Setember 11 Attack: A Crime Without Parallel in American History

[Limnor]

At the risk of upsetting everybody (not my intention), but solely for the purpose of a discussion about Mormonism, shouldn’t believing Mormons in some way admire the perpetrators of the Twin Towers attack - on the basis that they fervently believed that they were doing their God’s bidding? A bit like they admire Nephi for cutting off the drunken and inert Laban’s head? Or like they admire Abraham for being willing to murder his own child because his God commanded it? Is there a difference (other than carrying out the act on behalf of a different set of religious beliefs) in prinicpal?

I can’t remember who (maybe Vogel?) but there have been suggestions that the Book of Abraham may reflect pressure on Joseph Smith to produce a text that matched the expectations of his followers, particularly framed around obedience.

Joseph’s own life experiences, including his childhood surgery, and later being mobbed and nearly castrated, provide a possible framework as Joseph being “bound.” Alma was also “bound,” perhaps reflecting another form of this method.

Following theory that Joseph writes himself into his scriptures, the “priests” could be seen as Warren Parish and others, forcing Joseph into translating what they wanted to hear.

For a traditional Christian comparison, Abraham’s test isn’t about glorifying violence but about trust in God’s promise and Abraham believing that God would raise Isaac from the dead. Christian thought portrays that as foreshadowing God providing his own son as a sacrifice framed in love, knowing that life could be restored. So it’s less about obedience and more about trusting promises, particularly the promise being the seed through Isaac.

I’ve recently learned that LDS thought portrays that seed as the priesthood - would appreciate someone’s feedback on the validity of my understanding.

None of this is intended to be an apologetic for Joseph. It’s more a neutral observation.

[Limnor]

I’ve not really studied the Jewish or Muslim traditional thought

[Chap]

For a traditional Christian comparison, Abraham’s test isn’t about glorifying violence but about trust in God’s promise and Abraham believing that God would raise Isaac from the dead.

Can you give me some references (maybe from early Church Fathers?) for the bolded statement, please? That is new to me.

[Limnor]

For a traditional Christian comparison, Abraham’s test isn’t about glorifying violence but about trust in God’s promise and Abraham believing that God would raise Isaac from the dead.

Can you give me some references (maybe from early Church Fathers?) for the bolded statement, please? That is new to me.

At the risk of “Bible bashing,” I’d offer up the author of the letter to the Hebrews;

Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Origen and other Church Fathers speak to the idea as well.

Paul says that Abraham “believed God” about the seed and it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. Christian thought revolves around this type of faith.

[Limnor]

. Serious Book of Mormon scholarship, should it ever arise, will assume the Book of Mormon is a human composition, but where that leads may be uncertain. The problem non-believers often have is the investment of demonstrating a clear sham, rather than really getting to the truth.

This doesn't mean a critic shouldn't take a believer's assumptions seriously. I have an irk when non-believers drag out "burden of proof". There is no such thing as burden of proof outside of certain structured settings. If I want to convince anyone of anything, the burden is on me to figure out how to do it. In that sense, yes, a critic will need to entertain whatever possibilities the believer imagines. It's just that, if something like serious source criticism ever arises for the Book of Mormon, the assumptions will be naturalistic, but it won't be advanced by partisans, or at least, such partisans will need to stay covert for the long game.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=159798&p=2895424&hi ... s#p2895424

I thought a long time about this post, and have written and re-written it.

This is why I keep coming back. I’m really interested in solving the mystery of how he did it. As you state above, my approach is from a naturalistic viewpoint. It is not an attempt to demonstrate a clear sham, but an attempt to get at the truth.

The trouble is, even the statement to “get at the truth” can be seen as escalatory, as a believer already believes they have the truth about its origins, and anything else is impossible.

No matter how deftly I’ve tried to focus on the book as a piece of literature and not come off as “bashing” believers, inevitably, and perhaps justly, it is not met with welcome. I don’t blame people for that reaction, as it seems reasonable to react negatively if a discussion is seen as an attempt to destroy a worldview.

I do have pity - not in the perjorative sense - for believers because I think they have been lied to, and are, in a sense, caught in a trap.

