The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

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_Lemmie
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Lemmie »

Jersey Girl wrote:
mentalgymnast wrote:
I wasn't going to respond to this...but I will.


Of course you will. I could post the ingredients off a Campbell's soup label and you'd respond to it.

mentalgymnast wrote:Not true.

Regards,
MG

your prediction was 100% true, Jersey Girl! You posted:
"the ingredients off a Campbell's soup label"
and sure enough, he responded. :cool:
_Themis
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Themis »

mentalgymnast wrote:I've mentioned repeatedly that I default/take the position of support for the doctrines/teachings/mission of the CofJCofLDS. I'm not going to necessarily bring up the counter examples or arguments against the church.

That's your job. :smile:

Regards,
MG


It's the job of the truth seeker to do both. Evidently you are not one. :wink:
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_Themis
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Themis »

mentalgymnast wrote:You're starting with the presupposition/assumption that it was a con job (yes, I know you will say that the evidence led you to that one/only possibility).

The evidence, for you, will lead you that direction. Some evidence/records will be acceptable and some won't.

Regards,
MG


Actually no. You start with a certain position that must be maintained. I look at both sides to see which fits best. I want to know what is true. In order to do so I have to look at all possibilities and see which fits the evidence I have available. I don't want the church to not be true. That is what some people want to believe about former believers to feel better about their beliefs.
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Themis »

honorentheos wrote:Here's where things stand, one last time.

The Book of Mormon claims to be ancient in origin. It can't be shown using external evidence that olive grafting was actually practiced in a time and place required for this to be true. There is a proliferation of sources regarding olive grafting as this spreads later from Greece and through the later Roman empire. The claim of ancient authorship is challenged rather than supported by Jacob 5.

As a critic of the Book of Mormon's origin, I assert it is a product of the 19th century. There are no problems showing that Jacob makes sense when olives are replaced with a fruit which Joseph Smith would have had experience cultivating or his family cultivated. There are portions of the descriptions in Jacob 5 that actually apply better to apples than they do to olives. The claim of 19th century authorship is supported rather than challenged by Jacob 5.

ETA: fixed issue with code brackets.


You have made some great points in this thread. It fits Joseph or others coming up with Jacob 5, whether or not they did. It answers the OP about how the Book of Mormon was produced in this one instance. The five categories are contrived and don't represent what critics are saying, or many of the facts that exist about the question of the Book of Mormon's source.
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_I have a question
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _I have a question »

mentalgymnast wrote:You are creating a caricature which includes only one possibility and or interpretive framework.

It's the 'black/white syndrome' seems to crop with some folks, now and then, in which everything can only be looked at through narrow(closed?) eyes and/or tunnel vision.

Very little peripheral vision. We've been here before.

Regards,
MG


Yes we have, with Callister in the OP, you didn't seem to mind him doing it.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _I have a question »

mentalgymnast wrote:
honorentheos wrote:
Either the Book of Mormon is a product of the 19th century or it is of ancient origin.


Or both. :smile:

Regards,
MG


Now this^ is where you throw Callister, the Church, Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon under a bus.

"The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C. and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians."
https://www.LDS.org/scriptures/Book of Mormon/int ... n?lang=eng

The book throughout portrays itself as an ancient record. 100%.
If it contains any 19th century content, any at all, it destroys that claim.
To believe an expansionist theory is to accept that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be.
Nor what Joseph and the Church claim about it.
You've just allowed for the Church to not be true.
Last edited by Guest on Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
_Polygamy-Porter
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Polygamy-Porter »

mentalgymnast wrote:
honorentheos wrote:
Either the Book of Mormon is a product of the 19th century or it is of ancient origin.


Or both. :smile:

Regards,
MG

Doood!

Lay off sneaking the Snapple Iced Tea from Costco!


You are slipping.

Next thing we know you have a sleep over with Kerry Shirts.
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_Polygamy-Porter
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Polygamy-Porter »

What is puzzling and at the same time, telling, is how on one hand LDS peeps say the origins, translation, historicity, divinity, and authenticity of the Book of Mormon does not matter, on the other hand LDS peeps continually come out with these types of statements.


Is one an answer to outside critics and the later an attempt to mitigate the losses of membership?
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_zerinus
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _zerinus »

honorentheos wrote:How many times do I have to say it for it to sink in that no, it doesn't matter. What matters is how well the information in the actual Book of Mormon itself corresponds to external realities. And as I've contended with you thread after thread, it compares very well with thoughts, beliefs, and practices common to the time of Joseph Smith while having serious conflict with evidence from the time periods it is claimed to cover.

I'm being consistent, MG. Not sure why that is hard to see.
Olive trees, olive fruit, olive oil, and olive cultivation in the ancient wold, and especially in the Middle East goes back to thousands of years, long before Israel even came into existence. When the waters of the Flood had receded, the first sign of dry land was an “olive leaf” plucked by a dove:

Genesis 8:

10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.


When the Israelites came out of Egypt, while they were still in the wilderness, and God commanded them to build the Tabernacle, one of the artefacts in it was a permanently ​burning lamp to be fuelled by olive oil:

Exodus 27:

20 And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always.


Also this:

Leviticus 24:

2 Command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.


And the Tabernacle itself was to be anointed by a sacred perfumed oil the chief ingredient of which was olive oil:

Exodus 30:

22 Moreover the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
23 Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels,
24 And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin:
25 And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.
26 And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony,


Furthermore, olive cultivation had been practised by the former inhabitants​ of Palestinian territories long before it was conquered​ and occupied by the Israelites:

Deuteronomy 6:

10 And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,
11 And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;
12 Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Deuteronomy 8:

7 For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;


To suggest an ancient culture and civilization stretching back many thousands years, long before even the Israelites came into existence, who had learned to cultivate fruit trees of various kinds including (especially) the olive tree, whose product was such an important staple of their experience (not just for food, but for illumination and other purposes as well), had not figured out tree grafting until the Greeks came along stretches the imagination quite a bit.
_Chap
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Re: The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

Post by _Chap »

zerinus wrote:To suggest an ancient culture and civilization stretching back many thousands years, long before even the Israelites came into existence, who had learned to cultivate fruit trees of various kinds including (especially) the olive tree, whose product was such an important staple of their experience (not just for food, but for illumination and other purposes as well), had not figured out tree grafting until the Greeks came along stretches the imagination quite a bit.


Nope. You don't know much about the history of technology, do you? Many innovations seem obvious once you have them - but only then.

And in any case, the fact that Jacob says nothing whatsoever about oil (which is the main reason for raising olives, rather than eating them), considers it unusual that a cultivated olive should taste bitter (as they all do) and seems to think that the olive is some kind of fruit that can be eaten like an apple without elaborate preparation is fatal to any idea that Jacob is from an olive-using culture.

Still, kudos for maintaining your faith in the face of all evidence and logic. That's really the point for you, isn't it?
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
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