I found this humorous...

[_EAllusion]

Lots of cultures have myths involving cities/domiciles in the sky. The most logical explanation for this is there actually was a city in the sky at one point and all cultural tales are derivatively passed down from this fact.

[_DarkHelmet]

Lots of cultures have myths involving cities/domiciles in the sky. The most logical explanation for this is there actually was a city in the sky at one point and all cultural tales are derivatively passed down from this fact.

This is true. The Hale Bop comet people believed something like this. Also, Lando Calrissian lived in a city that floated in the sky.

[_Mercury]

Lots of cultures have myths involving cities/domiciles in the sky. The most logical explanation for this is there actually was a city in the sky at one point and all cultural tales are derivatively passed down from this fact.

This is true. The Hale Bop comet people believed something like this. Also, Lando Calrissian lived in a city that floated in the sky.

Therefore...the Book of Mormon....has a basis in reality! Isn't the gospel so wonderful?

[_Ray A]

From Friend.

Enoch and all who lived in Zion, his city, were so righteous that Heavenly Father took the whole city up into heaven.* In the last days, the city and its people will return to earth and be part of the New Jerusalem.† To help you remember that these great events are coming, you will need: heavy paper, glue, scissors, a sharpened pencil, and string.

1. Remove this page and glue it to heavy paper. When the glue is dry, trim the page along the heavy solid lines. Cut out the city on the broken lines.

2. Using the pencil point, punch small holes through the circles at A, B, C, and D. Thread one end of the string into B, down the back of the city, and out C. Then thread one end of the string through A, the other end through D, and tie the two ends together behind the page.

Each time you tell the story of the city of Enoch, slide the city up the string to heaven and then back down the string to Earth again.

.

When kids grow up on stuff like this then read:

Hugh Nibley:

There are other versions of these sad events in the myths and legends of many people, but by now it should hardly be necessary to multiply examples or to point out parallels to the reader. Of comparative studies there is no end, but where do they lead us? What can we say for sure about Enoch? For one thing, that the Enoch story is not just another myth. More than two thousand years ago, able scholars were trying to account for the common Flood story and the Enoch figure found throughout the ancient world; with the progress of modern research, Enoch, instead of dissolving as so many figures have done in the light of science, has become progressively more real, and the old familiar claims to his hoary antiquity do not vanish at the touch of modern research but do just the opposite. "Curiously," writes B. Z. Wacholder, "it is now generally agreed that the link between the Babylonian traditions and Genesis was much more profound than conceived either by Pseudo-Eumolpus or Alexander Polyhistor," two sound and competent scholars of the second or third century B.C.

It's not hard to understand posts like the one on MAD.

[_Ray A]

I nearly fell off my chair when reading Tarski's reply:

crystalized heavens? first sphere?

I knew that religion was always behind science but this is downright Ptolemaic!

Oh and City of Enoch in orbit? LOL This is priceless! Reminds me of growing up in Utah.

Sorry about the hijack, JSM, I'll quit. (I should have made this a separate thread.)

[_JohnStuartMill]

At least it's an interesting hijack. :thumbsup:

[_Gazelam]

The city of Enoch is actually the gulf of mexico floating in orbit? I never heard that before.

I thought God kept in a little room like Superman does with the Bottled City of Kandor.

[_Ray A]

The city of Enoch is actually the gulf of mexico floating in orbit? I never heard that before.

I do not think there Ever was a people on the earth who done as much as we have in 40 years. It was the opinion of the Prophet Joseph that the City of Enoch was in the gulf of Mexico, And that Adam offered his sacrafice & Built his first Altar in Adam Ondi Ahman, & the Stones of his Altar are there now to be seen. The City of Enoch was taken up but the City of Zion which we shall build will remain & not be taken away as his City was. Noah was 110 years in building an Ark. We have Not Been 40 years yet in building up Zion in our day & the Kingdom of God on the Earth.

Source: Wilford Woodruff Journal, March 30, 1873. Meeting at the Historian’s Office.

"Again Presdet Young said Joseph the Prophet told me that the garden of Eden was in Jackson Co Missouri, & when Adam was driven out of the garden of Eden He went about 40 miles to the Place which we Named Adam Ondi Ahman, & there built an Altar of Stone & offered Sacrifize. That Altar remains to this day. I saw it as Adam left it as did many others, & through all the revolutions of the world that Altar had not been disturbed. Joseph also said that when the City of Enoch fled & was translated it was whare the gulf of Mexico now is. It left that gulf a body of water." (Waiting for World's End: The Diaries of Wilford Woodruff, edited by Susan Staker, Signature Books, 1993, p. 305)

(Emphasis added)

Eden was also in Missouri, and Enoch lived to 365 years before he got zapped up.

[_Gazelam]

Ray,

Thanks for posting those. I guess I have read that before, my memories not the best, but I recognize those quotes now.

Hugh Nibleys quote is correct. There is alot of talk of Enoch in the writings of the Sumerians. They mention his visiting Noah after the Flood and educating him.

[_Ray A]

Hugh Nibleys quote is correct. There is alot of talk of Enoch in the writings of the Sumerians. They mention his visiting Noah after the Flood and educating him.

The books are all pseudepigrapha, Gaz.

The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch[1]) is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared (Genesis 5:18).

While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian Churches, it was explicitly quoted[2]:8 in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14-15) and by many of the early Church Fathers. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church to this day regards it to be canonical.

It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin fragments. There is no consensus among Western scholars about the original language: some propose Aramaic, others Hebrew, while the probable thesis according to E. Isaac is that 1 Enoch, as Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew[2]:6. Ethiopian scholars hold that Ge'ez is the language of the original from which the Greek and Aramaic copies were made, pointing out that it is the only language in which the complete text has been found[3].

According to Western scholars its older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) date from about 300 BC and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of 1st century BC[4]; It is argued that all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it and were influenced by it in thought and diction.[5]

Book of Enoch

These are not real history, but legends and religious traditions passed on that have no more historical validity than Greek Mythology, or Mithraic mythology. The "ancients" did not practice historiography in the critical sense that we do now, notwithstanding Herodotus, who complied:

excellent ethnographic descriptions of the peoples that the Persians have conquered, fairy tales, gossip, legends, and a very humanitarian morale.

Yet people like Nibley come along and take all of this seriously as if it's history. There is a very imaginative and embellished ancient literature, and none of it was written by the standards that would be required of a modern historian. (Critical peer review, etc.)