Origins of the Book of Mormon

[_charity]

Anachronisms are an obvious clue to a fraud. It's been a while since I've read it, but If I recall correctly in The Age of Reason, Payne relies primarily on anachronisms to decontruct the Bible.

Most of the seeming anachronisms have been shown to be false. All that is left is the horses thing and that has perfectly reasonable alternative explanations for the objective reasoner.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

Do you undestand where those stories came from? He was being tutored by angels. [/b]

LOL. Sorry, but that sounds ridiculous. I know why you believe it because I did once, but once you step outside the box and examine this stuff with the same critical thinking you examine everything else with, it really does sound funny. No offense.

I know. That is one of the standard false arguments. Dan Vogel is probably the leading proponent. "There are no such things as angels, visions, revelations. Therefore, Joseph Smith made it all up."

Only problem with that, is your argument stands or falls on the basic premise. YOu both buiilt on sand, my friend.

Well, even if there are Angels, it doesn't make Mormonism true, but it does make Joseph's claim of communicating with Angels more believable.

One of the main problem with the claim of Joseph Smith being tutored by Moroni is how much he got wrong regarding Book of Mormon history. You would think, being tutored by an actual Nephite over a period of several years, he would know what he was talking about. Why did Joseph Believe the Book of Mormon took place throughout North America, including upstate New York, when in fact it only took place in a tiny section of Mesoamerica? Didn't Moroni ever get around to telling him where he (Moroni) actually lived during his mortal life? If Joseph entertained his family about ancient inhabitants of America, including their culture, dress, modes of travel, etc. and these things were taught to him by Moroni, it seems Joseph's version would be the most accurate. If the Book of Mormon really took place in Mesoamerica, and Moroni walked thousands of miles to bury the plates in NY, why didn't he tell Joseph Smith about it? Surely he must have known that Joseph was spreading lies about the Nephites and Lamanites living throughout North America, why didn't Moroni correct him during the tutoring sessions? The bottom line is, why didn't Moroni tutor Joseph Smith on the Limited Geography Theory?

[_Scottie]

Anachronisms are an obvious clue to a fraud. It's been a while since I've read it, but If I recall correctly in The Age of Reason, Payne relies primarily on anachronisms to decontruct the Bible.

Most of the seeming anachronisms have been shown to be false. All that is left is the horses thing and that has perfectly reasonable alternative explanations for the objective reasoner.

The only 2 that I know of that have proven false are concrete and grain.

There are still problems with steel, coins, horses, asses, oxen, kings, chariots, Bibles, books, gold plates,...I could go on.

[_karl61]

The indians, when found, were still living in the stone age. A rifle could be a God as it strikes you down. A good thick steel breast plate could likely deflect a small steal ball; if they had those they would have kept them and passed them down to the next generation. There is no evidence to show that any people, that spoke hebrew and egyptian up until 420 AD, lived anywhere in the Americas. No people, who spoke hebrew and egyptian; had an advanced writing system. (Egyptian) lived through out the Americas. These are not my thoughts but those of B.H. Roberts - who according to an article that I read told his missionaries in the eastern states mission, to start using the Bible only to convert people.

[_Sethbag]

You'd have to be more specific than "war styles" for us to really get into it. The last time I read of things that might qualify, someone was making an argument that looked like this:

A) Joseph Smith wrote about Book of Mormon cities being fortified.
B) It was not known at the time the Book of Mormon was written that any ancient American cities had such fortifications.
C) Therefore Joseph knew about something pertaining to the Americas that he couldn't have known about through secular means.
D) Therefore Joseph must have received this information through inspired means, and the existence of fortified cities in the Book of Mormon is evidence that it's true.

This argument is a complete non sequitur. The fact is, whether or not fortified cities in the ancient Americas were known or not, they were certainly known to Joseph Smith through European and other world history.

If Joseph Smith did indeed write the Book of Mormon, it is logical that he would have included elements with which he was familiar. He was familiar with fortified cities, therefore fortified cities made it into the Book of Mormon. That fortified cities were subsequently discovered in the ancient Americas says nothing at all about Joseph's prophetic ability, since the idea of fortified cities was already universal at the time of Joseph Smith's development and education.

The key here is that nobody is claiming that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and included elements that only pertained to things he already knew about the ancient Americas. On the contrary, things such as steel swords, chariots, horses, elephants, widespread agriculture of grains not found in widespread agriculture in the ancient Americas, etc. prove quite the opposite, which is that Joseph Smith filled the Book of Mormon with things with which he was familiar, that were not found in the ancient Americas.

Additionally, it's not like the idea of fortifying a city that is in danger of being attacked is non-obvious.

If you've got some good examples of things Joseph Smith could not have known about from other sources, whether they were about the ancient Americas or not, that he put into the Book of Mormon, which subsequently have been confirmed to be proper elements in the ancient Americas, please provide them so we can talk.

[_beastie]

I'm still on page one of this discussion.

Beastie, there are more kinds of evidence than archeological. Hebrew rituals not well understood in Joseph's day appear in the Book of Mormon. Hebraisisms. MesoAmerican war styles described in the Book of Mormon. Complete consistency throughout the book.

And the detailed study of the Book of Mormon by Dr. Skousen, et al, show much more about Hebrew writing styles and grammar than the later "cleaned up" editions.

It really is a ocmplicated field of knowledge which cannot be written off as easily as is being done h ere.

I cannot comment on the Hebraic side of the equation, because it doesn’t interest me enough to study. But I can comment on the Mesoamerican side of the equation because I have studied that.

The only reason you make this comment:

MesoAmerican war styles described in the Book of Mormon.

is because you possess inadequate background knowledge about ancient Mesoamerica in general, and their “war styles” in particular.

