Themis wrote:Can you think of anything that does not fit into Joseph made it up?
The promise in Moroni 10:3-5 ... I have a tough time with Joseph Smith throwing in a promise/directive that requires prayer and an answer from God to determine if the Book of Mormon is true. There are too many stories/experiences that I have heard from people that I trust who have received this witness from God.
And they know it.
Why in the world would Joseph put this directive in the Book of Mormon? It seems like one of the last things that a con man would ask folks to do.
Actually pray to God?
Are there other sacred text produced in the later Christian era and/or in the last couple of centuries that have a directive and a promise that even comes close to this?
Joseph understood how easy it was to manipulate emotion into belief.
What kind of book is so insecure that it needs to constantly reassure you that it's history?
I'm sure you've seen the video where people of all religions talk about praying to God about their church (including polygamous LDS off-shoots) and getting spiritual confirmation of its truth?
It's not reliable for finding truth... and putting it in a book to try and assure the reader it's true does nothing to prove its authenticity.
Russell Nelson said he got a spiritual confirmation of the Nov 15 revelation against gays... we know how well that worked out for him.
Brant Gardner wrote:Third, whoever translated the Book of Mormon into English was fluent in western European culture (in which the US participated). We get agricultural concepts and idioms that are specific to that cultural inheritance, but which contrast to agricultural and historical practices anywhere in the Americas. That tells us that the translator knew a particular culture, and it wasn’t the original. Thus the translation shows evidence of the modern rather than the ancient in some of those particulars (flora and fauna are one example, but references to wheat culture is also significant). For me, that tells me that the suggestion that Moroni did the translation cannot be accurate. Regardless of fluency in English, Moroni would not have so easily misrepresented his native culture.
MG wrote:Why can't it be both?
Why can't what be both of what?
Last edited by Guest on Wed May 01, 2019 2:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
Brandt wrote:Third, whoever translated the Book of Mormon into English was fluent in western European culture (in which the US participated). We get agricultural concepts and idioms that are specific to that cultural inheritance, but which contrast to agricultural and historical practices anywhere in the Americas. That tells us that the translator knew a particular culture, and it wasn’t the original. Thus the translation shows evidence of the modern rather than the ancient in some of those particulars (flora and fauna are one example, but references to wheat culture is also significant). For me, that tells me that the suggestion that Moroni did the translation cannot be accurate. Regardless of fluency in English, Moroni would not have so easily misrepresented his native culture.
OK. Maybe I'm confused. Who are you quoting here? I have read Brant Gardner's stuff. But who is Brandt?
jfro18 wrote: [Praying to God is] not reliable for finding truth... and putting it in a book to try and assure the reader it's true does nothing to prove its authenticity.
But if the only way we can get truth from God is if He actually gives it to us...and we refuse it...where does that leave us?
Personally, I think that is an awfully bold promise/directive to place in the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon was a book Joseph and Co. cobbled together to sell and make money it seems like this is an odd thing to insert in the book.
jfro18 wrote: Personally, I think that is an awfully bold promise/directive to place in the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon was a book Joseph and Co. cobbled together to sell and make money it seems like this is an odd thing to insert in the book.
It's really not though. If you're trying to insist in the book being a true history, this is what you do when you're unwilling to let people actually see the source documents.
Again, Joseph is coming from a time of magic and revivalist movements where emotions are often thought of as from God or the devil.
You're right that it's an odd thing to have in a book that is supposed to be an abridgement of a history, but I think if anything that speaks to it more being from a man made source as opposed to being from God.
jfro18 wrote:Joseph understood how easy it was to manipulate emotion into belief.
I think this is kind of a cop out. But you're right in the sense that from your perspective an emotional response to stimuli is always that.
An emotional response. Period.
That would discount the possibility of receiving a spiritual witness, i.e. Moroni 10:3-5
If Joseph inserted this promise/directive in the Book of Mormon purely to get folks to experience an emotional response I think the Book of Mormon would have been a BIG fail. As it is, it's not a big fail. Reason? People know they have received a witness of the Spirit.
Not just a warm fuzzy.
And it's done in private. It's a private and intimate experience with God. It's kind of hard to produce an emotional response that can be mistaken for the Spirit when praying on one's own without the influence of other stimuli.
The point Skousen was making in that instance was the Hebrew portions with chiasmus were preserved in their Hebrew literary forms. Therefore, the Book of Mormon isn't fundamentally an Early Modern English text, it is a text that has Early Modern English elements in it.
I fixed the spelling of Brant's name, so now you can read the quote from the very link you shared with the board in full confidence that it is the Brant you're thinking of.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
Gadianton wrote: My favorite point by a narrow margin came from the legendary RT himself, who actually was just repeating what Skousen and Carmack have apparently said: Early Modern English is nearly impossible for modern readers to parse, including themselves as linguists, yet the Book of Mormon is simplistic to read. Therefore, it's not a Early Modern English text, but has elements of Early Modern English. Dumbfounded.
I know. He lays it out so clearly! My favorite of rt's, due to my math interests, was the follow-up to the one above:
Second, Early Modern English is not a language. It refers to a time period from the late 15th century to the late 17th century during which the English language actually changed a great deal. A text from 1475 would be very different from a 1675 text. But Carmack doesn’t really care about this. He will use examples from all across this period as if they were somehow equal. He simply cannot nail down when in the Early Modern period the examples from the Book of Mormon came from. They are all over the board.
That type of analysis has always bothered me about Carmack's statistical work. The results and conclusions he comes to for each individual case are so disparate, across decades of centuries, across frequencies, across types of usage. With each one, he concludes Early Modern English, but his statistical results can't be grouped together to create a single picture.
jfro18 wrote: If you're trying to insist in the book being a true history, this is what you do when you're unwilling to let people actually see the source documents.
Again, Joseph is coming from a time of magic and revivalist movements where emotions are often thought of as from God or the devil.
You're right that it's an odd thing to have in a book that is supposed to be an abridgement of a history, but I think if anything that speaks to it more being from a man made source as opposed to being from God.
Meh.
Your reasoning isn't wrapping itself around me and saying, "Yes, this is it!" "This is the reason Joseph inserted these three verses in the final part of the Book of Mormon."
I don't think you're giving enough credence to these three verses being tied to the Book of Mormon as the grand finale to the narrative. They could have just as easily been left out and no one would have been the wiser. Except for the fact that WITH the promise/directive it has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE for those that have taken the time to seek and follow that directive/promise. It is the witness of the Spirit as one reads and prays about the truth of the Book of Mormon that brings many people into the church and also keeps people in the church as they continually read, study, and pray about the Book of Mormon and it's teachings, etc.