree, pp. 33-34] Thus, the prophet Zenos probably lived before the time of Isaiah, and the allegory of Zenos might have been written as early as 1000 B.C.
Based on the botanical and horticultural information present in the archaeological and historical record, and reflected in Jacob 5, we can conclude that the ancients were superb horticulturists and had a profound understanding of vital biological and plant cultural principles. Most of the botanical and horticultural principles in Jacob 5 are sound and are very important for olive culture. In addition, the one or two points, according to our interpretation, that represent unusual or anomalous circumstances are necessary enhancements to the message of the allegory. In this single chapter of the Book of Mormon there are many detailed horticultural practices and procedures that were not likely known by an untrained person, and may not have been fully appreciated by professional botanists or horticulturalists at the time the Book of Mormon was translated. Even today, outside of olive-growing areas, professional horticulturalists may not fully appreciate some of the unique aspects of olive culture. Given the extensive detail about olive culture present in Jacob 5, we must give Zenos much credit for a high degree of horticultural knowledge, which many take for granted. Examples of what the ancients and Zenos evidently knew were how to prune, dig about, dung, and nourish; how to graft tame to wild and wild to tame, and how to graft tame back into tame; how to balance tops and roots by pruning, and the reasons for doing this; how to save the roots of trees whose branches had decayed, and how to transplant branches to preserve the desired traits of good plants; how to preserve and store fruit and how to distinguish between good and bad fruit; how well plants grow on good and bad soil; how to care for trees to cause young and tender branches to shoot forth; that they could graft wild to tame to rejuvenate tame; that specific cultivars produced well in certain areas; how to remove the bitter glucosides from the fruit; that they could burn an orchard to reestablish a new one; that plants grown from seeds would not have desirable characteristics; the importance of elimination of old wood and debris by burning, and how to deal with pests and pathogens; how to prevent heavy bearing one year and no bearing the next by proper pruning; the necessity to plant more than one cultivar for pollination; and how to propagate scions with the desirable genetic material. Interestingly, much of this sophisticated technology was probably lost in the Nephite civilization, for the olive is not mentioned again in the Book of Mormon after Jacob 5, an indication that the lands of the Book of Mormon may not have been suitable for growing olives. . . .
Exiled wrote:I'm interested in discussion, but your push to force us to presume that the Book of Mormon came from god simply because we can't show you, to your satisfaction, it didn't, boggles the mind. It's your burden to show that it is as advertised, not us. However, you seem like the type that would deny that the sun was shining if it was in your interest to have darkness. So, I'm sure by your artificial high standard, showing Joseph Smith wrote it alone or with others is pointless.
Then I suggest you go back and reread all of my posts in this thread more carefully. If you still can’t see the logic of my argument, then you are incapable of rational thought, and any further discussion with you on any subject will be pointless.
I saw your prior argument where you say if one can't show how Joseph Smith did it, then by default it came from god. That argument is simply preposterous. This is why I think you're here to just cause drama. You know posters here want good evidence and arguments based in reality but you bring this s$%t here anyway. Do you really believe that if one cannot show how Joseph Smith did his magic trick in creating the Book of Mormon, then by default it came from god? Is that what you really believe?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
mentalgymnast wrote:page 7 in the thread, first post.
? p. 7, first post:
Oops. Make that page eight. I was in hurry responding to you, Lemmie. You are time consuming. A black hole with no hope of escape!
Here, let me just cut and paste it for you:
This seems to be a question that has great importance to you and you're going to continue asking it...without feeling as though the questions asked of you are worth answering, I might add, (you seem to have a habit of doing that)...so I'll simply point you to the rest of Elder Callister's talk starting with the heading:
WHERE DID JOSEPH GET THE DOCTRINE?
Not to say that you're going to agree with him...but there it is. You read the talk, I assume?
That was my response to IHAQ.
Do we need to continue down this rabbit trail? I hope not. Are you going to go back and actually read Elder Callister's talk starting with this heading?
Unless you have something to contribute, substantively, to the conversation...please find something else to do. Thanks in advance.
And I'm not BS'n ya'.
Report me!!
Regards, MG
Last edited by Guest on Wed Apr 12, 2017 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
mentalgymnast wrote:Do you have some documentation/resources that would discount/negate the views expressed in these quotes/links?
Do you realize what you just asked?
You just asked me to prove to you something that isn't attested to in the actual non-BoM record.
Go back and read your links. They comment time and again at how amazing the knowledge is that Zenos and his people demonstrate that others of the time might not have. Why? Maybe it's because others of the time outside of China didn't have the knowledge. They're assuming the Book of Zeno is real and then composing an argument. The tech did not exist at the time in a place that would have made its way into the Brass Plates. Have fun finding a non-LDS source that will back you up.
