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I dropped by the Deseret bookstore Friday evening and picked up two books.

The first is titled "Leap of Faith" by Bob Bennett; the second is an audio book titled "Mormons and Masonry" by Matthew Brown.

As I reviewed them both over the weekend, a stark contrast emerged.

I am not done with the first two chapters of Brown's book on Masonry, and it is already apparent his agenda is to downplay or ignore the points of similarity while emphasizing the points of divergence.

He mentions the Mason motto of "Making good men better," but does not mention (as I fully expected) Joseph Smith's famous statement, "The gospel makes bad men good and good men better."

He also mentioned that the Masonic ritual deals with a progression through three levels, while ignoring the fact the temple endowment does exactly the same thing.

In short, I quickly realized I could not trust Brown to give me the full story.

In contrast, "Leap of Faith" attempts to analyze the Book of Mormon to see whether it bears indicia of being a forgery. It is an interesting idea, and I was pleased to see Bennett took his task seriously. He looks at all sides of the issue and discusses contents that look unlike a forgery, while also giving full disclosure to those things in the Book of Mormon that do look like a 19th century forgery.

When there are arguments on both sides, he presents both sides and does not try to draw conclusions.

I am halfway through this book, and find it well written and carefully constructed. I even think there are some points in favor of the Book of Mormon that Bennett omits, such as his statement that there is no evidence of Hebrew elements in any native American languages, while apparently overlooking Brian Stubb's work in this area.

So even though there are some things out there he omits, I feel confident that he is not omitting them to make a polemic point, but simply because he probably was not aware of them.

I can forgive him that, because he is reasonably well informed and is putting all his cards on the table.

In short, I feel I can trust Bennett to present the full picture, at least as full as he understands it to be.

Don't know if this rings any bells with folks, but I thought I would post about it anyway.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

Wait, there is evidence of Hebrew elements in the Native American languages?

It seems this would be a big deal and everyone would be talking about it. That is, unless we could also find evidence of Sanskrit and Chinese too. Has anyone searched for Sanskrit and Chinese? If not, why not?

Might I suggest that the reason people aren't searching for traces of Sanskrit in Native American languages is because there doesn't happen to be a religion who's existence depends on finding any type of link they can get their hands on?

consiglieri wrote:

zeezrom wrote:Wait, there is evidence of Hebrew elements in the Native American languages?

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=1&id=112

No known Native American language is very similar to Hebrew (or Egyptian).

Get rid of the "very" and there's your answer.

Thanks Consig!

I noticed the comment, "we have limited resources to carry out the research..." in the document you linked. I've noticed other researchers have said things like this before. My question is, why doesn't the church just bite the bullet and dump a truckload of resources on an archeological project down there? You can certainly do a lot of research with $1B. I'm sure many wealthy donors could be found as well.

zeezrom wrote:I noticed the comment, "we have limited resources to carry out the research..." in the document you linked.

And very limited resources are required to carry out that research. "We have limited resources" can mean anything. To be honest, I really don't see what kind of resources are required to do this kind of research independently. I hate to be cynical, but I think they have found a few "hits" and really are not interested in a full blown analysis using a rigorous methodology. It's simply much more convenient to say, "we have limited resources."

As for funding, the church has from time to time thrown money at research. They helped fund the NWAF and funded the "Camelot" era of Church History. While one can argue that both projects produced valuable data, and I agree with that assessment, from the point of view of the brethren, both were unmitigated disasters. And since it's the brethren who control the purse strings...

Very similar? Of course native american languages are similar to Hebrew. Both are spoken. How much more proof does a believer need?

consiglieri wrote:
In short, I feel I can trust Bennett to present the full picture, at least as full as he understands it to be.

Don't know if this rings any bells with folks, but I thought I would post about it anyway.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

And of course both books were purchased at Desseret and it shows that the members are attempting to address issues. I think that the publishing company attempts to be fair in the information that they publish.

An author is always up for critique and the author usually makes a stategy for why they are writing what they are writing in order to make their argument. I am sure that you can write to both authors with your comments.

consiglieri wrote:
I am not done with the first two chapters of Brown's book on Masonry, and it is already apparent his agenda is to downplay or ignore the points of similarity while emphasizing the points of divergence.

He also mentioned that the Masonic ritual deals with a progression through three levels, while ignoring the fact the temple endowment does exactly the same thing.

Consig, have you ever found anyone that was able to provide a good explanation for the similarities between the masons and the temple? Or anyone that was able to explain the away the similarities?

To me it seems a nearly impossible task. There are way too many comments from early church leaders talking about "celestial masonry" and "true masonry". Not sure how the church can successfully distance itself from the true origins of the Nauvoo endowment whey they were so proud of the masonic connection in the early church.