Morley wrote: ↑Sun Feb 06, 2022 6:33 pm
Here's your paper, in its most readable format:
https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/in-t ... n-3-nephi/
Pages aren't marked, but you can find what I've referenced by using the find function in your browser. You can, for instance, look for "fire" and see all the times that the author references where he's been able to find folks not being able to light a fire. Or you can look for darkness and find all the times he's been able to find reports of three days of darkness. That way you won't actually have to do any work.
Good luck.
I stand corrected. The piece you cut and pasted was from the same article I linked to. This piece does mention some instances that are recorded where fire was extinguished by volcanic activity...but more than likely, so were any people that were around.
I don't have a response to your concern on this point.
At the end of the paper this comment is made:
A question that might be asked by those who doubt the truth of the Book of Mormon account is, “What is so remarkable about the account of a volcanic eruption?” “No doubt,” they would say, “Joseph Smith had read an account of a volcanic eruption and thought it would make a nice backdrop for the destruction he envisioned occurring at Christ’s death.” I would answer that the account is remarkable for its detail and accuracy and that such an account would have been impossible for an uneducated young man to have published in 1830. Volcanoes were neither well understood nor well documented in the early 1800s. Geology was a science still in its infancy. The first real textbook of geology was published the same year as the Book of Mormon, 1830, by Charles Lyell in Great Britain.113 But his descriptions of volcanic eruptions, as well as the few other accounts available in Joseph Smith’s day, are incomplete and do not include all the features found in the Book of Mormon account, features that are now known to occur with large explosive eruptions.
The eruption of Tambora in 1815 was probably the most spectacular eruption in historic times, and it occurred when Joseph Smith was about ten years old. “Surely,” Book of Mormon detractors would say, “Joseph must have read or heard about this eruption? He could easily have modeled his 3 Nephi account after Tambora.” Although it is possible that Joseph read an account of the Tambora eruption somewhere, it is much more probable that Joseph never knew about the eruption of Mount Tambora. The eruption was almost completely unreported at the time it occurred, and detailed available accounts of the eruption are still rare.114 The only substantial accounts that survived from this time were assembled by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, British lieutenant governor of Java, and published in 1817.115 Raffles’s History of Java does include a few pages describing the eruption, and some of the features of the description are similar to the Book of Mormon account (as are the accounts of all volcanic eruptions of this type), but again the account does not mention some of the features of the Book of Mormon account. For example, no mention is made of lightning of any kind, nor of the inability to light fires. Nor does Raffles mention all the types of destruction found in the Book of Mormon account. It was not until 1847 that a scientific expedition penetrated to the crater and scientists were able to gain some understanding of what had occurred.116 Even then, the information gathered was not widely distributed.
It's questionable whether Joseph Smith would have had the knowledge necessary to construct his destruction narrative the way it is laid out in the Book of Mormon. You do bring up a good point that needs further research/information. Tambora was unlikely to have been a trigger for the Book of Mormon narrative.
There were enough 'hits' during the destruction narrative in the Book of Mormon (listed previously) to give one pause. It's interesting that this event is referred to multiple times in the Book of Mormon separated by chapters and other events, etc.
Regards,
MG
it's the same author! 
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