The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
The DCP board apologetics constantly use the excuse that non lds scholars just don't know what is in the Book of Mormon.drumdude wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 3:42 amMaybe the argument would be that the Nephite’s culture diverged sufficiently from the Hebrew origins that new names came into use that don’t have a clear link.
But you would still expect to see some sort of progression in those names, new ones aren’t pulled out of a hat. You might also expect to see some consistent patterns in the new Nephite names. Like the no “F” names in Hebrew.
My guess is that any objectively neutral unbiased cultural anthropologist studying the Book of Mormon would find the Book of Mormon doesn’t really have anything that resembles a real culture that has a possibility of existing in the Americas 600BC - 1200AD.
Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
I realize that from your point of view religious faith involves circular reasoning. I won’t disagree. And it’s difficult to demonstrate the intervention of God in any one time and place when by observation after the fact one could, does, take the naturalist position.PseudoPaul wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 7:11 pm
So, case closed. If you're positing some kind of miracle to explain it, you're not talking about historicity anyway. You're talking about religious faith. Faith and history are two separate disciplines.
A person of faith has hurdles to jump, which I grant, are simply too high to honor the required expectations/requirements of a non religionist and/or skeptic.
So, yes, it isn’t difficult to understand how some folks see Book of Mormon historicity as being “case closed”.
Regards,
MG
Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
Within the parameters of the world in which you, as an academic, live, it isn’t rocket science to understand this point of view which you’re expressing.Kishkumen wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 8:35 pmYep. But no matter how many times you demonstrate it, he will continue to make the same ridiculous assertions.PseudoPaul wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 7:11 pmAll of the pre-third century BCE Jewish prophets whose existence is certain did not believe in any of those things. That's because those ideas evolved in a certain historical context. That context was influence from Persian theology (from where we get the idea of evil cosmic beings) during the Persian period, and theodicy inspired by the Greek persecution of law-keeping Jews. The latter changed the longstanding belief that all suffering was a punishment from God for sins. The fact that the righteous were suffering en mass proved to them not only that evil must come from another source other than God, but also that for God to be just the righteous dead should get some kind of reward that is different from the reward the wicked. From there we get the idea of Resurrection from the dead, and centuries later the idea that people could actually live in the divine realm with God.
So, case closed.
As I’ve expressed before I look at things holistically.
I don’t have to cram myself into a box. The box of accepted orthodoxy within the ivory tower world of academia.
I don’t consider myself having to defend a position of ‘Reverend’.
There are some real world benefits of being just a regular guy.
Albeit, ‘ridiculous’.
Regards,
MG
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Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
I think you're missing the larger issue - historicity is an academic question that by definition can't be answered with faith. The moment you try to make an appeal to faith or miracles you've left the topic of historicity altogether - the same would apply if you tried to bring God into a conversation about math.MG 2.0 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 12:14 amI realize that from your point of view religious faith involves circular reasoning. I won’t disagree. And it’s difficult to demonstrate the intervention of God in any one time and place when by observation after the fact one could, does, take the naturalist position.PseudoPaul wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 7:11 pm
So, case closed. If you're positing some kind of miracle to explain it, you're not talking about historicity anyway. You're talking about religious faith. Faith and history are two separate disciplines.
A person of faith has hurdles to jump, which I grant, are simply too high to honor the required expectations/requirements of a non religionist and/or skeptic.
So, yes, it isn’t difficult to understand how some folks see Book of Mormon historicity as being “case closed”.
Regards,
MG
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Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
Just a reminder.
Or at least tell me if God could compute BB(10^100).doubtingthomas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 13, 2022 3:08 amIn science, good theories are heavily scrutinized and reviewed many times independently.
I'm not shrugging off anything, it could well be that there were multiple authors. I'm open to that possibility. But let me ask you again: when are the studies going to get submitted to a respected peer-reviewed Journal?
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus.
Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
I appreciate you for continuing to articulate this sane point of view. Unfortunately, LDS apologetics has inured people to the idea of having faith dictate historical issues. Evidence and logical argument take a back seat to testimony. Apologists have no compunction about forcing history into a box that is built by Joseph Smith, so to speak. If one looks at a lot of their idiosyncratic takes on the evidence of ancient history, for example, one sees a clear pattern of interpreting through the lens of Mormonism, consciously and deliberately.PseudoPaul wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 12:27 amI think you're missing the larger issue - historicity is an academic question that by definition can't be answered with faith. The moment you try to make an appeal to faith or miracles you've left the topic of historicity altogether - the same would apply if you tried to bring God into a conversation about math.
MG is just a little less artful in his way of expressing the same attitude and taking the same position.
There is no way in hell that I could or would join him there, even if I were active LDS.
“The past no longer belongs only to those who once lived it; the past belongs to those who claim it, and are willing to explore it, and to infuse it with meaning for those alive today.”—Margaret Atwood
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Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
Nearly a century before Joseph Smith, we have a striking example of religious-like devotion to a fabricated epic narrative, in the supposedly rescued, proto-Scottish Ossian poems invented by James Macpherson. These exerted major influence upon European and American literature. What I find relevant to our present discussion here is the power of conviction that can grow out of emotional response to some needed and increasingly repeated story or text with distinct literary cadence and eccentricities.
