J Antley: What is encompassed in the "truthfulness" of LDS?

[Guest]

In fact, how would this narrative be any less faith promoting? Changes are in red. Deletions are in light blue.

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

GEN 5:28 When Lamech had lived 182 18 years, he had a son.

29 He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and
painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed blessed."

6:14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it
with pitch inside and out.

15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 45 feet long, 75 7 1/2 feet wide and 45 4 1/2 feet high.

16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top.
Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks shelves for your fowl.

17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to your land to destroy all life under the heavens in your region, every creature that has the breath of life in it that walks on the land. Everything on earth Everything in your region that lives on the land will perish.

18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark--
you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.

19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures your livestock, male and female, to keep them alive with you.

20 Two of every kind of bird fowl you keep for your use, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that you need to sustain yourselves that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it
away as food for you and for them."

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

7:1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole
family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

deleted nonsense passages

4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth to your land for forty days 4 days and
forty nights 4 nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth your land every living creature all animals that walk the earth I have made."

5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old 60 when the floodwaters came on the earth.

7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark
to escape the waters of the flood.

8 All their pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, that they have use for,

9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark were herded onto the ark, as God had commanded
Noah.

10 And after the seven days several hours the floodwaters came on the earth to his land.

11 In the six hundredth sixtieth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the
second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth,
and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

12 And rain fell on the earth forty four days and forty four nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together
with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.

14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all their livestock and fowl according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.

15 Pairs of all creatures All their livestock that have the breath of life in them came to
Noah and entered the ark were herded onto the ark.

16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God
had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

17 For forty four days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters
increased they lifted the ark high above the earth his land.

8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock
that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the
waters receded.

2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been
closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.

3 The water receded steadily from the earth his land. At the end of the hundred and
fifty days several days the water had gone down,

4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on
the mountains near Mount Ararat.

5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first
day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible as the skies cleared.

6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark

7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water
had dried up from the earth.

8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface
of the ground.

9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water
over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He
reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in
the ark.

10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.

11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a
freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from
the earth his land.

12 He waited seven more days several more hours and sent the dove out again, but this time it
did not return to him.

13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first
year 61st year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering
from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.

14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth his land was completely dry.

15 Then God said to Noah,

16 "Come out of the ark unto me, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.

17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you--the birds,
the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground--so they can
multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

18 So Noah came out unto the Lord, together with his sons and his wife and his sons'
wives.

19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and
all the birds--everything that moves on the earth--came out of the ark, one
kind after another.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean
animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.

21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again
will I curse the ground this land because of man, even though every inclination of
his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living
creatures of this land, as I have done.

22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

9:9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after
you

10 and with every living creature that was with you--the birds, the
livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with
you--every living creature on earth.

11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off
by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the
earth this land."

12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me
and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations
to come:

13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the
covenant between me and the earth this land.

14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the
clouds,

15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures
of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all
life anywhere.

16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember
the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind
on the earth."

17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have
established between me and all life on the earth."

20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.

21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered
inside his tent.

22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two
brothers outside.

23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders;
then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their
faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's
nakedness.

24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had
done to him,

25 he said, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his
brothers."

26 He also said, "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the
slave of Shem.

27 May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents
of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave."

28 After the flood Noah lived another 350 35 years.

29 Altogether, Noah lived 950 95 years, and then he died. He was kind of an asshole, though.

[_ludwigm]

Changes are in red. Deletions are in light blue.

You are a stand-up guy!

18. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
19. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

[_Joseph Antley]

Then you believe that there was actually a man existed that is Moroni as described in the Book of Mormon?

Yep.

Do you believe that there was the great battle that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Nephites being killed? If so, why do believe it despite the lack of archaeological evidence to support it, while you dispute stories of the Old Testament?

I believe there was a battle, but I also think that the numbers are probably hyperbolic, which is typical of ancient battle descriptions.

[_Willy Law]

I assume you understand completely why the average chapel Mormon would see you as an apostate?

[_Willy Law]

From the Book of Mormon it seems that the account of the great tower and confounding of the languages was specifically mentioned in the 25 plates that made up the abridgement, it does not appear to be an interpretation of Moroni.

2 And I take mine account from the atwenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of Ether.

3 And as I suppose that the first part of this record, which speaks concerning the creation of the world, and also of Adam, and an account from that time even to the great tower, and whatsoever things transpired among the children of men until that time, is had among the Jews—

[_Darth J]

mDo you believe that there was the great battle that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Nephites being killed? If so, why do believe it despite the lack of archaeological evidence to support it, while you dispute stories of the Old Testament?

I believe there was a battle, but I also think that the numbers are probably hyperbolic, which is typical of ancient battle descriptions.

Because it is completely reasonable that an inspired prophet who was writing a scripture "for our day" would be following ancient conventions that make the account look highly improbable to the intended audience (people living in our day).

But aside from that, I'm sure that despite having no contact or experience with the Old World, their own people having left there a thousand years previously and developed their own civilization and culture over the course of ten centuries, nonetheless Mormon and Moroni would have thought in the same terms as people living in the ancient Near East.

Those brass plates must have been like the Library of Congress with all the information we need them to have contained. No wonder the voices in Nephi's head told him to turn Laban into a Pez dispenser.

[_Joseph Antley]

But aside from that, I'm sure that despite having no contact or experience with the Old World, their own people having left there a thousand years previously and developed their own civilization and culture over the course of ten centuries, nonetheless Mormon and Moroni would have thought in the same terms as people living in the ancient Near East.

I don't think it's an exclusively ANE habit, as I've been told that ancient Chinese records seem to do the same. I would imagine that it's pretty universal across the ancient world when it was often just unrealistic to count accurately very large numbers.

To assume that any ancient people, no matter how much the Holy Ghost was burning their bosoms or how many angels they saw, had the same idea of historiography that you and I do--a relatively modern concept--seems much less reasonable to me.

[_schreech]

I don't think it's an exclusively ANE habit, as I've been told that ancient Chinese records seem to do the same. I would imagine that it's pretty universal across the ancient world when it was often just unrealistic to count accurately very large numbers.

To assume that any ancient people, no matter how much the Holy Ghost was burning their bosoms or how many angels they saw, had the same idea of historiography that you and I do--a relatively modern concept--seems much less reasonable to me.

So, are you saying that when god showed Joseph the "translation" of the Book of Mormon through the seer stone(s) (that god provided him), that god showed him the actual, exaggerated/flawed, writings of the Book of Mormon prophets instead of correcting them on the spot as to not cause future confusion?

I don't think "historiography" has anything to do with the fact that god had the chance to fix it while dictating the Book of Mormon to Joseph considering NOBODY could read RE AND god was planning on taking the plates back anyway so he didn't need to worry about someone translating them later and discovering that he(god) fixed some of the errors or exaggerations...

Is that what you are saying???