Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_palerobber]

Jeff Lindsay, "Possible Evidence of Authenticity" (My Emphasis):

Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon:

Anyone spot this in Hunt yet?

yup.

http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp193.pdf

see page 14.

Is that it? Not much of a match.

yeah, not really interested in your opinions on that.

but what i thought was interesting was Grunder's exposure of just how misleading Welch's presentation (reproduced by Lindsay) of the Alma 36 "chiasmus" was.

[_Spanner]

You have to realize, my Christian Friend, that the Mormonisciousness of most folks you encounter on this board is nothing compared to that of the hard core of this religion.

mmmmmmmmmm, Mormonisciousness!

Lovely!

[_Spanner]

I have enjoyed all of this. It was up to 19 pages when I first opened it. Finally caught up (all links not included) and look forward to the next page.
This thread has everything that makes this my board of choice: Evidence that The Church isn't what it claims, wise cracks and smart-assery aplenty, Darth J, Runtu and a host of my favorite posters, occasional defense (like the 2013 Falcons), and other sacred reasons.

Do check out the links,

especially:
http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp193.pdf
http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/ ... 01RBSt.htm

Thanks to all who have contributed. Truly a popcorn moment.

Carry on. :-)

...LDSFF o.m.g.

Just think, we will be able to tell our Grandkids that we were there when the Mormon hoax got blown out of the water.

[_RayAgostini]

yeah, not really interested in your opinions on that.

Of course you're not interested. Nor are any of your mates here, whose only purpose is to see Mormonism flushed down the toilet and officially declared a "fraud". It was so from the beginning of this thread, and it will be so until the end of time.

Never let the truth stand in the way of prejudice.

[_palerobber]

yeah, not really interested in your opinions on that.

Of course you're not interested. Nor are any of your mates here, whose only purpose is to see Mormonism flushed down the toilet and officially declared a "fraud". It was so from the beginning of this thread, and it will be so until the end of time.

look, it's nothing personal against your religion, it's just that i don't value your opinion. you specifically.

this is all academic to me. unlike you, i couldn't care less whether or not Mormonism endures (though i would like to see it evolve into something less harmful to members).

[_cognitiveharmony]

So if I were to take all of the birthdays and all of the deaths of a subset of people such as prophets. Since I've now mixed birthdays and deaths, I should no longer expect random dates? Come on....let's have some intellectual honesty here.

When trying to show a correlation such as this, adding multiple subsets to the data does not help your results. If the Book of Mormon is really a work of fiction and not historical as claimed then the intellectually honest thing to do would be to make the case as simply and clearly as possible with something such as birth dates. That by itself should be more than sufficient to demonstrate the contention is true.

That is not what they did with the Book of Mormon. What you are championing and what the authors did is take many events from only a portion of the Book of Mormon history, put them all in one basket and claimed they were as a result made-up by a human-being. But any critical review of your results naturally blows up in your face because of the apparent bias that was introduced in your sample (comparing many different events together that may not even meet the criteria of being a random event). That is not how scientists or scholars should work. It is sloppy and unprofessional.

Why did you even respond? You've said nothing new. Your argument here is just as defeated as it was 3 posts ago. Until you respond with something substantive, I'll be ignoring you.

[_Mary]

Of course you're not interested. Nor are any of your mates here, whose only purpose is to see Mormonism flushed down the toilet and officially declared a "fraud". It was so from the beginning of this thread, and it will be so until the end of time.

Never let the truth stand in the way of prejudice.

No. No. No. Ray, not everyone sees Mormonism or religion in the context of authentic/fraud, true/false. One can say much the same about the historicity of the New Testament, and sadly the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

We don't know who half the New Testament authors were, we know that the New Testament was formally put together in the 300's for reasons that probably had little to do with assessing and finding historical accuracy, we know that quite a few of the New Testament texts are 'fraudulent' or 'pseudonymous' in the sense that they were not written by the name attributed to the texts, we know that the texts were copied, redacted and edited to suit contemporary listeners and orthodoxy.

When it comes to Jesus of Nazareth, who he was, what he stood for, what he said was debated almost from the beginning. It's messy.

So, when it comes to the Book of Mormon, this is just part and parcel (for me) of assessing what is historically true and accurate and what is myth, all in the wider context of Joseph endeavouring to begin a new religion adapted to a distinctly American audience, within an American historical context. And given that the active membership is now about 5,000,000, he did a very good job of it thank you very much.

I'm not waving my hands in the air here Ray. What this does is help me understand how Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, what likely influenced him, and the effect it had on it's listeners. (My interest areas would be the impact it had on women and race, but there you go).

Ray, this is interesting, fascinating and enlightening. I look forward to seeing how the conversation develops.

[_Mary]

Another avenue being discussed elsewhere by Craig Criddle:

" there are many other word usage patterns worth discussion. What nobody in the Smith-as-sole-author camp seems to want to discuss is why we see the "wherefore-therefore" shifts that correspond to Spalding attributions. We also see usage of "wherefore" correlating with use of an unusual Early Modern English usage of "that' (because that, before that, after that) And we see that Spalding attributions align well with known Spalding plagiarism patterns, with known Spalding name construction patterns. and with phrases used by Spalding in the Oberlin manuscript. I'm surprised by the silence about these word usage patterns. They need to be explained, just like the patterns that Chris Johnson has identified."

[_Mary]

Ray, also to add to what Steelhead alluded to in his post about Hebrew Canon. (It's not my area of interest), but distinguishing myth from historical fact in the Hebrew Canon is also a worthwhile exercise given the influence it has had on Western Tradition. Knowing that the Genesis story was likely influenced by Enuma Elish helps us to put the stories in a historical context. The same with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hammurabi Code. Knowing when and where they were possibly developed and written is also interesting even if it means that the allusions to Hebrew Canon in the Book of Mormon become puzzling and anachronistic.

One of the most beautiful things in Mormon Theology that I learned is this:

24 And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK2PBAG3 ... dMUujXfyWi

Christine Hayes (Yale) has a great online course on the influence of enuma elish on the Genesis account.

[_Runtu]

And without the original text, we have no way of knowing whether he is correct or not. One just chooses tight or loose translation on an ad hoc basis without the control having the source document.

Yep. That's how I read Royal Skousen, too: when it's a possible bullseye, it's a tight translation; when it's not, it's loose.