Dan Vogel Responds to Lars Nielsen (Part 4) - Nephi in Apocrypha

[dan vogel]

Did Joseph Smith get the name Nephi from the Apocrypha?

Your sidebar is not hermetically sealed. “Mr. Vogel seems to deliberately mischaracterize my work”; “I hope this video will help Mr. Vogel recognize where he himself is and decide for himself what kind of a critic he wants to be”; “if the truth is on Mr. Vogel’s side, he shouldn’t have to mischaracterize”; “This one figure alone should be enough to cause all of Mr. Vogel’s subscribers to seriously re-evaluate their relationship with him”; “Vogel as less of a serious historian and more of a sole-authorship apologist.” So there is no need to pretend you are on higher ground.

by the way, your endnote link only led to an index listing maps, dates, and the name of the river. This wasn’t exactly helpful. I had to do much more searching to locate actual maps.

So far, you have only defended two of your 6 Kircherisms.

-----------------------------------------

Now, continuing at 17:08 with the name Nephi in the Apocrypha, you assert that “it is far more likely that Spalding would have read and referred to the details of 2 Maccabees and Judges 15 than Smith.” This assertion is nonsense, as is also your claim that Joseph Smith probably didn’t even know the book of Maccabees existed. Are you seriously suggesting Joseph Smith didn’t know his Bible, which in all probability included the Apocrypha? (The Apocrypha wasn’t officially removed from Protestant Bibles until 1885. The Bible he and Cowdery purchased in 1830 for the Bible revision project included the Apocrypha.) Anyone who reads his early letters and revelations can see that he had a command of the Bible. He wouldn’t have been much of a religious leader if he didn’t know his Bible.

I included the background story for Nephi in the Apocrypha for context, not to make a connection to folk magic or fire. I wouldn’t make such an insignificant connection, but you seem to. You go on and on about how The Romance of Celes mentions fire, which proves absolutely nothing.

It is mindboggling when you assert: “According to Smith’s neighbors, they were not a church-going family in general, and were comparatively lazy, idle, and indolent (with Mother Smith showing only limited interest in religion after experiencing a near-death illness herself and again after Alvin’s death).” This is really a weak way to make it appear that Spalding was more likely than Joseph Smith to know about the name Nephi in Maccabees. The Smiths were not affiliated with a denomination until Lucy joined the Presbyterian Church about 1824-25 and didn’t baptize their children by design, because they believed the churches were corrupt and spiritually dead. This is clearly explained in both Lucy’s and Joseph’s histories. William recalled that his father read to his family from the Bible regularly. Orsamus Turner said Joseph Jr. was a passable exhorter in the Methodist meetings. Yet, you want to trot out the old apologetic trope of Joseph Smith’s supposed inability to write a crappy little book.

I mentioned that the Book of Mormon uses the same names for people and places because some apologists have countered that Nephi in Maccabees is a place name and not the name of a person. This didn’t merit the long unnecessary digression into Spalding’s MS where he did the same thing. It certainly isn’t evidence that Spalding wrote the Book of Mormon. Regardless, the objection has been removed.

The purpose of my discussion of the Nephilim and Nephi in the Apocrypha was to show that the name Nephi in the Book of Mormon isn’t necessarily a Kircherism. Given the convoluted arguments you use to get Kircher into the Book of Mormon, the sources in Joseph Smith environment are the more likely sources. Nothing you have said in response has changed that.

Continuing at 1:08:50, you attempt to argue that Joseph Smith was less likely than Spalding to have known about the discussion of abridgment in Maccabees, which is pure nonsense. You need to do better than that. You say Joseph Smith had a “sub-par education,” and the Book of Mormon shows it. Nevertheless, he did have about 7 years of education in total. He also had something you can’t get at school, and that’s intellect, charisma, and cunning.

Again, you mistakenly assert that Nephi was only included in Catholic scripture.

I wish you would have saved your irrelevant digressions and speculations for another time. I don’t believe your comments about the Romance of the Celes help.

You can’t say Joseph Smith wasn’t influenced by the Apocrypha. It’s nonsense for you to even attempt it. You argue that “it certainly does not follow that ‘one or both have to be a coincidence.’” How do you figure? If Nephi came from Kircher, then it didn’t come from the Apocrypha. Interestingly, you seem to suggest Nahom could be a coincidence.

You counter: “Equally or more important is whether Solomon Spalding was influenced by Kircher, or the Apocrypha, or both. Here again, it does not follow that one or both have to be a coincidence.” No, the more important question is whether or not the presence of Nephi in the Book of Mormon is a Kircherism. It seems you are willing to weaken your evidence to escape the implications of Nephi in the Apocrypha.

[Shulem]

I think all the points Dan made in the above post are valid and pretty much spot on. Linking the Apocrypha to the Book of Mormon is a back-burner project for me. I have little doubt that Smith was familiar with the Apocrypha long before he ever translated with Harris!

Also, I would like to propose that my groundbreaking thread Mormon at ages 11, 15, 24 is really Joseph Smith Jr., in disguise! is more than enough proof to show that Joseph Smith was the sole author of the Book of Mormon and the Spalding theory is bankrupt. Only Joseph Smith could have embedded the 11-15-24 and 24-24-24 codes in the text and stories of the Book of Mormon.

The Spalding theory on that basis alone is bankrupt.

Just leave it to Shulem to figure out the mysteries and solve these f-ing problems.

[dan vogel]

I think all the points Dan made in the above post are valid and pretty much spot on. Linking the Apocrypha to the Book of Mormon is a back-burner project for me. I have little doubt that Smith was familiar with the Apocrypha long before he ever translated with Harris!

Also, I would like to propose that my groundbreaking thread Mormon at ages 11, 15, 24 is really Joseph Smith Jr., in disguise! is more than enough proof to show that Joseph Smith was the sole author of the Book of Mormon and the Spalding theory is bankrupt. Only Joseph Smith could have embedded the 11-15-24 and 24-24-24 codes in the text and stories of the Book of Mormon.

The Spalding theory on that basis alone is bankrupt.

Just leave it to Shulem to figure out the mysteries and solve these f-ing problems.

Thanks for commenting, Shulem. The Mormon as Joseph Smith autobiography comes up later when discussing Nielsen's theory about Mormon coming from a 17th-century literary fraud in France.