I know you are simply repeating what some apologists have assured you is true, but it’s not. Here are a few simple reasons why:

1- There were no conquest wars in Mesoamerica during the specified time period. A conquest war is a war in which the victor takes over the polity of the vanquished. One of the reasons conquest warfare did not exist during that time period was lack of adequate population base that would enable this level of long-distance control. Yet, the Book of Mormon clearly describes wars in which the victor takes over the polity of the vanquished.

2 – There were no bows and arrows (much less “steel swords, or any type of sword instrument) during the specified period in ancient Mesoamerica, yet they factor heavily in Book of Mormon warfare.

3 – There was no standing army during the specified time period in Mesoamerica. This was due to the lack of population base and agricultural needs. Yet, a standing army is clearly described in the Book of Mormon.


For more detailed explanation with citations from Mesoamerican scholars, read my essay here:

http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/ind ... er#Warfare

[Guest]

I will call our attention once again to something that has been pointed out not a few times before. That it has reared its head here suggests to me that it is still worth repeating.

When claims concerning the antiquity of the Book of Mormon are at issue, believing Mormons elevate the few suggestive parallels and possible hits to a vertiginous lake of evidence, while they diminish all evidence that is contemporary to the book's 19th century appearance from a lake to a puddle.

The family and associates of Joseph Smith provide us the only outside witnesses that the gold plates ever existed. No closely similar ancient American artifact has been found to date.

Against this lack of hard evidence we can bring many contemporary (to the 'translated' Book of Mormon) works, both non-fiction and fiction, that deal with similar issues. Many people, from treasure seers to clerics and scholars, had long been speculating on how the people of this hemisphere fit into Biblical history. Speculations ran from Antediluvians to Hebrews.

For non-believers the many works roughly contemporary to Smith that provide fictional or speculative Indian origins in a Biblical framework provide ample evidence that the Book of Mormon as an artifact fits comfortably into the America of the early 19th century. Believers minimize this evidence as much as possible by throwing up direct plagiarism as a strawman. If it can be shown that the Book of Mormon sufficiently differs in content from any single one of these other works, believers are satisfied that Joseph did not copy the particular work in question.

The question, however, is not whom he copied, but where his work most comfortably fits, 5th century AD America or 19th century AD America. The answer is clearly the latter.

The fact that Joseph Smith's solution to the problem was different from the solution of others does not prove that the book is ancient. All it proves is that he was creative enough to formulate his own version.

[_Sethbag]

Anachronisms are an obvious clue to a fraud. It's been a while since I've read it, but If I recall correctly in The Age of Reason, Payne relies primarily on anachronisms to decontruct the Bible.

Most of the seeming anachronisms have been shown to be false. All that is left is the horses thing and that has perfectly reasonable alternative explanations for the objective reasoner.

The only 2 that I know of that have proven false are concrete and grain.

There are still problems with steel, coins, horses, asses, oxen, kings, chariots, Bibles, books, gold plates,...I could go on.

The grain one isn't really disproven, in my opinion. The criticisms of grain with respect to the Book of Mormon are that the Book of Mormon describes widespread agriculture of several grain species, of which there is no evidence that any such widespread agriculture of them ever existed. What has been demonstrated is that some species of the same family as barley has been demonstrated to have existed in certain North American locations anciently. What has not been demonstrated is that they were widely cultivated as staple parts of anyone's diet, and more particularly, that people in the areas assumed to be the location of the Nephites as per the Limited Geography Theory knew about or cultivated them.

I like Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs, and Steel". In that book he discusses what food crops were available in the Americas, and when they were available, and how the availability of them changed as the knowledge and cultivation of them spread to other areas over time. Nowhere in any of that discussion are wheat and barley cultivated by ancient Americans as part of their diets. If such had in fact been the case, Diamond's arguments would in fact have been strongly challenged, since efficient food crops and food sources were part of his arguments for how successful societies managed to evolve.

Charity, or any other TBM, please show me where wheat and barley were intensively cultivated in the ancient Americas, and particularly in Mesoamerica. I'm not nearly as interested in just knowing that a few kernels of a barley relative were discovered in the ruins of some Indian tribe in New Mexico somewhere. A few kernels of a barely relative in New Mexico (or wherever it was) do not constitude evidence that the Book of Mormon story belongs anywhere in the ancient Americas.

[Alf'Omega]

I have asked myself that question. And I have gotten an answer to the question. I have been looking for an article I read titled "The Lightning of Heaven" by Dr. Terryl Givens. I think I can quote him accurately. He said, "There is evidence enough on either side for a life of credible belief or of dismissive denial. The choice we make is based more on who we are than on the quality of the evidence."

The problem is that there simply isn't enough evidence on the side of credible belief, especially when stacked against the counter evidence.

You see the evidence and choose the life of dismissive denial. I see the same evidence and choose the life of credible belief.

Ahhh... but you don't see the same evidence. There is no way you possibly could, and not be convinced.

And I think it says something about who we are that you choose to insult me, accuse me of being dishonest, etc. because we do no agree.

Could you show me where I insulted you specifically? I was merely pointing out possibilities for specific scenarios without making a claim about you personally at all. That you would choose to call it being insulted certainly does say something about you.

What other possible explanation is there for looking critically at the mountains of contrary evidence and coming away with your Mormon belief in tact other than intellectual dishonesty?

[_Doctor Steuss]

[...]
The question, however, is not whom he copied, but where his work most comfortably fits, 5th century AD America or 19th century AD America. The answer is clearly the latter.
[...]

I hope to one day see it so clearly (whether on the side of the believer, or the non-believer). I see too much of a mixture of variations of ANE customs, and 19th century American Protestantism to make a clear-cut judgment call as of yet.