Macpherson never quite got around to showing his claimed old manuscript sources, but he kept publishing fresh, exciting lore. He suggested undreamed nobility in earliest Scottish character. He tantalized the ear and the heart with exotic, mysterious beauty. Here is a passage spoken from the hill Temora, cheering heroic warriors forward like Highland streams:
For a very long time, Ossian was more accepted and influential at all levels of European and American society than would be the future Book of Mormon. And Ossian was defended with some of the same approaches, stances and forms of evidence which would be employed later by Book of Mormon defenders.
When adherents asked famed critic Samuel Johnson if he actually imagined that "any man of modern age could have written such poems . . . ?" he quipped, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children." Equally prominent figures acted as apologists, and accused non-believers of indulging in too many parallels. The frenzy faded, but so slowly, over the years, that while Ossian is now just pretty fiction, its traces abound in various forms down to minor place names assigned to locales in (I believe) two hemispheres.
Among curious and supposedly ancient names Macpherson gave us were those of the high rocky hill Carmora, characters named Maronna, Maronan, or Nemi; the tribe of Morni and the land of Morven, a flag known as the Standard of Morven; the fearsome Sword of Luno; high Temora (residence of the kings of Ireland; "They shall seek me at Temora, but I shall not be found."), and quite a dizzying array of similar variants (among plenty of other names that don’t sound one bit like the Book of Mormon).
Do I think that Joseph Smith saw or “used” such a source? That is not my point. I’m mostly fascinated by how easily people make meaning for themselves out of ancient texts recently revealed, not caring, really, about actual historicity. On the one hand, I certainly think it would be absurd to suggest that Joseph would not have had an opportunity to look through some edition of Ossian during his early years - and one cannot do that for two minutes before seeing frequent Mormon-sounding names. But in the greater sense, the presence of all these words and all these adventures reminds us more broadly to take with a grain of salt the casual protests which we have heard from our youth, that no one could have made up so many names, or created so many plots as appear in the Book of Mormon.
For a much longer and more detailed version of the data above, with citations, see my Mormon Parallels entry 229, available for free download:
http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp229.pdf
Macpherson never quite got around to showing his claimed old manuscript sources, but he kept publishing fresh, exciting lore. He suggested undreamed nobility in earliest Scottish character. He tantalized the ear and the heart with exotic, mysterious beauty. Here is a passage spoken from the hill Temora, cheering heroic warriors forward like Highland streams:
Whether such words would have been spoken in the third century CE by Celtic ancestors was a matter of debate, depending largely upon whether or not the reader was Scotch. Yet when translated into Italian, the passages evidently became even more beautiful. Ossian was Napoleon Bonaparte's favorite book. In German, these poems helped inspire the "bardic movement," and a young Goethe put them in the hands of . . . Young Werther and Charlotte to soften their Sorrows (1774). Henry David Thoreau would compare these poems favorably to Homer and Isaiah."On Crona," said the bards, "there bursts a stream by night. It swells in its own dark course, till morning's early beam. Then comes it white from the hill, with the rocks and their hundred groves. Far be my steps from Crona. Death is tumbling there. Be ye a stream from Mora, sons of cloudy Morven!"
For a very long time, Ossian was more accepted and influential at all levels of European and American society than would be the future Book of Mormon. And Ossian was defended with some of the same approaches, stances and forms of evidence which would be employed later by Book of Mormon defenders.
When adherents asked famed critic Samuel Johnson if he actually imagined that "any man of modern age could have written such poems . . . ?" he quipped, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children." Equally prominent figures acted as apologists, and accused non-believers of indulging in too many parallels. The frenzy faded, but so slowly, over the years, that while Ossian is now just pretty fiction, its traces abound in various forms down to minor place names assigned to locales in (I believe) two hemispheres.
Among curious and supposedly ancient names Macpherson gave us were those of the high rocky hill Carmora, characters named Maronna, Maronan, or Nemi; the tribe of Morni and the land of Morven, a flag known as the Standard of Morven; the fearsome Sword of Luno; high Temora (residence of the kings of Ireland; "They shall seek me at Temora, but I shall not be found."), and quite a dizzying array of similar variants (among plenty of other names that don’t sound one bit like the Book of Mormon).
Do I think that Joseph Smith saw or “used” such a source? That is not my point. I’m mostly fascinated by how easily people make meaning for themselves out of ancient texts recently revealed, not caring, really, about actual historicity. On the one hand, I certainly think it would be absurd to suggest that Joseph would not have had an opportunity to look through some edition of Ossian during his early years - and one cannot do that for two minutes before seeing frequent Mormon-sounding names. But in the greater sense, the presence of all these words and all these adventures reminds us more broadly to take with a grain of salt the casual protests which we have heard from our youth, that no one could have made up so many names, or created so many plots as appear in the Book of Mormon.
