Hitchens on Mormonism

[_Hades]

here is a link to an excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' book God Is Not Great. I thought it was a good read.

[_Chap]

here is a link to an excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' book God Is Not Great. I thought it was a good read.

Interesting:

Mormon partisans sometimes say, as do Muslims, that this cannot have been fraudulent because the work of deception would have been too much for one poor and illiterate man. They have on their side two useful points: if Muhammad was ever convicted in public of fraud and attempted necromancy we have no record of the fact, and Arabic is a language that is somewhat opaque even to the fairly fluent outsider. However, we know the Koran to be made up in part of earlier books and stories, and in the case of Smith it is likewise a simple if tedious task to discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament. These words can mainly be found in the chapters of Isaiah available in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews: The Ten Tribes of Israel in America.

Is the bolded sentence true?

[_Hades]

Interesting:

Mormon partisans sometimes say, as do Muslims, that this cannot have been fraudulent because the work of deception would have been too much for one poor and illiterate man. They have on their side two useful points: if Muhammad was ever convicted in public of fraud and attempted necromancy we have no record of the fact, and Arabic is a language that is somewhat opaque even to the fairly fluent outsider. However, we know the Koran to be made up in part of earlier books and stories, and in the case of Smith it is likewise a simple if tedious task to discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament. These words can mainly be found in the chapters of Isaiah available in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews: The Ten Tribes of Israel in America.

Is the bolded sentence true?

B. H. Roberts seemed to think so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_Hebrews

Roberts' list of parallels included:

- extensive quotation from the prophecies of Isaiah in the Old Testament

[_Hades]

http://olivercowdery.com/texts/ethninfo.htm

Lehi's colony brought with them from Jerusalem the Old Testament, (the whole Bible) down to the days of Jeremiah-about 600 B.C., yet about the only books extensively quoted before the coming of Christ to America is Isaiah! Jacob, brother of the First Nephi, quotes nearly all of the 49th, 50th. and 51st chapters: and the Second Nephi quotes about thirteen full chapters from Isaiah (see "Synopsis of Chapters" in current editions of the Book of Mormon, pp. 523-530.)

The Hebrew records possessed by the Nephites on brass plates are spoken of as containing more matter than the Old Testament had among the Gentiles (I Nephi 13, 20-22.)

Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews quotes copiously and chiefly from Isaiah in relation to the scattering and gathering of Israel. In his second chapter on "the certain restoration of Israel he quotes from six different chapters in Isaiah. In his fourth chapter and in the few pages he devotes to a "Conclusion;" he returns to the subject of the "restoration of Israel," and here he quotes from twenty chapters of Isaiah! He quotes Isaiah 18th chapter complete; but verse by verse with comments and makes of it an "Address" of Isaiah to the U.S. to save Israel.

[_Chap]

B. H. Roberts seemed to think so.

Yeah, but B.H. Roberts was an anti-Mormon with an agenda, right? What would matter would be if a respected Mormon scholar was to say that kind of thing.

Wait a minute ...

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hello,

Does anyone know if B.H. Roberts has been thrown under the bus by Mopologists, yet?

V/R
Dr. Cam