Is the Book of Mormon a 19th century production?

[_why me]

Personally, I don't care how he "translated" the book, or what any witness said about it. The history of the world is full of people pulling scams, and equally full of dupes and liars. See my sig line.

Simply not knowing the details of how a "magic trick" was conducted is not justification for believing in real magic.

Of course you would write this since it fits your own worldview. However, it is not easy to get one's mind around at least 11 people in on a scam and yet, never come clean about it. And if we include emma, that would make 12. All sociopaths, I suppose, including emma if we buy into your line.

[_Buffalo]

Personally, I don't care how he "translated" the book, or what any witness said about it. The history of the world is full of people pulling scams, and equally full of dupes and liars. See my sig line.

Simply not knowing the details of how a "magic trick" was conducted is not justification for believing in real magic.

Of course you would write this since it fits your own worldview. However, it is not easy to get one's mind around at least 11 people in on a scam and yet, never come clean about it. And if we include emma, that would make 12. All sociopaths, I suppose, including emma if we buy into your line.

Or more likely, all gullible dupes.

[_beastie]

Of course you would write this since it fits your own worldview. However, it is not easy to get one's mind around at least 11 people in on a scam and yet, never come clean about it. And if we include emma, that would make 12. All sociopaths, I suppose, including emma if we buy into your line.

People can convince themselves of all sorts of crazy things. I can't imagine how you've made it to whatever age you are and still not be aware of that fact.

[_Dad of a Mormon]

If they were in on the scam, why would they want to incriminate themselves? And if they were duped and never discovered it, why would they deny their initial experience?

Well, this is the sociopathic argument. What you are basically saying is that all 11 witnesses were sociopathic, so much so that they would let people suffer and experience death for their scam and yet, show no remorse because they were concerned about themselves. Amazing.

You are making a lot of assumptions here. How would we know that they would have thought that they are causing immense amounts of suffering? Even if we assume that they were part of a scam, it is quite possible they thought that it wasn't hurting anyone.

[_Themis]

Better yet , why do you always make statements you can't possibily know.

The same reason that you do.

CFR

[_DarkHelmet]

However, it is not easy to get one's mind around at least 11 people in on a scam and yet, never come clean about it.

You seem to be the only one on this thread that can't get your mind around it. All the critics on this thread have no problem with this. You keep bringing it up but it's a non-issue. Do you have anything else to offer?

[_Sethbag]

You do realize where this idea of yours is leading? You are playing with the idea that the English text of the Book of Mormon may be significantly conditioned by the fact it was translated by an English-speaking man in early 19th C upstate New York, and therefore may not represent the original text in 'Reformed Egyptian' script (recording a version of Hebrew?) very closely. That is a version of the so-called 'Loose Translation' theory.

You are right, or it could be that God Himself, as the actual "author of the translation" chose to go with the anachronisms for "His own purposes"--something akin to providing a text that would best be accepted in early-to mid 19th century frontier America.

As someone further on says, yes, we grant that the particularly desparate argument that says that anything at all can be accepted if one simply waves their hands, blows some smoke into our faces, and asserts that, whatever it is, it's possible that God simply wanted it that way, cannot easily be refuted, but rather simply pointed and laughed at. It really is about as dumb as Peewee Hermann getting up quickly and saying "I meant to do that" after wrecking on his bike. Can you prove that Peewee really didn't mean to do that?

It gets worse, though. The same God who would have chosen to deliberately insert anachronisms into a text in a bid to make a text more marketable to 19th Century Americans would have known that 19th Century Americans would have given birth to 20th and 21st Century Americans and others, who would by then be knowledgeable enough, and educated enough, to be able to recognize the anachronisms. This God would have to know that doing so would, in essence, be setting the smart people up for failure.

That an omniscient, omniloving, and omnicaring Creator of the Universe would choose this as his method of informing his creations of information that he really wanted us to take seriously, is itself very difficult to take seriously.

That may get you out of some holes, on a 'mighta, coulda, we don't really know' basis. But you will have to pay for that by losing all the benefits of the opposing 'Tight Translation' view, which is the one you need to adopt if you want to retain the supposed 'slam-dunk' apologetics based on alleged Hebraic factors in the structure of the text and its syntax. On the other hand, as I think you realize, if you go that way you will be in trouble with such problems as your example of ' the use of Jesus Christ and Messiah'.

I realize there are plenty of problems associated with any theory of how the translation took place. Since we don't know how it took place, its not all that awful to assume a hybrid theory right?

You say "hybrid", but really we could just as well (if not better) call it "ad hoc". It should really make one glum to know, deep down in the cockles of one's heart, that one's argument is just an ad hoc assertion whose primary virtue is that it gets our position out of whatever particular trouble it's found itself in.

[_mentalgymnast]

I don't care how he "translated" the book, or what any witness said about it.

The interesting thing to me is that towards the end of his life Joseph Smith continued to bear witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. At this point there were a lot of other things going on (Nauvoo Era) but he felt it important to continue to bear testimony of the divine origin of the book. The question that I have is why? Why continue to rely upon the Book of Mormon even during his extremities and during some of the tortuous experiences and events which were occurring all around him.

