Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_AlmaBound]

Ch VI, 2

And to a certain chief captain called Wlliam, whose sir-name was Hull, was given in trust a band of more than two thousand chosen men, to go forth to battle in the north.

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

13. And Jackson spake, and said unto his captains of fifties, and his captains of hundreds, Fear not; we defend our lives and our liberties, and in that thing the Lord will not forsaken us.

Chapter LIV

[_Shulem]

So, whoever had seen a copy of Walker, and looks as though Smith may well have, could have seen an ad for the Hunt book, eh?

yeah, some awesome finds by Control Freak and Everybody Wang Chung.

I've sent some PMs out to get more eyes on this.

If the work already done at the conference you reference hasn't nailed the coffin shut for the apologists, by the time this thread has run its coarse it will be all over.

I doubt we'll see any response from the apologists soon, no doubt they see your thread here, Kish, and are paralyzed. They'll pretend it isn't happening until the momentum forces them to deal with it.

Let's not forget that Joseph Smith may well have stolen the names Shulem and Olimlah for his faked Book of Abraham Facsimile No. 3 translations. Keep an eye out for those names! Should those names pop up it will be another death blow to the prophet and a nightmare for the apologists. It's bad enough for them that there is no king's name in the Facsimile like Joe Smith said, but should those other names be found from a suspicious source we can bag the prophet and throw away the key!





Paul O

[_ZelphtheGreat]

Gold Plated found inside the Rock that was toppled in Goblin Valley? Maybe the scout idiots were inspired?

[_xolotl]

But who knows? Maybe this constituted much of Spalding's source material? We don't have a detailed explanation for the entire contents of the Book of Mormon, but there is obviously plenty of potential source material to work from!

I agree and personally I am not entirely persuaded by the spalding theory. As Kish pointed out, what we have here is an actual text to look at and read and the similarities are astonishing. The manuscript found, as far as we know, isn't a text we can readily look at and compare because we don't have access to it. We simply have eye witnesses that were present when Spalding read from it or looked at it themselves. It's certainly very plausible for Joseph to have relied heavily on these texts without needing a manuscript found.

As others have pointed out already some of the apologetics that have been done using particular phrases to show an ancient origin of the Book of Mormon are even more laughable now that we have other texts that Joseph could clearly have used and that work with the same phrases. I really despise the Fair type mopologetics, but I find myself anticipating a response to this newly laid out criticism.

[_vessr]

This one looks equally promising, and, in some respects, its language is even closer to the Book of Mormon than the 1812 epic.

This book you reference is not as powerful as the first, The History of the Great War, being what one called in its Preface "one of the best attempts to imitate the Biblical text." Therein lies its greatest connection to the Book of Mormon. I've gone through the first book page by page and did not find anything that could be called plagiarism. But the tone of the two books is amazingly similar, and I wondered if Joseph tapped into it and perhaps other books like it (which imitated Biblical text) to get his inspiration. I still find no one source to be close enough to support the charge of plagiarism, except for passages in the Old and New Testament which Smith obviously used, although the Bible was too old to be the object of plagiarism in the legal sense.

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

7. Nevertheless, it was so that the freemen came to the defence of the city, built strong holds and forts and raised up fortifications in abundance

Chapter LI

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

Someone please read Chapter XX, verses 11-16 and tell me if I'm the only one seeing an amazing coincidence.

[_Shulem]

7. Nevertheless, it was so that the freemen came to the defence of the city, built strong holds and forts and raised up fortifications in abundance

Chapter LI

I'm just flipping through pages and see continuous snippets of the Book of Mormon right before my eyes! Bits here and bits there. I'm expecting the angel Moroni to burst into my room at any moment and call me to the work. For TBM chapel Mormons their only response will be to close their eyes and mutter the usual "I know the Book of Mormon is true" and disregard the facts. When they do that they look and sound like retarded people but in reality are brainwashed by the cult.

Paul O

[_Shulem]

Someone please read Chapter XX, verses 11-16 and tell me if I'm the only one seeing an amazing coincidence.

I bet you'd pee your pants with joy if you had spotted the word ziff in there.

The apologists will claim the absence of ziff as their defence. No ziff -- no cigar.



Paul O