The War Chapters in Alma

[_Ludd]

Yeah, I never thought that was much of a "prophecy". Kind of like D&C 87 in the middle of the Nullification Crisis.

Yep. That was not much of a stretch for the prophet. Who knew that you agreed with a ****wad? I may have to reconsider my opinion of you.

It took me a minute to remember I'd called you a fuckwad.

Hey, we're all fuckwads at one time or another. I promise it wasn't personal. Fuckwad.

(Whoa! How come the post editor didn't insert the "****" in the second one? That's going to get my post banished to outer darkness.)

[_Bob Loblaw]

It took me a minute to remember I'd called you a ****wad.

Hey, we're all fuckwads at one time or another. I promise it wasn't personal. ****wad.

(Whoa! How come the post editor didn't insert the "****" in the second one? That's going to get my post banished to outer darkness.)

I readily admit to being a fuckwad, so we fuckwads have to stick together. :)

[_Uncle Dale]

...
Did you have any in mind?

Oh, I have a few ideas -- but I'd rather let you make your
own discoveries.

A couple of years ago Ron Dawbarn went through the 1830 text
and removed nearly all of the overtly "religious" parts. A sample
of his work is on-line, here:
http://premormon.com/resources/r007/007Dawbarn.pdf

I'm not suggesting that anybody attempt to remove 100% of
the Christian references in the latter part of Alma -- but the
overtly "religious" passages might be carefully compared to those
parts of the text in which religion is not the primary focus of
the narrative.

That's what I'd look at, first of all.

UD

[_kairos]

As a nevermo attending gospel doctrine at my daughter's ward in denver Co this past weekend, the teacher(female) never attempted to anything with the war chapters but to have members of the class read them out loud. Then in the middle of the readings she states that the milutary war colleges should take and study these battles for what they could learn from strategic, operational and tactical perspective.

Not being very familiar with the details of the battles, nevertheless i could not hold my tongue, having attended the army war college. I said the war college does study battles from the Bible( joshua, david, gideon etc), some from the greeks, war of 1812, and many from the civil war (gettysburg, vicksburg etc), wwi and ii ,korea, vietnam, iraq/afgan ; the non- use of Book of Mormon battles by the war college is due to the vague nature of the presentations and the lack of any useful details of terrain/land of battle settings of opposing forces. Mission, enemy,terrain,tactics are factors that make analysis of battles possible.
Consequently i said respectfully that the army war college would probably not consider using battles from the Book of Mormon.

"thank you for sharing that" said the teacher; i remained silent the rest of the lesson.


just sayin

k

[_Uncle Dale]

...
the army war college would probably not consider using battles from the Book of Mormon.
...

Indeed.

But that same school might now and then refer to battles and
military threats as occurred along the Great Lakes during the
War of 1812.

I think THAT is what the Alma war chapters most resemble --
a highly mobile enemy, who can appear as if from out of
nowhere at a moment's notice -- moving great armies across
the wilderness at great speed.

Add in the element of white "King Men" allied with dark Indians,
massacres, wooden forts, etc., and we have scenarios typical
of the French & Indian War, Revolutionary War and War of 1812.

But I think there is another point of possible historical reference,
and that would be the Valley of Mexico contentions prior to the
arrival of the conquistadors. There we see city-states engaged
in wars upon a limited landscape, in which great armies can move
from one urban area to another very quickly.

There are also occasional overlaps with the Israelite/Philistine
warfare, the Iliad stratagems, fighting in the Aeneid, and bits
and pieces of the Ossian tales' battles.
http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/SRPpap11.htm#pg09a

I think that the Alma war chapters were written by somebody
possessing a knowledge of the War of 1812 Great Lakes battles,
who also consulted war stories from the Bible and the classics.

UD

[_MCB]

Are there any military strategies from Maccabees that you see in the Book of Mormon? I haven't really looked at it from that angle, though I seem to recall the name "Nephi" showing up in one of the other books.

The thing I remember most about Maccabees was the guy getting fried up in the giant-sized skillet.

Or something like that.

Yeah, there is some horrific stuff in II Maccabees. I was rather young when I read it. Now I understand why it is needed, to help us understand the centuries immediately prior to Jesus.

As for the parallels, as Dale says, they are there. As well as with Clavigero's history of Mexico.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
Did you have any in mind?

Oh, I have a few ideas -- but I'd rather let you make your
own discoveries.

Oh well, I suppose I should revisit some of my investigations from
30 years ago. The topmost chart is a revised depiction of the one
I presented at the 1982 Ogden MHA annual meeting.

The three lower charts are Craig Criddle's authorship attribution data,
(from Mormonleaks.com) combined in various ways.


Here's a larger version of the same chart:
http://premormon.com/images/fig1-big.gif

As you'll see, between Alma 45 and Alma 63, I concluded that four
chapters did not originate with Solomon Spalding: 54, 60, 61, 63.

Do other investigators see anything in those four chapters which
stands out, as being different from 45-63 generally speaking?


UD

[_consiglieri]

I'm not even going to peak and guess those are letters.

How'd I do?

[_SteelHead]

Anyhow, I'm about to brief Vladimir Putin on how to better deal with the civil unrest in his country. How do you think I should approach it?

I recommend a punk protest song performed at a very public venue in Moscow. That will get his attention.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
guess those are letters.
...

It gets tricky -- because "epistles" do not always take up an
entire 1876 Orson Pratt chapter -- nor even one of the longer
1830 Alma chapters.

Some parts of the "epistles" chart out as possible Spalding
creations -- mirroring the "letters" included in the narrative
of his one preserved fictional story (the "Roman" story).

The scenario of a battlefield commander, at the front, writing
back to the Continental Congress (or to Nephite democrats)
for supplies and assistance, chart out as being Spaldingish.

Other epistle passages, professing Nephite Christianity, do
indeed read like late insertions into the text.

According to the 4-part bar charts, Oliver Cowdery and Pratt
are responsible for the non-Spalding chapters in latter Alma.
But, within each chapter, there are also probable insertions:


Here's a larger version of the same chart:
http://premormon.com/images/fig0-big.gif

It gets rather complicated.

UD