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.
But that's not an insignificant thing.
Grant Hardy notes that "the Book of Mormon was probably the first addition to the library of world scriptures after the Sikh Adi Granth, completed in 1604, and while it is not the last — Baha'i and Tenrikyo revelations also fit the criteria — it has been one of the most successful" (Hardy, "General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as World Scripture," in The Annotated Book of Mormon, 823–24).
The historian Adam Jortner has called it "one of the most remarkable books in human history — not merely for its content but for the effects it had on readers. . . . The Book of Mormon was not merely a book; it was a religious experience in itself" (Adam Jortner, No Place For Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021], 43-44).
(Another promotional blurb, sorry!)
Isn't Adam Jortner critical of the Book of Mormon? Like, he sees it as fiction, no?
- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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:
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?
More words in this context clearly means exhibiting a larger vocabulary, not a plethora of incoherent babbling.
Can you use the word “duh” in a complete sentence.
Then you are more capable than someone who doesn’t no “duh”.
In today’s hyper language, more words may mean things like [UrL].
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?
More words in this context clearly means exhibiting a larger vocabulary...
On what do you base this conclusion? Have you compared the vocabulary used in the various lengths? Are you sure the increasing length is unambiguously associated with a larger vocabulary?
The Book of Mormon isn't a text in the oral tradition which is what all of the other texts he mentions are or were--at one time or another. To be a work that's considered to be in the oral tradition, the work needs to have been passed from generation to generation without having been written down. To have a long work that gets memorized word for word, line for line, generation after generation, is quite significant.
Are you familiar with other narrative works that were orally dictated in large chunks over a short period of time (a few months) that resulted in anything comparable to the Book of Mormon? I would guess this was the point Hales was making.
Joseph produced the Book of Mormon through an oral ‘bard like’ method.
Anyone else that has done this…and at the length and coherency of extended text and narrative that Joseph Smith did?
Or is this production a ‘one off’?
Regards,
MG
If he was making that point, he would have said those words. Since Hales chose other words and methods, he was likely arguing the point he said he was making.
Anyway one looks at it, his comparison was grossly dishonest.
Isn't Adam Jortner critical of the Book of Mormon? Like, he sees it as fiction, no?
He's not a Mormon, so he probably does see it as fiction, but he doesn't discuss that in his books. He describes his approach in the Introduction to Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (which also looks at early Mormonism). He is not concerned with adjudicating the truth or falsity of the beliefs that he writes about, but is interested in how beliefs affect behavior.
So we get passages like this:
Adam Jortner wrote:By the time Joseph Smith had his first visit from the angel Moroni (traditionally dated to 1823), angels had already visited Universalists, Catholics, Native American prophets, Freewill Baptists, and Shakers — and those are simply the angelic visits whose subjects did not claim to be dreaming. If we include all those who saw angels in a mental state only, the list gets much longer: Jemima Wilkinson visited heaven in 1776; John Colby took the same trip in 1815. Polly Davis was instantly healed when an angel appeared to her in 1792. Angels guided Sarah Alley from heaven into hell in 1798. A Vermonter named Bullard dreamed an angel warned him of the approach of bears. Julia Foote saw an angel with a scroll who commanded her to become a preacher. Abel Sarjent built his Halcyon Church in Ohio in part based on angelic communication.... (Jortner, Blood from the Sky, 7-8)
First of all, listing a lot of pre-literate epics and boasting that the Book of Mormon is longer than them is like listing a lot of bicycles and boasting that a motorcycle is faster. Yeah, they're all two-wheelers, but only it has a motor. Only the Book of Mormon was written down and printed in mass after being dictated. As Morley points out, that's completely different from circulating orally over generations in a pre-literate culture.
What limits the length of a pre-literate oral performance is how much a performer can memorize word-for-word, and how long a piece audiences want to hear at one sitting. None of those limits has even the slightest effect on a text that is being dictated to a scribe for printing. So the comparison is worse than meaningless. The lengths of those oral epics so obviously have nothing whatever to do with how long a book Smith could have dictated, that only a dim or dishonest person could possibly mention them as evidence against Smith's composition of the Book of Mormon.
And it's not even just that.
The Book of Mormon isn't one story. It's a collection of many much shorter episodes, each featuring different sets of characters, spread over hundreds of years. Each individual episode is totally in the length league of old oral epics. Smith could certainly manage one. And then, having dictated one, he dictated another. What would stop him from doing that?
What's so hard about just keeping on talking? What would have stopped Smith from just keeping on dictating until the Book of Mormon grew as long as he wanted? Why is the length of the Book of Mormon any argument whatever against someone like Smith making it up?
This argument from Hales has been a fine example of just what I said: the apologetic arguments are garbage. They don't just fall short of the impossible, miraculous standard of proof that it would take to convince hardened critics. They are pitifully bad. They fall short of making even the least bit of sense.
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.
But that's not an insignificant thing.
Indeed.
Grant Hardy notes that "the Book of Mormon was probably the first addition to the library of world scriptures after the Sikh Adi Granth, completed in 1604, and while it is not the last — Baha'i and Tenrikyo revelations also fit the criteria — it has been one of the most successful" (Hardy, "General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as World Scripture," in The Annotated Book of Mormon, 823–24).
Okay, let's say that Hardy is correct. That the Book of Mormon is the first since XX and is one of those that has been successful means what?
It takes 15 hours to read the Iliad out loud. Given the relative length of the two works, it should take 25 hours to read the Book of Mormon. Is it really so remarkable that Smith dictated the Book of Mormon in a little over two months? I will grant that it is impressive, but I don’t see miraculous in that. I don’t agree with Hales when he minimizes Joseph’s earlier rehearsals of Book of Mormon civilization to his family. That counts, in my view, as composition. Just as novelists do character sketches, Smith was doing background work on the world of the Book of Mormon.
“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
It's one of his favorite Ad hom go-to's every time he feels bested. Never mind that every question has been answered repeatedly.... 