You haven't demonstrated anything more than that this is an anachronism still.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
mentalgymnast wrote: Oops. Make that page eight. I was in hurry responding to you, Lemmie. You are time consuming. A black hole with no hope of escape!
Here, let me just cut and paste it for you:
This seems to be a question that has great importance to you and you're going to continue asking it...without feeling as though the questions asked of you are worth answering, I might add, (you seem to have a habit of doing that)...so I'll simply point you to the rest of Elder Callister's talk starting with the heading:
WHERE DID JOSEPH GET THE DOCTRINE?
Not to say that you're going to agree with him...but there it is. You read the talk, I assume?
That was my response to IHAQ.
Do we need to continue down this rabbit trail? I hope not. Are you going to go back and actually read Elder Callister's talk starting with this heading?
Unless you have something to contribute, substantively, to the conversation...please find something else to do. Thanks in advance.
And I'm not BS'n ya'.
Report me!!
Regards, MG
Just documenting mentalgymnast's rule-breaking use of profanity.
mentalgymnast wrote:Do you have some documentation/resources that would discount/negate the views expressed in these quotes/links?
Do you realize what you just asked?
You just asked me to prove to you something that isn't attested to in the actual non-BoM record.
Go back and read your links. They comment time and again at how amazing the knowledge is that Zenos and his people demonstrate that others of the time might not have. Why? Maybe it's because others of the time outside of China didn't have the knowledge. They're assuming the Book of Zeno is real and then composing an argument. The tech did not exist at the time in a place that would have made its way into the Brass Plates. Have fun finding a non-LDS source that will back you up.
You haven't demonstrated anything more than that this is an anachronism still.
How frustrating, honorentheos. It's astonishing that mentalgymnast does not see the irony in making that request, in a thread where he is insisting that others have the obligation to prove words that Callister has spoken, also without substantiation or verification, not to mention his refusal to respond to ihaq's request to prove the Book of Mormon is god-given. Asking others to go read doesn't count.
Alternatively, mentalgymnast, you could disprove Chap's theory that it is satan-given!
mentalgymnast wrote:Do you have some documentation/resources that would discount/negate the views expressed in these quotes/links?
Do you realize what you just asked?
You just asked me to prove to you something that isn't attested to in the actual non-BoM record.
Whether or not this is true, I really don't know without proof or documentation. At this point I'd have to take your word for it. The two links I provided, however, give some credence to the idea that Jacob 5 isn't anachronistic.
To focus on whether you think that Jacob 5 is anachronistic is an interesting side topic...but it doesn't negate the fact that Jacob 5 is THERE and from what I've been able to see/read along the way, it seems as though it wasn't simply 'whipped up' on the fly while Joseph had his head in a hat.
Another link for those that are interested in further reading/study:
Look, MG. If you go to a known source in Romans where olive grafting is used as a symbol, it also makes cultural sense. If you read the parable in Romans, it describes grafting to restore vigor to a tree so it can produce fruit for the purpose of the time. And this in a culture and time when tame olives would be used for olive oil for eating rather than for other purposes.
But the Book of Jacob tells us this -
31 And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard did taste of the fruit, every sort according to its number. And the Lord of the vineyard said: Behold, this long time have we nourished this tree, and I have laid up unto myself against the season much fruit.
...
52 Wherefore, let us take of the branches of these which I have planted in the nethermost parts of my vineyard, and let us graft them into the tree from whence they came; and let us pluck from the tree those branches whose fruit is most bitter, and graft in the natural branches of the tree in the stead thereof.
...
63 Graft in the branches; begin at the last that they may be first, and that the first may be last, and dig about the trees, both old and young, the first and the last; and the last and the first, that all may be nourished once again for the last time.
65 And as they begin to grow ye shall clear away the branches which bring forth bitter fruit, according to the strength of the good and the size thereof; and ye shall not clear away the bad thereof all at once, lest the roots thereof should be too strong for the graft, and the graft thereof shall perish, and I lose the trees of my vineyard.
What does it mean to store up olives? Let's start with you running that down. When the master of the vineyard is tasting fruit to "lay up unto himself", how does that correspond with ancient olive cultivation and use?
On the flip side, considering apples being stored in a cellar was a relatively common practice how do you think this makes more sense when transposed into an ancient middle-eastern culture prior to Hellenistic influence?
Parables include tells about the cultures they actual come from. The Book of Mormon includes tell after tell pointing to the 19th c. frontier, and issue after issue when it pretends to be describing an ancient culture.
Authorship being primary, what does this tell us about it's authorship?
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
