If plates then God

[Morley]

This may be a side track but I found myself thinking of Jeff Koons upon seeing this image. His work seems to exist is some parallel space. I find it easy to say I do not care for Koons but I realize his work manages to be art in a way this Kinkade does not. I am not up to explaining it or maybe I am shy of understanding it. perhaps the big picture for any given work is larger than the physical dimension.

Indeed. I love this observation. Even a stainless steel balloon rabbit will edge out a pastel fairy castle every time.

[MG 2.0]

It’s amazing (well maybe not so much) that you are able to concisely explain how the Book of Mormon was created whilst at the same time ignoring all that has been written to the contrary that would poke holes in your one sentence shrink wrapped conclusion.

And critics criticize believers for supposedly walking around with blinders on.

Regards,
MG

I’ve provided facts:
Joseph was an imaginative story teller.

There’s a difference between being a good story teller…lots of people are…and hitting it out of the park in comparison with all of your peers:

Prominent oral texts
Origin Title Approx. Word Count
Joseph Smith Book of Mormon 269,320
Greek (Homer) Iliad 148,045
Iceland The Story of Burnt Njal 144,000
Greek (Homer) Odyssey 134,560
Finnish The Kalevala 130,430
Italy-Latin (Virgil) The Aeneid 108,170
Middle East Arabian Nights 81,000
Serbo-Croatian The Marriage of Meho 80,000
Iceland The Eddas of the Norse Mythology 80,000
Tonga The Banished Child 43,000
Sudan The Epic of Son-Jara 40,000
Congo Mwindo Epics <30,000
[multiple] Gilgamesh: Man’s First Story 25,500
Spanish El Romancero 25,000
French La Chanson de Roland 25,000
Mali Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali 24,000
Old English Beowulf 22,000
[Page 258]Spanish El Cid 15,000
Byzantine The Lament of the Virgin 12,000
Turkish The Book of Dede Korkut (longest story) 11,000
Arabia Taghribat Bani Hilal 8,700
Old English Bede’s Story of Caedmon 5,000
Turkish Kokotoy’s Memorial Feast 751

No one else comes close. And remember his age…

His scribe, Oliver, was a well educated school teacher.

He received the dictation. He wasn’t the one with his head in a hat.

There were contemporary reference materials, such as the King James Bible, available to them.

That doesn’t begin to account for the volume of intertextuality and other literary/narrative components of the Book of Mormon.

You are skirting around the edges without really approaching the serious apologetics that have shown that it is highly unlikely Joseph could have orally transmitted the Book of Mormon as a Super Bard. You are trying to make him into the Bard of all Bards when the evidence doesn’t seem to justify it.

Multiple historical sources show that in the 1830s and 1840s, Joseph Smith would sometimes employ stories while teaching the Saints. Scott A. Hales, a writer and editor for Saints: The Story of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, explains: “The Prophet was an informal storyteller, who sometimes incorporated anecdotes into his everyday conversations and sermons.” Yet, Hales also notes: “The stories Joseph told in his daily life never reached the same level of complexity as the Book of Mormon narrative.”95
Joseph Smith’s formal education would have included few, if any, lessons designed to enhance storytelling skills. Course work in district [Page 281]schools in upstate New York did not include composition in part due to the lack of writing instruments and writing surfaces.96 Dennis A. Wright and Geoffrey A. Wright explain: “Schools in the nineteenth century provided students with few if any school supplies and rarely had blackboards. Slates were not introduced in the classroom until about 1820, and lead pencils were not used until several years later. … In the early 1800s, paper was very costly because of its scarcity.”97
While rote repetition and reading aloud were commonplace, students “on the frontier had little formal education and even less training in formal rhetoric or public speaking.”98 If Joseph developed extraordinary oratory skills, he would have done so largely independent of his formal schooling.99

Folks such as yourself like to focus on Joseph’s telling stories about the ancient inhabitants of America.