I also have sympathy for ex-Mormons, and even a bit of admiration for what I see as the courage to speak out and escape from the trap. I feel compelled to help if I can.

I agree with your insight about partisanship, and have attempted myself to covertly introduce ideas about the book as literature. The challenge is my reading of the book is naturalistic. That’s almost a “no go” from the start.

I’m not aware if anyone has conducted a sort of Documentary Hypothesis for the book but, because it is just a message board and it’s a lonely hobby, I intend to offer up a contribution,

It’s starts with Alvin.

[Chap]

Can you give me some references (maybe from early Church Fathers?) for the bolded statement, please? That is new to me.

At the risk of “Bible bashing,” I’d offer up the author of the letter to the Hebrews;

Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Origen and other Church Fathers speak to the idea as well.

Paul says that Abraham “believed God” about the seed and it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. Christian thought revolves around this type of faith.

Thanks - I have never noticed that Pauline reference! However, I think you will agree with me that at the time the Old Testament account was written down, nobody would have thought of Abraham's sacrifice in that way.

[Limnor]

Thanks - I have never noticed that Pauline reference! However, I think you will agree with me that at the time the Old Testament account was written down, nobody would have thought of Abraham's sacrifice in that way.

Im not sure if the sacrifice was considered a Messianic foreshadowing, but will follow-up. I’ll have to look the the Mishnah and other sources to find references.

The second, Pauline thought, is captured in Genesis 15, however:

Genesis 15:4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.


For this promise to be true, Abraham would have to believe that God could bring his son back to life.

I’ll do more research and provide a further response concerning Jewish thought.

[Physics Guy]

I think of the Isaac sacrifice story as a subtle polemic against human sacrifice. First, the standard that the story sets for acceptable victims is that they can't just be powerless nobodies: a real leader's sacrifice is his own precious son. And then the standard that the story sets for a truly great leader is actually that they won't have to sacrifice anyone, that God will approve of them so much that they'll be excused in the end. In a culture in which the Abraham-and-Isaac story was a well known meme, any leader who did sacrifice someone would be declaring that they definitely didn't measure up to Abraham.

The story makes human sacrifice uncool, in a way that I think would actually work in a society where it had been cool. The story sets up Abraham as this major dude who is absolutely hard-core enough to sacrifice even his own son, but in the end God himself declares that Abraham is actually too cool for that. Now whoever's in charge somewhere has to decide. Is he in the Abraham tier?

And I really don't think this perspective is just a 21st-century retrospective whitewash of the Bronze-Age fanatics. I think that making human sacrifice uncool was the utility of this meme, the reason that the story made it big enough in the Bronze Age to persist until now. Human sacrifice is an unbelievably wasteful activity, and anything that discouraged it was a cultural asset. Humans slowly dragged ourselves out of barbarism—at least as far as we've come—in large part by using stories like this one. We didn't abandon our savage gods because we jumped straight to modernity. We abandoned them for gradually less savage gods, over time. This story may have marked one of those steps. It may even have made one of them.

[Limnor]

At the risk of “Bible bashing,” I’d offer up the author of the letter to the Hebrews;

Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Origen and other Church Fathers speak to the idea as well.

Paul says that Abraham “believed God” about the seed and it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. Christian thought revolves around this type of faith.

Thanks - I have never noticed that Pauline reference! However, I think you will agree with me that at the time the Old Testament account was written down, nobody would have thought of Abraham's sacrifice in that way.

I found some indications in Genesis Rabbah:

“When Abraham bound Isaac his son on the altar, the Holy One, blessed be He, appointed Isaac’s ashes as a means of atonement for his children in every generation.”

“The merit of Isaac who offered himself upon the altar shall stand for Israel forever.”

https://www.sefaria.org/Bereshit_Rabbah.56.9?lang=bi

It goes on the explains the actual ashes were not used.

I didn’t know this story was used to explain the blowing of the shofar. Learned something, thank you.

[Chap]

[...]
Genesis 15:4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.


For this promise to be true, Abraham would have to believe that God could bring his son back to life.

I’ll do more research and provide a further response concerning Jewish thought.

This is all very interesting.

But may I say that deducing what might have been thought about 'Abraham' many centuries ago on the grounds of logical consistency is a risky procedure?