Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[Guest]

I don't think this parallel has been found here, but my brother, Chris, mentioned this one in his presentation:

TLWB 28:12 “they cut down the tall trees of the forest, and hewed them, and built many more strong vessels… and they put windows in them, and they pitched them within and without with pitch; after the fashion of the ark”

Ether 2:17 “And they were built... tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree;”
Ether 2:23 “your vessels ... cannot have windows”
Ether 6:7 “their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ark of Noah”

I think it sheds interesting light on the anachronism of the Lord mentioning windows that can be dashed to pieces.

Have seen your posts on this subject over on the MADBoard. Welcome and thanks for dropping in.

The mention of pitch with regard to the construction of ocean going wooden vessels in the TLWB text you quoted above stood out to me, mainly because with all of the shipbuilding that supposedly went on the the Book of Mormon, an absolutely critical component is never mentioned; that of pitch or bitumen for sealing the hull planks.

Pitch would have been absolutely required to make the Jaredite barges "tight like unto a dish". In doing research on period shipbuilding in Mesopotamia, it became clear that both soft and hard bitumens were used for this purpose.

Here is the problem. Had the Jaredites used this material for sealing their vessels, they would have had serious problems with toxic fumes inside of sealed vessels, especially in the tropics. Had they not used this material, their vessels would not have been water tight (or anything like unto it).

Worse still, since they were not allowed to build fires on the barges, they would not have been able to make repairs with heated softened pitch or bitumen when the seals between the hull planks failed.

Nonetheless, we are expected to believe that the pitch sealed hulls of all eight Jaredite barges remained water tight while Jaredites drifted for 344 days in rough seas with waves that buried the barges in the depth of the sea.

Perhaps someone among the Book of Mormon authors should have taken a second look at TLWB and (assuming that they understood what they were reading), figured out that they should have pitch-sealed their Jaredite barges and allowed fire on board in order to effect vessel repair in route.

[_Chap]

I think there are other things that resemble the language of Book of Mormon much better than Hunt's book. That would be the Book of Abraham, the D&C, and Joseph's language in the JST. So in my opinion this text is running a distant 4th place in texts with similar language to the Book of Mormon.


Phaedrus

But ... Joseph Smith wrote all those himself. So why shouldn't the Book of Mormon (which he also wrote) resemble them closely?

Or am I missing a joke here?

[_Shulem]

I've got to say that between barges sealed with pitch that discuss windows, and a cataclysmic earthquake producing darkness...... I am seeing some really strong thematic correlation. Add that to the stippling warriors and the curious workmanship, and the 1/2 dozen other hits.......

There are orders of magnitude more correlation in hits for this, than anything produced in defense of the Book of Abraham.

Someone needs to compile a side by side running list of all the things mentioned in both books and then we can clearly see how Joe stole his ideas from the Late War, which was written first. I think this running list would delight the eyes of the critics and put a pit in the stomachs of the faithful. Just look how they compare!

Paul O

[Guest]

As crazy as the Spalding theory is, it's far more believable than the official church version of events. Books like the Late War simply demonstrate how ordinary the Book of Mormon was for it's time. Maybe there was a conspiracy, maybe it was miraculous, but the simplest and most likely answer is it's nothing special, somebody wrote it, and it required no conspiracy or divine intervention to produce.

Personally I feel like the Book of Mormon is one of those incidents and texts that is much more than the sum of its parts. I see the relationships with other books of its time, but I see more than those other books too. Perhaps it is because I am attached to it, it has been a source of inspiration for me, and it is part of my spiritual life, but I see it as a bigger phenomenon than Hunt's book. On the level of historical significance, it is clearly a much bigger book, but for those who have cherished it as scripture and have not abandoned that attachment, it is a bigger book for other, less tangible reasons too.

[_Kishkumen]

Or am I missing a joke here?

[Guest]

Indeed. It is understandable to me why Spalding theorists are not greeting this news in the same way as Smith-only theorists. My comments were not meant to contribute to the latter's denigration of the former. My point was methodological. So much groundwork remains to be done on making any kind of credible case for Spalding that it seems to me to be a terrible strategic blunder to begin the task of exploring Hunt's influence by throwing it into the murky waters of Spalding.

Respectfully, it is, at this point, a distraction. But then so too is any other approach that primarily addresses the notion of who met whom carrying which text on which day and what he knew, etc. As has always been the challenge in past discussions of Mormon scripture, one cannot prove that Joseph Smith had a particular book open and consciously in mind when he translated his scriptures. Only in the case of the Book of Mormon and the KJV, where a clear pattern of eliding italicized words has been established, do we have a secure method for showing any kind of dependence that does persuasively put a book in Smith's hand.

This is nowhere nearly that. Is it exciting? Yes, and I am obviously bubbling at the prospects of learning much from this relatively recent revelation. But I am struck with buck fever, as many of us are. We are on the hunt, we see a nice seven-point buck, and we start tripping over ourselves in jubilation at the thought of bagging a big prize this season. As we do so, we run the risk of creating havoc.

I apologize to all that this is where I bubble over and fumble for my twelve gauge. In my view this isn't a scholarly forum, but, at the same time, it is a collection of very bright people, many of whom have advanced degrees in the sciences and humanities. We are going to have a great time batting around these ideas and discovering this text together. Some of our initial thoughts may go somewhere, though we may not be the ones to take them there. Some may not. Am I going to drop the topic because Nevo thinks there is nothing worth getting excited about?

Hell no.

You hunt deer with a twelve gauge?

[_Phaedrus Ut]

I think there are other things that resemble the language of Book of Mormon much better than Hunt's book. That would be the Book of Abraham, the D&C, and Joseph's language in the JST. So in my opinion this text is running a distant 4th place in texts with similar language to the Book of Mormon.
Phaedrus

But ... Joseph Smith wrote all those himself. So why shouldn't the Book of Mormon (which he also wrote) resemble them closely?
Or am I missing a joke here?

It was a bit tongue in cheek. In all seriousness this text will be devastating to the average person because the similarities are so obvious. With a bit of simple editing I could convince someone this was from the sealed portion or part of the lost 116 pages.

Phaedrus

[_Kishkumen]

You hunt deer with a twelve gauge?

LOL. I should have said duck? Goose? Help me here.

Truth is, I have never been hunting in my life.

Kinda shows, doesn't it?

The worst part is that my daughter does archery. She would have been ashamed to see such an egregious error.

[_SteelHead]

12 Guage with slugs is highly effective on big game and legal in the majority of states.

[_Shulem]

The silly story in Ether about sealed barges and their fantastic voyage is absolutely beyond belief and a total impossibility. Hell, I'd accept Joseph Smith's Explanations of Fasimile No. 3 before ever caving in to this stupid fairy tale about the Jaredite voyages. That has to be the most stupid mistake he made when writing his book. And Mormons who believe it are just a stupid people, retarded retards -- brain dead fools.

Paul O