One report from Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph’s mother, describes his storytelling inclinations around 1823 when he was in his 18th year:
During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious [Page 282]worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.100
This very late quotation refers to details of “dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode,” none of which occur in the Book of Mormon, raising questions about the reliability of the recollection. These “amusing recitals” were placed in the context of Joseph receiving instructions from the angel regarding the soon-to-be translated ancient record. Nowhere does she hint that Joseph possessed the skills to author such a book or that his imaginative storytelling in the family setting was a harbinger of a fuller fiction that he was developing.
Beyond Lucy’s declaration, none of Joseph’s other family members or acquaintances described him engaged in behaviors that might be interpreted as rehearsals or public speaking performances. It seems if he had practiced oratory performing, someone in the area might have been aware. In 1834, Eber D. Howe published statements from twenty-two local residents along with two “group statements” from the inhabitants of Palmyra and Manchester.101 In July 1880 newspaperman Frederick G. Mather compiled written recollections from twelve citizens of Susquehanna, Broome, and Chenango Counties, Pennsylvania.102 In 1888, Arthur Deming printed accounts from fourteen individuals in two volumes of Naked Truths about Mormonism.103 Many of these persons [Page 283]knew Joseph Smith Jr. personally, but none pronounced him engaged in the activities of a village storyteller or trying to entertain spectators with his sagas. Journalist James Gordon Bennett visited the Palmyra area in August of 1831 and recorded that Joseph Smith’s father was a “great story teller,” but wrote nothing similar concerning the younger Joseph.104

As I said, you and others skirt around the rather voluminous evidence that Joseph was completely out of character in order to create a work such as the Book of Mormon.

In one instance Joseph is made out to be a country bumpkin with little or no education and at other times a genius of unequaled proportions.

Which is it?

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

For the moment, and for argument's sake, I'll go with Book of Mormon being remarkable. If angels were involved, it was something more than remarkable: It had to be a miracle.

The product of a miracle needs to be something a little more than just remarkable. It's not a miracle that a shiny piece of quartz is discovered on my front porch one morning. It may be a miracle if the quartz were discovered to be a genuine version of the Heart of the Ocean pendant from the film Titanic, that had somehow magicked itself there. That something is classed as being worthy of being called a miracle depends, in part, on the worth of the result of said miracle. Clearing up that zit on my nose, no matter how improbably it happened, won't be called a miracle, while the spontaneous, overnight, sprouting back of my amputated left hand might be.

So, the question is: Is the remarkable Book of Mormon significant enough to be worthy of being called a miracle. As a text, it has little unique literary value, or it would be studied in universities worldwide. It contains no breakthrough theological doctrine for the world, or even Mormonism--as that all evolved later. It has proven to be next to worthless as a guide for historians, archeologists, biologists, geologists, or linguists--all areas that one might think an ancient text, in Reformed Egyptian, about a thousand-year-long empire of Jewish proto-Christians in the Americas might be. It makes no significant contributions to psychology, philosophy, art, or science. So, what is the worth of the book? As dantana notes in another thread, the book's only value is that it was used as a catalyst to kick off yet another new religion. And as Physics Guy suggests, books like that are a dime a dozen and are hardly unique.

And definitely not qualifying for the assumption that an angel was involved, let alone the miracle of magically disappearing (albeit unused) plates.

Great comment, Morley, thanks.

[Marcus]

There’s a difference between being a good story teller…lots of people are…and hitting it out of the park in comparison with all of your peers:

Prominent oral texts
Origin Title Approx. Word Count
Joseph Smith Book of Mormon 269,320
[snipped: <list compiled by Hales with many, many errors in it pertaining to wordcount....>]

No one else comes close. And remember his age…

Just so I understand this, your argument is that the more words one speaks at a younger age, the better story teller one is? Please explain your reasons for making this statement.

(Keep in mind I currently have a precocious two year old nephew whose continuous babbling between naps has long since surpassed Smith's achievement. And his doting parents have videos of every moment, so I'm happy to double check the word count, if you need proof.)

Side question: In what way do you consider Joseph Smith to be a peer of Homer, Virgil, and the author of Beowolf, among others?

[Nevo]

His scribe, Oliver, was a well educated school teacher.

Oliver Cowdery wasn't "well educated." He had only a common school education, the same as Joseph Smith. He never attended an academy or went to college.