For a much longer and more detailed version of the data above, with citations, see my Mormon Parallels entry 229, available for free download:
http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp229.pdf
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
― Cicero, De Oratore - Book III
― Cicero, De Oratore - Book III
Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
Kishkumen wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 8:35 pmYep. But no matter how many times you demonstrate it, he will continue to make the same ridiculous assertions.PseudoPaul wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 7:11 pmAll of the pre-third century BCE Jewish prophets whose existence is certain did not believe in any of those things. That's because those ideas evolved in a certain historical context. That context was influence from Persian theology (from where we get the idea of evil cosmic beings) during the Persian period, and theodicy inspired by the Greek persecution of law-keeping Jews. The latter changed the longstanding belief that all suffering was a punishment from God for sins. The fact that the righteous were suffering en mass proved to them not only that evil must come from another source other than God, but also that for God to be just the righteous dead should get some kind of reward that is different from the reward the wicked. From there we get the idea of Resurrection from the dead, and centuries later the idea that people could actually live in the divine realm with God.
So, case closed.
mentalgymnast, do you understand the meaning of the word, "holistically"?
pseudopaul, literally, just gave you an "holistic" explanation.
well, yes. We all live within the parameters of the world academics evaluate. I for one, appreciate the sharing of expertise that happens here very much. you don't have to be such a ridiculous "regular guy," you know.I don’t have to cram myself into a box. The box of accepted orthodoxy within the ivory tower world of academia.
I don’t consider myself having to defend a position of ‘Reverend’.
There are some real world benefits of being just a regular guy.
Albeit, ‘ridiculous’.
Re: The burden is now upon those who deny the ancient origins of the Book of Mormon
Wonderful post, Rick! Posts like these are a real gift.Rick Grunder wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:14 amNearly a century before Joseph Smith, we have a striking example of religious-like devotion to a fabricated epic narrative, in the supposedly rescued, proto-Scottish Ossian poems invented by James Macpherson. These exerted major influence upon European and American literature. What I find relevant to our present discussion here is the power of conviction that can grow out of emotional response to some needed and increasingly repeated story or text with distinct literary cadence and eccentricities.
Macpherson never quite got around to showing his claimed old manuscript sources, but he kept publishing fresh, exciting lore. He suggested undreamed nobility in earliest Scottish character. He tantalized the ear and the heart with exotic, mysterious beauty. Here is a passage spoken from the hill Temora, cheering heroic warriors forward like Highland streams:
Whether such words would have been spoken in the third century CE by Celtic ancestors was a matter of debate, depending largely upon whether or not the reader was Scotch. Yet when translated into Italian, the passages evidently became even more beautiful. Ossian was Napoleon Bonaparte's favorite book. In German, these poems helped inspire the "bardic movement," and a young Goethe put them in the hands of . . . Young Werther and Charlotte to soften their Sorrows (1774). Henry David Thoreau would compare these poems favorably to Homer and Isaiah."On Crona," said the bards, "there bursts a stream by night. It swells in its own dark course, till morning's early beam. Then comes it white from the hill, with the rocks and their hundred groves. Far be my steps from Crona. Death is tumbling there. Be ye a stream from Mora, sons of cloudy Morven!"
For a very long time, Ossian was more accepted and influential at all levels of European and American society than would be the future Book of Mormon. And Ossian was defended with some of the same approaches, stances and forms of evidence which would be employed later by Book of Mormon defenders.
When adherents asked famed critic Samuel Johnson if he actually imagined that "any man of modern age could have written such poems . . . ?" he quipped, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children." Equally prominent figures acted as apologists, and accused non-believers of indulging in too many parallels. The frenzy faded, but so slowly, over the years, that while Ossian is now just pretty fiction, its traces abound in various forms down to minor place names assigned to locales in (I believe) two hemispheres.
Among curious and supposedly ancient names Macpherson gave us were those of the high rocky hill Carmora, characters named Maronna, Maronan, or Nemi; the tribe of Morni and the land of Morven, a flag known as the Standard of Morven; the fearsome Sword of Luno; high Temora (residence of the kings of Ireland; "They shall seek me at Temora, but I shall not be found."), and quite a dizzying array of similar variants (among plenty of other names that don’t sound one bit like the Book of Mormon).
Do I think that Joseph Smith saw or “used” such a source? That is not my point. I’m mostly fascinated by how easily people make meaning for themselves out of ancient texts recently revealed, not caring, really, about actual historicity. On the one hand, I certainly think it would be absurd to suggest that Joseph would not have had an opportunity to look through some edition of Ossian during his early years - and one cannot do that for two minutes before seeing frequent Mormon-sounding names. But in the greater sense, the presence of all these words and all these adventures reminds us more broadly to take with a grain of salt the casual protests which we have heard from our youth, that no one could have made up so many names, or created so many plots as appear in the Book of Mormon.
For a much longer and more detailed version of the data above, with citations, see my Mormon Parallels entry 229, available for free download:
http://www.rickgrunder.com/parallels/mp229.pdf
“The past no longer belongs only to those who once lived it; the past belongs to those who claim it, and are willing to explore it, and to infuse it with meaning for those alive today.”—Margaret Atwood