Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

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hauslern
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Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by hauslern »

https://www.Facebook.com/GospelTangents ... 0914768407

Craig Criddle said this "The Smith-as-sole-author theory ignores many, many lines of compounding evidence. The best theory should parsimoniously explain the evidence"
drumdude
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by drumdude »

I’ve often wondered how many average everyday people are impressed by the Book of Mormon as a literary work. People outside of Mormonism who don’t have an interest in describing it as a “marvelous work and wonder.”

I know I was thoroughly unimpressed as an investigator. I quickly realized that the way Mormons read the book is two ways:

1) from cover to cover as a type of spiritual meditation, like praying the rosary. It’s a chore, not something even most dedicated members would consider enjoyable.

2) selected passages, scripture mastery, snippets of the Book of Mormon that are noteworthy, isolated from the tedium of most of the book.

These both seem to cover up for the plain fact that the Book of Mormon is not a very good novel. It’s the kind of throwaway paperback you would see at a thrift store for a dime a dozen, were it not for its historical religious significance.

The podcast “my Book of Mormon” is a great insight for anyone who hasn’t viewed the book from an outsiders perspective.
Chap
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by Chap »

drumdude wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 8:39 pm
I’ve often wondered how many average everyday people are impressed by the Book of Mormon as a literary work. People outside of Mormonism who don’t have an interest in describing it as a “marvelous work and wonder.”

I know I was thoroughly unimpressed as an investigator. I quickly realized that the way Mormons read the book is two ways:

1) from cover to cover as a type of spiritual meditation, like praying the rosary. It’s a chore, not something even most dedicated members would consider enjoyable.

2) selected passages, scripture mastery, snippets of the Book of Mormon that are noteworthy, isolated from the tedium of most of the book.

These both seem to cover up for the plain fact that the Book of Mormon is not a very good novel. It’s the kind of throwaway paperback you would see at a thrift store for a dime a dozen, were it not for its historical religious significance.

The podcast “my Book of Mormon” is a great insight for anyone who hasn’t viewed the book from an outsiders perspective.
Yes, but ...

In a thread in another forum, I said this with reference to another poster's comments on the work of an author of the past:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=154184&p=2747403#top
A basic rule in reading a text that comes from a different time, place, and culture is that you need to realise that the author was not writing for you, and your idea of what he ought to be trying to do, and whether he has succeeded in his aims, is likely to be irrelevant.
Joseph Smith was addressing an audience of people like himself: not highly educated, but literate, saturated in 'Bible English', and eager for new religious insights. He wrote for them, not for people learned in the history of English grammar, or the premodern history and archeology of the Americas as we have come to understand it today. For many of them, what he wrote seemed to be indeed 'a second testament of Jesus Christ', as fascinating to them as the second film in the Star Wars series was to fans of the first one. More stuff from the Lord, written in the Lord's own distinctive language, and about stuff that happened right here in America! What's not to like?

Today, and to readers with a much wider range of knowledge than Smith's intended readership, it is a lot less impressive ... But if Smith could have seen the extremely large financial resources of the organisation he founded, I am not sure that he would have felt that his project had been a failure.

[Edited once for typos]
Last edited by Chap on Thu Oct 21, 2021 4:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by Kishkumen »

Good points, Chap. Very good.

Brian Hales never ceases both to amaze and bore me at the same time. The impenetrability of his mind to evidence that contradicts his assumptions is the stuff of legend. He is, first and foremost, an apologist for LDS assumptions, not a scholar who is seeking to understand things on their own terms. He is continually asking people to dislodge him from his convictions but only so that he can heroically (in his own mind) stay stuck in them. Because, at the end of the day, this is performance art. This is an exercise in showing everyone that, yes, you too can look at all of the evidence and stay blind to what you are seeing. You too can come to new information and walk away without it having discomfited you in the least. You can stay in your comfortable bubble.

But why? Why should you want to? What fun is that? Hales is not about fun. He is about protecting status quo LDSism. And I have very little patience for that. It is not that I dislike people being LDS. It is that I dislike an obsessive, obdurate mind fixed on maintaining static boundaries, and teasing everyone else into wasting their time with this sadomasochistic game. Indeed, going so far as to attack others who lack this singular, confused mindset as though they are the ones with the problem. How dare you not come to the same, tired, anachronistic conclusions as Brian Hales? Well, you must be deluded, or you must have bad motives. Why do you hate the "truth"?
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Dr Exiled
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by Dr Exiled »

These are great comments. Hales' obstinate adherence to his position, and that of the other apologists, is definitely a turn off to me as well. It reminds me of the experiments Solomon Asch did with respect to conformity: https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychol ... rmity.html

For Hales, the tallest bar in the chart below will always be the one that supports LDS truth claims, regardless of the evidence.

Image
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
drumdude
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by drumdude »

Chap wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 10:37 am
drumdude wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 8:39 pm
I’ve often wondered how many average everyday people are impressed by the Book of Mormon as a literary work. People outside of Mormonism who don’t have an interest in describing it as a “marvelous work and wonder.”

