Origins of the Book of Mormon

[_Jersey Girl]

charity,

When you have time ;-) could you tell me what Hebrew rituals are contained in the Book of Mormon that were not well understood at the time? I asked earlier, but I'm sure it got lost in the shuffle.

Jersey Girl

[_Some Schmo]

There is always a one in some outrageous number possibility. And you can put 100 monkeys in a room with word processors, and one of them may type the entire collected works of Shakespeare. Yeah. Right.

LOL

Well, Joseph Smith wasn't a monkey and the Book of Mormon is far from Shakespeare. It's not even Dean Koontz.

[_Mercury]

Heres the thing. There never were any witnesses to the gold plates unless you count hallucinations induced by drunkenness after fasting.

I take your point, Mercury, but I prefer to give the witnesses the benefit of the doubt, because it doesn't matter in the end. They had no way of telling what the plates were even if there were plates. So what, then, does their witness mean other than that some object having the appearance of gold plates was put before them...at best?

How can you give them the benefit fo the doubt whe most, by their actions , discounted their original forced "testimony" to begin with?

[_Mercury]

Enough for a start?

Sure, for a non sequitur its a start.

[_Jersey Girl]

charity, you act as though Joseph Smith was illiterate. Do you think he was? If so, why?

That seems to be part of the "there's no way he could have come up with it himself" story. I'm as baffled as you are as to why people think that.

Not that I have a dog in this fight but, I don't believe for a second that he came up with it himself. However, the evidence related to him having been illiterate is against that assumption. Unless someone has information that I haven't got. That's why I'm asking charity.

Sorry I missed the question earlier.

No, Joseph was not illiterate. He could read. He did read, although his mother stated he wasn't as given to reading and studying as some of his siblings, although he was given to deep thought.

He was uneducated and did not write well in his teens and early twenties. I don't know if he was brilliant to begin with, but with the tutelaage he received, he certainly improved upon what he was given.

My statement "there is no way he could have come up with the Book of Mormon (Book of Abraham, Book of Moses, and the JST, too) by himself" is not the ability or inability to write. It is in the content of those productions. The content could not have been written in the 182-40 year period with information known at that time. I know statistics. There is always a one in some outrageous number possibility. And you can put 100 monkeys in a room with word processors, and one of them may type the entire collected works of Shakespeare. Yeah. Right.

Excuse my ignorance, charity but...


If Joseph could read:

The New Testament
The Old Testament
Heaven and Hell
View of the Hebrews (or knew someone else who did)
Manuscript Found (or knew someone else who did)

Wouldn't that fit with your comment that he wasn't illiterate but also couldn't have composed the Book of Mormon by himself?

[_charity]

Excuse my ignorance, charity but...


If Joseph could read:

The New Testament
The Old Testament
Heaven and Hell
View of the Hebrews (or knew someone else who did)
Manuscript Found (or knew someone else who did)

Wouldn't that fit with your comment that he wasn't illiterate but also couldn't have composed the Book of Mormon by himself?

I maybe should have said that no one, Cowdrey, Rigdon, Ethan Smith, Spaulding, Joseph Smith, could have written the Book of Mormon in the early 1800's.

Have you read "Manuscript Found?" It is funny. I have a ocpy. Bought it at Deseret Book several years ago. Like I said before, the only people who think Manuscript Found or View of the Hebrews was the prototype of the Book of Mormon haven't read one or the other.

[_Jersey Girl]

Excuse my ignorance, charity but...


If Joseph could read:

The New Testament
The Old Testament
Heaven and Hell
View of the Hebrews (or knew someone else who did)
Manuscript Found (or knew someone else who did)

Wouldn't that fit with your comment that he wasn't illiterate but also couldn't have composed the Book of Mormon by himself?

I maybe should have said that no one, Cowdrey, Rigdon, Ethan Smith, Spaulding, Joseph Smith, could have written the Book of Mormon in the early 1800's.

Have you read "Manuscript Found?" It is funny. I have a ocpy. Bought it at Deseret Book several years ago. Like I said before, the only people who think Manuscript Found or View of the Hebrews was the prototype of the Book of Mormon haven't read one or the other.

What if some of those folks on your list got together and pooled their efforts? Do you think it would be possible then? If not, why not?

To my knowledge, there are no extant copies of Manuscript Found in existence. How is it that you have a copy from Deseret Books?

[_Dr. Shades]

Have you read "Manuscript Found?" It is funny. I have a ocpy. Bought it at Deseret Book several years ago. Like I said before, the only people who think Manuscript Found or View of the Hebrews was the prototype of the Book of Mormon haven't read one or the other.

Actually, you only read "Manuscript Story," not "Manuscript Found." Manuscript Story--the one you read--was merely the rough draft before Spalding went back and wrote the document from which the Book of Mormon would later be plagiarized.

The notion that they are the same document is simply a mopologetic fiction that has been foisted upon the public to throw them off the scent.

[_charity]

Heres the thing. There never were any witnesses to the gold plates unless you count hallucinations induced by drunkenness after fasting.

I take your point, Mercury, but I prefer to give the witnesses the benefit of the doubt, because it doesn't matter in the end. They had no way of telling what the plates were even if there were plates. So what, then, does their witness mean other than that some object having the appearance of gold plates was put before them...at best?

How can you give them the benefit fo the doubt whe most, by their actions , discounted their original forced "testimony" to begin with?

"By their actions" are you referring to the fact that 2 of the 3 witnesses were not associated with the Church at the time of their deaths?

Let's look at that. Yes, David Whitmer and Martin Harris were not associated with the Church when they died. Oliver Cowdery had returned to the Church and been accepted in full fellowship.

But both David and Martin reaffirmed from their death beds that the Book of Mormon was of divine origin, they had seen an angel and the plates. From what I know of psychology, it would have been more understandable if they had renounced the story of the angel and the plates when they were fighting against Joseph. But they didn't. That is explainable only if they were recounting an experience they really had, not one they fabricated.

And their testimonies were not forced out of them. You need to read about all three of them and their lifelong comittment to their testimonies. Richard Lloyd Anderson's book on the subject is a must read if anyone wants to talk about the witnesses. Anyone who won't read the Anderson book is just blowing smoke through his ears, since there is no brain in between to stop it.

[Guest]

I just learned this week that Joseph Smith did something called automatic writing. It's done. But it was done better by others. Joseph was an amateur. Same stuff. Stop and start, pick up where you left off, writing about things you could not have known about, using some type of physical object. People should learn about Pearl Curran. I need to read all her biographies. One person who wrote about Joseph Smith and Pearl Curran would proably say that Joseph Smith could not hold a candle to Pearl Curran. And I'm not even addressing, the flirting, other wives, fraud, violence, etc.