[MG 2.0]

I can only speak for myself, but I'm not going to bother to take any part of your gish gallop seriously unless you actually attach the sources for each part you quoted.

Here you go, Marcus. Hope this helps.

"a unified, coherent, history-like narrative of nearly 270,000 words and almost 200 named characters interacting with one another in complicated plot lines"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: The Origins of the Text,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 749.

“that covers a thousand years of history”
Source: Nevo

and includes "a diverse array of genres (history, sermons, prophecy, scriptural exegesis, poetry, allegory, letters, etc.), multiple levels of narration (with later narrators editing and commenting on previous accounts), and literary techniques such as flashbacks, embedded documents, and parallel narratives,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as Ancient History,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 807.

while also keeping track of "genealogical relationships, the sources of various plates and records, and successions of rulers,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as Ancient History,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 807.

and exhibiting intertextuality and internal allusions and playing with temporality,
Source: On intertextuality and internal allusions, see Grant Hardy, “General Essays: The Book of Mormon as Literature,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 798. On playing with temporality, see Elizabeth Fenton, “Nephites and Israelites: The Book of Mormon and the Hebraic Indian Theory,” in Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon, ed. Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 298-320.

and addressing not only the question of Indian origins and the state of contemporary Christianity, but also "God's covenants with Israel, the nature of salvation, prophecy, scripture, faith, eschatology, human agency, and divine justice and mercy,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: The Origins of the Text,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 750.

while also presenting, in sermons and stories, "a coherent spiritual vision that draws from biblical precedents, resolves ambiguities, and both explains and applies doctrines in ways that were intelligible to nineteenth-century readers,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Book of Mormon Theology,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 766.

that would also resonate with millions of future readers around the world,
Source: See Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as Fiction,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 811.

and that future historians would hail as "one of the greatest documents in American cultural history"
Source: Gordon S. Wood, “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History 61, no. 4 (1980): 380-81.

and "among the great achievements of American literature"
Source: Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 314.

*bump

And then we have Marcus’s very next post:

Wow. You really did just cobble together a bunch of disparate things. And you "hope it helps"? I thought at least from Morley's comment that you were quoting a cohesive statement, but you have just shoveled together a bunch of stuff. I enjoy Grant Hardy's work, but, no, this mishmash of stuff is not convincing.

Thanks for the links, but you need to go back to the beginning and try again to respond to PG's comment in a coherent way.

Marcus, that was kind of lame, if not rude. Nevo went to a bit of work to do what was requested and then this?

It’s not worth the time for any of us to go back to Hardy’s book and do what Nevo did here if other posters are simply going to toss it off as being unsubstantial and/or of no worth.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Have you no shame? 80-90% of your responses to me are large volume cut and pastes.

For being such a smart person (you do work in the academy from what I seem to remember) you sure do some dumb things.

Any substantive original response to the post made upthread to PG?

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=158043&start=1290

Or are you just trying to make it disappear?

Folks, take a look at what this lady can do. Isn’t she amazing? Not only the board nanny but also the cut and paste queen. What skill! What acumen!

Do you think Joseph Smith wrote/dictated the Book of Mormon on his own? How did you come to the conclusion that you have?

Regards,
MG

*bump

Marcus, did I miss your answers/comments?

Regards,
MG

[drumdude]

*bump

Marcus, did I miss your answers/comments?

Regards,
MG

I hope she doesn’t answer you after you called her the “board nanny.”

Shame on you, MG. You are better than that.

[MG 2.0]

*bump

Marcus, did I miss your answers/comments?

Regards,
MG

I hope she doesn’t answer you after you called her the “board nanny.”

Shame on you, MG. You are better than that.

I’m afraid that’s exactly what I think/meant. So I said it.

Regards,
MG

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

His scribe, Oliver, was a well educated school teacher.

Oliver Cowdery wasn't "well educated." He had only a common school education, the same as Joseph Smith. He never attended an academy or went to college.

He was smart enough to teach, and then become a lawyer through self-study (I believe that's how it went). He was extremely proficient with the written word, and is purported to have been very well-read, especially so for that era.

- Doc