I know I was thoroughly unimpressed as an investigator. I quickly realized that the way Mormons read the book is two ways:

1) from cover to cover as a type of spiritual meditation, like praying the rosary. It’s a chore, not something even most dedicated members would consider enjoyable.

2) selected passages, scripture mastery, snippets of the Book of Mormon that are noteworthy, isolated from the tedium of most of the book.

These both seem to cover up for the plain fact that the Book of Mormon is not a very good novel. It’s the kind of throwaway paperback you would see at a thrift store for a dime a dozen, were it not for its historical religious significance.

The podcast “my Book of Mormon” is a great insight for anyone who hasn’t viewed the book from an outsiders perspective.
Yes, but ...

In a thread in another forum, I said this with reference to another poster's comments on the work of an author of the past:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=154184&p=2747403#top
A basic rule in reading a text that comes from a different time, place, and culture is that you need to realise that the author was not writing for you, and your idea of what he ought to be trying to do, and whether he has succeeded in his aims, is likely to be irrelevant.
Joseph Smith was addressing an audience of people like himself: not highly educated, but literate, saturated in 'Bible English', and eager for new religious insights. He wrote for them, not for people learned in the history of English grammar, or the premodern history and archeology of the Americas as we have come to understand it today. For many of them, what he wrote seemed to be indeed 'a second testament of Jesus Christ', as fascinating to them as the second film in the Star Wars series was to fans of the first one. More stuff from the Lord, written in the Lord's own distinctive language, and about stuff that happened right here in America! What's not to like?

Today, and to readers with a much wider range of knowledge than Smith's intended readership, it is a lot less impressive ... But if Smith could have seen the extremely large financial resources of the organisation he founded, I am not sure that he would have felt that his project had been a failure.

[Edited once for typos]
Good point. Were there many Americans at the time who enjoyed it, reviewed it favorably, but who didn’t join the religion? It’s something I haven’t seen talked about much.
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by Chap »

drumdude wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 5:11 pm
Were there many Americans at the time who enjoyed it, reviewed it favorably, but who didn’t join the religion? It’s something I haven’t seen talked about much.
Somehow I don't think that the kind of people who got book reviews published were quite the readership that Joseph Smith was targeting ...
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Rick Grunder
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by Rick Grunder »

The wonderful 1834 review of the Book of Mormon by Unitarian Jason Whitman (1799-1848; Harvard, 1825) includes this particularly relevant passage:
In a large portion of the community, there is a great degree of ignorance in regard to the geography of the sacred Scriptures, the manners and customs of the Jews, and the natural history of the Bible. There are many, who read their Bibles daily, and with devotional feelings it may be, who have no idea that the places mentioned in sacred history, like those mentioned in any other history, can be traced on the map, can be found and visited at the present day, although disguised under modern names. It makes no part of their study of the Bible, to ascertain where the places mentioned are to be found, and what they are now called. They have no idea that the allusions to manners and customs, found in the Bible, can be understood, through an acquaintance with the practices and habits of the people described; and, consequently, the study of Jewish manners and customs makes no part of their preparation for understanding the Scriptures. They have no idea that the allusions in Scripture to facts in natural history can be verified by an acquaintance with that science; and, consequently, they make no exertions to understand the natural history of the Bible. They do not take up the Bible and read it with the expectation of being able to understand it, even in regard to these particulars, as they would understand any other book. All such are prepared, by their very ignorance on these subjects, to become dupes of the Mormon delusion; or, rather, they are not prepared to detect and withstand this delusion. They open the Book of Mormon. The paragraphs begin with the phrase, "And behold it came to pass." They read of the cities of Zarahemla, Gid, Mulek, Corianton, and a multitude of others. They read of prophets and preachers, of faith, repentance, and obedience; and having been accustomed, in reading the Scriptures, to take all such things just as they are presented, without careful examination, they can see no reason why all this is not as much entitled to belief, as are the records of the Old and New Testaments.
--THE UNITARIAN. Conducted by Bernard Whitman. (Cambridge and Boston: James Munroe and Company, Booksellers to the University, 1834), 48 (from the January issue of this short-lived periodical which was published for one year).
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by drumdude »

It seems like it would have been very divisive, either you accepted Joseph Smith as a prophet and followed Mormonism or you rejected it as heresy and blasphemy. Anyone who had heard of the book would very likely also have heard all the other claims Joseph Smith made. If there was a large group of Americans who read the Book of Mormon as a standalone work of fiction and received it well without having an favorable opinion on the claims of Mormonism and Joseph Smith I haven't seen much about them.
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Rivendale
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Re: Hales on Book of Mormon Authorship

Post by Rivendale »

Hales is the equivelent of Mike Tannehill from the old Mormon expression podcast. Mike would get pummeled day in and day out from the panel members and remain completely unfazed. On a private Facebook group about Mormon historians Brian will engage in many historians like Vogel, Stephenson, Davis and others. He will ask a question (recently it has been a challenge for naturalists to explain how Joseph produced the words of the Book of Mormon) and get several answers but remain absolutely oblivious to the answers. Someone recently suggested he get his short term memory checked because he repeats the same question even though plausible answers have been given.
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