why me wrote:And him memorizing it and sticking his head in a hat to recite it. Quite a feat if I say so myself. Also he needed to travel around with manuscript in hand, work on the farm, purchase pens and paper and then make metal plates...
You show an incredible ignorance towards oral composition and how people recalled information prior to computers and word processors. Here is a nice blurb from John Hamer from another board.
That is not how knowledge has always worked. When you read medieval texts, authors will often include long quotes from the authorities --- the Bible, Aristotle, St. Augustine, etc. Quite frequently these quotes will misquote the actual source. Not as a typo (of course there was no type) or a copying error (although the errors of copiests were frequent in an era when all books were hand-copied), but as a significant misquotation; for example, one that paraphrases the authority. This happens because they do not have the Bible or Aristotle in front of them as they write. They are quoting from memory. In an era when there was so much less knowledge and when access to it was so much more difficult, learned brains stored that knowledge very differently than we do today. Much more of the sources were simply committed directly to memory. The Medieval capacity to quote from memory would astound any of us today, because we simply don’t use memory that way.
This brings me back to the Qur’an. Although the book is 80,000 words long, there is a whole class of Muslims, called “hafidh,” who have committed it to memory. This may well seem hard to believe --- like it’s some trick. But, in truth, this is simply a different way to use memory. It’s a way that was much more common in the past and it’s a way that is wholly alien to the way I use my memory in the internet era (I had to look up the word “hafidh” on the internet). But this kind of memorization is by no means an inexplicable phenomenon.
Here in the twenty-first century, all composition is done via word processor. It’s hard to imagine writing any other way, but all writing actually occurred prior to the invention of word processing within my own memory. I have a number of friends, twenty and thirty years older than myself who composed PhD dissertations using note cards for their research and writing text long-hand on note pads. A major portion of finishing their dissertations involved hiring typists. This concept is essentially inconceivable to me and yet I know it happened recently in historical terms.
So it is no surprise that many people today are incredulous at Joseph Smith’s oral composition of the Book of Mormon. He wrote an entire book orally. He dictated and other people wrote it down. Impossible!
Not so. Not only is this process possible, it’s extremely ordinary. It’s not amazing, it’s not miraculous, it’s not extraordinary. It’s alien to us today, but oral composition was, in fact, standard practice in the past.
It turns out that oral composition pre-dates composition by word-processing. As miraculous and inconceivable as it seems, people did, in fact, compose books before the invention of word-processing. More incredibly to our own time and perspective, people composed books prior to the invention of writing itself. When Homer composed the Iliad, he didn’t merely speak it aloud to scribes who took every word down --- he composed it into memory because there was no one to write it down. The whole epic was not merely memorized, like the Qu’ran today, from written text. There was no writing. How impossible was that?
Not impossible at all. It was a completely ordinary feat that has been replicated by oral poets across cultures throughout time. Oral composition predates written composition. The capacity to create a story orally is not miraculous --- it is alien to us today, but in the past, it was totally ordinary.
Joseph Smith was an accomplished oral story-teller. His composition of the Book of Mormon, which was done by dictation, is not a miraculous, incredible, or inexplicable occurrence. It’s noteworthy to be sure --- the same way that it would be noteworthy if you had perfect attendance in Junior High --- i.e., it’s something to note; but it’s not a miracle. The composition of the Book of Mormon is no mystery and no miracle. The process is completely understood and it requires no extraordinary explanations. Joseph Smith was an innately smart and creative person and a gifted story-teller. Having pondered his stories for years, over the course of many months he rattled them off to scribes who wrote them down. For his circumstances, this accomplishment is noteworthy, but it’s hardly miraculous or inexplicable. It’s thoroughly explicable.
http://forum.newordermormon.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20371It is my province to teach to the Church what the doctrine is. It is your province to echo what I say or to remain silent.
Bruce R. McConkie
I can think of an easier way to do so. But the list of conspirators grows and grows.