How many are familiar with this statement written from Nauvoo on November 13, 1843? Seven months before his death. It appears as though he was even more assured and definite in his testimony.

The boldness of may plans and measures can readily be tested by the touchstone of all schemes, systems, projects, and adventures-truth; for truth is a matter of fact; and the fact is, that by the power of God I translated the Book of Mormon from hieroglyphics, the knowledge of which was lost to the world, in which wonderful event I stood along, an unlearned youth, to combat the worldly wisdom and multiplied ignorance of eighteen centuries , with a new revelation, which (if they would receive the everlasting Gospel) would open the eyes of more than eight hundred millions of people, and make "plain the old paths," wherein if a man walk in all the ordinances of God blameless, he shall inherit eternal life.

According to Dan Jones who was with Joseph in the Carthage Jail Joseph Smith spent the final night of his life, June 26, 1844, studying and testifying of the Book of Mormon.

During the evening, the Patriarch [Hyrum Smith] read and commented on copious extracts from the Book of Mormon, the imprisonments and deliverance of the servants of God for the Gospel's sake; Joseph bore a powerful testimony to the guards of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon-the restoration of the Gospel, the administration of angels, and that the KIngdom of God was again upon the earth.

Whether or not we really care what witnesses said in regards to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, I think it is interesting, at least, to look at Joseph's testimony towards the end of his career.

You also have Elder Holland's talk that was delivered recently and the account which he shared in regards to the usage of the Book of Mormon in receiving comfort and wisdom towards the end of Joseph's ministry. Again, Hyrum was a key player in this instance.

http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2009/10/e ... ut-on.html

It is a stretch, at least to me, that if Joseph's Book of Mormon was a scam, he could in any sense of good conscience, scam his brother right up to the end.

Doesn't make sense.

Regards,
MG

[_beastie]

MG -

Relying on the testimonies to bolster your belief in the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon is problematic in my view.

For one thing, there are other texts that people believe to be of divine origin that turned out to be written by an author and in a time period other than what was originally claimed, such as certain Old Testament texts. So even assuming that there is a God, and that God told Joseph Smith and all these other witnesses that the Book of Mormon was divinely inspired does not necessarily mean that it is of ancient origins. Perhaps God used the gold plates as a revelatory trigger, the way some believers think he did with the Book of Abraham. Perhaps God knew that a prophetic writing would have more chance of being respected and heard it if were claimed that ancient prophets wrote it, rather than a nineteenth century prophet (contemporary in that time period). God works in mysterious ways and all that.

In addition, there are multitudes of people throughout the history of the world who have strongly believed flat-out erroneous and even crazy things. They have often been able to convince others of such, as well. There are people who DIED for those beliefs, sometimes at their own hands (see Heaven's Gate). The strength of one or several people's convictions has nothing to do with whether or not their convictions are actually true.

For these reasons I view the testimonies of Joseph Smith or others as completely irrelevant as far as ascertaining whether or not the Book of Mormon is of ancient origin or nineteenth century origin. I invite you to review my thought experiment a page or so back. I am 100% convinced that no person with expertise in both ancient America and nineteenth century America would come to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is of ancient origin. Well, there is one exception - people who have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. Then, and only after the testimony, does the evidence become apparent. That is a HUGE red flag.

[Guest]

However, it is not easy to get one's mind around at least 11 people in on a scam and yet, never come clean about it. And if we include emma, that would make 12. All sociopaths, I suppose, including emma if we buy into your line.

The is a powerful, one word, counter argument here: "Jonestown".

Here we have a charismatic religious cult leader, Jim Jones, who convinced more than 900 of his followers to commit suicide on nothing more than his say so.

This was possible because these followers had been systematically conditioned by Jones and his associates to believe in what Jones said, whether it was true or not. The "cult think" conditioning by Jones ran so deep that his victims had the faith in him required to take profound action against their own best interest. So deep was their faith that parents even supervised the killing of their children before drinking the Kool Aid themselves.

This kind of thing happens when those involved do not have the curiosity, or emotional intelligence, or critical thinking skills necessary to see the scam. They go along to get along, and they usually get what they pay for.

They believe what they are told because their others with whom they associate believe what they have been told. That is the way a cult works.

When Mormon leaders tell their followers that Mormons are a "Peculiar People", they are instilling and reinforcing the concept of the Church as a cult.

And make no mistake, the early Mormon Church certainly qualified as a cult, from a charismatic leader who exploited his followers financially and sexually, to the attempts to isolate the followers from the rest of society, to the "special knowledge" and baseless "just so stories" in which members were expected to express belief.

Joseph Smith had conditioned these witnesses as to what was expected of them. He told the "witnesses" what they were about to see, presented them with a prop of the object they were expecting to see and told them they had seen it.

Most of them probably believed that they had seen the "plates" which were presented under a cloth cover (with their spiritual eyes, at least). Believing or not, Smith convinced them all to sign a document. Even if they later realized they had been scammed, what motivation would there ever be thereafter for them to admit it?

Anyone who believes that the Book of Mormon was not a 19th century scam needs to assess the magnitude of the "cult think" component in their worldview.